Dominic Cummings is right – it’s time for the civil service to modernise

In a crisis, there is nothing better than the British civil service, Tony Blair argued in 2018. “I thought it had enormous strengths, when it came to managing the system and bringing the system powerfully together at points of crisis,” he said, while adding it was “really poor” at change.

A reputation enhanced by its handling of the 2008 financial crisis is now in tatters after the system failure on coronavirus. The planning for – and management of – the crisis has been woeful. The system prepared for a flu pandemic, rather than a novel virus. The 2016 dry run Operation Cygnus was, one of those involved told me, “a box-ticking exercise after which nothing changed”.

There were so many “Dom bombs” in Dominic Cummings’s remarkable select committee appearance that the ones he lobbed at the government machine were largely overlooked.

He said: “There are wonderful people inside the civil service, there are brilliant, brilliant officials all over the place. But the system tends to weed them out from senior management jobs. And the problem in this crisis [Covid] was very much lions led by donkeys over and over again."

Cummings claimed parts of Whitehall currently "fight to the death to stop a culture of open by default jobs” and recruit internally “like a caste system”. He complained that officials – rather than ministers – controlled civil service appointments.

“You have [Matt] Hancock pointing at the permanent secretary, you have the permanent secretary pointing at Hancock, and they are both pointing at the Cabinet Office, the Cabinet Office is pointing back at them and all the different Spidermans are all pointing at each other saying 'you are responsible' and the problem is that everyone is right and everyone is unhappy."

After getting Brexit done, Whitehall reform was Cummings’s next mission, before he was diverted by the pandemic. His confrontational, destructive approach didn’t work, alienating civil servants when ministers needed them to buy into the reforms.

However, much of Cummings’s diagnosis has now been vindicated. Nick Herbert, a Conservative former minister who chairs a commission for smart government, said: “We are not structured to deal with the big problems any longer. We need to restructure. This is about systemic reform, not incremental change.”

He believes no government since has matched Blair’s relentless focus on public service “delivery".

Since the departure of Cummings, ministers have pushed on with reforms, but in a more consensual way. For example, Cummings wanted to swing the axe at 3,000 communications officials based in Whitehall departments and seize control of the operation from the centre.

According to a blueprint I have seen, the “single employer model” has now been ditched. It recognises “how important it is'' for media, external affairs and internal comms to be “rooted in departments”, although there will be some central coordination.

Key figures include Michael Gove, who wants civil service promotions to be based on merit rather than time served – one idea in a radical reform blueprint this week from the Policy Exchange think tank. It also proposed that the renewal of a permanent secretary’s contract should depend on hitting targets set by ministers.

Another key player is Simone Finn, No 10’s new deputy chief of staff and veteran of previous attempts to reform Whitehall. The Tory peer thinks Covid provides “a unique opportunity” to “force the pace”. She rightly believes ministers are part of the problem.

Before her appointment, she wrote that ministers are “too often uninterested in institutional reform, chasing headlines, and jumping from idea to idea. When we consider how to ensure that the executive has the right skills and experience, we also need to think about how to equip ministers as well."

I look forward to ministers’ responses when they are told to go back to school.

Officially, Johnson is minister for the civil service. Never a details man, he has subcontracted the reform agenda to Gove. Despite Cummings's caricature, many officials acknowledge the need to modernise. But to win back their confidence, Johnson will have to sack ministers who mistreat them.

His shameless failure after Priti Patel bullied officials does not inspire confidence. Nor must senior civil servants be weeded out to purge Remainers – that war is over.

One hopeful sign is that Johnson has recreated Blair’s No 10 delivery unit after a review by Michael Barber, who headed it under Blair. It will chase progress on Johnson’s vague goals to “build back better” after Covid and “level up”.

But the PM needs to lead from the front if change is to happen and work. That is not his style; he likes to sit back and watch rival courtiers argue it out. According to Cummings, Johnson once told him: “Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who is in charge.”

Similarly, Johnson has appointed weak, lacklustre ministers unlikely to outshine him, based on their loyalty and views on Brexit – that must change at the next cabinet reshuffle. If it is right for civil servants, appointment on merit should apply to ministers too.