UK PM says government needs to be ‘happier with innovation’ as he sets out reform plan
UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has said that the government needs to become “happier with innovation” in order to ensure that the state can operate at “maximum power”.
In a speech setting out his plans to reform the public sector, Starmer said that change was needed in order to deliver more effective services.
He highlighted that the public sector employs more people than it has for decades, but this was not matched by delivery: “Look around the country; do you see good value everywhere? Because I don’t.”
In fact, he said, the state is actually weaker than it’s ever been: “Overstretched, unfocused, trying to do too much, doing it badly, unable to deliver the security that people need.”
Among the areas where Starmer pledged action was tackling what he called “a vast array of quangos, arm’s length bodies and regulators” that ministers have hidden behind.
This amounts to a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers”, Starmer said, “using taxpayer money to stop the government delivering on taxpayer priorities”.
The government would therefore “hack back the thicket of red tape that stop us getting things done”, he said, adding: “Right across Britain people are frustrated, they don’t think politics works for them because it doesn’t deliver on promises. How can you justify that? That part of the state see their job as blocking the government from doing the very things it was elected to do. You can’t justify it.”
Starmer also announced the abolition of what the government called the largest quango in the world – NHS England – with the duties at the public body being returned to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Global Government Forum’s Innovation 2025 conference takes place on 25 & 26 March in London, and brings together government leaders from across the globe for discussions on transformation in government. It will look at what innovation means for civil servants, as well as how to create space for experimentation in government. Find out more and register here.
Putting innovation at the heart of government
Starmer said that his government would focus on delivery, and that one of the proposals to achieve this was to send officials into departments to drive change.
They would focus on helping government make better use of technology such as AI.
“We are going to get the best of best on AI working across government,” he said. “I’m going to send teams into every government department with a clear mission from me to make the state more innovative and efficient.”
In the question and answer session following the speech, Starmer said that “we need to create a culture where we are happier, more content with innovation”.
Starmer said that “innovation is risky, because you are trying something for the first time, and yet we always come down so heavily when something goes wrong that people are a bit scared to innovate”, and that he sees this problem in government.
“Almost everybody in government, when I say we need to change something, says ‘yes I agree with that’, but then there is a reluctance to do it.”
He said that this was a “completely human reaction based on fear about what will happen if something goes wrong on my watch”.
“So there’s a cultural thing that I think is important here as well.”
Innovation 2025: The conference agenda has been developed with the support of event co-hosts the UK Cabinet Office and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and will cover key topics including: how to apply AI in government; how digital credentials can make it easier to interact with government; getting procurement right; and how to tackle groupthink in government.
Read thoughts from speakers at the conference below, and find out more and register here:
‘At the cutting edge of the hardest stuff’: Five minutes with Carla Groom, head of human-centred design science at the UK’s DWP
Good risk and brain food: Five minutes with Clive Martin, head of the UK Government Risk Profession
Solving the right problems: Five minutes with Wei Boon Goh, chief executive of Singapore’s Government Technology Agency
Staying true to yourself: Five minutes with Ima Okonny of Employment and Social Development Canada
More effective government: Five minutes with Barry Lowry, Ireland’s chief information officer
Starmer’s speech set out more details of the blueprint developed by government to rewire the civil service, with plans to create a new scheme to incentivise under-performing officials to leave their jobs, as well as work to double the proportion of civil servants in the digital and data profession.
Starmer wrote to UK civil servants to set out plans for a “more agile, mission-focused and more productive” government, and called on them to help the civil service “once again become the engine room of delivery for every person in every part of the UK”.
He said that, under his plan, civil servants would “be enabled to re-focus on your core purpose, away from the things that hamper your day-to-day work, delivering excellent, high-performing public services that improve people’s lives”.
Read more: UK government plans radical reform to ‘unshackle civil servants’
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