Reform Party MP Danny Kruger is concerned. The UK, he says, has ‘a bloated, paralysed centre of government and a mutinous bureaucracy’; and that ‘Real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent Civil Service’. So he has set out some proposed changes for the civil service should Reform become the government. These proposals prompt us to ask: what is the civil service for?

Reform’s Proposals

I will just focus on how Kruger proposes to deal with the ‘mutinous bureaucracy’. He wants to shake things up. The Cabinet Office will go, to be replaced by an Office of the Prime Minister. The post of Cabinet Secretary will go, to be replaced by three different posts, the first two being political—a Chief of Staff; a Chief Secretary; and a Head of the Civil Service. And protections set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (the malnourished legal basis of the civil service) will go, so that ministers and their special advisers can appoint and fire senior civil servants. All this is part of Kruger’s project to ‘restore the power and authority of the Prime Minister.’

The picture Kruger paints is that of a frustrated political executive, hampered by a civil service run amok. But the evidence is weak. I note two examples. Kruger quotes a UCL Current Legal Problems lecture I gave last year to suggest the civil service were preparing to resist a government it disapproved of. A more careful reading is that I was arguing that the primary duty of civil servants is to support the incumbent government, regardless of the government’s political complexion. I did explore the possibility of civil service resistance in a hypothetical, but argued this was an option with limited or no democratic legitimacy, and with limited or no legal basis (read or watch the lecture and decide for yourselves). It was a hypothetical, not a picture of how things are.

Kruger also notes the current office of the PM is treated as a subsidiary unit within the Cabinet Office, hinting that this is another civil service ‘coup’ at play. But No 10 has been underpowered for decades: the growth of the Cabinet Office is in part a response to concerns of successive PMs taking office and realising they have very little resources compared to departments—the real powerhouses of Whitehall. The growth of the Cabinet Office (albeit chaotic) reflects the increasing power of the office of the PM, not its decline.

The Enemy Within?

What is Kruger’s problem? Kruger and his colleagues don’t know what they want: they only know what they don’t like. Reform complains about means because they don’t know about ends. The civil service is an easy target. It can’t speak back, because the civil service must always be thinking about potential future masters.

But there is a deeper problem. This is Kruger’s view of what the civil service is for; and his broader understanding of how the British constitution works. For Kruger, the civil service ‘simply provides staff for politicians to inform and then implement their decisions.’ On this view, the civil service is part of a chain of delegation, running from ‘the people’ to Parliament; from Parliament to ministers; from ministers to the civil service. The civil service, then, is the passive agent of a set of democratic principals. It is an empty vessel; it has no business providing friction. The insistence on democratic accountability simply ends any further discussion of the role of the civil service.

Kruger goes further than this, though. He wants to delegitimate the civil service as an actor. He makes multiple positive references to the private sector. He wants to appoint a significant number of permanent secretaries from outside the civil service. The CEO of the new Department of the Civil Service (DCS) will be a ‘proven business leader’. A key role of the DCS ‘will be to find the best people from outside government to serve the Crown.’ Pointy-headed policy professionals should go: what is needed is a ‘healthy entrepreneurialism’. Implicitly, the civil service is seen as sclerotic and unproductive; devoid of any spirit of public service; it is a drag on change.

Predictably, Kruger’s solution to a frustrated political executive is greater personalisation and politicisation of the civil service. Given it is ministers who are largely* democratically accountable, Kruger argues, they therefore require greater control over the civil service. They should be able to choose the people who will get the job done. These proposals, Kruger says, promise greater ‘accountability’—meaning ministerial accountability to Parliament and to the courts. But Kruger also promises future change to Parliament and the courts to ‘empower’ them while at the same time stressing that neither should encroach on the ‘proper powers of government’ (these ‘proper’ powers are left entirely undefined, of course). The defenestration of the civil service is part of a broader project aimed at concentrating power within the political executive.

Leave aside the practical problems of Kruger’s proposals (eg, where are all these outsiders coming from—a magical competence tree?). Kruger and Reform are not alone in seeing the civil service as a source of frustration. They are drawing on and intensifying common criticisms of the civil service. Lord Maude of the Conservatives in various reports repeatedly made the argument for greater ministerial power over officials—again, on the basis of accountability and negative comparisons with the private sector. Dominic Cummings has long complained about civil service obstruction (more recently, see here). And frustrations about delivery go all the way back to Blair and Thatcher. For decades now the idea of the civil service as a public service or good has been eroded. Slowly, but surely, the civil service has become the enemy within.

The Challenge for the Civil Service

If a political party hostile to bureaucracy comes into government with a majority—it doesn’t have to be Reform—there is very little stopping it making significant change to the civil service. There are some protections in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, but they are minimal, limited to matters like the requirement to publish a Civil Service Code; appointment on the basis of merit and fair and open competition; and monitoring of recruitment by the Civil Service Commission. 

Public law theory is of limited help. It has largely adopted the ‘empty vessel’ view of the civil service. The civil service is seen either as a delegate—of the political executive (ministers) or as the delegate of Parliament or the courts (think of judicial review). In law the civil service appears to have no identity of its own because of the Carltona principle: civil servants are treated as the alter ego of ministers (and see R(FDA) v Minister for the Cabinet Office([2024] EWHC 1729 (Admin) where the idea that the civil service had a separate constitutional personality was dismissed).

What is the Civil Service for?

In short: the long-term authority of the civil service depends largely on the acceptance of successive ministers—and the wider public. It is expendable. And, being impartial, the civil service has limited means to defend itself. Is this state of affairs good or bad? If we think it bad, then we should ask: what do we think the civil service is for? Let me sketch out some incomplete answers.

One answer is that the civil service provides expertise or competence, as Elizabeth Fisher and Sidney Shapiro have suggested. The legitimacy of Parliament rests on its representativeness; the legitimacy of the executive rests on its expertise. But ongoing churn within the civil service make this an awkward argument; and there is a growing dismissive attitude to expertise generally (unless, of course, it comes from the always-right, never-wrong private sector).

A second answer is that the civil service ensures procedural fairness. Process provides stability, and a defence against arbitrariness and corruption. More generally, the civil service can be understood as part of representative democracy—a ‘mediated majoritarianism’, where democracy is indirect, mediated via a variety of institutions (as Aileen Kavanagh and Jeremy Waldron would say). Perhaps, as Brian Christopher Jones has argued, the civil service is a constitutional guardian. But proceduralism fares badly against claims of necessity and the need for fleetness of foot. Bureaucracy becomes ‘red tape’. And talk of guardianship puts the civil service in potential opposition to present and future government, which is neither practical nor desirable for the civil service.

A third answer is that the civil service provides promissory or anticipatory legitimacy for democracy itself. It is a resource: it provides current and future governments with capacity to govern. The civil service is a public good to be used by today’s winners, but it is also a promise to today’s losers. If today’s losers become tomorrow’s winners, they too can use the civil service to achieve their ends. It gives losers a reason to continue their involvement in the democratic process.

And because it must serve a multitude of masters, the civil service should be seen (as Janet McLean and Paul Du Gay have argued) in terms of office, with attendant duties separate from any incumbent government. It is a public service. That is why, for instance, the Civil Service Code emphasises responsiveness to the duly elected government, but limits that responsiveness where it would damage a relationship with a future, differently-constituted government. The civil service has a master, but that master is always temporary: the civil service can never be totally committed.

None of these arguments are entirely satisfactory: in particular, they tend to collapse into the idea of the civil service as a constraint, when it should be seen as a source of empowerment; as a source of strength. But my concern is that the impulses driving impatient politicians—not just from Reform—will sooner or later end the civil service in its current form, without thinking through what the civil service is for. No one thinks the civil service is perfect. But to dismiss it so quickly, to view the civil service as the enemy within and not as a public good may help undermine democracy itself. Our capacious desire for instant solutions, our credulous deference to simple platitudes, and our pernicious unconcern for the civil service blind us to our folly. Time to rediscover the public value of bureaucracy.

The author thanks the editors for their excellent comments.

Ben Yong, University of Durham

* I say ‘largely’ democratically accountable, because some ministers may be peers; and because Reform figures have said that they would appoint ministers from outside Parliament.

(Suggested citation: B. Yong, ‘The Civil Service: A Public Good, Not the Enemy Within’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (27th August 2026) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))