24 October 2008
By Paul Dicken
The crisis in the financial sector is likely to restore confidence in a 'public service ethos' within Whitehall, a former head of policy at Number 10 has said.
Geoff Mulgan, now head of the Young Foundation, said a 'major culture shift' was likely in government. He added this would 'make it look rather odd that for quite such a long period of time there was quite such deference, not based on evidence', to particular business methods.
Mulgan, who worked in the Labour government from 1997 to 2004, was giving evidence to the public administration select committee inquiry into good government on October 16.
Committee chair Tony Wright said the inquiry would attempt to 'step back from the daily grind and see if we can distil some of the underlying operating principles of good government that we may have learnt over the years'.
Responding to questions about the handling of the economic crisis, Mulgan said: '[One] thing that perhaps will change irreversibly now is we've been through a long period where probably there was insufficient confidence in a public service ethos and too much deference to business methods in inappropriate fields in relation to policy advice. Being wealthy was taken as a proxy for wisdom.'
He said many wealthy people had been involved in advising government not on business but on areas such as social policy and that 'having a senior corporate position was seen as qualifying people to advise on running large public services'.
Although he thought the government had dealt decisively with the banking crisis, he told the committee there was a lack of planning for crises and 'unpleasant scenarios' such as the credit crunch, often for political reasons.
Another former Number 10 adviser, Matthew Taylor, said the government was facing an increasing problem of public apathy. He quoted polling which showed that 75% of people thought climate change was the biggest challenge facing the country, but 60% said they were doing nothing about it.
'What government can do without citizens participating is pretty limited,' he warned.
PFoct2008
