Re:View 30 May 2025
Directory of Strategy
Quote of the week
“It can’t be voluntary. It isn’t voluntary to use AI or not... If you don’t use it, you will never be promoted. You won’t get a job”
Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund - the largest in the world.
Congratulations on making it to Friday!
If you missed the biggest news in Westminster last week, then a quick reminder – Reform is now Re:State! After 25 years of producing policy research the think tank has rebranded. New name, same mission: remaking the State and reforming public services. And as part of the rebrand we’ve updated our weekly roundup email to the Re:View, which will still be gracing your inboxes every Friday.
Ahead of the Spending Review on the 11th, the papers are already full of briefing about who will get what. In some ways it’s Groundhog Day for spending speculators – protected areas like the NHS and defence will see some kind of boost, but for everyone else it’s a bleak picture. In other areas, particularly welfare reform and capital spending, the SR could represent a big shift from the consensus over the last few years.
With the major measures deadline looming, the OBR will already be underway scoring the fiscal impact of the biggest moving parts. So it’s some of the smaller fiscal measures (albeit big policy ones) which are worth watching this close to the day.
At Re:State we have our eye on the civil service workforce numbers. The Financial Times are expecting that the Chancellor’s plan to reduce civil service running costs by 15 per cent will get more detail, starting with a plan to cut headcount by 10 per cent. A smaller, leaner civil service is achievable and desirable, but the Cabinet Office need to think seriously about how to put these plans into place once the numbers are finalised with the Treasury.
50,000 fewer posts still gets to a total well above the level that headcount was in 2019. Following the expansion to take on additional functions after Brexit, there’s no structural reason the civil service needs to remain as large as it has grown. Indeed, more headcount doesn’t mean higher performance. And higher staff numbers are just covering for failure demand, like the challenges caused by repeated poor performance not being addressed, an issue we wrote about last year.
But key implementation decisions remain. It would be a mistake to try and avoid compulsory redundancies, for example. It’s clear that the classic playbook of Voluntary Exit Schemes and recruitment freezes means that the civil service loses those with the best opportunities outside government, and means departments still keep the worst performers.
And given lots of the expansion has been in frontline services, like the prison service, asylum caseworkers and tax assessors, we can expect a push to protect those areas from any reductions, heaping more of the burden on ‘back-office’ functions like policy. But this isn’t always a good thing. Whitehall still needs to look for efficiencies and better ways of running the big caseworking functions in the MoJ, Home Office and HMRC, rather than keeping those workforces growing indefinitely.
Read of the week…
Sahil Lavingia’s blog about his time working at the US Department of Government Efficiency, as one of many software engineers brought in to help President Trump’s effort to cut the federal government.
Insider accounts of one of the most radical experiments in upending a civil service anywhere in the world are invaluable to Whitehall watchers. But what’s striking is how common many of the problems are to previous, albeit less radical, British efforts.
Common issues recur again and again. Tenure being valued over talent and performance. Slow decision-making. Unclear authority to approve reforms, but lots of ways that changes are vetoed. And challenges communicating who is doing what and why to the public.
As our Government looks to rewire the State in the coming months and years, particularly by embracing new technology, they'd do well to pay more attention to why the people trying to fix systems find it so hard in the first place.
(Re:)Meet the team!
Since we relaunched as Re:State last week, we wanted to take this opportunity to re:introduce (get it?) you all to the team who bring you our research and commentary, every week, straight to your inbox. Up first...
Sean Eke, Researcher - @sean_eke, @seaneke.bsky.social
Tell us about yourself?
After time spent working in housing policy and teaching geography through Teach First, I joined Re:State in late 2023.
What are you working on?
At the moment I work on both the Re:Imagining Whitehall and Local State workstreams. I’m fascinated in how the different tiers of government can adapt and, crucially, collaborate to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Right now, I’m writing about rethinking public procurement and England’s regional tier of government.
Who is your favourite reformer?
Alphonse de Lamartine, French poet and politician. Key figure during the French Second Republic.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Gymnopédie No.1.