Had Britain’s Covid19 ‘vaccine task force’ been led by politicians and the time-serving bureaucrats of Whitehall instead of the brilliant Dame Kate Bingham, this country might now be locking down for Christmas — like our unfortunate neighbours in Austria, Holland and large parts of continental Europe.
There is no guarantee of failure when you give a large job to the civil servant.
The world beater scheme that allowed vaccines to be purchased and paid for before the results became public was a success, as Britain discovered.
If civil servants — either at Whitehall or in government quangos — had been in charge, they would surely have spent the past 19 months dithering over bureaucratic processes, and we would have experienced a far worse pandemic.
But don’t take my word for it. Yesterday, Dame Kate herself launched an astonishing attack on ‘groupthink and risk aversion’ that bedevils the British civil service.
Kate Bingham warns that Britain could face a new global pandemic if it doesn’t reform its civil service.
She bemoaned the ‘devastating lack of skills and experience in science, industry and manufacturing’ — and vividly declared that ‘the machinery of government is dominated by process, rather than outcome, causing delay and inertia’.
Her diagnosis was correct, unfortunately. Whitehall is no longer the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of government still treasured in the popular imagination.
Far too often, it is self-interested, insular, snobbish and under-skilled — and its mandarins seem addicted to working from home.
This criticism isn’t the first to be made by Dame Kate. Instead, hers is only the most recent criticism of sluggish officialdom — and my hope is that it will be one of the last.
The 1980s sitcom Yes, Minister introduced us to the figure of ‘Sir Humphrey’ — the silken mandarin whose job was to prevent our elected representatives from rocking the boat too much.
In 1999, just two years into his premiership, Tony Blair complained that he bore ‘scars on his back’ after trying — and manifestly failing — to reform the public sector to make it fit for this century.
More recently, veteran minister Michael Gove, as well as the maverick adviser turned No.10 consigliere Dominic Cummings, have compained of ‘The Blob’ — an amorphous, obstructive force that prevents serious change and pioneering policies being enacted.
Decades of the same criticism, then — but nothing has been done. Why? Well, from our research at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, we have identified a number of causes — and some clear solutions.
You’ll see groupthink at work in nearly every public institution, no matter how large or small, whether it is the biggest government department or the most humble quango.
Part of the reason for this is the extraordinary preponderance of ‘generalist’ humanities graduates — who begin their working lives in the public sector after studying English, History or Classics at Oxbridge — rather than those schooled in the so-called ‘Stem’ subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The 1980s sitcom Yes, Minister introduced us to the figure of ‘Sir Humphrey’ (centre, played by Sir Nigel Hawthorne), a silken mandarin whose job was to prevent our elected representatives from rocking the boat too much
Technology is the world in which we live. Imagine an older mandarin, possibly in their 50s, who works in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
He or she may have grown up before the internet — yet now has to find a way to interact with huge and all-powerful global technology behemoths, with their legions of lawyers and lobbyists.
A First in Classics or History from a great university is a fine thing — but it leaves one desperately ill-equipped to take on the brightest minds of Silicon Valley and grill them on the algorithms that determine what our children are watching on their phones.
Indeed, the civil service is often inept when it comes to technology: witness the ‘Making Tax Digital’ debacle, in which a new IT system for HMRC was rolled out — despite the fact the mandarins themselves found the scheme was not fit for purpose and had serious security flaws.
But because the programme was already under way — it had to carry on.
A civil servant might seem smart and diligent, but once they have mastered the task, they could be promoted to the Northern Ireland Office.
And that’s not all. A second problem is that the civil service cannot fire the unmotivated and the incompetent.
Talk to any minister and they will regale you with stories about how civil servants simply refuse to follow up on instructions — and there is nothing the minister can do about it.
It is infuriating to watch Home Secretary Priti Patel trying everything she can to stop the waves of migrant boats landing on the English South coast every day, while Whitehall responds at a snail’s pace or, it has been alleged, strangles her ideas at birth without offering alternatives.
An underling in any company who refuses to obey orders repeatedly would be fired. Whitehall is different. The system there is built to last its political masters.
This is sometimes presented as a strength: governments and ministers may come and go, the theory has it, but the machinery of government runs smoothly on — always politically neutral.
Contrast that, say the civil service’s defenders, with the U.S, where incoming presidents sack and appoint their own civil servants, more or less on a whim.
Sometimes, though, it is worth a little bit of fear to erase the slate.
In the United Kingdom, by contrast, Whitehall fosters a kind of spineless officialdom that locks civil servants — however clever, honest, high-minded and dutiful they might be — into a system that positively resists change.
Yet, institutionalized officers and unambitious individuals continue to pass the same thoughts and assumptions on to their bosses in department.
It prevents bold reformers from taking a stand and changing the status quo.
We at the Taxpayers’ Alliance have a bold but simple proposal: a points-based system for all public appointments.
Whitehall potential recruits at all levels would have their applications prioritised if they bring new ideas, experiences from the private sector, or science and tech backgrounds.
This could help to end the groupthink that is so common among our public employees. The system needs to bring in, cultivate and, crucially, reward such pioneering outsiders — not stop them from even getting their foot through the front door.
Dominic Cummings, in his iconoclastic way, once sought ‘weirdos and misfits’ to serve him in No 10. He identified the same problem we do in the face of The Blob — though his solution was characteristically different.
Kate Bingham also sees the problem. She warned yesterday that, without the vital reform the civil service needs, the next global health pandemic could be even worse for Britain — let alone the other risks our country faces.
‘Another war is coming,’ she warned. ‘Let’s make sure we have the right people with the right skills to fight it.’
Now it is time for ministers at last to heed these dire concerns — and end once and for all the tyranny of the mandarins.