PM Keir Starmer plans reform of UK state in bid to counter criticism

Starmer's reset moment, including six 'milestones' designed to be tools to measure the government's progress, instead triggered more disquiet and confusion about his strategy

By Eleanor Duncan

 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is set to launch a £100 million ($127 million) fund aimed at helping the state run “more like a start up,” as Labour attempts to rebut criticism over its tumultuous first few months in power. 

UK Cabinet minister Pat McFadden, who will be speaking at University College London’s campus in Stratford on Monday, is expected to say the fund will help deploy teams of people around the country with the aim of solving issues in public services.

 

Whitehall needs to adopt the “test and learn” mindset of digital companies, according to a Cabinet Office statement. 

 

 

The teams — made up of a mix of workers with data and digital skills, policy officials and frontline workers — will be “empowered to experiment” and try new things, McFadden is set to say.

 

McFadden’s so-called Innovation Fund comes on the heels of Starmer’s “Plan for Change” speech, made last week with the aim of rebooting his premiership. The prime minister has previously said that the UK state needs “rewiring.”  

 

The teams will be deployed from January and will initially focus on family support and temporary accommodation across Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool, before expanding to other areas of the country.

 

The government will also look to encourage tech workers to join the government for six- to 12-month “tours of duty,” while frontline public service workers including prison governors and social work heads will take up secondments in central government. 

 

The government is also looking to make changes to its hiring processes, with McFadden expected to say that the recruitment process for the civil service is “mind bogglingly bureaucratic and off-putting” and needs to be “fundamentally” overhauled. 

 

Starmer’s reset moment last Thursday, including six “milestones” designed to be tools to measure the government’s progress, instead triggered more disquiet and confusion about his strategy. The speech’s bumpy landing led some Labour insiders to question whether Starmer and Reeves would survive until the next election — a suggestion that would have been borderline unfathomable just a few months ago.

 

The prime minister is traveling to the Gulf this week, where he’s pursuing closer ties with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with the aim of creating thousands of clean energy jobs in the north of England. 

 

“Every region and nation in the United Kingdom should feel the impact of our Plan for Change, which is why I am in the Gulf forging closer ties and strengthening relationships that support our growth mission in every corner of the country,” Starmer said in a statement released by his office. 

 

Projects set to be announced during the trip include the launch of the world’s first commercial production of graphene-enriched carbon fibre by Manchester-based GIM and Saudi Arabia’s NEOM Giga-Project. The project aims to generate £250 million of investment into a research and innovation hub in Greater Manchester, and is expected to create more than 1,000 skilled jobs in the region.

 

Oxford-based private equity fund HYCAP will also invest £785 million to develop hydrogen mobility clusters in Northern Ireland as part of efforts to support Saudi Arabia’s plans to reach net zero emissions by 2060 — a project that will generate more than 1,000 jobs. The UK and Saudi Arabia will also partner to establish a new Joint International Institute for Clean Hydrogen, backed by universities from the two countries.