The state of the buildings that make up the Palace of Westminster is a ghastly metaphor for what’s wrong with what goes on inside it. And the transformation that’s needed in government is as fundamental as the refurbishments.
The Houses of Parliament are sinking into the Thames. Many dozens of offices were condemned upon their vacation by outgoing MPs. There are electrical and water hazards only a few metres underfoot, and the whole thing will cost billions to fix – not least because MPs are insistent they stay in the building while it happens.
But there is an even greater urgency to transform the way the organisation operates if we’re to bring about the change this country badly needs.
People often comment that MPs of all parties go in with good intentions but then change once they enter Parliament. I’ve heard people say that all the power goes to their heads, and perhaps that’s true – but six weeks in I think it’s caused in no small part by the building itself and its ways of working.
Rather than being designed around main thoroughfares, the grand corridors are built around the ritual ceremony that opens Parliament. The layout was set in a pre-digital age when runners carried messages between chambers, meaning the fastest way from the new bit to the old is via sets of narrow stairs.
Instead, a modern internal design is needed, where the main thoroughfares join together areas most frequently used by MPs and staff going about their business, with plenty of space to step aside and benefit from chance conversations and exchanges, privately but safely. MPs stuck in small individual offices is a less ominous, but no less outdated, example of pre-digital working practices. Opposite Westminster, the York Road offers a striking range of modern, collegiate working environment that could serve as nearby inspiration.
But it’s not just the layout of the building: the arcane ways that Parliament functions “by convention” are inherently change-resistant. And the overall structure of departments and functions of government remains debilitatingly out of date.
We need a New Kind of Politics – and many authors have written eloquently about why. This needs to extend beyond tweaks to culture and behaviour. In fact, conversely, keeping the traditions of Parliament would be a good way of taking people on the journey.
Instead, the change needs to start at the most fundamental level of the structures of government departments. Modern organisations are customer centric; their bosses oversee key functions that are aligned to their customers’ or users’ journeys. They are no longer siloed by functions that mirror operational processes (and are more convenient for the organisation than its customers). Government needs Secretaries of State for Prosperity and Wellbeing, for the Citizen Experience, and for Data and Privacy, if it’s going to respond to the needs of the modern world, not catch-all Secretaries of State for Agriculture, Health, or Local Government.
Agriculture is a good example. Farming covers some enormous topics: from people and communities, to economy and food security, not to mention land, water, and environmental management. There are too many ways in which farming crosses over into other departments for strategic change to be possible.
In fact I expect that even if the best Secretary of State, with the best and most agreeable policy, were to take office and actually make things happen, the consequences would be so shattering on the other systems and siloes it touched that it would have the same administrative consequences that Brexit did. Similarly, well-intentioned initiatives like cross-functional working are doomed to failure when faced with the barnacled inertia of a system that has remained staggeringly unreformed for fifty years – further undermining the viability of change.
As well as a complete organisational restructure, government also needs innovation. And innovation needs people to challenge the status quo: whether in the confines of a lab, or through open encouragement of divergent views. But it’s nearly impossible to break or test rules without knowing what they are, or how, when or where they apply. Stick around long enough to learn the conventions and you’re in danger of just accepting them as normal. And that’s the problem: in Westminster, undocumented convention obfuscates these rules. Would-be challengers are fighting blind, and even those pitiable souls become part of the fabric and the furniture rather than ready to embrace change when the opportunity presents itself.
It is here that the greatest damage is done: those countless opportunities to do things, change things, make thing happen, speak out or even just speak up, that go undone because the culture of Westminster rewards passive conformity and dressed up wordy politeness rather than candid, direct, constructive challenge. What sounded like a good idea “out there” suddenly seems unviable within the labyrinth. And god forbid if a good idea comes from someone on the wrong side!
Good people go in with good intentions, but those good intentions are forced out in favour of an anti-change, fundamentally regressive preservationist agenda, by the power of unwritten convention, out of date structures, and a building built for boozing and back-stairs power, that rewards mastery of the undocumented and unseen.
“The blob”, in other words, is the same as it is in all other unreformed organisations: the toxic ingredients of incumbency, groupthink, and preservation of the status quo. It’s certainly not the fine, talented minds working in the civil service.
If we really want politicians to be creative, collaborative, and human, we need them to occupy a place of work that is inspiring of the possibilities of the future not revering of the long distant triumphs of the past, organised to facilitate dialogue not division, and operating with clear, transparent, modern codes of practice. And if we want government to be able actually to do things, we need to start by transforming the fundamental way government is structured to go about its business.
All of the organisational transformation projects I’ve been involved with have needed a majority of new incomers to make any real difference to culture and practice.
Perhaps, by luck, this is Parliament’s chance.
