Inside View

What a few weeks it's been for Whitehall anoraks. With impeccable timing, the full impact of PM David Cameron's spring offensive against civil service ‘enemies of enterprise' hit in the same week Michael Cockerell's excellent Secret World Of Whitehall graced TV BBC4's schedule. Captured within his imposing office, the programme revealed ‘GOD', or plain old [Cabinet secretary] Sir Gus O'Donnell, is only the 10th in the post since Lloyd George drafted Maurice Hankey in 1916 to restore order to a chaotic war effort. Beaming telegenically, a natural communicator under the glare of production lights, Sir Gus described how he took incoming prime ministers in hand. He's currently on his third. A youthful expression of joy betrayed the clear pleasure derived from showing who is really boss. The first jab, condescendingly, congratulates them on landing the job in the first place. The second cows them with immediate serious issues on nuclear codes and highest-level intelligence. But jabbing has been both ways, evidently. Before Christmas last year, Messrs Cameron and Osborne were angered when Sir Gus' unsolicited and rejected request that the Treasury prepare a Plan B for economic growth in case the country tipped back into recession was leaked and given currency. A recent regular Wednesday gathering of Whitehall permanent secretaries was so collectively enraged by the ‘enemies of enterprise' line that the chief mandarin urged Jeremy Heywood, the ‘unsung radical' civil servant in charge of Number 10, for whom no reform is too shocking, to calm things down. Why does this Whitehall equivalent of handbags at dawn matter? First, as Lord Adonis observed, the ‘private sector good, public sector bad' line risks demoralising civil servants during a period of unprecedented change and reform. Do ministers really need to make whole-scale restructuring that much tougher by alienating the senior staff they rely on to make the running? And when central government administrative budgets are being cut by one-third? Second, there's the issue of concentration. Wars and foreign engagements stymied Tony Blair's domestic ambitions to reform public services. From the moment unfolding events forced him to change his keynote address to the TUC on 11 September 2001, there never was a real chance for the ‘scars on his back' to heal. Even Margaret Thatcher planned her major industrial relations reforms with studious care and consideration, stockpiling resources and putting legal elements in place. Recent official files reveal the deep personal despair she felt at having achieved so little in her first year in office. The delay to publication of the public services White Paper may be contingent upon events in Libya and fear of needlessly scaring the electorate in May with talk of privatisation. If Mr Cameron wishes to push through reforms, he might do well to choose his fights, and timing, with greater care. Jonathan Werran is editor of Governetz Public Property

Title

WHITEHALL

Inside View

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