The Civil Service

The following is the conclusion of the fifth post by Reform in the Spectator, looking ahead to the Spending Review. The first four were on Health, Education, the First Hundred Days and Welfare. All worth reading.

The Civil Service is expensive, but the real issue is that it is not good at its job. The root cause is the lack of accountability for performance. The Cabinet Office structural reform plan makes not one mention of accountability. Instead, the Government’s approach centralises more decisions on headcount, procurement and governance.

As with all areas of the public sector, politicians shouldn’t take a personal view on the size of the Civil Service. They should make it accountable and then leave it to get on with its job. Bringing in big hitters from the private sector will not change the predilection to spend rather than save.

Real reform in the Civil Service means making it accountable for every penny it spends and every person it employs. Reform has recommended that democratically elected politicians should be able – openly – to hire and fire senior officials, on the Australian model. Officials themselves would become visible and accountable, contrary to the current doctrine of ministerial accountability.

I was surprised to learn that the Civil Service accounts for only 527,000 of 6.1 million people employed in the state sector, and that it had only grown by five percent since 1999. The four largest  departments are Work and Pensions (134,000), Revenue & Customs (87,000), Justice (85,000) and Defence (77,000).

I guess the reason why Whitehall is so expensive is that about half of them are in “management” positions. Managing what, apart from decline, I wonder?