How far is the PM willing to go to rewire the State?

The PM is pledging to transform the “overcautious and flabby” State, which has become “bigger, but weaker”. This is exactly the right goal.

Back in the early 2010s we talked about wanting more for less. We now get less, for more. That has to change — the British public has lost faith in the State’s ability to deliver, and that leaves a dangerous vacuum for those with false promises to occupy.

So how will Labour achieve this? Red tape and regulators are in the firing line (sound familiar?) and AI is the answer (…also sound familiar?).

Who can disagree with the PM’s desire to “unleash” the entrepreneurs and investors, and to scrap the bat-tunnel-barriers to building? Starmer is promising a 25 per cent cut to regulatory administrative costs, and to take on the public bodies acting as blockers.

Just last month we published a paper on why Government needs to address Britain’s “quangocracy”. In his Telegraph piece, Starmer says “for any challenge faced, for too long the answer has been more arms-length bodies, quangos and regulators which end up blocking the Government as we’re trying to build.” Exactly our point — ministers do need to stop “outsourcing” decisions.

The Government will also “harness the power of AI to make every department more innovative and efficient”. In fact we’re told that digitisation will save ￡45 billion. Peter Kyle, the man charged with achieving this, is styling himself as a disruptor. In promising higher pay for technical expertise, combined with overhauling the funding model for digital technology, the DSIT SoS is taking positive steps in the right direction — and as with quangos, he’s following our advice.

Of course, realising ￡45 billion in savings means actually cashing in the reductions in civil servant time. That means a massive and ambitious programme of job redesign, redeployment and, ultimately, significant headcount reduction which will likely require compulsory redundancies as jobs are lost to automation. It’s not clear there’s a plan for that.

And speaking of plans, how is the Government going to cut 25 per cent of administrative costs linked to regulation? Presumably AI and automation will have a role to play here too, and merging regulators is an excellent plan so that businesses are not having to engage with different bodies who all have different approaches and requirements. But it's also going to mean deregulating and being comfortable with more risk. So which regulations are going?

Plus all of this is going to require highly talented people who can think differently, challenge the status quo and move quickly. Which means fundamental reform of the workforce model itself. The PM needs a plan for addressing poor performance (may I suggest ours?) and a plan for attracting the best and brightest — the ‘tours of duty’ are great, as is the higher pay for digital skills, but they need to go much further (we’ve also covered that…).

And it's going to mean actually matching resources to priorities, which means getting rid of entire teams and projects that are legacies of previous administrations. That means compulsory, not voluntary, redundancies.

We’ll wait to hear the PM’s speech to see how far he’s actually willing to go to rewire the State.