Dear Dame Antonia,
Congratulations on your appointment. You inherit a role that has been diminished by instability, anonymous briefing, the absence of a credible reform agenda and a long-term decline in the status and prestige of the British civil service. In recent times that has meant three cabinet secretaries in under eighteen months. A civil service told to take risks by ministers who then swiftly terminated the career of its most senior leader. You do not need us to tell you how much trust and goodwill have been eroded.
But as the newly appointed cabinet secretary, you also inherit an opportunity. The case for civil service reform is now so widely accepted that the argument has been won. The question is whether anyone will actually implement the reform agenda. We believe you can, but you must resist the twin temptations that have defeated your predecessors: treating reform as a communications exercise; or treating it merely as a drive for cost efficiency. It is neither. It is above all a question of building the right combination of state capability to confront the challenges of the age.
Here, respectfully, is what we think matters most.
Firstly, make the relationship with the prime minister robust, not deferential. The failure of your predecessor was not primarily a personality mismatch. It was a failure of institutional design. The cabinet secretary's authority depends on being able to tell the prime minister that a proposed decision or reform initiative is ill-conceived, drawing on their vast knowledge and, in particular, institutional memory. That requires a relationship in which challenge is encouraged across the system of government, the fundamental basis of the relationship between ministers and civil servants. The prime minister must understand that your success is his success, and that plausible deniability over anonymous briefing is corrosive to the trust on which effective government depends.
Second, define what the civil service needs to become before you start cutting resources and staff. The government has promised a strategic workforce plan. It has not delivered one. In its absence, recruitment freezes and headcount targets are being applied by each department without any clear picture of what capabilities the civil service actually needs for the future. Digital specialists, commercial negotiators, programme directors and data scientists are not mere overheads. They are the capabilities without which the state cannot deliver its mission. Pay reform, career paths that reward expertise rather than generalist rotation, and external recruitment that attracts talented outsiders are all overdue. But they need to be part of a coherent plan.
Third, open up the civil service so it better reflects the country it serves. The senior civil service has reached near-parity on gender over the last decade, a genuine achievement. But 71% of the SCS comes from higher socio-economic backgrounds, a figure that has barely changed since 1967. Around a fifth of officials attended elite universities, against less than 1% of the population[MOU1] . The Fast Stream pipeline exacerbates these inequalities. If the state is to make decisions that reflect the complexity of the country and avoid the perils of group-think, its decision-makers cannot be drawn from such narrow social backgrounds. This is not a diversity aspiration. It is a capability requirement. Yet the success profiles for civil service roles are often opaque and confusing to outsiders and should be replaced; all roles should be advertised externally by default.
Fourth, be visible. Your predecessors operated largely behind closed doors. That approach no longer works. Half a million civil servants need to hear from you directly about the scale of what needs to change and your confidence that the institution can change it. And you need to be more visible to the public given the legitimate demand for greater transparency and accountability in public service. The greatest risk is invisibility. If you are not setting the narrative on civil service reform, others will set it for you – and they will not be kind.
Fifth, put digital transformation at the centre of the drive for reform. The government has promised "wholesale digital transformation of the state". The School for Government and Public Services is a welcome step towards building internal capability. But training alone does not transform institutions. The barriers between policy and digital teams are structural. Legacy technology and the cyber risks associated with it remain unaddressed in too many departments. If AI is to reshape public services rather than simply automate existing dysfunctionality, the civil service needs leaders who understand technology as a strategic capability, not an IT function.
Finally, remember that Whitehall has a long history of confusing reform with reorganisation. New units, new structures, new organograms: these create the appearance of change without enabling necessary transformation. What the civil service needs is not a new architecture but a new operating culture, one that rewards delivery over process, values expertise alongside generalism, and treats institutional learning as a core function rather than a discretionary activity. The strategic state we need for the challenges ahead – AI, climate, demographic change, geopolitical volatility – requires sustained investment in capability, not another round of machinery-of-government changes.
You have the experience, the credibility, and, for now, the political backing to drive genuine reform. The window will not stay open indefinitely. We wish you every success.
Yours sincerely,
Patrick Diamond – professor of public policy at Queen Mary University of London and a former head of policy planning in No.10.
Vijay K. Luthra – a public service transformation specialist and former civil servant, local government councillor, school governor and NHS NED