Starmer says British state needs ‘complete rewiring’ as Chris Wormald appointed new cabinet secretary
Chris Wormald, currently permanent secretary at the Department for Health and Social Care, will be the new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, the government has announced. He will replace Simon Case, who became cabinet secretary when Boris Johnson was PM.
Announcing the decision, Keir Starmer said:
I want to thank Simon for his service to our country and for the invaluable support he has given to me personally during my first months as prime minister. He has been a remarkable public servant over many years, and our best wishes go to him and his family as he now takes time to focus on his health.
I am delighted that Chris Wormald has agreed to become the next cabinet secretary. He brings a wealth of experience to this role at a critical moment in the work of change this new government has begun.
To change this country, we must change the way government serves this country. That is what mission-led government will do. From breaking down silos across government to harnessing the incredible potential of technology and innovation, it will require nothing less than the complete rewiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform.
Delivering this scale of change will require exceptional civil service leadership. There could be no-one better placed to drive forward our plan for change than Chris, and I look forward to working with him as we fulfil the mandate of this new government, improving the lives of working people and strengthening our country with a decade of national renewal.
Quite what Starmer means by “complete rewiring of the British state” is not clear. It sounds a bit like Dominic Cummings. Or like Kemi Badenoch, who has regularly spoken about her desire to rewire the system and who told the CBI last week “one of the things that we’re going to have to do is rewire everything”.
Key events
Dominic Cummings is not the only person unimpressed by Chris Wormald’s handling of matters relating to Covid. John Crace has dug out the sketch he wrote when Wormald gave evidence to the Covid inquiry last year and John described his evidence as a “masterclass in time-wasting”. It turns out John was prophetic.
Imagine what it would be like working with Chris. A lifetime in the hell of a bureaucratic cul-de-sac. Where process trumps outcome every time. But he will get his reward. People pay good money for that kind of futility. Which is why he’s tipped to be the next cabinet secretary when Simon Case steps down. Make that Lord Wormald.
Dominic Cummings, who was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser in Downing Street when the pandemic started, is scathing about Chris Wormald (as he is about almost everyone). He posted this on social media.
Since I left No10 Ive explained how Westminster now is truly pathological, it seeks & destroys the few things that work, like its persecution of special forces and closing of sewage monitoring necessary for bioterror etc. So it is a truly beautiful, artistic appointment to appoint as the most powerful official – a role 100X more powerful than ministers (other than the PM) – the official who told us all in Q1 2020 that we were ‘the best prepared country in the world’ for covid, who was responsible for the PM being told by then Cabinet Secretary on Thurs 12 March to go on TV to advocate for people holding ‘CHICKENPOX PARTIES’ so that as many as possible caught covid as fast as possible – the official who has presided over the implosion of the NHS and A&E ….
Today should be a wake up call to all investors in UK and young talent – the Westminster system is totally determined to resist any change & will continue all the things of the past 20 years that have driven us into crisis, the war of Whitehall on the productive and civilised forces in this country will continue to the knife.
The Green party has responded to the BBC story saying many councils think the government’s housing targets are unrealistic (see 9.26am) by saying it should prioritise getting council homes built. The Green MP Ellie Chowns said:
Labour’s housing strategy involves cosying up to big wealthy developers and falling for the myth that the private sector will build the housing that we need. But too many developers are more interested in lining their own pockets than in providing what communities are actually crying out for, which is affordable housing.
We can’t privatise our way out of the housing crisis. If we are to build the right homes in the right place and at the right price, we need to build hundreds of thousands of new council and social homes. These need to be in places well served by schools, health services and public transport. Not detached housing estates with a predominance of large expensive homes that make a quick and big buck for developers but are out of reach for most people.
And here is the statement that Chris Wormald put out following his appointment as the next cabinet secretary.
I am delighted that the prime minister has appointed me to the privileged role of leading our talented civil service, as we rise to the challenge of delivering the government’s focused agenda to deliver its plan for change.
The government has set a clear mandate – an ambitious agenda with working people at its heart. That will require each and every one of us to embrace the change agenda in how the British state operates.
So I look forward to working with leaders across government, to ensure that the civil service has the skills they need to deliver across the breadth of the country.
Wormald will start his new job a fortnight today, on 16 December.
Starmer says British state needs ‘complete rewiring’ as Chris Wormald appointed new cabinet secretary
Chris Wormald, currently permanent secretary at the Department for Health and Social Care, will be the new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, the government has announced. He will replace Simon Case, who became cabinet secretary when Boris Johnson was PM.
Announcing the decision, Keir Starmer said:
I want to thank Simon for his service to our country and for the invaluable support he has given to me personally during my first months as prime minister. He has been a remarkable public servant over many years, and our best wishes go to him and his family as he now takes time to focus on his health.
I am delighted that Chris Wormald has agreed to become the next cabinet secretary. He brings a wealth of experience to this role at a critical moment in the work of change this new government has begun.
To change this country, we must change the way government serves this country. That is what mission-led government will do. From breaking down silos across government to harnessing the incredible potential of technology and innovation, it will require nothing less than the complete rewiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform.
Delivering this scale of change will require exceptional civil service leadership. There could be no-one better placed to drive forward our plan for change than Chris, and I look forward to working with him as we fulfil the mandate of this new government, improving the lives of working people and strengthening our country with a decade of national renewal.
Quite what Starmer means by “complete rewiring of the British state” is not clear. It sounds a bit like Dominic Cummings. Or like Kemi Badenoch, who has regularly spoken about her desire to rewire the system and who told the CBI last week “one of the things that we’re going to have to do is rewire everything”.
Downing Street has criticised the MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace for dismissing allegations about his sexually inappropriate behaviour as just the concerns of “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.
Asked about the comment from Wallace, in an Instagram post at the weekend defending his conduct, the PM’s spokesperson said:
The culture secretary spoke with the BBC leadership at the end of last week on this matter and wider workplace culture issues to seek assurances that there are robust processes in place to deal with complaints.
Clearly the comments we have seen from the individual over the weekend were completely inappropriate and misogynistic.
More broadly the BBC is conducting an independent review into workplace culture which must deliver clear and timely recommendations. It’s essential that staff and the wider public have confidence that the BBC takes these issues seriously.
Wallace’s laywers have denied that he engages in sexually harassing behaviour.
There will be two urgent questions in the Commons this afternoon and two statements. They are:
At 3.30pm: A defence minister responds to an urgent question from James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, on “the impact of the government’s Chagos negotiations on the UK-US defence relationship”.
Around 4.15pm: A Foreign Office minister reponds to a UQ from Labour’s Barry Gardiner about attacks on the Hindu community in Bangladesh.
Around 5pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, gives a statement on net migration and border security.
Around 6pm: Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister, gives a statement on developments in north-west Syria.
No 10 plays down claims prioritising cutting waiting lists in new ‘plan for change’ could harm other parts of NHS
As Jessica Elgot reports, NHS leaders are reportedly worried that if Keir Starmer tells the health service to prioritise cutting hospital waiting lists, other aspects of healthcare will lose out.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked if it was realistic to set a goal of of getting the number of patients who get their operation within 18 weeks up to at least 92% (reportedly part of Stamer’s “plan for change”), the PM’s spokesperson replied:
What you’re seeing with all of these milestones is that they are going to be ambitious. There’s no point in setting milestones that aren’t ambitious.
But do we think that they are achievable? When it comes to the NHS, as the Darzi report showed, we inherited an NHS that’s broken, and the manifesto showed clearly that tackling waiting lists would be our immediate priority.
The spokesperson said the milestones would be “ambitious but achievable”.
Asked specifically about claims that other parts of the NHS might lose out as a result of this being set as a target, the spokesperson replied:
Tackling waiting lists is a critical step in taking pressures off A&E and GP services. It’s why it’s been set out as one of the government’s priority aims in office.
That’s not to say that the government isn’t going to continue to take action on continue to take action on wider priorities in the NHS.
I would point out we’ve already resolved strikes, making this the first winter in years that all A&E staff will be on the frontline rather than the picket line.
No 10 claims Starmer’s new ‘milestones’ don’t mean having highest growth in G7 being downgraded as target
The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished. Asked about claims that the “plan for change” being unveiled by Keir Starmer on Thursday will suggest that achieving the highest sustained growth in the G7 is being downgraded as a target, the PM’s spokesperson rejected this. He said:
We’re fully committed to all the missions. One of one of the missions is about the UK being the fastest growing economy in the G7 and it’s important that it’s the number one priority, because it’s only through economic growth that we directly improve people’s living standards.
We’ve been clear that the benefit of growth must be felt by working people. Milestones set out later in the week will set out how we’re going to achieve that.
I will post more from the briefing soon.
Report claiming Musk might give $100m to Reform UK revives calls for tighter donation laws, as Farage says it may be false
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that he does not believe a story saying Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire Trump ally and owner of X, might give his party $100m.
The suggestion was contained in a story published by the Sunday Times yesterday. It did not feature an on-the-record source for the claim, but it said “leading businessmen and Conservative Party officials believe there is a credible prospect that Musk is preparing to give $100 million (£78 million) to Farage as a “f*** you Starmer payment” with a view to transforming British politics”.
In an interview with GB News, Farage said that he did not know anything about this suggestion until he got a call about it from the Sunday Times on Saturday. He went on:
I suspect this is not true. Legally, companies operating in the UK can give money to UK political parties, but I think we’re a very long way away from that.
Look, if it did happen, well, that’d be great, but I think it’s one of those really very good gossipy Sunday newspaper things. Let’s see. But I rather doubt it.
But Farage did say Musk was “very supportive” of Reform UK. “He thinks that if Reform do well in the UK, we can bring about the same kind of change that he intends to do with Donald Trump in America,” Farage said.
In a blog on his Democracy for Sales Substack account Peter Geoghegan, the former editor-in-chief of openDemocracy and author of a book on the malign influence of money in politics, says this story illustrates why Britain’s laws on political donations need to be tightened. He says:
The craziest thing about this story is that it is all perfectly legal.
Musk is a South African-born billionaire who lives in the US. Our election laws are explicitly supposed to prevent foreign donations like this – but anyone, from anywhere, can get around the rules if they donate through a UK registered company. (A wheeze Robert Jenrick knows well.)
If Musk’s donation does materialise it will likely be made via the British branch of X/Twitter, the Sunday Times reports.
Trump’s right-hand man can pump as much Reform content as he wants onto this social media platform. Britain’s election laws, written for the analogue age, have barely changed since the digital revolution.
Geoghegan says it is frustrating that Labour has done almost nothing to change the rules in this area, but he says tightening the law would not be difficult.
Keir Starmer’s “plan for change” being unveiled later this week (see 9.26am) will involve sidelining the mission pledge to deliver the highest sustained growth in the G7, Ben Riley-Smith from the Telegraph reports.
New targets on living standards will be unveiled by Keir Starmer on Thursday
Is being seen as a sidelining of his big economic pledge – getting the highest growth in the G7
Nerves about whether that’s achievable. G7 target remains… but others now added
The problem with the ‘highest sustained growth in G7’ target is Starmer of course doesn’t control the economies of US, Aus, Canada, Germany, France, Japan
US growing way faster now: 2.8% estimate for 2024 vs 1.1% for UK
Plus the tax-raising Budget reduced medium-term forecasts
For the new living standards target real household disposable income and GDP per capita have been considered.
The new promise will likely have the benefit of not being a pledge to beat other countries.
Labour will argue this is about making the benefits of growth be felt.
Note the nuance. The G7 target remains. It will likely be mentioned in the ‘Plan For Change’ document unveiled on Thurs and Starmer’s speech
But a new major economic pledge will now be unveiled which in the coming years is likely to be talked about much more than the G7 ambition
The Local Government Association says councils need multi-year funding arrangements to help them deal with dangerous cladding. In response to today’s announcment from the government (see 10.08am and 10.17am), it issued this statement from Cllr Heather Kidd, chair of its safer and stronger communities board.
Councils are committed to keeping tenants and residents safe, and are keen to work with government to drive the pace of remediation.
However, for local government to carry out enforcement and addressing cladding issues as effectively and quickly as possible, multi-year funding arrangements are needed.
Councils are keen to remediate the buildings they own that have dangerous cladding, but they need access to the necessary funding to do so on the same basis they had to remediate ACM [aluminium composite material] cladding.
That is a reference to a scheme to fund the removal of ACM cladding first announced in 2018.
Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, is attending a humanitarian conference in Cairo today where she is announcing £19m in UK funding for Gaza, “including £12m in funding to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and World Food Programme (WFP)”. In a statement she said:
The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter. The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis.
The UK is committed to supporting the region’s most vulnerable communities, pledging additional funding for UNRWA, and to supporting the Palestinian Authority reforms.
Israel must immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza. I will meet counterparts both in Israel and the OPTs [occupied Palestinian territories] to discuss the need to remove these impediments, bring about a ceasefire, free the hostages and find a lasting solution to the conflict.
Peter Apps, the leading housing journalist and author of a brilliant book on the Grenfell tragedy, isn’t impressed with the new government targets for the removal of unsafe cladding from tall buildings. (See 10.08am and 10.17am.) He has explained why in posts on social media. Here are some of them.
As a reminder, Labour promised in its manifesto to “review how to better protect leaseholders from costs and take steps to accelerate the pace of remediation across the country, putting a renewed focus on ensuring those responsible for the crisis pay to put it right.”
Does this do that? Well… no, not really. The aim is to accelerate remediation, but how that will be achieved in practice is pretty uncertain. We have seen targets set and missed and set and missed since the whole thing started. It doesn’t seem to work.
Currently the stasis seems to be the result of disagreements about the level of remediation required, arguments about who is responsible, and a general squeeze in the (lengthy) supply chain for fixing buildings. More here:
Currently the stasis seems to be the result of disagreements about the level of remediation required, arguments about who is responsible, and a general squeeze in the (lengthy) supply chain for fixing buildings. More here: https://t.co/7cfalWGlEV
— Peter Apps (@PeteApps) December 2, 2024
I can’t really see how today’s announcement is going to fix any of those. The fines for freeholders are clearly aimed at forcing them to get moving, but it isn’t always the freeholder who is causing the delay.
And sure, developers can promise to double the pace of building remediation, but how? Why? The 2029 end date for above 18m buildings is also not especially ambitious. Given the funding first came out in 2020, that’s about where you’d expect it to be without further intervention
If you live in one of the affected buildings, I don’t think life will feel particularly different after this announcement. The problems of non-qualifying leaseholders, non-cladding defects, orphan buildings, insurance costs, interim measures etc etc still stand
Apps also says today’s announcement is “miles and miles away” from the approach to this problem Keir Starmer proposed in 2021 when he called for an independent taskforce on cladding to take direct control of dealing with the problem.
Growth expectations among UK firms take ‘decisive turn for worse’, says CBI
Growth expectations among UK companies have taken “a decisive turn for the worse”, in a fresh blow to Rachel Reeves amid warnings that business confidence has plummeted since the budget. Julia Kollewe has the story.
Building owners who fail to remove dangerous cladding could face jail, minister says
Building owners who fail to remove dangerous cladding could face jail, a minister warned today.
Alex Norris, the building safety minister, issued the warning as he gave interviews this morning promoting the government’s plan to ensure that all inflammable cladding on high-rise flats is removed by the end of 2029. (See 10.08am.)
Speaking on Sky News, Norris said:
I would want people who own buildings that are watching this, who have not been remediating them, to know we are on them, we are after them, and we want those buildings remediated. And if they don’t, they will feel the force of the law.
We have a range of powers already, ranging from fines to prison sentences, that can be used in health and safety cases.
We will use that basket of tools in whatever way with each building to get it resolved. We have committed that that will be the case by the end of this decade.
Cladding will be fixed on high-rise buildings in England by 2029, says Angela Rayner
Dangerous cladding on all high-rise buildings in government-funded schemes in England will be fixed by the end of 2029, Angela Rayner has pledged. Haroon Siddique has the story.
And here is the news release with details of the announcement from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Here is Jessica Elgot’s story about the NHS concerns about Labour prioritising cutting waiting lists.
And here is an extract.
No 10 insiders have said the new numerical targets, although risky, are a necessary recognition that Starmer’s “missions” which he set out in the run-up to the election were too conceptual for most people.
The prime minister will cease rhetoric about achieving the highest growth in the G7 in favour of specific promises on a pledge to increase real disposable income. He will also recommit to a plan to build 1.5m affordable homes and to measurably improve school-readiness for nursery children.
Labour under pressure over housing and waiting lists targets as Starmer prepares to unveil new ‘plan for change’
Good morning. Keir Starmer is giving a speech on Thursday and you can tell it is important because No 10 started briefing on what it is going to say in a news release to journalists sent out last Friday. He is going to announce a “plan for change” that will include “measurable milestones”. In the advance briefing Keir Starmer said it would be “the most ambitious yet honest programme for government in a generation”.
But hang on – hasn’t Starmer announced plenty of “measurable milestones” already? In 2023 he announced five missions, which he said were not just conventional performance targets but part of an attempt to make government more strategic and focused on the long term. The five headline missions all included sub-missions, so arguably there were around 26 targets or pledges in the document. Then, as the election approached, Labour simplified matter by announcing six first steps for change.
The new milestones will build on what the missions set out. No one is saying the five missions have been junked. But, by announcing new priorities, it is hard to avoid the conclusions that the old ones are being at best downgraded, and so it is not surprising that this is being seen as a relaunch. Politico this morning is describing it sarcastically as the “definitely-not-a-reset speech”.
In an interview yesterday Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, revealed that one of the new milestones will be to increase the number of children who are deemed educationally and socially ready when they start primary school from 60%, the current figure, to 75%. It is being reported that another milestone will be for the NHS to reach its target of getting the number of patients who get their operation within 18 weeks up to at least 92% – a goal that has not been reached for years.
But today, in their Times splash, Chris Smyth and Oliver Wright say NHS leaders are concerned about the impact of prioritising cutting waiting lists above all else. They say:
Health bosses accept the need to focus on the government’s political priority but say ministers will need to accept trade-offs to achieve it. “If the priority is putting all the money into electives, what we will see is warzone A&E departments and all sorts of other things being sidelined,” said an NHS source. “It will have a number of casualties, including mental health, community care and waits in A&E.”
The pre-election missions also included plans to build 1.5m new homes – a target reaffirmed by the housing minister only last month. In July Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, announced new housing targets for local authorities in England designed to ensure this target is reached.
But this pledge is also looking problematic. The BBC has published the results of an investigation showing that many councils, including Labour-run authorities, believe the new Rayner targets are unrealistic. In their report Alex Forsyth, Jack Fenwick and Hannah Capella explain:
Local councils have told the government its flagship plan to build 1.5m new homes in England over the next five years is “unrealistic” and “impossible to achieve”, the BBC can reveal.
The vast majority of councils expressed concern about the plan in a consultation exercise carried out by Angela Rayner’s housing department earlier this year.
The responses, obtained by the BBC through Freedom of Information laws, potentially set local authorities on a collision course with Labour over one of its top priorities.
The report quotes many examples of what councils have said in response to the consulation.
Labour-run Broxtowe council in Nottinghamshire described the proposed changes as “very challenging, if not impossible to achieve”.
South Tyneside, another Labour-run council, said the plans were “wholly unrealistic”, while the independent-run council in Central Bedfordshire, said the area would be left “absolutely swamped with growth that the infrastructure just can not support”.
We will be hearing from Rayner later in the Commons, where she is due to take questions at 2.30pm.
Yesterday McFadden said migration, which was not included in the original five missions, will be in the plan for change document. That topic is coming up later today too because Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is giving a statement on irregular migration in the Commons after 3.30pm.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, makes a statement to MPs about irregular migration, and the government’s deal with Iraq covering people smuggling.
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