Our @instituteforgovernment.org.uk conclusion on Chris Wormald’s time as cabinet secretary - and what needs to come next By me and @hannahkeenan.bsky.social www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/next...

Major news for local government finance. Great that there's now more certainty - without action it's likely the majority of councils would have faced 'bankruptcy' in 28/29. But unclear (at least to me) where the £5bn is coming from. For context that's about 8% of the core schools funding for 25/26

Obviously major Whitehall news if it happens Perhaps not surprising given briefing. And if the PM loses confidence in a cabinet secretary then it’s pretty inevitable they go But an impartial civil service cab sec exiting as fallout from a government scandal/attempted reset is very much not great

Tim Allan only joined No10 in September last year as part of the most recent (very turbulent) 'reset'...

On 14 January Wes Streeting said that waiting lists had fallen three times faster in 20 areas of the country where crack teams had been deployed. We’ve looked at this claim and have questions. 🧵 www.gov.uk/government/n...

*shocked face* The quotes are brilliant: Yusuf pinpointed Kent, saying that government officials’ “snouts have been in the trough for too long” But, Chamberlain said there “just weren’t big cuts to make, because services had been hacked away for years and years” www.ft.com/content/fc3c...

Happy new year (is it too late to say that?) from the Week in Public Services team! This week: the government’s addiction to pilots; the failure of ed tech; and Reform UK’s row about pensions medium.com/week-in-publ...

12:30 TODAY 💻 Join a webinar panel of Nuffield Trust and IfG experts as they explore the policy implications of the abolition of NHS England. Featuring @markgdayan.bsky.social @sjanereed.bsky.social @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social and @njdavies.bsky.social Register to watch online for free 👇

This Economist article seems relevant for this announcment www.economist.com/united-state...

TOMORROW | How can the government make a success of the abolition of NHS England? Join our webinar on Thursday 29 January, 12:30, with Mark Dayan and Sarah Reed @nuffieldtrust.org.uk, @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social and @njdavies.bsky.social www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/govern...

Reading an interview with Streeting in the HSJ on 31 Jan 2025 When asked if he would abolish NHS England his response was: "I could spend a lot of time and money changing job titles and email addresses and not make a difference to the patient interest" 2026 Streeting would strongly disagree

I have a report out today on the near-perennial question of why UK governments struggle to stick at growth policy in anything like a strategic way. Some hurried points:- 0/ www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

This is now the third major public service that is going through a structural reorganisation after the NHS and local govt All are supposedly about cost saving, but I think it's also at least partly because it's an easy and visible "lever" for ministers to pull

Short comment from me about SEND reform: Legal rights are a much-relied-upon safeguard in the SEND system, but they can complicate efforts to make education more inclusive. Govt must acknowledge and carefully navigate that tension, with parents and other stakeholders

"Cutting waste" is the same line that Reform used in the local elections last year Since those elections, Reform has flatly failed to find any substantive waste in their councils, let alone cut it It's fair to assume that their claim about waste in central government is equally meaningless

Even I'm guilty of believing the "community > hospital" hypothesis but it appears to be a myth. *Sometimes* it's better but not always. Worth reading @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social's thread to which this post is replying to.

It's an odd document. Usually you'd have an impact assessment with policy objectives, options and their costs and impacts - aligning with policy choices. But the Impact Statement seems like it was produced retrospectively, justifying (not always very convincingly) the 10YHP policy choices.

The 10YHP made the bold, false & easily refutable claim that there's unequivocal evidence that shifting care to the community is cheaper. The Impact Statement says their literature review found mixed impacts on costs. Suggesting the literature review was undertaken after the 10YHP was finalised?

After Darren Jones joined IfG this week, @hannahkeenan.bsky.social and I had some thoughts about how he can make good on his plans for reforming the state: - show that his plan is different to those that have come before - ensure he's not spreading himself too thinly - set a clear vision

DHSC published its impact statement for the 10 Year Health Plan this week (yes, that is 6 months after it published the plan) It's more measured and clear-eyed than the original document and quite a contrast to some of the effusive optimism in the plan Some of the things that caught my eye 👇

Darren Jones: "I felt from the whitehall monitor section on missions that you were a bit sad." As the author of that bit, I am happy to confirm that yes I was a bit sad about the missed opportunity for reform. But have a read for yourself! www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

We’ve today published Whitehall Monitor 2026 As well as being your guide to whether Labour is making progress on rewiring the state (A: definitely still a work in progress) it also contains some fantastic data viz Some of my highlights 🧵

Streeting criticises IFG for calling his changes to NHSE/ICBs ‘a distraction’. But whether you support the changes or not (we’re pretty agnostic) they are definitely a distraction, particularly if you announce it with no clear plan on how to deliver, almost a year into office

This is a crucial point and a rebuttal to Streeting who claims that time consuming NHS reorganisation is going to free up lots of resource for the "frontline" - even if DHSC meets its savings targets, it will only be a tiny proportion of spending on the NHS

Louise Casey on why successive govt's have failed to reform adult social care: "Possibly quite simple. I'm not sure who's taken policy responsibility for social care in last decades. It falls between two depts [MHCLG and DHSC]. Streeting wants to lean into social care, but it falls in the cracks"

Louise Casey on patient/citizen choice in public services: "I disagree with performative legislation that has no strategy, no money, no ability to get that done which turns it a advocacy, legislative, lawyering up job, which we have with SEND and potentially the Care Act, and with homelessness"

Louise Casey really bringing to life what this means in practice for how stuff gets done in the civil service: "And I look at a grade 5 [deputy director] and think god love you, on a good day you might make a decision that an HEO used to make"

Louise Casey blunt on grade inflation in the civil service - compares decisions grade 5s make now to those fast streamers used to make…

A few thoughts on Streeting's speech: 1) Streeting majored on decentralising power in NHS. But he's overseeing huge concentration of power into his and DHSC's hands while merging ICBs into larger, less local bodies 2) No mention of social care reform. Continues to be the govt's greatest failure...

Streeting says that centralisation has ‘infantilised’ the NHS and he’s scrapping NHSE because you can’t run the NHS from ‘two offices’ in London. Yet scrapping NHSE gives him more power, with the NHS now arguably run from one office in London

This is getting going now, will live tweet some of the highlights of what Streeting says Thread below...

📢NEW REPORT📢 Every year @instituteforgovernment.org.uk sets out the latest on the civil service - size, professions, pay, morale. You name it, we analyse it. This year's report is out today. If you're interested in state capacity, you should be interested in what's happening in the civil service. 🧵

As Playbook says, Wes Streeting is speaking @instituteforgovernment.org.uk this morning Playbook rightly points out that we gave him a mixed review in last year's Public Services Performance Tracker. If you want to read that review, link is below www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Really excited to say that we have Wes Streeting talking at our Government 2026 conference tomorrow morning at 8:30 (don't worry, we'll provide coffee) Sign up below 👇 www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/govern...

Reposting our IfG starter pack - ahead of our conference tomorrow, make sure you're following all my fantastic colleagues:

So DHSC had one of the largest increases in morale in 2024, according to colleagues' research I'd be *very* interested to know what happened to morale in 2025, after the merger with NHS England got underway. I'd be surprised (putting it mildly) if the 2024 trend continued

New to Bluesky? Or just interested in the workings of government in the UK? Check out our @instituteforgovernment.org.uk starter pack here - find all my fantastic colleagues and follow for their insight and analysis go.bsky.app/P7JZCH

There's now data out about the resident doctor strikes last month So how disruptive did they end up being? And what can we say about how the NHS is responding to ongoing strikes? Short 🧵👇

It was not a super flu year and why I think government and NHS messaging was wrong and counterproductive - my latest post christinapagel.substack.com/p/it-was-not...

Reform councillors are trying to blame Labour's funding reforms for council tax rises It doesn't stack up. After those reforms, 5/10 Reform councils will receive above average funding increases and none get anywhere near a cut They are raising tax because they failed to deliver promised savings

New year, new comment piece, same problems. I've written for @instituteforgovernment.org.uk on what the covid inquiry is revealing about (poor) govt info sharing during the pandemic and what needs to be in place for the next crisis. HMT does not come off well... tinyurl.com/muhtm2r8

Got 2 minutes? Tell us how we can improve our yearly deep dive into public services

Bumping this again. We'd really value the feedback of anyone who has read Performance Tracker. If you haven't yet, you can read it below....and then fill in the survey www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

This was always going to happen Reform promised to cut wasteful spending but never had any proper plan for how to do so. Instead, it was all populist nonsense about "DEI" programmes and lazy council staff www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The government set up 7 new public inquiries in 2025 Which means as we start 2026 there are 27 public inquiries currently underway (21 statutory inquiries) This is a huge number, at the start of 2016 there were only 10 public inquiries ongoing

Another misplaced attack on the OBR. The government dictates fiscal policy, not the OBR. That includes the OBR's mandate and the fiscal rules. The fundamental problem is a weak fiscal position, which requires tough choices on tax and spend

Amid some v good initiatives, lots of the longstanding problems with the civil service got worse again in the past year. If the government wants to 'rewire the state' it needs to set out what that means for the workforce. 👇Sneak peek at some of our @instituteforgovernment.org.uk report, out in Jan.

Between this and "superflu" the NHS is spinning very hard this winter. Few ways to interpret this comms strategy: 1) manufacturing demand crises to shift blame 2) stick to beat the BMA 3) to bounce HMT into emergency funding 4) they actually believe high demand causes long waits None good!

Happy unprecedented wave of super-flu season to those who fabulate.

PODCAST 🎙️ 2025 in review: Starmer's year of drama The IfG team and the FT's @chris-smyth.bsky.social pick out the big moments of the last 12 months – the big political developments, and the key appointments that could shape the year ahead www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/podcast/insi...