'Fixing the Centre' - Reform's Plan for Government

Danny Kruger MP has recently¹ published another policy document (Fixing the Centre) on his Preparing for Government website.

It is not, as far as I can see, an official Reform UK policy document but it’s clearly of interest, not least as a proposal for Whitehall and Civil Service reform.

Its rather questionable presumption is that “Real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent Civil Service, especially the Cabinet Secretary and the sprawling, incoherent bureaucracy of the Cabinet Office”. Why questionable? All the Cabinet Secretaries that I have met, or seen quoted, bemoan the fact that they in practice have insufficient power in our highly distributed democracy.

But there are nevertheless plenty of good reasons to want to strengthen the centre of our government.

Here is what Mr Kruger’ wants to do:

• Abolish the Cabinet Office and the role of Cabinet Secretary and create a new Office of the Prime Minister under a powerful political Chief of Staff

• Create a new Department of the Civil Service charged with major headcount reduction, AI adoption and improved terms to incentivise high performance

• Restore responsibility for policy and delivery to Departments and make Ministers properly accountable to Parliament

• Give Ministers real powers to hire and fire civil servants, reward high-performing officials and recruit top talent from the private sector

• Scrap quangos and return their powers to government

• Co-locate Ministers in a new Combined Ministerial Office

Many generations have learned that it is much easier to propose Whitehall reform than to implement such proposals. There has, therefore, been no serious reform since ‘Haldane’ in 1918/19. My advice for potential reformers explains that they should consider 11 questions before deciding whether to proceed with their reform plans, and failure to do so will likely scupper their plans.

So … here, as far as I can see, is what Mr Kruger would likely say in response to my questions. You can judge for yourself whether his answers might suggest that his plans might run into serious difficulty.

Q1. Scope?

No.10, the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service – and also the Quangos. Not Parliament, not the Treasury and not local government.

Q2. Are you planning to abandon Cabinet Government?

Yes. The plan establishes something much closer to presidential government - which may be a necessary consequence of Nigel Farage’ control of Reform UK and the weakness of his current supporting team.

Q3. Should civil servants become more accountable to Parliament and the public, and so open policy-making to greater scrutiny?

No. “The core principle of reforms preparation for government is the restoration of Ministerial accountability for the actions of the state.”

Q4. Should we permit appointment and promotion other than on merit?

Yes. Many more senior staff would be political appointees

Q5. Should we revisit the Haldane reforms under which the relationship between civil servants and ministers is supposed to be one of mutual interdependence, with ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise?

Yes. Officials will be expected to ‘Speak Truth to Power’ even less than they do now, and deliver more obediently and effectively.

Q6. Do you prioritise continuity or uncertainty?

There would inevitably be a good deal of mainly temporary uncertainty within Whitehall but maybe no great disruption of external relationships as a result of this proposal on its own.

Q7. Will you ‘leap the chasm’ or cross it carefully?

Not addressed in this document but the tone of the document suggests that Mr Kruger want to see rapid change - but see Q8 below.

Q8. Leadership

The proposed reforms would require a large number of subsidiary questions to be addressed, including the destination of current Cabinet Office responsibilities and staff, and a huge number of issues connected with the abolition of quangos. One question that immediately comes to mind is the future of the Cabinet Office’s National Security team that coordinate the intelligence gather by MI5, MI6, GCHQ and MoD.

Someone would need to lead the team responsible for answering those questions, taking legislation (especially ‘Quango’ legislation) through Parliament and organising the consequential staff moves, redundancies etc. The choice of this person and their team would be crucial and could conceivably delay the reform.

Reform might be tempted to appoint the UK equivalent of Elon Musk and DOGE but … that did not end well.

Q9. Organisation and Planning - The Six Cs

It is interesting the Mr Kruger has thought about consequences such as for civil service salaries and relationships although there would inevitably be much remaining devil in the detail.

As a former Accounting Officer, I would certainly have welcomed less central control (including from the Treasury) over my HR and information technology policies. But would Reform ministers have been happy for me and other Accounting Officers to go our own, maybe quite different, ways?

Q10. ‘Selling’ the reforms to MPs & The Media

Not considered in this paper but likely to be important, either because Reform might be part of a coalition or because its own newly elected MPs might have views of their own.

Q11. Why Projects Go Wrong

This reform project is much more complex than it initially appears and many potential pitfalls inevitably lie ahead - but Reform are doing a lot more pre-election planning than did our current government.

Martin Stanley

1. Sunday 24 May 2026