5th May 2026
The real reason we need rules and procedures in public administration
It is a paradox that in the weeks and days before an election people tend to become less interested in law and policy. The focus instead turns to politics and personalities, and the soap opera of who is up and who is down, and who is in and who is out.
And in the days after the elections, those who could not predict the outcome will confidently assert that the result proved them right all along.
*
This is not really a politics blog, and it has no party-partisan preference. Indeed, the general view of the blog is that governments tend to be illiberal, regardless of which politicians take power, and that the politicians who affect to be liberal in opposition tend not to carry that liberalism over into office.
As the eminent jurists the Bonzo Dog Band aver, it can seem that no matter who you vote for the government always gets in.
*
But.
We have in popular opposition not only those parading their liberalism, but the illiberalism, and so voters have a choice between the possibility of liberalism (and likely disappointment) and the certainty of illiberalism (and likely despotism).
And so it is at times like that we should take more interest in the actual workings of government and now public administration works. We should watch how public administration is conducted with anxious scrutiny.
This is why, perhaps counter-intuitively, the whole Starmer-Mandelson-Robbins affair is important.
In respect of political drama, the matter may not be of lasting import: the media caravan has moved on, and the attention-spans of the easily bored have been exhausted. The Prime Minister is still in office and if he is to be deposed, then it will because of a further political drama and not the one which has just passed.
The importance of what happened is otherwise than of immediate political effect. It was instead in the rare insight we had into how ministers and officials actually do make decisions (or don’t make decisions). The sort of thing which is usually hidden from public view.
An excellent balanced and informed account of the matter has now been posted at the Substack of the estimable former civil servant Martin Stanley. That post is required reading for anybody with an interest in our government in action (or inaction).
What I can add from the perspective of a former central government lawyer is that the informal-formal inexact process and lack of process is not unusual in Whitehall. The only difference here is that a stone has been lifted and we get to see what was teeming underneath.
(Public administration is more about teems than teams.)
*
Sometimes one can fall into the error of thinking government and administration is about the neat, almost-Euclidean geometry of decision trees and straight lines on a grand plane of an organogram. No, it is often a mess, both at the time and when there has to be an account of it afterwards.
This is why one the purpose of processes and policies and public law is not so much to make things go well, but to help stop things being worse. For example, the law of public procurement is not really there to help public authorities to make good purchasing decisions, but to stop public authorities making worse purchasing decisions than they otherwise would do.
And this is the significance of the Starmer-Mandelson-Robbins affair: we got to see under the rock. From that we can take the wider understanding that this is how important decisions and indecisions are made more generally. And that, in turn, helps explain why we have such an accountability gap in the government of the United Kingdom.
There is a general disconnect between how ministers and officials take decisions and how those decisions are accounted for to parliament, and to the media and public.
Certain executive-minded pundits and activists want to reduce even further the role of processes and policies and public law in government – to get rid of impediments and barriers.
They think that will make public administration better and more effective, but it is more likely to make public administration even worse than it already is.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.
More on the comments policy is here.
What is really striking about this affair, and highlighted in the Stanley blog, is how much importance seems to be given to making sure that colleagues and superiors are NOT informed of awkward facts. In my three decades working in a (non-British) public administration the rather old-fashioned view was that the ‘Top Man’ – or ‘Woman’ MUST be informed of anything that might redound on them. This led to far too much paper pushing and probably delayed decisions excessively but there was never any question who was responsible for a mistake – so mistakes (as opposed to errors of omission) were rarely made!
The Mandelson affair seems to demonstrate, among other things, the limitations of the ‘need to know’ approach to management!
The narrow context of your article is accepted. Of course an illiberal prospect is worse than an ineffective liberal one. However in a wider context the title, while accurate, provokes this comment.
The fundamental problem of justice delayed or justice hampered or even justice continually frustrated means the near universal perception remains ‘mired in negative territory’, as the pollsters say. If one claim to its social acceptance is that the justice system exists to stop things getting worse surely it depends on doing that well so everyone can appreciate the fact?
My understanding of the current state of public administration and the justice system more widely in this country is that almost everyone involved says it is failing and needs urgent and extensive work to make it fit for purpose. I’m happy to be shown my error if this is not the case.
Politicians often say things are broken or not fit for purpose, but rarely come up with any better system. Often the replacement is even worse. The NHS and its various reforms for example.
The justice system is not in need of urgent and extensive work. It is severely underfunded. The kind of tear it apart and rebuild it reform of the civil service threatened by Dominic Cummings would be a disaster. An opportunity for illiberal forces to tear up long established processes that protect the public interest. The processes the Civil Service uses may delay things but I think that’s far better than rushing ahead with reforms without proper consultation and consideration.
Thank you for your views. Much obliged. I agree that top-down, politically driven changes to important sectors have been abysmal in recent memory. A wholesale Civil Service reform by someone like Cummings is to be avoided. Mainly because they are asymmetrically informed and, as you suggest, likely to dismantle useful outputs we currently enjoy.
On careful consideration I’m struggling to reconcile two parts of your reply though;
‘The justice system is not in need of urgent and extensive work.’
and
‘It is severely underfunded.’
If any course of work can be described as ‘urgent and extensive’ I’d have thought it’s countering severe underfunding across the whole justice system.
And again, I defer to your more in-depth knowledge but as much of an opponent of poor administration as I am I struggle to describe the course of judicial and Civil Service reform as one of ‘rushing ahead with reforms without proper consultation and consideration.’
Reforms to both have been discussed for years, in fact decades. Consideration has been had. It’s not enough to claim that the consultation has not been ‘proper’ just because it may result in conclusions you don’t like; that sounds like the perennial ideologues’ claim that ‘they aren’t proper Christians’ or ‘proper libertarian societies have never been tried’.
A process has been executed, political power has been exercised. Decisions have been made. This is how society is adjusted, isn’t it? People on the wrong end of those decisions may not like the decisions reached, just ask the miners, but they are taken by those in a position to do so according to the rules in which they operate.
We are where we are, the board has been reset. It’s not possible to turn the clock back but we can aim for better from here. The refuse workers in Birmingham have now accommodated the supposed need for ‘changes in working practices’ in exchange for an adjustment period.
It does give me pause that critics of these justice reforms appear to wish to turn the clock back to a time when state expenditure for practitioners was more free-flowing. I’m more persuaded by detailed arguments of the loss and damage they will cause to plaintiffs and defendants than the rewards which might be given to self-interested financial participants.
This isn’t a bogus cost-saving position, the magic money tree does in fact exist for governments which control their own currency, but it’s ironic to me that a government led by a legal expert and experienced practitioner is proposing changes that you reject and counter by advocating spending more money on legal practitioners. I’m sure that has been considered.
You mention the Civil Service and the NHS, I mention the miners and the refuse workers of Birmingham; my point is that we must all eventually face the reality we are presented with by those placed in power to alter our lives.
There is no conflict in what I said. Spending cuts have stopped the justice system performing properly. It needs to be properly funded. I don’t see that as reform of the system.
What you are describing is a more general reality. The philosopher of science Abraham Kaplanin his 1964 The Conduct of Inquiry distinguishes between logic in use and reconstructed logic. Logic in use is the messy process in which things (scientific hypotheses in Kaplan)are made or established. Reconstructed logic is the formal rational wrapping paper over what really happened.
The appointment was a disastrous decision both for itself and for the PM’s future, but the important point is that this is how decisions are really made. Since the process is not what reconstructed logic says it is, non-bad decisions require judgment and wisdom. Starmer has demonstrated neither. His massive majority rests on April ice. He will go and soon. Proportional representation is on its way because it is the only democratic way and finally will lead to a cabinet in which policy will be made by fighting things out. I hope.
The worst kind of radical reform is that which seeks to solve a problem without properly investigating the causes or the need for reform at all.
The present government has introduced a major reform of local government of very dubious merit that nobody seems to want and which was not mentioned in their manifesto.
They seek to streamline planning applications to increase house building without considering whether there actually is a problem with planning delays, or the damaging effect of this on local democracy.
They have decided that the way to reduce delays in the justice system is to restrict jury trials even further. Ignoring the chronic underfunding that is the real cause.
Such sweeping reforms require proper and open consideration. It concerns me that this has not happened, and I am generally a supporter of this government.
As a lifelong legal bureaucrat, I’m ambivalent about policies and procedures. Our Host speaks truth: process is a check on all kinds of bad behavior. But it is also a check on good behavior, as well. I’ve had to baby many a client who wanted to do the right thing, but was afraid of G.E.T.T.I.N.G. S.U.E.D! A processed environment rewards doing nothing.
There’s a lot in what you say. I remember, as a ‘young’ Eurocrat – a mere 10 years of service – being advised by the senior man in the department not to push for an accelerated procedure to facilitate an event taking place in the next few weeks: “Don’t stick your head up: if nothing happens no one can blame you!” – advice I’m glad to say I resolutely ignored for the next twenty years!