Sir Bernard Jenkin: “change is achievable” in the civil service

Sir Bernard Jenkin

I started my career having decided I wasn’t going to be a musician. That was what I went up to Cambridge intending to do – but I got drawn into politics and in the end studied music for a year but switched English Literature, and took my degree in that subject. I then went into business. I joined Ford Motor Company for four years and then spent six years in the fledgling private equity business.

A big influence in my life had been my father who had been in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Much to his surprise I chose a political career. I got elected at the tender age of 33. I was keen, diligent and ambitious. I immediately ran into difficulty because I opposed the Maastricht Treaty which didn’t endear me to the Major administration.

After a period in the Cabinet, I rather fell out with David Cameron. It was over the conduct of candidates. He was determined to bring in all-women short lists. I kept telling him: if you do this, you won’t get it through the party, and secondly it’s probably wrong in principle. We’re a Conservative Party.

Then I went on the Defence Committee and started a new phase of my career. After 2010, I became the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee. I’ve always been interested in how Whitehall works and why it doesn’t work as well as it should do. In Defence I became interested in who writes the UK’s grand strategy. I bumped into the Chief of Defence Staff at the time Jock Stirrup and I asked. He said: “It’s an easy answer: nobody.”

The first enquiry was into that. It got immediate pushback from the establishment and David Cameron who said he didn’t want a strategy, he wanted to remain flexible: he didn’t understand the idea between a strategy and a plan. There’s the old adage: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.

I did a series of reports in strategic thinking in government, culminating in 2019 when the House appointed me Chair of the Liaison Committee. To start with I was very wary – there was a degree of resentment over the manner my appointment as I’d been appointed by Resolution of the House instead of being voted in by the Committee

I had to tread carefully, but as my appointment progressed, people understood that I was being consensual. We also launched the Strategy Group, which I co-share with George Robertson the former NATO Secretary-General and former Labour Defence Secretary, and there was increasing dialogue with the likes Jeremy Heywood and Mark Sedwill about how Whitehall can work better.

I think so much of the discourse about the civil service is very destructive. If you just call it a blob, frankly you just annoy everyone. The system’s not going to work for you unless they feel engaged in what you’re doing, and if you feel undervalued and dismissed it won’t work. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t brilliant all the time at motivating the civil service to her advantage. In those days, before open recruitment, it was much easier to plan people’s careers; they could make sure the right people were in the right place. Today there is a lack of continuity and expertise.

This engagement with the senior civil service led to another report released before the 2024 General Election, called Strategic Thinking in Government in which we make a number of recommendations to government so that the civil service understand the concept. This is what they do in the Armed Forces, which is one of the reasons they’re so effective.

You always get some pushback from the civil service when they say we don’t do training, we do professional development and learning. Actually, there needs to be far more red-teaming exercise and tabletop modelling of scenarios – and not just in Foreign Policy but in other areas too: in energy policy for instance, or education or health.

This idea that there is some magic policy that’s going to fix everything: so many civil servants have seen it so many times before. I’ve talked to civil servants who say: “New minister, new crisis – I just dust off the old paper I did five years ago!” Change will take time and patience but it is achievable.