Exclusive: 'Aloof' Civil Service needs private sector overhaul, says key adviser

The civil service needs to recruit more from outside of London to overhaul a perception the political system is “aloof, arrogant, remote”, the Prime Minister’s new deputy chief of staff has said.

Baroness Finn has also called for Whitehall to draft in more expertise from the private sector as part of a drive to boost commercial awareness and risk appetite at the heart of Government.

A veteran ally of Michael Gove, the peeress has been a non-executive board member at the Cabinet Office since last May and was promoted this month to become a senior aide in No 10.

She is well-versed in the mechanics of Government, having previously worked as a special adviser to Lord Maude, the architect of a proposed civil service overhaul during David Cameron’s administration.

In an article for the liberal conservative think tank Bright Blue published on Friday, she has identified a series of weaknesses in Whitehall systems.

These include a “lack of capability” to deliver successful projects across the UK, particularly in digital and physical infrastructure that is needed to combat climate change and boost transport links.

She added that the civil service also “lacks the right approach” on investment, arguing that the Government should be enabled to take on more risk by backing early-stage research and innovation projects, accepting there could be a high failure rate.

The calculation is balanced by the state’s strong ability to commercialise the intellectual property of initiatives that succeed, she said.

Her intervention will dash the hopes of those mandarins who believed that No 10’s enthusiasm for wide-reaching civil service reform had departed with Dominic Cummings.

The Prime Minister’s former chief aide, who left in December, took a pugnacious approach and had reportedly warned that a “hard rain” would fall on Whitehall.

Baroness Finn said that negative attitudes towards the Government came to the fore in the 2016 EU referendum campaign, when “overlooked families and undervalued communities expressed their discontent with a political system they regarded as aloof, arrogant, remote, and centralised”.

However, Whitehall reform can now play a positive role in Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda, she said, by spreading recruitment opportunities more widely across the nation, which in turn will bolster civic pride and education in those communities.

The civil service can foster a “renewed sense of common purpose” by ensuring it draws on “all the talents of every part of the UK”, she said. This would help make sure decision-makers are “acquainted with the challenges faced by those outside the metropolitan bubble”.

Offering an example, she said the welfare system would be improved by the input of people who are “intimately involved with the decisions made by citizens in Mansfield or Merthyr Tydfil” and can therefore bring an “additional level of granularity and effectiveness” to policy formation.

She threw her support behind the plan for the Treasury to build a major new campus in the north. Teeside is the “obvious location”, she averred, given its transport links and proximity to the universities of Durham and Newcastle.

In addition, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is set to relocate to the Midlands. She said that Wolvehampton, with good rail transport links and an up-and-coming university, offered a “a compelling opportunity”, instead of the “easy choice” of Birmingham.

While she backed moving central Government infrastructure and jobs out of London, however, she warned it was “not enough”. There must also be “respect for and inclusion of different voices and life experiences”.

The “career ladder” within the civil service should be broken up, so that private sector employees can be welcomed in for periods of two years or more in order to share their expertise in sectors such as renewable energy, she said.

She also singled out the civil service apprentice programme as an engine of change and called for its acceleration. In addition the boardroom apprentice programme in Northern Ireland has shown the “enormous benefits” of drafting in people from a great diversity of backgrounds and ages, who bring new perspectives to public sector and third sector boards.