In recent months, familiar tensions between ministers and civil servants have resurfaced in public. Remarks about Whitehall inertia, tighter controls on officials’ public engagement, and visible frustration on both sides have fuelled a narrative of dysfunction at the heart of government.
This framing is unhelpful. Not because tensions are unreal but because it misdiagnoses the problem. The challenge facing the UK is not a breakdown in goodwill between ministers and officials. It is the absence of a strong, shared delivery compact at the centre of government.
If the state is to deliver complex reform at pace and at scale, the relationship between ministers and the civil service must be understood not as a mere cultural nicety, but as a core element of system performance.
Why the centre matters
Decades of research point to the same conclusion: Delivery failures rarely stem from individual incompetence. They arise when the centre of government cannot align political intent, administrative capability and operational reality.
The Institute for Government and others have shown repeatedly that the working relationship between secretaries of state and permanent secretaries is one of the strongest predictors of departmental effectiveness. Where that relationship breaks down, priorities fragment, decision-making slows and accountability blurs.
This is not about personalities. It is about whether the centre functions as a strategic system or as a series of parallel hierarchies talking over and across each other.
The false comfort of the blame game
When delivery falters, the temptation is to reach for caricatures. Ministers complain about risk aversion and inertia. Officials complain about unclear priorities and political volatility. Both stories contain grains of truth. Neither is wholly accurate.
Empirical studies show no evidence of systematic obstruction by civil servants. On the contrary, officials consistently report strong professional commitment to making ministers successful. Equally, most ministers are not hostile to the civil service. They are operating under intense pressure, short time horizons and weak institutional memory.
The danger is that constant press opprobrium corrodes the very capability the centre needs. Once officials believe they will be scapegoated for political difficulty, risk aversion increases, constructive challenge is muted and any desire for learning, shuts down. The system becomes less adaptive, not more.
A strategic centre cannot run on mistrust.
Delivery requires light, not heat
One of the strongest findings from delivery research is the importance of clarity. Where ministers are clear about what matters, civil servants are generally effective at navigating complexity and aligning action.
Where clarity is absent, frustration and fear fills the vacuum.
The centre of government has a specific responsibility here. It must help ministers translate political ambition into a small number of durable priorities that survive reshuffles, fiscal events and media cycles. Without that discipline, departments oscillate between initiatives, and officials are left optimising process rather than outcomes.
This is why earlier delivery models, such as the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in the 2000s, worked when they focused on shared priorities and problem-solving, not surveillance or blame. The lesson is not to resurrect Deliverology, but to remember that delivery improves when ministers and officials are aligned around a common definition of success.
Truth to power is a virtue
Much is made of the civil service’s duty to speak truth to power. Less attention is paid to whether the system actually rewards it.
Research suggests that officials are often adept at discerning what ministers want but less confident in surfacing uncomfortable delivery realities early. This is not primarily a failure of courage. It is a rational response to environments where challenge is interpreted as resistance.
From a centre-of-government perspective, this is dangerous. Strategic failure is rarely the result of bad intentions. It is the accumulation of unchallenged assumptions.
If ministers want better advice, the centre must normalise structured challenge. That means creating forums where disagreement is expected, evidence is tested and trade-offs are explicit. It also means ministers signalling, consistently, that candour will be met with respect and reflection, not reprisal.
Truth to power is not an individual virtue. It is an organisational design choice.
Special advisers as system actors
Special advisers are often treated as political lightning rods or ministerial refuse collectors. In reality, they are critical components of the centre’s delivery capacity.
Evidence shows that where spads act as translators and brokers, departments function better. Where they act as gatekeepers or enforcers, mistrust grows and delivery suffers.
From a system perspective, the role of spads should be to integrate politics and administration, not to polarise them. That requires clarity about their function, and maturity from ministers in how they deploy them.
The centre should be explicit about this. A strategic state does not leave such a pivotal role to chance or indeed to 20 somethings with little experience of the world, let alone the world outside politics.
Openness and confidence
Recent moves to restrict civil servants’ public engagement reflect a concern about message discipline. But there is a trade-off. Over-control signals insecurity and weakens policy capability.
High-performing systems allow senior officials to explain, test and defend policy in public within clear boundaries. This improves policy quality, builds external confidence and reduces the burden on ministers.
An emboldened civil service is not one that freelances. It is one that is trusted to act as a professional partner in delivery.
What delivering from the centre actually requires
If the UK is serious about rebuilding a strategic state, the centre of government should focus less on rhetoric and more on institutional discipline.
First, we must reframe the minister-official relationship as a delivery asset, not only a cultural problem.
Second, force clarity of priorities, so departments are not pulled in multiple directions.
Third, design challenge into decision-making, rather than relying on individual heroes.
Fourth, use spads deliberately as integrators, not as buffers.
Fifth, signal confidence through openness, not control.
None of this requires constitutional change. It requires leadership from the centre – a settlement that seeks to set the conditions for success rather than dictate every decision.
From friction to function
Tension between ministers and civil servants is inevitable. Politics and administration have different logics. The question is whether that tension is destructive or productive.
A strategic centre turns friction into traction. It aligns intent, capability and execution. It replaces blame with shared accountability. And it understands that delivery is a team sport, especially when the challenges facing the state are structural, long-term and politically hard.
The test is not whether ministers and officials always agree. It is whether the centre of government enables them to disagree well, dissent amicably, decide clearly and deliver together.
That is what delivering from the centre really means.
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