Last year, Keir Starmer’s government promised a nation bruised by uncertainty and instability five clear destinations: faster growth, clean power, an NHS that works, safer streets and opportunity for every child. A year ago, the language of ‘missions’ felt visionary, and was sold as grown-up politics. Yet after last month’s Spending Review – long on fiscal restraint while thin on the detail of how money will actually track missions – the gap between ambition and the capacity to deliver looms large.
After less than a year in government, there is frustration in Starmer’s team about the alleged failings of the British state: its bureaucracy, lack of agility, risk-aversion, and slow pace of change. It was Tony Blair who several years into his premiership complained about ‘the scars on his back’, having battled to transform the public sector. Understandably, civil servants respond that the problem is not the machinery of government, but a lack of direction from the top.
So far, the response from ministers is to resurrect the approach from the early 2000s known as ‘deliverology’, applying tools of performance management to track progress in achieving the government’s missions. The favoured approach uses targets, ‘a prioritised set of measurable, ambitious, and time-bound goals’, with ‘trajectories’ that specify how improvement should be achieved.
Recreating the Delivery Unit is not necessarily the wrong starting point. Those who worked closely with its first head, Michael Barber, confirm that he was (and is) a highly capable leader whose emollient style helped to ensure a rigorous approach to implementation. The DU could easily have been loathed or ignored by the civil service. Yet many departments worked constructively with the unit, appreciating it would strengthen their ability to deliver results, while enhancing their secretary of state’s reputation.
The DU brought together, in Barber’s words, ‘a small group of dedicated individuals focused exclusively on achieving impact and improving outcomes’. The unit added routine and discipline to decision-making through ‘regularly scheduled and structured opportunities for the system leader, delivery-plan owners, and others to review performance and make decisions’ through stocktakes and delivery reports. During the Blair premiership, there was agreement that public services got significantly better.
Nevertheless, the unit was a product of its time, and the nostalgia which has encouraged the current generation of leaders to re-establish the DU may prove misplaced. The terrain for public services in the 2020s is far tougher. The SR means that many services will receive no real terms increase in budgets. The NHS gets more money, but nothing like the spending rises of the early 2000s. Net public sector debt has topped 90% of GDP, while there is nervousness about gilt markets returning to the volatility last witnessed during the Truss premiership. The Treasury, rattled by years of rapid ministerial turnover and the debacle of the Truss/Kwarteng ‘mini-budget’, now acts like a risk manager, not a strategic investor. Departments fight for survival, hoarding budgets rather than collaborating to remove silos. The political landscape has changed too, with city-region mayors competing for a larger share of resources. It is a different time to the early 2000s when economic growth meant the key question for governments was how to ensure extra spending led to improvements in results and outcomes.
The crucial issue is whether bringing back deliverology will help to improve the performance of public services in the light of current constraints? Our understanding of how to implement policy and improve organisational performance across central and local government has evolved significantly since the DU was first established. A particular issue is the problem created when policymaking and delivery are viewed as separate disciplines. The divide was institutionalised in Whitehall by the creation of Next Steps agencies in the late 1980s: arms-length bodies responsible for operational delivery were established working (at least in theory) outside the day to day control of ministers.
An unintended consequence of Next Steps was that understanding of front-line delivery among Whitehall officials eroded, while the public sector grew more fragmented. Deliverology may lead to similar problems: it is largely divorced from policymaking, while it focuses on refining technical structures, negating the importance of culture and relationships. In many instances, the problem is not simply implementation, but the fact the policy at the outset was flawed.
As such, frontline wisdom must inform policy at inception, not as an afterthought. The Cabinet Office’s recent plan to second prison governors, social workers, headteachers and NHS managers into Whitehall is sensible, but only if the insights gained are taken on board by departments, and improvement is secured at scale. A few high-profile placements here and there will not change the system.
The real gap in central government is the lack of capability devoted to strategy, helping ministers set a clear vision and direction while choosing between competing priorities. Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund releases money only when fiscal impact, strategic fit and delivery muscle line up. Canada’s Quality of Life Framework links the things that matter most to Canadians to budgeting and decision making in the federal government. These approaches tether ambition to resources from day one. Whitehall should do the same.
Starmer’s missions can succeed, but only if ministers build a system that links purpose to pounds, and pounds to people’s lives. In politics, aspiration without strategy goes nowhere fast. After years of drift, Britain deserves better.
Patrick Diamond is professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London and a former head of policy planning in No.10. Vijay K. Luthra is a public service transformation specialist and former civil servant, local government councillor, school governor and NHS NED
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