The next cabinet secretary - Five tasks for Simon Case’s successor - Alex Thomas

The new cabinet secretary also has the opportunity to show how a big figure in the centre of government can help the prime minister, and the good management of the government, in other ways. [...] Being the secretary to the whole cabinet, with the status of head of the civil service, means the cabinet secretary can credibly speak with authority to everyone, from the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to the head of the NHS, to power brokers overseas. [...] Pat McFadden and Georgia Gould, the minister in the Cabinet Office responsible for public sector reform, will need the prime minister and the cabinet secretary to corral the secretaries of state in charge of the major public service departments to bring some sort of coherence to a reform programme, and to come up with a plan to make the public sector improvements they deem essential to their re-el. [...] How to make the duty of candour proposals work, a reflection on what civil service impartiality will mean for the institution as society changes towards the middle of the 21st century, and how to recruit, retain and motivate civil servants at all levels, should form part of a programme of work to make the ‘service’ part of being a civil servant more live and relevant to the demands of the coming y. [...] It is the cabinet secretary’s role to do that while at the same time shaking and shaping the organisation of government, from the central institutions of No.10 and the Cabinet Office, out to permanent secretary-led departments and the rest of the public sector to deliver the government’s mission, and building the capability of the civil service.