Dame Antonia Romeo made her first committee appearance as cabinet secretary on Monday, speaking in front of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
The cab sec and head of the civil service answered questions on subjects including: pay; churn; AI; relations between ministers and officials; silos; and plans to refresh the civil service code.
Here are the key takeaways from the session.
Fixing the pay-churn incentive
A longstanding issues in the civil service is the way the pay system incentivises civil servants to change roles to get a pay rise.
Asked about concerns that this has diluted expertise in departments, Romeo said that having a system which means "the quickest way to get a pay rise is to move" rather than to stay where you are and become more expert is “crazy” and "obviously the wrong incentive".
She said reforming this system is “a big part” of her plans as cab sec.
Romeo added that the right balance needs be found.
“On the one hand we've got to incentivise people staying and offering expertise,” she said. “On the other hand, one of the great advantages of the civil service, apart from the fact we all do incredibly purpose-led work, is that we offer the opportunity to work across a whole range of things.”
Noting her own varied experience across a 25-year civil service career – spanning the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Foreign Office, Department for International Trade and Cabinet Office – Romeo said this is “one of our great sells as a recruiter” to bring in “the best talent in the country”.
“So I'm keen that we still allow people to be able to move around while recognising we need to not have people constantly moving, and especially not constantly moving because they feel they have to do so in order to get a pay rise,” she said.
Civil servants do ‘the hardest jobs in the country’
Now four months into the job, Romeo was asked what has been the “most surprisingly pleasing” thing she has noticed in the role.
She said one of the things that has surprised her the most is “the absolute enthusiasm for change among a huge number of people in the civil service”.
“What I have also seen that didn’t surprise me is the sheer professionalism, expertise and commitment of the talented staff in the civil service,” she added. “The entire country every day relies on their work. I’m incredibly grateful for that work. I think they do the hardest jobs in the country.”
Romeo’s biggest concern is the civil service’s readiness for technological change
Romeo was also asked what has been the “most devastatingly disappointing surprise” so far.
Romeo said, rather than a big surprise, the thing she is “most concerned about is our readiness as a service for the huge amount of technological change that is currently underway”.
“I don't think it's unique to the civil service, by the way, but I think it's something that I, as the head of the civil service and the whole of the top of the service needs to take very seriously,” she added. “We essentially do two things in the civil service: we support the elected government in developing and implementing their policies, and in delivering public services, and both of those two domains are going to be completely radically rewritten by AI and technology.”
On AI, Romeo said she has a four-point plan focused on “tools, talent, transformation and transition”.
She said “tools” is about “how to put best possible models in the hands of the people doing the work”, while “talent” is about upskilling civil servants in the use of AI and technology and “bringing in world class experts”.
“Transformation”, she said, will be about the “end-to-end process”, while “transition” will be about understanding what the changes mean for people’s jobs and include working closely with unions and ensuring people are being skilled to do the new jobs that are created.
Is curiosity the cure for the civil service code?
Among her long list of tasks for this year, Romeo has been asked to rewrite the civil service code.
Asked what needs to change, Romeo said she “strongly believes” in the current values of integrity, impartiality, honesty and objectivity, but she is “quite interested in considering” adding in “curiosity”.
The cab sec said she is also focused on ensuring “everybody in the civil service really live the values of the code”.
Cabinet Manual refresh will look to streamline ‘write-round’ process
Along with refreshing the code, Romeo has been asked by the PM to renew the Cabinet Manual, which sets out the laws, conventions and rules under which the government operates. During the session Romeo confirmed that a key element of this will be “streamlining write-rounds”, one of the processes by which ministers gain collective agreement for policies.
Write-rounds are when ministers reach decisions through written correspondence instead of an in-person meeting of cabinet or a cabinet committee. The minister seeking a decision sends a proposal to other relevant ministers, requesting their approval. If any disagree with the proposal, they can respond in writing to the relevant cabinet committee chair, explaining their objection. The process is designed to ensure that there is government-wide agreement on cross-departmental issues.
Romeo told the committee: “I think we do need to do quite a lot of work at the centre to look at how we streamline the write-round process to look at how we can broker things more quickly.”
She also argued that the key to departments avoiding “getting bogged down in siloes” is “attitude”.
‘Signal and noise’: Romeo on reported tensions between civil servants and ministers
There has been a lot of talk of tensions between civil servants and ministers recently, especially following the recent sackings of Romeo’s predecessor Sir Chris Wormald in February and the Foreign Office permanent secretary Sir Olly Robbins in April. Following the removal of Robbins, former cab sec Gus O’Donnell warned prime minister Keir Starmer he “faces one of the worst crises in relations between ministers and mandarins of modern times”.
Romeo, however, said this is not something that she has noticed.
“I don’t think I do agree that there's a tension particularly,” she said. “I think the civil service serves the government and delivers direct public services. “I have to say, now and in every role I have worked in – I've been a perm sec for nine years before this job – there's always been excellent relations between the civil service and secretaries of state. And I should say also that, often there's kind of ‘noise around’, but actually, if you ask the people doing the jobs, they say relationships are great.”
Asked why tensions are so often reported if they don’t reflect the reality, she said: “There's signal and noise, isn't there? The signal is we've got to get better at delivery, at innovation, I want to build up pride and trust. Those are things I'm focusing my time on, and that is all in the service of the prime minister and the government.”
Putting a spell on the civil service
Romeo was asked what she would do if she had a magic wand to change something immediately to improve delivery.
She said there are “a raft of things” she could pick but she would “probably focus on capability as the thing where there is the biggest gap between achieving something as soon as possible and how long I think it's actually going to take”.