Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Lamb Excerpts

Thursday 24th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

I appreciate this collegiate style of discussion. There is a huge amount to do here. When we came into power, we set out, as I said, a review of the picture that showed just how hard it is for citizens to negotiate. When moving home, one has to announce it to 10 different organisations using different public services, sometimes 40 different services, so we need to change. We have not waited for the review. We have already set out our own plans, but we will of course respond to external reviews that come forward.

[Peter Lamb (Crawley) (Lab)]

5. What steps he is taking to reform the civil service.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Pat McFadden)]

Let me thank the thousands of diligent and hard-working civil servants who are dedicated to making people’s lives better. We want to get the best for civil servants and out of civil servants, so we are reforming the structure and the focus so that it is better placed to fulfil that purpose. That includes a number of important steps in recent weeks: robust performance management; better use of digital tools; faster recruitment; cuts to some wasteful spending; and a review of the arms-length body landscape, including the changes announced on NHS England, to return both power and responsibility to elected representatives.

[Peter Lamb]

I thank the Minister for his response and I am perfectly happy to accept the diligence of the civil service. Regardless, every two years a third of the civil service change their Department and countless more change to unrelated policy roles within each Department. Under the previous Government, policy expertise was completely hollowed out from the civil service. Will the Minister set out how we intend to resolve that to bring policy expertise back into the civil service and ensure we have Government teams capable of delivering for Britain?

[Pat McFadden]

It is probably true to say that a long-held frustration of some Ministers has been turnaround and the pattern of career progression, where people move on after a few years just as they are becoming an absolute expert in their area. Our ambition is not just to have policy expertise, but to change the way that policy is put together in the first place. That is why the test-and-learn approach, which we discussed earlier in this session, is so important. Frankly, the old way of having a group of experts writing a White Paper, throwing it over a wall and hoping it will work first time, just does not work in today’s age. What we really have to avoid is a two-speed world, with massive innovation in the private sphere and a public sphere working in the same old ways. We have to avoid that in the interests of the public.