‘What past public service reforms can – and should – teach this government’

Few incoming governments in recent decades have faced as dire a situation on public services as Labour did two summers ago.

The government is facing both a tough inheritance and high expectations

In 2024, almost every service that we analyse was performing worse than in 2019, and far worse than in 2010. NHS waiting lists were at record highs, prisons were at breaking point, while the public had far fewer public libraries and youth clubs at their disposal than the last time Labour were in office. 

None of this was lost on voters. Satisfaction with the NHS reached a record low in 2024 and health consistently ranked as one of the issues that voters cared most about in the run up to the election.

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Unlike in 1997, Labour also inherited a dire set of public finances. Spending plans were incredibly tight and were kept tight as Starmer and Reeves consistently pledged not to raise taxes during the campaign. With their hands tied financially, Starmer declared that Labour’s approach to public services would be “reform or bust”.

While the government did increase spending compared to those pre-election plans, it has also stuck by its commitment to reform. It has launched reform programmes in the NHS, schools, local government, children’s social care, the courts and the police, among others. 

There is a lot riding on these reforms. Ministers promised better public services before the next election. Getting reform right is therefore vital.

Ministerial leadership will be key

Ministers have a difficult task when it comes to public service reform. They are working with large, fragmented systems where delivery is often at arm’s length from government, making change hard to drive from Whitehall. While success depends on much more than individual ministers, past examples in our recent paper show that those who lead reform effectively, create the conditions for success through active leadership. 

Central to this is recognising that ministers cannot deliver reform alone. Within government they need good networks across other relevant departments and the centre. Early support from the Treasury was crucial to the success of Sure Start, as was Tessa Jowell’s role as a strong advocate for the programme across government. 

But ministers need good relationships throughout their sectors too. Norman Lamb, for example, was widely credited with using his extensive networks across the mental health sector to pursue his reforms in that area during the coalition government. While current Labour ministers have different goals to their predecessors from other parties, there are things they can learn from how reform was delivered.

Ministers also need to articulate a clear vision of what a reform is intended to achieve. When done well, this can align departments and delivery partners behind a shared set of goals. A strong long-term vision, reinforced by clear short-term priorities, allows ministers to secure early wins while maintaining focus on longer-term change. 

These lessons can sound deceptively simple. However, ministers operate under huge pressure, face frequent crises and work in a system that often rewards short-term wins over long-term reforms. Even these seemingly straightforward aspects of leadership are hard to do consistently well.

Ministers are falling short on public services reform

So, how are Starmer’s ministers performing on their own reform plans, after almost two years in government? Our analysis shows there are common patterns in Labour’s reform programmes – and some problems with their approach. 

Ministers have often shown a preference for large-scale structural reforms. The abolition of NHS England is the most high profile, but other reorganisations are under way in the courts, police and local government. These are time-consuming endeavours that rarely deliver the cost savings or performance improvements that ministers expect. 

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The government is also trying to save money by cutting management and admin staff. That, too, is usually a false economy: managers coordinate the system, ensuring that money is spent well. Some ministers are giving themselves more power. A desire for more control is perhaps understandable, but can throttle innovation and cooperation at the local level, where organisations know their public best.

Finally, and most importantly, ministers are steaming ahead with their reforms with little consideration of their effect on other services or the entire system. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the redesign of subnational organisations. 

The current geographic ‘footprint’ of these is incoherent – meaning, for example, a local council might work with different police and health care services within their area. There was an opportunity to create a rational system, but the government is instead moving services from one incoherent map to another.

The fault for this poor coordination lies with the centre of government. There has been only a weak central vision for how reforms should work together or what they are intended to achieve. In the absence of control, ministers pursue their own priorities.

Labour’s actions run counter to its stated ‘principles’ of public service reform

Good ministers in the past have recognised that they need to work with people on the frontline and cannot deliver change alone. This government’s approach – giving themselves and civil servants more power, ripping up organisations and moving people around – runs counter to these lessons, and Labour’s own rhetoric on ‘more devolved, more integrated, more preventative’ public services. Learning from the past, ministers and the government must grip these challenges, or they risk making little progress on public services by the next election.

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