According to the think tank, employment in the senior civil service should be reduced by 40%, salaries should be increased and more staff should be hired

Ministers should cut senior civil service staff by 40% and aim to restore pay to 2010 levels, a think tank says.

“A much smaller but much better paid senior civil service would provide a better service to ministers and the public,” the Conservative think tank Policy Exchange said in its latest report, Gaining Control of the System: Restoring Ministerial Authority Over the Machinewhich featured support and a foreword from former Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.

Today’s report found that in recent years “power has been transferred from ministers to independent bodies, unaccountable advisory and expert groups, the civil service and the courts”.

Policy Exchange believes that reducing the size of the civil service, increasing the number of special advisers in Cabinet, giving ministers greater powers to make senior civil service appointments and tackling ministerial turnover are key steps to reversing this shift in power and enabling the government to deliver on its policy priorities.

The report noted that there were a number of “unflattering comparisons” between the UK civil service and that in Singapore – widely regarded as a haven of efficiency.

“The public will not receive a Singapore-style civil service with ever-declining salaries. However, the public cannot afford the continued expansion and drift in the hierarchy that this document describes in the upper echelons of the civil service, even at current rates of pay, let alone more generous conditions,” the document reads.

It envisages a 40 per cent cut in senior civil service staff, which has risen by 67 per cent since 2012, as well as a similar reduction in government policy-related professions.

It should use the savings from the move to fund a return to 2010 pay levels, the think tank said. The report calls on ministers to ask the Senior Salaries Review Body, which issues recommendations on SCS pay, for advice on how to do this and says it should consider a 30% pay rise.

The report noted that the SSRB had repeatedly highlighted falling Civil Service pay, particularly in senior roles, since 2010, as well as the widening gap between Civil Service pay and comparable positions in the private sector and other parts of the public sector, such as local government and the NHS.

As the report states, the government’s pay and promotion policies “have logically led to the phenomenon of job drift and staff turnover.”

“Different parties may have different views on the size of the civil service required, depending on the fiscal situation and the policy priorities of the new government,” the report reads.

“Whatever the new government’s position on this issue, there is a strong case for reducing the size of parts of the central civil service, particularly the senior civil service and the policy core, and for reviewing the overall pay package.”

The process of “reducing and transforming” the civil service must be accompanied by training “to ensure that the civil service is of the highest quality”, said the report, which called the abolition of the National School of Government by the coalition government in 2012 a “mistake”.

It comes in response to calls from commentators, including former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, for the creation of a similar institution to provide general and specialist training at all levels of the civil service.

More Special Advisors

As the civil service shrinks, the number of special advisers in government is set to rise, Policy Exchange has found. The report says ministers and épée men have become “increasingly a minority” in departments as the SCS and the political profession have grown.

“The hollowed-out nature of political parties means ministers have fewer dedicated political resources to support them, making them dependent on an official machine that values ​​conformity and consensus in thinking about policy and an extreme aversion to risk when it comes to the law,” the report said.

It said “artificial” limits on the number of discharges and their role should be removed, “and ministers should resist the temptation to gain short-term plaudits by tightening the numbers further, as recommended, for example, by the recent Governance Commission”. The commission’s February report called for a “rigorous cap” on discharges in government.

The Policy Exchange report suggests lifting the cap on inheritances or setting it at a level of between 200 and 300 – significantly higher than the current level.

It also recommends the creation of two categories of SPADS: those assigned to individual ministers and a new category of subject experts based in revamped Extended Ministerial Offices in departments, employed on fixed-term contracts to support successive ministers from this administration. The last EMOs were disbanded in 2013.

“The number of bequests is small compared to the overall civil service pay bill,” the report says. “Their role in supporting ministers on priorities, communications and media is well-known. Our interviews also highlighted how important they were in helping ministers to formulate and deliver their priorities.”

The document also indicated that SPAD’s role should be “significantly enhanced” in areas such as making public appointments, driving the delivery of key ministerial priorities and advising ministers on the management of their departments.

The central spad team at No.10 working on public appointments should also be strengthened, taking responsibility for creating a template for job specifications and advertisements “from which departments will have to justify any divergences”, the report said. Any potential recruitment campaigns would have to be agreed with the team.

Greater ministerial authority over public appointments

The report said ministers should also have greater freedom to influence public appointments and senior civil service positions, as well as to set the course for independent bodies.

“The role of the civil service in ensuring that successful candidates are ‘appointable’ is an important check against nepotism, cronyism and corruption. But it is absurd that prominent public figures are initially screened on an application form and required to undergo a time-consuming, month-long bureaucratic process to even get an interview – rather than being assessed on their public record and skills,” the document reads.

“Ministers should be able to refer candidates directly for interviews and the entire recruitment process needs to be completely overhauled as it currently perpetuates bias against candidates from the public sector or similar experience.”

Ministers should also have the right to request the transfer of officials to positions “key to their strategic priorities” or to redeploy them.

While moves “should not necessarily be seen as a problem with an individual’s performance”, the report also said ministers should be more involved in day-to-day performance management – ​​an area where it said ministers’ input was seen as “somewhat inappropriate, despite the fact that it is clearly provided for in official guidance on senior civil service performance”.

It says ministers should “reaffirm” that they will be consulted on the SCS performance review system, providing comments that could feed into individuals’ annual performance reviews and the talent grid that monitors the long-term promotion prospects of civil servants. It says line managers are “obliged to take into account the views of ministers – but any such divergence is an appropriate matter for discussion between permanent secretaries and ministers”.

Update of the Civil Service Code

The report also recommended the introduction of two recommendations to the Civil Service Code that aim to address what it described as “conservatism among civil servants regarding legal risk”.

This is indicative of recent disputes over the Rwanda programme, which the new government has abandoned. Home Office officials were told that if a judge at the European Court of Human Rights were to issue an injunction against a flight deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda under the programme, they should ignore it if ministers told them to. The FDA union had sought a judicial review – which ultimately failed – of the case, saying ministers should change either the programme legislation or the Civil Service Code to clarify their duties.

To avoid similar situations in the future, the Policy Exchange report calls for a “simple but powerful amendment” to the section of the Civil Service Code that sets out the duty of civil servants to “obey the law and uphold the course of justice”. Instead, the section should read that civil servants must “obey the law of the UK and uphold the course of justice”, it states.

The document also indicated that the obligation in the Code not to “hinder the implementation of decisions already taken” should be reinforced by an additional obligation covering the policy development process.

Former Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove wrote in his foreword that the report’s recommendations were “worth looking at carefully”.

“I think change is possible – but the process can be painful and slow. I understand many of the problems identified in the report,” he said.

He said the report “strongly opposes the claims of those who believe that entire areas of public life and decision-making affecting the population should be fenced off and left in the hands of technocrats beyond any political accountability.”

“I noticed a certain sense of commonality among politicians of all parties about the challenges they faced in pursuing their policy priorities after taking office. It is interesting that this reflection is reflected in the findings of a report jointly written by a former civil servant and two former special advisers from both parties. I recommend it to all,” he said.