The government promised to rewire the British state – so, where is the plan?

Keir Starmer during a Q&A session after delivering a speech on plans to reform the civil service, Kingston upon Hull, England, March 2025 (Oli Scarff/Pool Photo via AP / Alamy)

It’s not all been resting on the cabinet secretary’s shoulders, of course, and the Prime Minister and ministers alike have been nothing if not bold in the changes they have promised. We have been told that mission-led government would “change the nature of governing itself”, that the state would operate more like a startup, that it would work at “max power”, that the walls of Whitehall would be torn down, and that the state would become “productive and agile”.

That ambition is both necessary and welcome. When Labour came into office, it inherited a Civil Service where familiar problems had been left unaddressed for far too long, and reforming the Civil Service is a key enabler of sorely needed wider state reform. But a year and a half on, it is hard to say that the Civil Service is meaningfully different to the one Labour was introduced to in 2024.

It is hard to say that the Civil Service is meaningfully different to the one Labour was introduced to in 2024

In fact, longstanding and worrying trends in the Civil Service workforce tended to get worse last year. The Civil Service continued to grow. It continued to skew towards more senior grades (in part a result of grade inflation, where people are promoted more quickly than they might otherwise have been to retain and reward them in a broken pay system). The policy profession has grown by 116 per cent since 2016 and continues to grow quickly, although it is not at all clear that ministers feel better served by having twice as many policy officials.

Taking the long view, the Civil Service remains stubbornly London-centric: London has 24 per cent more officials than it did in 2010, while four regions of England as well as Scotland still have fewer. And both growth and expensive voluntary exit schemes – 5,000 civil servants are due to leave by the end of March 2026, costing hundreds of millions of pounds – are happening in the continued absence of a long-awaited workforce plan.

So, why have efforts to rewire continually eluded a government so keen on the idea?

First, change requires a plan. And one that is specific enough to preclude some activity and prioritise some other activity. Breaking down silos and empowering communities are laudable goals from the government, but they’re also broad, ill-defined and long-term ideas that need more beneath them to get the system moving. Unfortunately, ‘mission-led’ government has been allowed to remain such a broad concept as to be functionally useless in driving workforce reforms. The government must set out what it means by a rewired state, and how it will tackle the workforce problems in its way.

Secondly, while this is important, worthy and necessary work, it is not exactly glamorous. The government may find it easier to have a ‘relentless’ focus on delivering its missions or, say, on the cost of living. A ‘relentless focus on workforce planning’ doesn’t have quite the same ring. And so, too often, focus shifts elsewhere, and the can gets kicked down the road.

But ministers and Civil Service leaders alike know that a reformed Civil Service is the key to unlocking a more effective state. Darren Jones, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, will need to set out and own a reform plan, alongside Sir Chris Wormald and Civil Service chief operating officer Cat Little. Keir Starmer will need to back it vocally, not least to ensure the disparate power bases of Whitehall know they are expected to actively get with the programme. And all four will need to show a sustained commitment to delivering on it in 2026. 

Hannah Keenan is associate director at the Institute for Government

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