It is “absolutely right to start reducing the size of the civil service”, former cabinet secretary Simon Case has said.
Speaking to the BBC’s The Week in Westminster following his nomination as a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, Case said: “The civil service grew in response to Brexit and Covid and a little bit more in relation to Ukraine. That growth, a good deal of it was necessary, but [it’s] absolutely right to start reducing the size of the civil service.”
Case, who was also head of the civil service before leaving in December, was speaking in response to questions about the government’s plans to cut the civil service headcount by up to 15%.
Case’s response echoed comments he made during an interview with CSW this spring. The former cab sec said the expanding size of the state is “the thing I reflect on more than anything else is that during my time in government”.
“What's been really interesting… is how often the answer to [a crisis or a challenge] has been more people, rather than as our first instinct being more technology,” he told CSW.
“Particularly after Brexit or Covid, we had a really big expansion. I think – self-critically – that so often our answer was: ‘We should hire some more people,’ rather than: ‘Is there a technology solution to this?’”
Case also said ministers have lost too much direct power. He told the BBC: “The challenge we do have in this country – largely by accident rather than by design – is that power is now incredibly diffuse. Politicians in this country, oddly enough, have less and less direct levers of power than they used to.
“That is the thing that is at the heart of the frustration that you hear lots of politicians say is, you know, ‘Well, I thought I'd got to the top of the game – I'm now prime minister and I’m a cabinet minister, I've been elected, I'm here, I've made it. And I say I want to start doing things and then I find there's an enormously long list of organisations that actually have the power or I'm required to consult before I can do anything.’
"Personally, I think that is unsustainable.”
'The pressure is enormous, and certainly I don't miss that'
During the interview, Case was asked to describe “what it was like to be in the room at times of crisis” as the government grapples with conflict in the Middle East.
“These are enormous moments. I have been thinking a great deal these last few days and weeks about my colleagues still in government who are having to deal with events in the Middle East,” he said.
He said the prime minister would be spending a lot of time in Cobra meetings – “something that many people probably will have heard about, but a probably distinctly less glamorous location than most people think, sort of an underground, windowless bunker underneath 70 Whitehall”.
He also described the abrupt changes in focus during a crisis: “You're going from thinking about these unbelievably difficult international issues and then, ‘Okay… that's the end of that Cobra meeting. Right, prime minister, we're taking you back into a different room, and we're thinking about welfare reform. Such is the life of a prime minister today.”
Asked whether he missed being at the centre of government at such times, he said: “I have to say, I really don’t”.
“There is an adrenaline… you can get through the sleepless nights and endless amounts of caffeine, but actually, the pressure on people is enormous, and certainly I don't miss that,” he added.
Case was also asked to reflect on messages he had sent at the height of the pandemic that were published during the Covid Inquiry, some of which were highly critical of then-prime minister Boris Johnson and other ministers.
In one such messag in October 2020, Case said the government looked like a “terrible, tragic joke” and lacked the “credibility” to enforce Covid after flip-flopping on the rules.
In another, he said the “real person in charge” at No.10 was the PM’s then-girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.
Speaking to The Week in Westminster, Case said the messages were akin to “the modern equivalent of a diary”.
“The pressure is enormous. And, you know, people make all sorts of mistakes. I certainly made plenty along the way… what you've got is those in the moment exasperations and frustrations. What you saw was the very human ups and downs of the days that we had during Covid,” he said.
'I definitely will not be writing a book'
Since leaving government, Case’s career has focused on security and defence, including his appointment in February as chair of the Barrow Delivery Board, which is overseeing a £200m regeneration project to make Barrow-in-Furness the home of nuclear submarine-building in the UK.
But he declined to share the advice he had given ministers on the subject while in government, explaining: “Ministers get to leave and they get to write their books. I think civil servants should leave and not talk about the advice they've given.”
Case confirmed he “certainly won't be writing a memoir”.
“I definitely will not be writing a book, I can absolutely assure you... I certainly will not be revealing what I saw. Politicians are the ones who have to take, in the end, the tough decisions. They're the ones who go down in history, and in my view, I'm totally comfortable with them being the ones writing the history,” he said.