The cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, called for an overhaul of a “reactive and risk-averse” civil service in her speech last Tuesday. Ministers planned a “radical shift” of powers, resources and accountability to regional and local government, which she said would leave Whitehall “leaner and more strategic”. As 80% of civil servants already work outside London, devolution promises to alter what central government does, not simply where it operates. Reinvention is in the civil service’s blood – ever since it was founded as a permanent, impartial institution in 1854. Even departmental boundaries, Dame Antonia said, are on notice, asking do they “remain optimal in an era of cross‑cutting delivery?”
This must be set against the civil service’s relative decline: it is ranked joint sixth internationally on one measure of public administration. To improve, Dame Antonia says the civil service must embrace AI. The efficacy of public service, she claimed, no longer has to be constrained by the limits of “human bandwidth”. That is an extraordinary claim. Technology can help speed up identifying someone at risk of homelessness – but it does not supply a home. Better administration and adequate resources need each other.
Trust in institutions is waning. Reliability and fair outcomes matter. But the public also need ways to challenge decisions. Learning from business must not mean treating public scrutiny as “frictions” or neglecting the people whom markets fail to serve. Dame Antonia correctly identifies poor incentives, churn and inadequate training as issues. But who gets to the top also matters. A 2025 paper by Oxford University’s Erzsébet Bukodi and John H Goldthorpe, with Nottingham University’s Inga Steinberg, says access to elite civil service posts remains skewed to people from advantaged backgrounds. Progress towards widening access has reversed in the last 20 years. Whitehall risks overlooking the talent to govern an increasingly complex country.
The academics traced the backgrounds of 476 public service leaders between 1945 and 2022. Among officials reaching the top, the share from higher professional and managerial families fell from 56% before 1960 to 45% in 1980-99, then rose again. Those reaching senior posts in 2000‑22 resembled their pre-1960 predecessors in class origins. The paper also highlights how few people at the top have qualifications in Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or quantitatively oriented disciplines such as sociology and demography. The latter could help officials understand the lives affected by policies they implement. Such a “cultural disconnect”, experts say, has caused major policy blunders.
Class privilege is linked to Whitehall’s cult of the generalist: those valued for intellectual dexterity rather than expertise. Privately schooled Oxford graduates dominated among top officials from privileged families, the vast majority of whom had studied humanities – the traditional grounding for Whitehall generalists. State-school entrants from other universities were more likely to have Stem or social science degrees. Better recruitment and promotion could help with the specialist knowledge Dame Antonia wants. Kate Bingham, the former vaccine taskforce chair, has warned that too few scientists are being recruited to shift Whitehall’s skillset. It’s time to look at the social selection that determines who gets to the top as well as reforming the system that shapes officials’ behaviour.
