. Such is the power of civil servants across Whitehall that our elected politicians are often too cowed to criticise or even suggest improvements, let alone try to reduce the bloat that is so obvious to any outside observer. Not so Steve Barclay , the health secretary. A response to a Parliamentary question from Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed that Mr Barclay has already axed one in six civil servants at the Department of Health, with no perceptible drop in quality. To be clear, Barclay has only trimmed his own department, which after staff cuts now employs 3,316 people. This headcount is dwarfed by the number of staff working within the NHS. But health seems to be one of the few bits of Government that is starting to rage against the dying of the light. Barclay is endlessly pushing the potential of AI to save lives and improve efficiency, greenlighting new wonder drugs and miracle cures from gene therapy and gene editing to weight loss drugs. And we should not downplay the bravery required to implement this hiring freeze. Officials now have to directly appeal to the Secretary of State for essential specialist hires but, in the DHSC, efficiency and value for money are real priorities. It turns out that there was a huge amount of slack in the staffing pool, as many have argued all along. Meanwhile, the health secretary's decision to eschew the smartly refurbished ninth floor, instead ordering his ministers to sit with him together on normal desks in the middle of an open floor plan, is testament to his commitment for a leaner department. His special advisers – who are not civil servants but rather appointed by the secretary of state – sit next to them, alongside the directors-general of the department. Gone are the cavernous workplace){kind=link}
Steve Barclay’s decision to reduce the Department of Health headcount should encourage other secretaries of state to do the same
There is a temptation to believe that an ever-expanding modern state is an inevitability. To hold fast to heretical ideas about a lean, efficient bureaucracy is to make oneself a latter Julian the Apostate (Thou hast conquered, bureaucrat!).
Such is the power of civil servants across Whitehall that our elected politicians are often too cowed to criticise or even suggest improvements, let alone try to reduce the bloat that is so obvious to any outside observer.
Not so Steve Barclay, the health secretary. A response to a Parliamentary question from Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed that Mr Barclay has already axed one in six civil servants at the Department of Health, with no perceptible drop in quality. To be clear, Barclay has only trimmed his own department, which after staff cuts now employs 3,316 people. This headcount is dwarfed by the number of staff working within the NHS. But health seems to be one of the few bits of Government that is starting to rage against the dying of the light. Barclay is endlessly pushing the potential of AI to save lives and improve efficiency, greenlighting new wonder drugs and miracle cures from gene therapy and gene editing to weight loss drugs.
And we should not downplay the bravery required to implement this hiring freeze. Officials now have to directly appeal to the Secretary of State for essential specialist hires but, in the DHSC, efficiency and value for money are real priorities. It turns out that there was a huge amount of slack in the staffing pool, as many have argued all along.