Ministers need to realise that reforming the civil service is a three-to-five year project, Gisela Stuart has said.
Appearing before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the first civil service commissioner was asked what changes to recruitment practices are needed to allow for a more fluid system of talent coming in and out of the civil service.
Baroness Stuart, who heads up the Civil Service Commission, said: “When it comes to civil service reform, ministers need to realise that if you really want to reform a workforce of 600,000, that will not be a project of one year, two years, it will be a project over three [to] five years to have that transition.”
She added that “the biggest challenge is to be able to distinguish between the urgent and the important, and not be run adrift because the urgent demands keep calling your attention”.
People within the system also have a responsibility to do a better job of describing the challenges of working for government “and just how satisfying it is”, she added.
Stuart said “one of the areas where I think we haven't done enough yet is with local authorities, strengthening that, having much more greater interchange”.
She diagnosed that “these things are possible, but… you will find on reflection very few individuals who you could name in the last 50 years who have taken a consistent long-term interest in civil service reform amongst the politicians”.
Stuart was also asked about comments from the prime minister, Keir Starmer, on civil servants being “comfortable in a tepid bath of decline” and his frustrations with the time it takes for “pulling a lever” to result in delivery.
“The key thing is, don't start the blame game,” she said. "I don't think it's helpful for either side to blame the other. And a really good secretary of state starts off by saying to his or her perm sec: ‘These are the things which are important to me, these are the things which should be important to you – how can we jointly actually achieve that?’ And that's when you get a clarity of purpose, and that's what I think, in a sense, we've got to return to.”
Stuart was also asked about the reform announcements from chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones last week to rewire the state, which included creating "peacetime" taskforces which will get expedited approvals for short-term appointees with external expertise.
“Ministers have to decide what kind of structures they want to have," Stuart said. "They have to decide what kind of skills they need. We can assist them with the recruitment process for those skills. Sometimes we can prepare packages for ministers to fulfill particular functions. So AUKUS in the Ministry of Defence, where we work very closely with the Australians, we put together a package which allowed them to work together.
"The regulator is not a player. The regulator is someone who says: 'Ministers, these are the decisions you take, these are the structures you want to take forward, there are some enduring principles which you have to adhere to for an impartial civil service.' We need to have a structure which, irrespective of the government of the day, can deliver for the people of this country and that's really what we are guarding. So we work with them, but the initiative has to come from ministers.”