Cyril Northcote told us about this

Why has the civil service grown so big — but not more productive?

The problems are not new, and governments have been vowing to streamline Whitehall for decades. But according to one expert, the central problem is ‘there is no one in charge’

No, it’s not that there is no one in charge. It’s that this is what bureaucracies do.

C Northcote Parkinson told us all about this. We all recall the Law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion. But that wasn’t the main lesson. Rather, that bureaucracies just grow. Like Topsy, they just do.

There is no measurable output therefore a bureaucracy cannot be measured by output. Therefore the measure of success becomes growth in the bureaucracy. More people, more layers, more budget. No one would be spending more on an organisation, have more people in the organisation, if it were not a successful organisation. Therefore that more is being spent upon more people is proof of the success, right?

This then leads to a major, possibly even the main, job of a manager in a private sector organisation. Relentless fighting back against that expansion of the paper shuffling and administration. Those who don’t do that go bust and the Invasion of the Clipboards is dealt with that way.

Government bureaucracies do not go bust - well, not until they parastise out the entire society, as with those wasp pupae that eat spiders. Therefore the job of politician is not, as they all think, to dream up new things to employ more bureaucrats to do. It is, instead, to provide that slashing and burning that every bureaucracy requires. Ministers should glory, revel, in firing people. Simply because there is no other form of fightback possible in the public sector.

We here at the ASI once suggested that Ministers who closed down their own department should gain a Viscountcy. This was not an entirely jocular suggestion. It’s possible to think of extensions to this. A BEM for reducing the HR headcount by 50%, an MBE for 75%. O for killing off outreach say and K for entire administration line closures - and so on.

But we here do think that money is a great motivator. The typical pension for a civil servant costs some 30% of their wages. A minister who cuts headcount might receive, say, 10% of the pensions not accruing as a result of the sparsity of employment resulting from good management. 3% of the wage bill that is - to be paid at the minister’s own retirement age, obviously, in order to align cashflows and incentives.

This is not wholly and entirely a jocular suggestion. Not wholly and entirely.

Tim Worstall