The Tory turnaround is welcome – but it is also risky

    For some years, the Conservatives have – unsurprisingly – adopted a very small-c conservative line on the civil service, bemoaning the upsurge in special advisers; the supposed loss of civil service skills; the reliance on consultants; and, above all, the strengthening of the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and Downing Street in relation to the other departments.

    That line, it seems, has now changed. Following reports that David Cameron and George Osborne have been considering the arguments for a stronger centre of government, with the power to ensure that cross-departmental policies are coordinated and cross-government reforms adopted, shadow Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has made clear that the party now favours “some pretty tight control” of government operations, “but very defined on a few things – which might include the delivery of shared services”. Compared to previous oppositions – and, indeed, to the Liberal Democrats – the Tories have made great efforts to understand the civil service.

    The Conservatives, Maude told CSW (see our 21 April issue, p1 and p7), recognise the tendency of large organisations to put the needs of vested interests at their centres above those of the frontline staff who deliver services; and they understand the need for strong direction from the heart of government, in order to realise the cost-saving potential of new technologies and to push reform programmes out through the civil service.

    This is welcome. In the past, efforts at reform have stumbled because those who felt threatened by change have been able to delay or block progress. And, given an injection of energy and political capital, there is plenty of potential here – both to save public funds, and to improve services through better information, planning and coordination. But in pursuing reform, the Tories will encounter a risk: if their commitment to overcoming vested interests leads them to ignore sensible and well-informed advice from the people who know the system best, they could create systemic and policy disasters that make the stories of the Rural Payments Agency or the Child Support Agency look like minor hiccups.

    Government is a vast and complicated beast, and it works within the constraints not only of political considerations but also of legacy systems and a tangled legislative environment. What’s more, in many fields, any changes must be introduced without interrupting services. This is no place for gung-ho management: energy and commitment is certainly required – but so is insight, expertise, sensitivity and intelligence.

    There is a further complication here. The Tories’ new line retains their hostility to spending on consultants – but the current government, at least, has often relied on consultants’ skills and relative independence to introduce change programmes. Francis Maude is confident that the civil service is still able to foster reform, but doing so is bound to be more difficult without such dependence on external change agents.

    Any Conservative government, it seems, will understand the potential value of greater central direction in improving the efficiency of government. But it will not have much experience of working with the civil service – and a false move could create great human as well as political damage. If the Tories win, their ability to listen carefully will be just as crucial to success in government as their reforming zeal.