Maude Civil Service Review

Recommendation 1: The Head of the Civil Service must be a separate and full-time position. The HoCS should set the annual objectives of departmental permanent secretaries, in agreement with ministers, including for the delivery of cross-cutting Civil Service changes.

Recommendation 10: The following changes to the role and composition of the Civil Service Commision should be implemented: The First Civil Service Commissioner should be a full-time position with pay which is commensurate with the gravity and importance of the role, and which is comparable to equivalent positions elsewhere within the UK and other jurisdictions. The leadership and staff should not be current or former civil servants; No civil servants should be involved in any way with the recruitment and selection of Civil Service Commissioners. The selection panel should be appointed by the Prime Minister after taking advice from the First Commissioner, and should generally include the Chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and the Government Lead Non-Executive Director; The Civil Service Commission should employ its own staff in line with the recommendations of the 2014 Triennial Review, rather than only civil servants as is the case at present; The Civil Service Commission should set its own budget, recovering its costs from departments and other bodies that employ civil servants on a prorata basis;

Recommendation 11: Anyone invited to conduct a review into any aspect of the Civil Service should be invited back two years after submitting their recommendations to assess progress in implementation. Their follow-up assessment should be published. Ministers should have the opportunity to receive written or oral updates directly from the reviewer.

Recommendation 12: The centre of government should be reshaped to create a new Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet (OPMC) containing the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet and National Security (and other) Secretariats.

Recommendation 13: A new Office of Budget and Management (OBM) should be created. This would include HM Treasury's current responsibilities for the allocation and control of public expenditure, together with the centres of the major cross-cutting functions - financial management, commercial procurement, digital, project delivery, human resources.

Recommendation 14: Each government function should be expected to carry out six tasks for the Civil Service as a whole: develop capability, continuous improvement, set and enforce standards, provide expert advice, set and enforce cross government strategies and develop and deliver services.

Recommendation 15: Each major government function should be unequivocally led by a single Chief Officer, appointed at Permanent Secretary level, covering both central delivery capability and the cross government function.

Recommendation 16: Functional leaders will be held accountable to Parliament by Select Committees in hearings alongside major programme Senior Responsible Officers (SROs), where those programmes have substantially relied upon common cross-government services for delivery.

Recommendation 17: The mandate for spending controls needs to be restated and strengthened, with a high bar set for any exemptions to agreed spending limits. Publication of exemptions, alongside numbers for efficiency savings, should be resumed on the same basis as between 2010 and 2015 and figures for the intervening years should be published.

Recommendation 18: Senior officials in the functions in the departments should be directly employed by the central function, as is the case with the commercial function already. An immediate start should be made with the HR function.

Recommendation 19: the Civil Service Commission should be given the responsibility to oversee and scrutinise internal appointments (at Grade 6 and above) as well as external appointments; and the requirement to appoint on merit should be extended to internal as well as external appointments.

Recommendation 2: The Head of the Civil Service must have a clear mandate, with clear authority to lay down what must happen across government for the delivery of reforms, to support its implementation, and to call out backsliding. Their mandate should include capability, culture, recruitment, management information and performance evaluation.

Recommendation 20: existing letters of delegation from the Minister for the Civil Service to ministers in charge of departments should be replaced with formal letters clarifying the minister’s management powers and responsibilities. A draft is included at Annex 5A.

Recommendation 21: in relation to the appointment of permanent secretaries, ministers in charge of departments should be made aware at the outset of how they can choose to be involved in the selection process; and the 57 panel should submit to the Prime Minister the names of all candidates deemed appointable.

Recommendation 22: in relation to the appointment of the principal chief functional officers, the interview panel should contain no more than one current civil servant, who would normally be HOCS.

Recommendation 23: for the appointment of director-generals, the prime minister should be able to make the final selection from a list of appointable candidates, after consulting the departmental minister, First Civil Service Commissioner, and HOCS.

Recommendation 24: in relation to appointments at SCS grades 1 and 2, and other posts that are deemed critical by the minister, the following should apply: The minister should be informed in good time of any changes are planned or expected; With the agreement of the Civil Service Commission, the minister should be able to have an official removed from a role they consider to be critical to the delivery of a policy priority; With the agreement of the Civil Service Commission, the minister should be able to manage an appointment process directly, agreeing a process and timetable with the Commission and permanent secretary. The minister should be able to nominate a personal representative to observe any Civil Service recruitment or appointment process.

Recommendation 25: ministers should be able to make a direct appointment of a chief of staff as a civil servant to manage their office; and extended ministerial offices (EMOs) should be reintroduced.

Recommendation 26: all Senior Civil Service appointments, except at permanent secretary level, should be for a four year fixed tenure; and it should not be permissible for civil servants to apply for other jobs elsewhere in the Civil Service, or in central government organisations that are technically outside the Civil Service, without the consent of their line manager or other identified senior manager.

Recommendation 27: The minister in charge of the department should chair the departmental board, handing over the chair to the lead NEBM for some items on the agenda. In the absence of the minister, the lead NEBM should chair the board, but it is essential that another minister should attend the board.

Recommendation 28: The board agenda should be set by the lead NEBM, with the agreement of the minister (the minister may choose to delegate this entirely to the lead NEBM). There should be some standing items on every board agenda. These should include some key elements of management and financial information. For common areas of activity and spending, the information and data must be provided in a standard agreed form that is common across the government.

Recommendation 29: If the NEBMs are dissatisfied with the quality or consistency of the management, financial or performance data that is presented to the board, they should seek to resolve their concerns with the Permanent Secretary and the minister. If there is no resolution, they should raise their concerns with the National Audit Office, copying their concerns to the HoCS, the Government Lead Non-Executive Director, and the First Civil Service Commissioner. 26Practical Steps to Improve Management Information in Government, an independent report by Dr Martin Read CBE, 2013.

Recommendation 3: The Head of the Civil Service’s mandate must run across the whole Civil Service, including the Diplomatic Service.

Recommendation 30: Interview panels should be chaired by the departmental lead NEBM (or the Government Lead Non-Executive Director in the case of a lead NEBM vacancy). The Permanent Secretary should be a member of the panel. The third member should in no circumstances be another civil servant; it should be someone independent under the appointment rules, nominated by the Minister. It might be another NEBM from a different department.

Recommendation 31: Ministers in charge of departments should publish an annual short statement of their objectives for the year ahead. When a new minister is appointed the statement of objectives must be published within two months of appointment. The minister's Permanent Secretary should publish an accompanying implementation statement setting out how these objectives will be delivered. The Permanent Secretary’s annual objectives - to be agreed with the minister, HoCS and First Civil Service Commissioner - naturally will be expected to reflect the agreed plans.

Recommendation 32: When a policy decision is made and announced, the evidence and data that underpin the decision should be published.

Recommendation 33: The Civil Service Commission should commission annual audits of the quality and accuracy of civil servants’ advice, with the results being reported to Parliament.

Recommendation 34: When an accounting officer has made a request for a written direction, they should notify the department’s Audit and Risk Committee.

Recommendation 35: There should be a consistent, government-wide standard, appropriate for the digital age, for the maintenance of records, with adherence monitored by the Government Internal Audit Agency.

Recommendation 36: Annual reports should follow a much more uniform and factual template. The focus should be on performance data and management information, with descriptive text kept to a minimum. The annual report should include hard outcomes data linked to spend.

Recommendation 37: Every entity in central government should publish online, continuously kept up-to-date, an organisation chart with salary bands attached to individual SCS positions.

Recommendation 38: Sir Martin Read should now be invited, together with the Government Lead Non-Executive Director, to revisit his findings, and assess the extent to which his recommendations have been implemented.

Recommendation 39: It should be routine for officials to attend cabinet committees and to speak. It should also be routine for the Chair of the cabinet committee to approve the attendance of Special Advisers.

Recommendation 4: For the next ten years, the Head of the Civil Service should be someone most of whose previous career has been outside the Civil Service, and much has been in the private sector.

Recommendation 40: Every weekly cabinet meeting should have on its agenda a list of all decisions taken in the previous week in cabinet committees. These would be for routine ratification and would therefore carry the unequivocal status of a collective Cabinet decision.

Recommendation 41: At any cabinet committee where a policy decision is to be made, the Permanent Secretary from the department proposing it should present the implementation plan and be ready to answer questions on it, together with the official who is the designated Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) who is charged with its delivery.

Recommendation 42: Cabinet committee minutes should record action points, with clear timelines and individuals identified with responsibility for their implementation. Any deviation from the timeline should be reported immediately to the secretariat, the chair of the committee and their team including Special Advisers, and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. The minutes should be circulated in draft to all ministers, Special Advisers and officials attending the meeting.

Recommendation 43: Cabinet committees should be prioritised by nominated ministers and their teams so that there is seamless continuity from meeting to meeting. It should be exceptional for ministers to attend committees as a substitute for the nominated minister.

Recommendation 44: The government should commission a review of the Governance and accountability for implementation of cross-departmental policies and programmes without any restriction on what reforms can be considered.

Recommendation 45: There should be improvements in the selection, preparation and support of ministers including: More care taken, especially in the appointment of junior ministers, to ensure that there is a good fit between the individual and the role; Preparation for appointment as ministers should start well in advance; Induction of ministers after appointment should be taken much more seriously; Ministers should generally stay in post for longer;

Recommendation 46: There should be more support made available to ministers to support Special Adviser external recruitment. Basic training should also be provided to Special Advisers prior to starting roles so they can be brought sufficiently up to speed with Civil Service terminology and the mechanics of government. There should be a greater focus from political parties on the need to cultivate talent long-term; There should be an element of continuous professional development (CPD) for all serving Special Advisers.

Recommendation 47: There should now be a sustained programme to map the landscape of ALBs accurately and consistently, with existing as well as new ALBs classified under the new simplified taxonomy, with a transparent central register of all ALBs kept rigorously up to date. Departments should maintain and publish a complete list of all ALBs sponsored by them, including their purpose, responsibilities, functions and an up-to-date list of board members including those where appointments are falling due.

Recommendation 48: There should be a general principle that the power to set policy rests with ministers accountable to Parliament. Any exception that leaves policy-making powers with an ALB should be identified in the current Public Bodies Reform Programme, and the reasons for the exception outlined

Recommendation 49: The programme of triennial reviews of ALBs should be revived and include an examination of the relationship with its sponsoring department, with an expectation that each triennial review will be overseen by a NEBM of the sponsoring department's board. The schedule to the Public Bodies Act 2011 should be updated.

Recommendation 5: The Head of the Civil Service should be responsible for defining and publishing a future operating model of the Civil Service, and the transition plan to get there. That should include performance targets, investment and budget.

Recommendation 50: the board chair for executive agencies should normally be a NEBM of the home department’s board.

Recommendation 51 : A survey should be undertaken to establish the status of ALB framework documents, and of annual letters from ministers to ALB chairs setting out objectives, which should be published.

Recommendation 52: The departmental accounting officer should report annually to the department board on the governance and effectiveness of the ALBs sponsored by the department

Recommendation 53: All incoming ministers should be provided on the day they are appointed with a list of the ALBs for which they are accountable to Parliament, to include purpose, responsibilities, functions, the most recent triennial review and an up-to-date list of board members including those where appointments are falling due. The sponsor team in each department must be clearly identified and a meeting arranged with the ALB chair and the sponsoring team. Junior ministers with ALBs in their portfolio should receive support and training on managing these relationships.

Recommendation 54: There should be consistent senior oversight of an ALB sponsorship team, and strong professional oversight of ALBs should be an essential skill for promotion to director-general. Public

Recommendation 55: The government should appoint a chief talent officer, who would lead the central appointments unit in the Cabinet Office, with responsibility to ensure that there is a comprehensive forward look for appointments, that processes are being managed effectively with officials involved at a sufficiently senior level and that the process allows ministers to be fully involved in good time.

Recommendation 56: The chief talent officer should lead an outreach programme to build, maintain and refresh a strong pipeline of candidates for appointment to ALB chairs and boards, diverse in every way including by social background and geography. The consent of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, advised by the chief talent officer, would be required before external search agencies are engaged for any vacancy. Direct Appointments, Tsars and Ad Hoc

Recommendation 57: No direct appointments should be made without express and minuted ministerial approval. All such appointments should be published, as should the membership of all ad hoc boards and committees. Appointment terms should be for one year with the possibility of extension if expressly agreed by ministers. Ministers should be provided with a list of all such boards, committees and directly appointed advisers and “tsars” so that they can decide whether they wish them to continue.

Recommendation 6: There should be a single Civil Service Board to support the Head of the Civil Service. The Board should include the First Civil Service Commissioner, Government Lead Non-Executive Director, Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, the chief people officer and two of the heads of the other principal cross-cutting functions: commercial, digital, financial management, Infrastructure and Projects Authority; all of whom should be appointed at Permanent Secretary level.

Recommendation 7: The Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff should attend the “Wednesday Morning Colleagues” meeting of permanent secretaries.

Recommendation 8: Any additional Civil Service governance committees or groups must firstly be agreed by ministers and secondly have a clear agenda and outcomes to ensure that they align with and inform meetings of the Civil Service Board.

Recommendation 9: The Civil Service Commission should be reformed to play a more proactive role, with focus on improving capability and effectiveness, in line with counterparts in Australia and New Zealand. A reformed and strengthened Civil Service Commission should fulfil that role, with a lead First Civil Service Commissioner supported by the Government Lead Non-Executive Director, network of departmental board Non-Executive Board Members and former ministers.