Thread by @Gabriel_Pogrund

At Tory conference today, @rosskempsell chaired a superb @Policy_Exchange panel on the civil service — offering rare insight into govt plans for Whitehall

It confirmed "hard rain's gonna fall" thesis, yes, but possibly on ministers as well as mandarins

Some highlights here 1/

Lord Theodore Agnew, Cabinet Office minister + key figure behind Whitehall revolution, revealed "I'm pushing very very hard to get senior civil service posts out of London"

There's too much "metropolitan elite type thinking", it's "suffocating", stifles "diversity of thought" 2/

The clear implication is this will not merely be junior officials. Nor limited to quangos or arms-length bodies - ie ONS to Newport or Environment Agency to Bristol in the past

"The key element" he said, is getting "higher propotion of senior civil servants" outside the M25 3/

Baroness Simone Finn, non-executive board member of Cabinet Office, says there's "outrageous" disparity b/w "grand mandarins" developing policy and "below the salt" officials delivering it. No "parity of esteem"

So mandarins overpowered but disconnected from effect of policy 4/

(On grand mandarins, she's "very pleased" to see greater churn among permanent secretaries, thanks to fixed-term contracts introduced under coalition.

It's "part of the accountability of the official to the minister" took a swipe at the papers overreacting to recent events) 5/

Finn and Agnew believe there's an under-utilised weapon in the war to improve Whitehall— letters of ministerial direction

This is where a minister formally tells their dept to proceed with a spending proposal, despite an objection from their permanent secretary 6/

Finn says this has often been seen as a "nuclear option", must it be used more

The effect will be twofold: leave officials in no doubt about govt priorities

And it will raise pressure of ministers: "it puts accountability fairly and squarely where it should be" 7/

In other words, on the minister's head be it.

But the quid pro quo is no officials smiling politely as ministers give orders that they then ignore

Finn said: "I think it's a very clear, sensible way of doing things"

8/

Surprisingly, Agnew and Finn were clear that ministers also need to up their game

Agnew: They need to get far better training "so they have the confidence to take these decisions".

Finn: Ministerial induction and training is "absolutely critical"

9/

Agnew suggested civil servants must never be allowed to bamboozle ministers with superior expertise on complex areas

If ministers become more literate in their policy remit and in delivery, they can challenge status-quo bias and resistance from officials

10/

Agnew also said training for officials will become more rigorous and dynamic too

But ATM he can't understand where hundreds of millions are supposedly going on existing courses

"I can't get it all on a page...It's been a labyrinth to get our hands around the whole ..." 11/

training landscape that is just so convoluted, but by flook some major contracts on trainug are up at the moment".

Expect training to be farmed out beyond the Big Four

In the meantime, he is going to produce a central library of all training resources 12/

Zooming out, a lot of what Agnew and Finn said was surprisingly uncontroversial

Even David Lidington - that great icon of Vote Leave etc - agreed that "Whitehall does need to be less introverted and more willing to let ministers be personally exposed to outside opinions" 13/

And Dame Hodgson said we need a smaller, smarter and more skilled civil service.

The question, then, is how radical and effective the government is actually going to be in dispersing London-based senior civil service, reinforcing accountability and improving expertise 14/

More on this in tomorrow's ST, including the revelation that Treasury is likely to locate Treasury campus in Darlington - near Teesside Intl Airport and Rishi's seat to boot

And officials have examined plans to move DCMS to Manchester/Leeds and MHCLG to the Midlands. 15/

OH. And you can stream the convo here:



ends