Civil servants have been accused of blocking Brexit laws as Jacob Rees-Mogg launches a major review of Whitehall.
The probe, instigated by Mr Rees-Mogg, the minister for government efficiency, will investigate whether ministers’ decisions are being properly implemented and whether officials are “extracting maximum value from taxpayers’ money”.
It comes amid concerns among Cabinet ministers that civil servants are “standing in the way” of government policy by “dragging their feet” over enacting policies that they disagree with.
“Over the last few years there has been a growing feeling that while lots of parts of the Civil Service have got bigger, have they got more effective?” a senior government source said.
“Are ministers’ decisions properly being taken forward? Are things agreed at Cabinet actually happening? Is the machine standing in the way of things happening by our elected government?”
The Cabinet source pointed to the Brexit Opportunities Bill – aimed at getting decades’ worth of EU red tape axed from the statute books – as an example of a policy that has been frustrated by pushback from civil servants.
Officials in certain government departments – particularly the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – are understood to have complained about the volume of work required to go through thousands of complex regulations.
The source also pointed to Whitehall officials attempting to block government policies like the decision to pause the Civil Service fast-track under which more than 1,000 university graduates are brought into government each year.
“The decision to include the fast stream in the headcount reduction took weeks to get agreed despite the fact that the PM said it at Cabinet,” the source said.
The Telegraph reported last month that there was deep disquiet about the proposal among permanent secretaries, the officials who head up each government department, with senior mandarins pressing Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, to scrap the plans.
‘A well-oiled machine’
Earlier this year Mr Rees-Mogg said that the Government would reduce its Civil Service headcount by about 65,000 people.
The total size of civil servants shrank between 2010 and 2016 from 470,000 officials to 384,000. However, since then, the number has increased again to 472,000, the highest on record. The swell in numbers has been partly down to dealing with Brexit as well as responding to the pandemic.
The Whitehall review, which will be chaired by Lord Maude, former Cabinet Office minister, will consult a range of experts on how to make the Government more efficient.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “The public rightly expects the Government to be a well-oiled machine, with clear lines of accountability ensuring the Government is making the best decisions possible and extracting maximum value from taxpayers’ money.
“Lord Maude is uniquely qualified to lead this review. Leveraging his vast experience of public sector reform will help us learn lessons from the pandemic and better deliver on the British public’s priorities.”
