Think tank Re:State has warned that new PM Andy Burnham’s planned No.10 North will be a failure if it operates as “just another” government outpost. It says the planned “nerve centre” for change “must be used as an opportunity to disrupt the usual norms and customs of central government”.
According to Re:State, relocating some No.10 operations to Manchester – as is Burnham’s plan – will not be sufficiently disruptive if the result is “a regional office with the same, much criticised, Whitehall culture”.
Burnham first set out his plans for No.10 North in his People’s History Museum speech at the end of last month. Yesterday, further details emerged. They include moving local economic growth and devolution strategy from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to No.10 North and local economic growth policy from HM Treasury to the operation, too.
In its new paper, Building No.10 North, Re:State argues it is imperative that No.10 North should be the product of bringing together existing capabilities “in a productive new way”, and building up new capacity and capabilities that have not existed before.
“Simply reproducing or mirroring efforts playing out elsewhere in the system would be a failure, meaning this new part of the system will have had few opportunities to add value,” the paper says.
Building No.10 North says that with the exception of secretarial and private office functions to enable smooth logistical collaboration, none of the functions or teams within No.10 London should be directly replicated in No. 10 North.
It proposes the creation of four “core units” each tasked with one aspect of handing power to subnational government under Burnham’s devolution plans.
They are: a “devolution unit” responsible for driving through the PM’s devolution agenda; a “subnational investment and growth unit” supporting local growth and reindustrialisation; a “system democratisation unit” to review functions held by arm’s-length bodies for regional control; and a “local public services innovation unit” to lay the ground for place-based public service reform.
According to Re:State, each unit should be led by a director general or director who is answerable to No.10 North’s chief executive.
Alongside the four core units, the think tank says there should be a “prime minister’s transformation directorate”, that would act as the “coordinating engine” for what No.10 North is trying to achieve. Re:State says the directorate should comprise “north wings” of a strategy unit, a policy unit and a delivery unit.
“The heads of ‘strategy unit north’, ‘policy unit north’ and ‘delivery unit north’ should be recruited in a way that actively prioritises non-traditional backgrounds,” the paper says. “Ideally, they would be led by established experts who are outsiders to the Whitehall system.”
Building No.10 North anticipates that getting the PM’s new base up and running should take between 12 and 18 months for an initial “mobilisation phase”, with the operation having a staff in the region of 300 by the end of that period.
Report author Simon Kaye says the project can on only succeed if it is designed from the start to be “an exemplar” of wider changes to how the state works.
“It must strengthen the part of central government that immediately supports the prime minister, while systematically transferring power, money and responsibility outwards, and building a very different relationship with local and regional government around England,” he concludes.
“To accomplish this, No.10 North must operate outside the existing Whitehall system to help inculcate changes designed to, over time, transform the whole operation. Built well, it could become the machinery through which Whitehall finally learns to let go.”