Let us pray PM can heal the sickly state

WHITEHALL is littered with the remains of unsuccessful initiatives to reform, rationalise or reduce the civil service. The pattern of recent history is that bureaucracy tends to grow rather than shrink, swallowing even greater sums of taxpayers' money and not improving services.

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Despite that sorry record, Sir Keir Starmer is taking up the cause of change. Speaking in Hull yesterday, he promised to tackle the “over cautious and flabby” government machine, saying it had squandered recent Budget increases by its lack of focus and excessive regulations.

As proof of his commitment to this mission, he boldly announced that his Government is to abolish that citadel of incompetence, NHS England, created by Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley. It was meant to be the jewel in the crown of his NHS reorganisation. But it became a symbol of officialdom’s descent into waste, paralysis and extravagance.

As the unwieldy quango is absorbed within the Department of Health, staff numbers will be halved and duplication of functions will end. It is absurd, for instance, that NHS England and the Department each have their own strategy and communications teams.

Starmer claims he wants to impose radical reform right across the bloated state. The civil service is also in his sights. Last December, he declared, using an unusually vivid phrase, that there were “too many people in Whitehall who are comfortable in the tepid bathwater of managed decline”.