MPs are most likely to agree that Whitehall is too risk averse, slow, and inflexible
Labour has taken aim at the civil service in recent months. In a December speech, Keir Starmer criticised Whitehall for being too “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”, with a prevailing attitude of “'don't say anything', 'don't try anything too ambitious', 'set targets that will happen anyway'”.
This also seems to be the reality of Whitehall as perceived by Keir's peers in the Commons, with a new YouGov poll of MPs showing that 52% believe the Whitehall civil service is working badly, compared to 40% who think it is working well.
Labour MPs are more evenly divided, splitting evenly 46%-46%.
One of the civil service’s greatest critics of recent times has been Dominic Cummings, formerly chief of staff to Boris Johnson during his premiership, as well as serving as a special adviser for a number of years. The media have reported that, privately, senior Labour figures have been expressing the view that Cummings was right in his assessment of Whitehall.
However, according to our poll, such views are in the minority among MPs. While three in ten (31%) say they think Cummings is mostly or entirely right about the civil service, slightly more say he is wrong (39%) – a further 14% aren’t sure, while 16% say they aren’t aware of Cummings’s views on the civil service.
Among Labour MPs specifically, agreement with Cummings’ overall perspective falls to 25%, with 41% considering him to be wrong.
Of course, such a reaction could be driven by partisan considerations, given that Cummings is a figure most closely connected with the Conservatives. For when we examined the extent to which MPs agree with common criticisms of the civil service (many of which have been made by Cummings), we find largely negative sentiment among the nation’s elected representatives.
Of nine statement pairs we put to MPs about how they would describe the Whitehall civil service, they are most likely to say that “the Whitehall civil service is too risk averse and closed to new ideas”, with 64% saying so.
Similar numbers also feel that “work is produced slowly”, “civil servants are too reliant on established procedures and are unable to adapt to new challenges”, and that “Whitehall is too prone to groupthink and tends to hire, retain and promote civil servants with orthodox views”.
The majority also agree that “civil servants typically seek to block ministerial directions and/or find reasons why things cannot be done”.
The only positive sentiment that MPs are more inclined to express about the civil service is that “work is produced to a high standard” – although this still only amounts to 35% of MPs feeling this way. About the same number (38%) were neutral on the subject, while 18% consider the work produced to be poor.
Attitudes among Labour MPs are largely the same across these measures. The most notable differences are that they are somewhat less likely to say that civil service leadership is not poor, less likely to think that Whitehall is too prone to groupthink, and less likely to think civil servants typically seek to block ministerial directives. However, in each case this sentiment still remains by far the predominant view among Labour MPs.
See the full results for MPs here
If you need to know what MPs think, understand your reputation or support for an issue, or develop public affairs activity, YouGov regularly run surveys of MPs which enable you to quickly, cost-effectively and accurately understand their views. For more information click here.
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