Ministers ‘will be radical’ in civil service reforms, says McFadden

Ministers “will be radical” in their civil service reforms, Pat McFadden has suggested.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said that the Government is not adopting an “ideological approach to stripping back the state” after reforms to the service were unveiled on Sunday.

Under-performing civil servants could be incentivised to leave their jobs and senior officials will have their pay linked to performance under the new proposals.

Mr McFadden has also declined to put a number on how many people could lose their jobs through the reforms.

Unions have pushed back against the announcement, including one who said that the Government must “end the tradition of treating the civil service as a political punchbag”.

Asked how radical the Government are willing to be, Mr McFadden told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “Performance management is part of every big organisation, but it’s an important thing for you and your viewers to remember: we’re a centre-left government.

“We believe in good public provision, that’s why we fought the election, saying we wanted to have more teachers in schools, more neighbourhood police officers, why we wanted to get waiting lists down.

“It is part of what we believe in that the state can provide both security and opportunity for people.

“That will guide us in our actions, it’s up front in our policies, so we will be radical about this, but it’s about getting bang for our buck in terms of the outcomes for the public, it isn’t an ideological approach to stripping back the state.”

Under the plans announced by Mr McFadden on Sunday, he promised a new “mutually agreed exits” process, in which civil servants who could not perform at the level required of them were incentivised to leave their jobs.

The system would be designed to give bosses more tools to address bad performance.

Alongside the exit processes, senior civil servants who were not meeting standards would be put on development plans, with a view to being sacked if there was no improvement within six months, and the most senior officials would have their pay linked to performance outcomes.

Asked on the same BBC programme where he broadly thought the staffing numbers should be, Mr McFadden said: “I think the old tactic of picking a headcount number for reduction hasn’t worked.”

He went on to say he believes the civil service “would and can become smaller” and said he would like to see more “working outside London”.

As part of the reforms, the Government has vowed that one in 10 civil servants will be employed in a digital or data role by 2030.

Currently, around 5% of the civil service workforce is employed in one of these jobs, officials say, equating to around 25,000 employees.

Unions have pushed back against the announcement, with the FDA describing it as a “retreading of failed narratives”, while Prospect have said that civil servants have been “integral to helping the UK navigate the challenges we have faced in recent times”.

Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy said: “Nobody would say the civil service is perfect, and our members are willing partners in reform, but this government must end the tradition of treating the civil service as a political punchbag.

“A serious reform agenda must start not from blunt headcount targets, but from an appraisal of the specialist skills needed in areas like science and data, and a realisation that the current pay system does not compete with the private sector for these skills.”

Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA, has said that meaningful reform “must put substance before headlines” and any announcement that “points the finger” at public staff “only reinforces the sense that the Government lacks a credible long-term plan”.