Britain doesn’t need government efficiency, it needs excellence July 2, 2025 Elon Musk’s Doge assumed that cheaper government was better government. that’s the wrong way round: a better run government is a cheaper government, says Andrew Greenway Democracies around the world are facing a big problem. They don’t deliver well enough. In Britain, we have a housing crisis, a fraying health service and the interminable sagas [...]
Spending Review: Whitehall faces axe to fund Reeves’ spending spree June 11, 2025 Dramatic real terms cuts to departments such as the Home Office and the Department for Transport are to fund Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ multi-billion pound spending packages on the NHS and AI technology. Reeves told MPs on Wednesday afternoon that the government would spend taxpayers’ money with “care” as she said the government had been “relentless” [...]
Cabinet Office to shed 2,100 jobs as government shrinks civil service April 10, 2025 The Cabinet Office will lose almost a third of its staff as Labour seeks to shrink the civil service, the government has announced. Around 1,200 jobs will go through redundancies and leavers not being replaced under plans unveiled to civil servants on Thursday, with another 900 transferred to other departments. The 2,100 job cuts represent [...]
Business needs a real voice in the Civil Service, not a mid-rank mandarin April 3, 2025 The civil service needs an actual industry bigwig, not a mid-rank mandarin, if it wants to properly engage with business, writes Matthew Elliott.
Analysis: What do Starmer’s reforms actually mean – and can they work? March 15, 2025 Sir Keir Starmer has announced his reform plans to make the British state more “innovative and effective”. The Prime Minister unveiled a series of new measures on Thursday, including the headline abolition of NHS England – the arms-length body which runs the NHS in England. But Sir Keir also spoke about his broader ambitions to [...]
Quango crackdown as Starmer reportedly set to slash civil service jobs March 12, 2025 The Prime Minister is reportedly planning to slash thousands of civil service jobs amid a crackdown on quangos, as he aims to radically overhaul the British state. Sir Keir Starmer will deliver a speech on Thursday, in which he will set out plans to cut thousands more Whitehall jobs than expected, according to the Guardian. [...]
Google reviews have done more for public services than Whitehall February 18, 2025 Google Maps reviews have done more for public services than Whitehall, writes Michael Martins in today's Notebook.
Move fast and break the civil service: Will Whitehall get its own Elon Musk? February 12, 2025 Whether it sees Elon Musk’s DOGE as a success or a failure, Whitehall should see it as a warning. Because institutions which won’t reform themselves can only ever be reformed by outsiders, usually in unpredictable ways, says Joe Hill In December, the Prime Minister pledged to “rewire the State”, and Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden told [...]
Farmers warn of ‘breaking point’ at Westminster tractor rally February 10, 2025 Protesting farmers at a tractor rally in Westminster have warned “we are at breaking point” as they called on the government to scrap planned changes to inheritance tax on farms. Protesters staged another tractor protest outside Parliament and Downing Street on Monday, organised by Save British Farming, as they continued to campaign against Labour’s plans [...]
UK’s audit chief ‘open to learning’ from Elon Musk’s DOGE in US February 5, 2025 The head of the government’s spending watchdog has said he is open to learning from Elon Musk’s US “department of government efficiency”, or DOGE. Gareth Davies, the UK’s chief auditor, gave his annual speech to Parliament on Tuesday, warning that money was being “wasted” and public services “compromised” as he stressed that there was a [...]