A new report makes the case for a radical overhaul of government. It opens thus: “The British state is the machinery by which we deliver prosperity and security… but right now that machinery is jammed. Successive governments have promised transformation while allowing dysfunction to persist at the heart of the State.”
Its authors are frank about the consequences: “Public-sector productivity has stalled, digital transformation has been neglected, and businesses struggle to invest in a system that finds reasons to say no rather than yes.”
They prescribe urgent medicine: prize value for money; smash Whitehall groupthink; learn from the private sector to hire top talent and clear out underperformers; boost productivity with AI and automation; spark a bonfire of quangos; and require the Cabinet Office to reform, not simply conserve, the state. Along the way, there are brickbats for the planning system, government waste, and campaigners who exploit bad law to “stifle dynamism”.
Many of these ideas are familiar. Conservative ministers and thinkers have floated them for much of the past 20 years. Indeed, I’ve espoused various of these solutions in this column over the years.
Yet these aren’t the words of Michael Gove, the TaxPayers’ Alliance or Dominic Cummings, but of the Labour Growth Group, which describes itself as “over 100 Labour MPs committed to tearing down the barriers to growth”.
They aren’t alone. A couple of weeks ago Sir Keir Starmer argued that while “the state employs more people than it has in decades… it’s weaker than it’s ever been. Overstretched, unfocused, trying to do too much, doing it badly.”
Labour’s first few months in government have proved frustrating and radicalising. Ministers pull levers, only to find that they aren’t connected to anything. Even the Chancellor was recently ordered by the Office for Budget Responsibility to change her fiscal policy on the eve of her Spring Statement.
The battle over the Sentencing Council provides another good example. The Opposition criticised the Council’s new justice guidelines – which recommend that pre-sentence reports should be considered if an offender belongs to one or more groups, including a racial, faith or cultural minority – when they came out in early March.
Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, agreed with them, and wrote to the quango urging it to change tack. The Sentencing Council refused, even delivering to the Government a five-page lecture about its powers and rights.
Mahmood was obviously right that those accountable to the people should control how crime is punished. She was understandably frustrated that instead an unaccountable body wields these powers, and did so poorly, bringing criticism down on her head.
Yet the Sentencing Council was also within its rights to act this way, thanks to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The Brown government wanted to give away control of a key mechanism to fight crime – and Parliament foolishly agreed to it.
On Sunday night, the Sentencing Council at last agreed to suspend the new guidelines before they came into force. But the Government was ready to legislate to overrule one of its own official bodies; a short bill was to be introduced this week, simply to allow the Government to govern.
No wonder Labour ministers and MPs have been radicalised to the point that they share what was previously a conservative analysis of our unaccountable, malfunctioning state.
It’s positive that there’s now a consensus to sort it out. But given that this issue has been around for years, the fact that it hasn’t yet happened is a reason to worry.
It seems unlikely that this Government will ever acknowledge the part that it played while in Opposition in preventing these necessary reforms when Conservative ministers proposed them. The instant, empty sugar rush of howling down reasonable changes as granting dictatorial powers, politicising policy, and offending the independence of experts bodies was too tempting a way to score points.
square MARK WALLACE
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Read MoreThe challenge for the Conservatives, therefore, is twofold: will they, in turn, resist that same temptation to oppose for Opposition’s sake, passing up those easy point-scoring opportunities? And will they have the magnanimity to do instead what Labour didn’t do, and back the Government when it moves in the right direction, despite its past record?
The signs so far are positive. Robert Jenrick, the shadow Justice Secretary, has pressed Mahmood to go faster and further in her struggle, while Kemi Badenoch has criticised Labour’s introduction of new quangos, not their analysis. I hope these are signs that advantage will be sought in arguing for radical action and condemning any failure to do enough.
This is only an early skirmish over state reform. There will be much more to come if the job is to be done properly, as the Labour Growth Group make clear. In particular, it seems evident that there is a titanic battle yet to begin over judicial reviews, which are increasingly exploited for the purposes of wasteful lawfare by activist groups.
The long Conservative years in office (if not in power) show how easy it is for ministers to experience these problems, to identify the cause of them, and yet still fail to overcome them.
If our state is ever to function properly, to deliver the high performance, value for money and ambition that we deserve, then we cannot afford to stay stuck in this mire any longer.
Labour and the Tories may not agree with each other on much, but if they both agree that Parliament should be in charge, they must work together to make it so.
Mark Wallace is Chief Executive of Total Politics Group
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