The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) plans to release a strongly critical report on Whitehall this week, committee chair Bernard Jenkin has exclusively told CSW.

“Our report on the civil service and reform in Whitehall is hard-hitting and brutal,” he said. “We are concerned at the inertia in Whitehall and the inability of Whitehall to change.”

The report is scheduled to be published tomorrow (Thursday). Jenkin said that “what we raise is whether, in fact, there is sufficient understanding of the scale and nature of change required”. A lack of this understanding, he warned, “threatens the entire public service reform agenda.”

Meanwhile, PASC is launching a new investigation into strategic thinking in Whitehall, building on a report it published last year which argued that in the field of defence and security, nobody is directly responsible for strategic thinking on national policy.

Of that report, Jenkin said: “We were very disappointed by the government’s initial response but we are intrigued by developments since then. The government is bringing together a community of strategic thinkers from across Whitehall and it is clear our report has stimulated a significant debate in at least parts of Whitehall.”

“We have developed our thinking further, and there are new aspects of strategic thinking that we want to explore. Traditionally, strategy is a top-down process, but in a modern, democratic society, strategy must be about engagement with citizens and consensus and consent as well as leadership,” he said.

The new inquiry’s scope will be much wider than the last one, he said: “We’re expanding the remit of our enquiries to the whole of Whitehall. This is not just about national security; it’s about business, education, and most particularly the role of the Treasury, which sometimes seems to have a strategy all of its own.”

Asked whether some departments are not engaged with UK national strategy, he said: “The whole business of cross-departmental working is very difficult in Whitehall. That helps to create disjointed strategy.”

Hearings will begin for the new report in November.