Speaking to a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) earlier this week, I suggested that their department had at some point become the most radical part of Whitehall. ‘You must be pleased about that,' I said. She replied, frowning: ‘Yes, you would think that, wouldn't you?'. Add ‘radical' to the list of civil service boo-words, next to ‘courageous'.
The reserve here may be understandable, though. Policy radicalism is a little addictive. Far from setting a goal and working toward some end-state, the process is ongoing; the revolution is permanent. Not by choice, but because the work is never quite done when shifting a complex system.
MHCLG has decided to go full-throttle into local government reorganisation, English devolution, planning reform, shifting standards, streamlining funding, rebooting audit, and more. It's an exhausting list but, in a way, you couldn't do any of these alone without diving into the others.
And Government itself has been perfectly clear that we should be seeing the English Devolution White Paper as a floor, rather than a ceiling, to their ambitions for change.
So perhaps it is no surprise there are already parts of the local government sector which, far from being hazed or wearied by the pace of reform, are calling for more of it.
This is exactly what we found when we invited leading figures to share their ideas for remaking the state in our new collection, published to mark the renaming of our think-tank from Reform to Re:State (I reckon I don't need to get into detail about why we've made that decision).
In the collection (Re:Think – Bold ideas to remake the State), the hunger for more profound change is unmistakable. Across essays from economists, civil servants, mayors and former mandarins, a shared conviction emerges – that the local state can, and should, be fundamentally reimagined.
The lid on the devolution Pringles can has been well and truly popped. These more radical visions for what comes next are not going to go away – and it is important that they do not
Two leading economists call for fiscal devolution in order to unlock growth nationally. Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is joined by Lord Jim O'Neill in linking regional empowerment with national prosperity. This is an understanding of growth being choked not just by tax distortions and planning gridlock but by the simple fact of Whitehall's central grip. Johnson's prescription is unambiguous: we need a ‘brutal focus' on growth, paired with real, deep devolution to city regions. Not just boundary tweaks or token powers, but full fiscal and functional decentralisation.
There are insights from two former leaders in the West Midlands, where devolution has taken major strides – and faced major tests. Deborah Cadman, who has led local authorities and the region's combined authority, makes the operational case: that system reform is only possible if the system is trusted to lead. She calls for Whitehall to stop treating local government as a delivery arm and start seeing it as a full partner. That means shared outcomes, joined-up budgets, and long-term certainty.
Andy Street, until last year the mayor of the region, agrees, calling for the removal of the ‘dead hand of Whitehall' from local economic development and infrastructure. This is a vision of combined authorities that sees them taking on significantly more power – he, too, wants fiscal devolution, alongside full control of rail as part of an integrated transport strategy.
Andy Burnham, meanwhile, wants mayoralties to become ‘Prevention Demonstrators': powerful new entities for public service reform, taking on full control of employment support and integrating the services to improve outcomes, including the health system.
For Donna Hall, these kinds of actions add up to an entirely new social contract – something she herself pioneered in her leadership of Wigan and creation of the Wigan Deal.
The lid on the devolution Pringles can has been well and truly popped. These more radical visions for what comes next are not going to go away – and it is important that they do not. A partial revolution is arguably worse than both the status quo and a never-ending revolution. After all, who would want all the struggle and strife of deep change without the benefit of a system that has been genuinely remade as a result? n
Dr Simon Kaye is policy director of independent think-tank Re:State
