Labour ministers’ frustration at what they see as a sclerotic civil service is finally boiling over.
Most people familiar with the machinery of government would accept that Labour’s Pat McFadden has a point when he says the civil service needs to change so that elected ministers – of whatever party – can do the things they were elected to do.
And the fact that it’s McFadden who is driving this agenda means it’s worth taking seriously, since he’s one of Labour’s most effective operators.
But – so far, at least – one thing appears to be missing from the Labour civil service plan. The Whitehall reform the government really needs actually involves hiring more of a certain type of civil servant. Labour should hire more special advisers. Lots of them.
Special advisers – Spads – have a dismal reputation. Spin doctors. Apparatchiks. Bag-carriers. Vapid PPE-graduate careerists with no real-world experience. And so on.
In some cases that might be justified – David Cameron is a former Spad, for instance. But over 20-something years at Westminster, I’ve learned that in general Spads are a vital part of good government. The biggest problem with Spads these days is that there just aren’t enough of them.
That’s because, simply, ministers need more spads to get stuff done.
In technical terms, Spads are temporary civil servants appointed directly by ministers and given special dispensation to engage in party political activity. They’re a very British compromise on the principle of a wholly apolitical civil service, and an acknowledgement that ministers don’t really ‘run’ departments or deliver on their promises.
From the outside it can look like ministers have power. They have titles and trappings and a lot of responsibility. They sit atop departments that employ lots of people and spend lots of money. But they don’t
As most people who have worked in the private sector know, power can sometimes come down to how many people you can sack. The CEO of a public company has a lot of power, because he or she can – as long as the board and shareholders are content – close divisions and sack hundreds or thousands of people.
Ministers have no such clout. You might be a cabinet minister at the peak of your political might, but if a middle-grade civil servant simply fails to do something you’ve asked to be done, you don’t really have any sanction you can deploy against them. You can grumble, directly or to their bosses, but the officials who have failed you don’t work for you and you don’t really influence their career prospects. And you know there’s a chance of retribution for your grumbling, either in media briefings or obstruction elsewhere.
Good ministers accept they don’t run their departments, instead trying to steer the departmental agenda by way of clear strategy and good use of people. This is where Spads come in.
No minister can hope to chase up on all the decisions and requests they make in a day – there simply isn’t enough time in even a very long working week. Spads play a vital function as progress-chasers and follow-uppers, making sure things get done – either in line with the ministers’ political and strategic aims, or just get done at all.
Because sometimes, ministers ask for things and officials don’t do those things. Not – generally – because they’re undemocratic Machiavellis intent on thwarting the will of elected representatives. Whitehall inertia is almost always more prosaic in nature. Stuff doesn’t happen because of endless meetings to consult endless stakeholders, because rules and process are prioritised over outcomes. And sometimes because the relevant people went home at five o’clock or weren’t working that day because they’re on compressed hours, or because they’re off sick with stress.
The biggest problem with Spads these days is that there just aren’t enough of them
The previous paragraph, incidentally, is based entirely on accounts of the civil service that I’ve had from civil servants themselves – the good and dedicated ones (who are real and numerous) are at least as despairing of the clogged up machine as the ministers trying to kickstart it. Good officials often enjoy working with Spads because it gets results.
Fundamental Whitehall reform may well elude even McFadden, since that really requires a full-on push from a prime minister willing to spend time and capital on the project; Keir Starmer’s instincts and priorities are elsewhere.
But McFadden can still deliver a lot of positive change if he pushes through a big increase in the number of Spads.
The exact number of Spads is a bit unclear but it’s probably in the region of 120. Governments don’t like publishing the number because they worry about being accused of hiring an army of expensive spin-doctors and apparatchiks.
This is silly, as the numbers show.
According to the Institute for Government there were 513,205 full-time equivalent (FTE) civil servants in 2024. That’s a 4.9 per cent rise on the previous year. It’s up from the 384,000 recorded in 2016. And it’s about 13,000 higher than at the end of 2023 when the previous government ordered an ‘immediate’ headcount cap.
This means many things, but one is that ministers and their aides are outnumbered. The simple ratio of political appointees to officials has tipped significantly against the politicians. It’s just got harder for ministers to oversee and steer the Whitehall machine.
And the way to steer that machine is to get your own people, people you know and trust, to join your team. If you want to know how to be a good minister, you can do a lot worse than study how the editor of The Spectator did the job before coming home to journalism. Indeed, quite a few Labour ministers will privately admit to being fans of Michael Gove’s effectiveness as a minister, even if they don’t share his politics.
And a key plank of Govite government is to understand the power of organisation – bureaucracies are driven by people, so get your own people into commanding positions. Even if the PM tries to stop you.
On taking office in 2010, Cameron decreed that Spad numbers should be capped. That was a characteristically shallow decision – he wanted to get some quick headlines about how he was removing Labour’s army of spinners and aides.
And in so doing, Dave delivered worse government for more than a decade, creating a restraint on ministerial effectiveness that lingers to this day. Only a few bold/sneaky ministers found a way around that cap: the Gove approach was to hire ‘specialist ministerial advisers’, talented outsider allies who could do most of the job of a Spad without the party politics, thus getting around that Spad cap. It helped make him a more effective minister.
Too few Labour ministers have managed to follow that example so far. Hence the current crop of ministers and their outnumbered, overburdened Spads are struggling to assert themselves on the vast civil service; some are already burning out due to excessive work, and frustration. And as a result the government isn’t doing enough of the things it wants to do. A single cabinet minister and two or three 20-something spads working 90-hour weeks just can’t steer the huge ship of state in its current form.
Labour, rightly, wants to make Whitehall work better. The way to do that get more of your own people into the top of Whitehall. Hire more Spads – double their numbers at least. Will that get some nasty headlines? Will it get some chatter on political X? Hell yes. But some things matter more than that, and more Spads would mean better government. Time to call up a new army of apparatchiks.
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