David Cameron ruffled more than a few feathers at the Conservative spring conference in Cardiff in March by identifying civil servants as the ‘enemies of enterprise’. For many politicians, bureaucrat bashing is much easier than banker bashing – after all, civil servants are unlikely to move to Geneva as a result of the political opprobrium heaped upon them.
But earlier this year, the prime minister painted a very different picture when he referred to a ‘hidden army of public service entrepreneurs’. So which of these descriptions is accurate? It’s time that politicians developed a better understanding of what civil servants do, and how they fit into a future of reformed public services.
The idea that civil servants are the enemies of enterprise and sit around cooking up regulations to frustrate business for the sake of it is surely absurd to all but hardened conspiracy theorists. In reality, regulations reflect constantly shifting political judgements about the balance between costs and benefits. For example, in times of prosperity mainstream opinion might deem it desirable to promote greater fairness in the labour market by strengthening employee rights. In a period of high unemployment, sentiment might shift against such regulation in order to prioritise job creation.
Moreover, the red tape that civil servants stand accused of adding to often stems directly from the decisions of their political masters. It is, after all, politicians who, in reaction to high-profile events such as the Soham murders, impose new regulations – in that case widespread compulsory Criminal Records Bureau checks – that soon come to seem burdensome and unnecessary, once public hysteria has abated.
So what about the claim that the civil service harbours an ‘army of public service entrepreneurs’? Unfortunately this idea also misses the point. The civil service is a monopoly – a single body of officials, standing ready to implement elected politicians’ choices. Lacking the pressure of competition, monopolies don’t tend to be very entrepreneurial.
But to judge civil servants’ effectiveness by how entrepreneurial they are is to ask the wrong question. They are employed to have qualities other than being entrepreneurs. Inside the civil service, experimentation is not highly prized – and for good reason. Most experiments end in failure and it is ministers who will be blamed when they do. A bias for evolution over revolution is perhaps understandable in an environment where failure is politically damaging. Now, at the height of their reforming zeal, ministers may find the caution of their civil servants exasperating. In time, however, they come to thank these advisers for their tempering counsel when elements of their plans begin to go awry, as they will.
So, the civil service isn’t the body to innovate. But that’s not to say that civil servants don’t have a central role to play in future public service delivery. The coalition is rightly prosecuting a radical programme of market-based reforms to public services, from offender rehabilitation to secondary education. Once these reforms are through, civil servants will be less involved in direct service delivery than at any time in the history of the welfare state. That implies a changing, but no less important, role.
Public service markets do not conform to the perfectly competitive ideal. They need careful design and stewardship. Not even the most bone-headed free-marketer thinks that public services such as health can be delivered in a manner resembling the grocery market.
The design and commissioning of a market such as the government’s Work Programme for employment services is a complicated undertaking. Small changes in the structure of the market, how providers are paid, and how effectively their performance is managed, will make the difference between the programme’s success and failure.
Officials will have to steward the market effectively in order to create the space in which entrepreneurs can do what they do best. It is to these complexities that the work of the future civil service will increasingly be devoted.
So politicians will continue to give voice to the ebb and flow of the regulatory tide, blaming the bureaucrats when it suits them. But across swathes of the emerging public services, modern civil servants are neither the enemies of enterprise nor its entrepreneurs. Rather, their job is to enable enterprise in public services: to steer while getting others to row.
Ian Mulheirn is director of the Social Market Foundation
