The political manifestos are pretty short on detail about what changes the parties might make to the 400,000 people who run central government, perhaps feeling that no one ever got elected on a promise to reform the civil service.
Civil service reform didn’t feature much in the 2010 election campaign, either, but that did not prevent the coalition government implementing a wholesale cuts and reform package once it came to power. The past five years have seen huge cuts in civil service jobs and pay, as well as deeply unpopular changes to pensions and the way performance is judged. But there has been surprisingly little mucking about with the structure of government departments themselves. Politicians generally can’t resist tinkering – at vast cost and disruption, with little proven benefit – with the machinery of government: departments and arm’s length bodies, more commonly known as quangos.
The coalition certainly arrived with a quango-dismantling agenda, but many bodies were merged or moved back into departments. Only one in 10 was abolished. As for the main departments, the Department for Children, Schools and Families was slimmed down to become the Department for Education, but most restructuring has been within departments, such as the scything-out of jobs at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), now a mere shadow of its 2010 self.
Whether things will be different this time around will depend on this week’s election results and on whether parties keep to their pre-election pledges. Since February, civil servants have, as is traditional before an election, liaised with both the incumbent government and the opposition on their policies (though not with the SNP, to the fury of Nicola Sturgeon). So they will have a pretty good idea of what the three major parties have in store for them.
Surprisingly, quangos don’t seem to be on anyone’s hit list. As the Institute for Government’s Jill Rutter has pointed out, there’s been remarkably little anti-quango rhetoric this time around. Instead, parties want to strengthen some public bodies. Labour, for example, wants the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to oversee its proposed budget responsibility lock, audit manifestos and monitor and report on progress toward child poverty targets. Lord Falconer, former mentor to Tony Blair and adviser to Ed Miliband, has said he wants to strengthen the relationship between the three hubs of power at the heart of government: Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. But in an interview with Civil Service World, Falconer ruled out any big departmental reorganisation, saying that they can lead to internal wars, as both civil servants and ministers jostle for power. “By and large they are to be avoided,” he said.
Civil servants are reported to have been preparing plans for a major restructuring, including possibly reducing departments from 24 into a mere nine if the Conservatives win the election. The most likely departments to disappear are the smaller ones, including Culture, Media and Sport and DCLG, although the Lib Dem manifesto wants to strengthen the role of the culture department and give tourism a higher priority. Under a Tory-led government, the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices may merge; the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which was only formed in 2008, may be split up and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills may not survive.
But the real question for any incoming government is whether to spend time and money reorganising Whitehall. There may be more urgent things to do.
Jane Dudman is editor of Guardian Public Leaders and Guardian Housing
