Dominic Cummings speech at IPPR - The Hollow Men (2014) political lecture Brexit - video Dailymotion

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Transcript

00:00:42Well, welcome to IPPR. I'm Nick Pierce. I'm the director here, and I'm very pleased today to introduce you to

00:00:48Dominic Cummings. Dominic is probably the only special advisor I can think of in recent memory who sort of anybody

00:00:55outside Whitehall knows him.

00:00:57That's because he has very interesting and controversial views, and he's not afraid of expressing them. He's here today to

00:01:03talk to us about the reform of Whitehall and Westminster, what needs to change in the civil service and in

00:01:08our politics.

00:01:09And so we look forward to what I'm sure will be very interesting and provocative remarks. I'll then ask Dominic

00:01:15some questions, and then later on there'll be some opportunity for some debate. So Dominic, over to you.

00:01:26I'm happily unemployed, very happily unemployed at the moment. So I've got a lot of time for question and answers

00:01:32later on.

00:01:33I can keep answering questions as long as people would like me to afterwards.

00:01:40So over the next six months or so, everyone's going to be focused on the election. But one of my

00:01:46basic points is I don't think it really matters what happens in the election.

00:01:51It won't really change some very important fundamentals, whether it's Cameron or Miliband who get in, we're going to have

00:01:59someone with very similar education, very similar experience, very similar intellectual outlook.

00:02:06Neither of them know how to prioritize. Neither of them can build a serious team.

00:02:12They're both surrounded by these dysfunctional teams all day, every day.

00:02:17They don't know how to get anything done. They've never had experience in an organization watching anyone who really knows

00:02:23how to get anything done in a real alpha organization that's well managed.

00:02:27They don't understand why Whitehall around them doesn't work.

00:02:32And whichever one wins, we're going to have someone who looks at things, I think, with quite a narrow short

00:02:37term party advantage

00:02:38and obsessed with just trying to get through the next news cycle or a few days ahead.

00:02:45That's certainly how number 10 operates. And looking at the Miliband's operation now, I think doesn't make much difference which

00:02:53of them get in.

00:02:54So I think we need to do things differently. But I want to put how I think we should do

00:02:57things differently in a broader context of just Westminster and Whitehall.

00:03:02So I'll talk briefly about some fundamental aspects of how the world works, why some aspects of human endeavors work

00:03:09better than others,

00:03:10compare that with Whitehall and Westminster and talk about what the core of why the systems don't work,

00:03:17have a think about the scale of the problems that these failing systems have to cope with,

00:03:21and then talk about what I think we should do to change it.

00:03:27So the first section on this, the fundamental aspects of how the world works.

00:03:33It's a very simple point, but very important one, I think, about sheer complexity.

00:03:37On Friday, if David Cameron wants to get together all the people, wants to get together 60 people and blame

00:03:42them for why the by-election went wrong,

00:03:45he wants to line them all up in a row and go one after one and tell them,

00:03:49it's your fault, it's your fault. There is, roughly speaking, the number of different ways in which you could arrange

00:03:55those 60 people

00:03:55is approximately 10 to the power of 80. That's about the number of atoms in the universe.

00:04:01So you see quickly that even a very simple problem like that, like how to line up 60 people in

00:04:05a row,

00:04:06explodes to astronomical complexity.

00:04:09How does the world cope with this?

00:04:11Well, if you look around at social networks, physical networks, mental networks,

00:04:17they consist of complicated, non-linear and independent systems.

00:04:24In these networks, properties emerge from the interaction of lots of different agents.

00:04:29You can't tell what's going to happen just by looking at a single agent.

00:04:32So, for example, if you look at ant colonies, you have lots of interacting ants,

00:04:37and from this you have emergent behaviours like farming, slavery and war that you can never predict from a single

00:04:44ant.

00:04:44If you look at the immune system, the immune system operates with lots of interacting cells,

00:04:50and they produce the emergent properties of the immune system, the defence system, interacting via molecular signals.

00:04:57If you look at brains, you see individual neurons interacting via synapses,

00:05:01and these produce emergent properties that we think of as thoughts.

00:05:05And what are the common features of these?

00:05:08Well, the extreme complexity means that prediction is extremely difficult, even over tiny timescales.

00:05:15Effective action is very hard.

00:05:17Even loose control is very hard.

00:05:20Failure is ubiquitous.

00:05:21Local failure is ubiquitous.

00:05:23It means this scale of complexity means you can't have centralised control.

00:05:26There's no master ant.

00:05:27There's no master neuron.

00:05:28There's no master immune cell.

00:05:30The system has to learn from decentralised experimentation, from trial and error, and from probabilistic experimentation.

00:05:38So adaptation is vital.

00:05:40And the fourth thing you see in these networks is two interesting qualities that come out of them.

00:05:50The networks, including the three that I've discussed, are what's known as scale-free networks.

00:05:55A simple way to imagine what these are.

00:05:56Picture the continental United States and a flight map of all the different flights.

00:06:00And you'll see certain hubs like Atlanta, LA, New York, and whatnot.

00:06:06And this hub-and-spoken network you see throughout the world.

00:06:09You see it in brains.

00:06:10You see it on the internet.

00:06:11You see it in market structures.

00:06:14You see it in terrorist networks.

00:06:16And these sort of networks have two characteristics.

00:06:20One is they're resilient to random failure.

00:06:22So you can knock out individual things randomly and the system will keep working.

00:06:26But they're very vulnerable to knocking out hubs.

00:06:29If you knock out crucial hubs, then you see cascades start cascading through the system.

00:06:35Errors start cascading through the system.

00:06:39Now, some parts of human life have evolved systems to cope with this very well.

00:06:45Science and markets have both developed institutional mechanisms that allow us to cope with this complexity.

00:06:50In markets, you see a similar sort of system.

00:06:53You see individual humans, individual firms interacting via price mechanism, all sorts of global emergent properties.

00:07:01Like the immune system, you see local decision-making, probabilistic experimentation, reinforced success, and cull failure.

00:07:09In science, since Newton, you've seen the development of the whole scientific method with peer review, scientists having to make

00:07:17data open, however prestigious and powerful they are.

00:07:21So in markets and science, you have systems that have evolved which try and cope with this level of complexity

00:07:28and make people correct errors.

00:07:30Which, in lots of ways, we're not programmed by evolution to do very well when we're faced with these sort

00:07:37of problems.

00:07:39Now, it doesn't work perfectly.

00:07:40You've got a clear hierarchy.

00:07:42So at one end, you've got maths and physics.

00:07:44You've seen recently the comet.

00:07:45We can send things zillions of miles away with extreme precision land.

00:07:49The systems that we understand extremely well.

00:07:51At the far end of that, I would say, probably you've got things like sociology and education research,

00:07:56which are very, very far away from the way in which maths and physics work.

00:08:01The reasons for that are interesting.

00:08:03We can explore that in questions and answers if people would like.

00:08:07So now we compare those things that work with politics.

00:08:10And what do we see?

00:08:11We see extremely bad prediction amid complexity.

00:08:15And there's ground-working empirical information on this, particularly a work by a guy called Philip Tetlock,

00:08:20who tracked expert decision-making over decades.

00:08:23And what he found, unsurprisingly, is that these expert decisions are almost random.

00:08:30There are a few people that do.

00:08:31There's a tiny number of people who do better than everyone else.

00:08:33But most people, it's like chimps throwing darts at a board.

00:08:37Secondly, the more likely these people are to be on TV, the more likely they are to be wrong.

00:08:42And third, which is very important, third, people don't really learn very much.

00:08:49They don't learn from their mistakes.

00:08:51Because unlike in markets and science, where there's feedback all the time,

00:08:54your company goes bust, the peer-review system says your experiment isn't the same kind of feedback in the political

00:09:00world.

00:09:01So people aren't punished for failures.

00:09:03So it's obviously important that expert opinion to be largely rubbish.

00:09:09Now, secondly, most political institutions control what they do badly.

00:09:14They do a bad job of it.

00:09:15Why is that?

00:09:16First of all, goals.

00:09:18It's much easier to define goals in markets, make a profit, or find a particle within these physical parameters,

00:09:24than it is in politics.

00:09:25It's much harder to formulate clear goals.

00:09:28Secondly, the nature of the people.

00:09:30So political bureaucracies tend to select for narcissists and for certain kinds of bureaucratic mentality.

00:09:37And look around Parliament.

00:09:38What are the kind of people that get ahead?

00:09:40There tend to be people who are glib, who enjoy public speaking, enjoy networking.

00:09:46Lots of judgments are made on the basis of speeches and jokes.

00:09:49You watch a little group of MPs, often used to see they're all just sitting there watching their phones,

00:09:53waiting for a chance to interrupt.

00:09:54They like talking.

00:09:55They don't really like listening.

00:09:58These institutions tend to fill up with people like lawyers, who are obsessed with process, and PR people.

00:10:04And the kind of people who are often energized by social networking, whereas a lot of people who actually get

00:10:09things done in the world are often repelled by social networking.

00:10:12They're externally oriented.

00:10:14They're not interested in climbing the greasy pole.

00:10:16So if you look around it, how many of our best mathematicians, our best research scientists, and the best entrepreneurs

00:10:23who actually build successful organizations in the world are represented at the top of decision making in Westminster and Whitehall?

00:10:29The answer is approximately zero.

00:10:32We then take that pool of people and we select ministers from them.

00:10:36And then we promote them on the basis of launching gimmicks to the lobby and whether or not they help

00:10:41the party and harm the enemy party.

00:10:44So we then select people.

00:10:46So we've got a bad pool of people to begin with.

00:10:48And then we select from that pool people in a not very sensible way.

00:10:54And then we educate and train them badly.

00:10:56So, first of all, in one way, quantitative skills.

00:11:00For a simple example, to understand financial markets, you need to know what normal distribution is.

00:11:05And the financial crisis in 2007-8, you need to know what normal distribution is.

00:11:10But almost none of the people who come through into leading roles in politics are ever trained to know what

00:11:16normal distribution is.

00:11:17And, in fact, you can go all the way through maths A-level and further maths A-level now without

00:11:21ever learning what it is.

00:11:23So you have people in charge who have no technical understanding of very basic, actually not very basic, extremely subtle,

00:11:28but in some sense basic concepts such as randomness.

00:11:32But it's much worse than that.

00:11:33If you just look at basic probability, the Royal Statistical Society recently did a survey found that only 40%

00:11:40of MPs could correctly answer the question,

00:11:42what's the probability of getting two heads from flipping a fair coin twice, but three-quarters of the MPs said

00:11:50that they got the right answer.

00:11:54So there's a narrow problem and a broad problem.

00:11:57The narrow problem is PPE and economics training.

00:12:01I'm constantly astonished at how people who've gone through economics degrees and PPE have very little understanding of the intellectual

00:12:08history of their field

00:12:09and very little understanding of how physical scientists regard predictions, how you actually make robust predictions in the world.

00:12:16And therefore, unsurprisingly, these people don't understand the dodginess of the predictions which they're constantly making and in economics.

00:12:27They are encouraged to think that they've been trained by this process to make very important decisions, but they don't

00:12:35know the very basics of how organizations work.

00:12:38They think they've been taught to run the country, but a lot of them can't even run their own diaries.

00:12:42It's a broader problem than just PPE.

00:12:44In general, Westminster and Whitehall are dominated by arts graduates with very poor quantitative skills, little to no understanding of

00:12:53important scientific and technological issues.

00:12:56And little or no experience of successful organizations or responsibility for big organizations.

00:13:01And to think of the scale mismatch, most MPs have never been responsible for managing even 100 people.

00:13:06They're suddenly put in charge of managing sometimes 10,000 people or more.

00:13:10They've never managed a budget of a million quid and suddenly they're managing budgets.

00:13:15They give the DfE of, say, 70 billion quid, about a billion quid a week.

00:13:20Look at poor Cameron.

00:13:21Cameron bounces from PPE to special advisor to being in charge of the Conservative Party to being prime minister.

00:13:25He's never been part of an organization that's run well or anything approaching, anything that requires making decisions on the

00:13:33scale that suddenly he's involved in.

00:13:36And there's no training systems in Whitehall that can begin to cope with this.

00:13:41So then you take this poor minister and you think, OK, well, what are the tools that they've got?

00:13:48So think, who are the big CEOs that we think of for the last few years?

00:13:52People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, these kind of characters.

00:13:56All these people can hire, fire, promote and train their teams.

00:14:02But no minister has the power to do any of this in their government department.

00:14:09So you have often the wrong people with bad education and training for the systems that they're supposed to cope

00:14:16with.

00:14:16No experience of the scale of the system that they're suddenly in charge of.

00:14:21And they have to do all of this without any of the very basic tools that someone like Bill Gates

00:14:25would say instantly.

00:14:26Well, how on earth are you supposed to be responsible and manage the system?

00:14:30So it's unsurprising that lots of these things go wrong.

00:14:35On top of that, they're not allowed to have any help.

00:14:37Because one of the civil services is extremely effective, tries very hard and is largely, I would say, 99 percent

00:14:42effective

00:14:43of keeping special advisors and other people out of the business about appointments and those crucial, crucial decisions.

00:14:51And that brings on to civil service and HR systems.

00:14:56The people who are promoted tend to be people who protect the system and don't walk the boat.

00:15:02A lot of young people who care, work hard, often disillusioned quite quickly and leave.

00:15:08And the ones who play the system and focus on personal goals, not the public interest,

00:15:11often tend to be the ones who are promoted.

00:15:16It promotes people who focus on being important, not getting important things done.

00:15:21And it ruthlessly weeds out people who are dissenters, who are mavericks, who have a different point of view.

00:15:29So if you have an entire institutional structure that selects against the skills of entrepreneurs and successful scientists,

00:15:35don't be surprised when the people in charge can't solve problems like entrepreneurs and scientists.

00:15:40In organisations that work very well in the world, you see people that care, they try hard.

00:15:46In large parts of civil service, the whole HR system encourages the opposite.

00:15:50Almost nobody is ever fired.

00:15:52But more important than that, everything pushes against a culture of responsibility and excellence.

00:15:58Failure is absolutely normal.

00:16:00It's not something to be avoided.

00:16:03Time after time after time, I would be in the department and we'd be leading the news and you'd look

00:16:06at the TV screen here saying,

00:16:08Gov, latest Gov disaster, Gov botches X.

00:16:11And you look through the glass screen and you'd see the official responsible for it in the lift, pottering home

00:16:16at 3.30 in the afternoon.

00:16:18It doesn't care.

00:16:19Why not?

00:16:22Because failure is normal.

00:16:24It's not something to be avoided.

00:16:26And the HR system reinforces that.

00:16:28Why did we ban announcements on Mondays?

00:16:31Because you can't assemble a team reliably on a Friday.

00:16:34Between flexi hours, compressed hours, and a culture which says it's perfectly acceptable just to go on holiday the day

00:16:40before an announcement you've been working on for the last six months,

00:16:43it's very hard to get the people who are responsible for something in the same room.

00:16:46So we just had to ban announcements on a Monday because otherwise you knew that everything would fall apart.

00:16:52But why does all – and you also, on top of that, you also have a broader problem which is

00:16:57how difficult it is to assemble good teams.

00:17:00People are constantly being moved.

00:17:02Ministers have no control over it.

00:17:03One day you have – there's one expert on special educational needs funding and then bam, suddenly they're off and

00:17:09they're in charge of the physics GCSE curriculum.

00:17:11It's a completely crazy system over which ministers have absolutely no control.

00:17:18Now you also have a whole set of misaligned incentives.

00:17:22In markets and science you have incentives to push people in certain directions which are overall healthy and towards correcting

00:17:28errors.

00:17:29In Whitehall you have – you tend to have unclear goals and then you have distorting targets that are focused

00:17:38on methods, not on goals.

00:17:39And this encourages huge micromanagement.

00:17:43It means that perverse incentives create all kinds of distortions in the system and then to cope with that decisions

00:17:51are sucked all the time upwards to the supposed wise chief at the top of the hierarchy who's supposed to

00:17:56sort this out.

00:17:58The exact opposite of what happens in healthy organisations.

00:18:00And then, of course, it's much easier to fiddle the targets than it is to admit that you've made mistakes

00:18:06in them, partly because the whole system is so opaque.

00:18:09In extremists you end up having peasants melting down ploughs for scrap metal in order to hit steel targets, as

00:18:15happened in Mao's Great Leap Forward.

00:18:16But on a smaller scale you see this sort of problem happening in Whitehall all the time.

00:18:22It's also the case that officials are not incentivised to ask who in the world has already solved this problem

00:18:28and how can we apply this here.

00:18:31A very – what you'd think is a very simple question, but that doesn't really happen in Whitehall, it's very

00:18:35parochial.

00:18:36There's very poor institutional memory, libraries are often being destroyed, so the library in the DfE was destroyed, the library

00:18:42in the Foreign Office was destroyed, record keeping is often abysmal.

00:18:47So Whitehall ends up being parochial, not just about the outside world, the rest of the world, but also even

00:18:52about its own past.

00:18:55Very few people are incentivised to cut regulation.

00:18:58Incentives push people to create more.

00:19:01There's very, very little incentive on anyone actually ever to get rid of any regulation.

00:19:05There's very little incentive to save any money.

00:19:07Treasury does not care about saving money.

00:19:09The Treasury cares about its power over the Whitehall system.

00:19:12And the dodgy account system means that they can hide a huge amount of financial bungling.

00:19:18And the pay system also doesn't incentivise good behaviour.

00:19:21There's massive, massive overpayment in the public sector and actually in the private sector.

00:19:25I think the left won't face it in the public sector and the right won't face it in the private

00:19:29sector.

00:19:29But the whole system is full of people on 70 to 140 grand a year who are not worth anything

00:19:33like that money.

00:19:34And you could hire bright 25-year-olds who do a better job faster and cheaper.

00:19:39So what does the civil service incentivise?

00:19:42It fundamentally incentivises an obsessional process, staying friends with special interests, and empire building.

00:19:52Put your hand up in the room if you've seen the movie The Social Network.

00:19:57So there's a scene in there where Zuckerberg goes to Palo Alto to try and get his first financing.

00:20:01And there's a scene where you see the legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel in the room.

00:20:05He only says one sentence.

00:20:06In fact, in real life, he never said that sentence.

00:20:08But you'll remember the scene where he's in Peter Thiel's office and the guy turns and says,

00:20:12who's Edward Savarin?

00:20:14Well, that guy just wrote a book recently.

00:20:16He did a series of lectures to Stanford graduates and wrote a book about it.

00:20:21And in his book, he wrote this.

00:20:23In the most dysfunctional organisations, signalling that work is being done becomes a better strategy

00:20:28for career advancement than actually doing work.

00:20:30If this describes your company, quit now.

00:20:35Now, that describes the vast majority of activity in Whitehall.

00:20:41It's signalling and it's process obsession.

00:20:44It's not obsession on quality.

00:20:47It's not obsession on good services.

00:20:49It's not obsession on trying to get useful things done.

00:20:55If you look at how private offices operate, and I spotted at least a couple of people here in private

00:21:00offices,

00:21:00they'll know exactly what I mean.

00:21:02The vast majority of their time is spent on process.

00:21:04And it's extreme.

00:21:06You'll have situations in which you have got some system, some disaster that's leaving the news.

00:21:12People have died because of blah.

00:21:14But the real focus of the system is, why would we not copy it on that email?

00:21:18That's where the system drives everyone to actually obsess on who's CC'd in on the email.

00:21:24Not that system's fallen over and all these people haven't got a school or the hospital's collapsed

00:21:30or whatever it might be.

00:21:33You also have misaligned timescales.

00:21:35So lots of these problems involve timescales over many years,

00:21:39which obviously doesn't fit well with career advancement and the way that parliaments work.

00:21:44We're always told capitalism is extremely short term.

00:21:46But if you look at how Silicon Valley operates,

00:21:49the founders of these companies are incentivized to think about more than 10 years from now

00:21:53because that's when most of the profits of these companies will make.

00:21:55Most profits from the successful start in Silicon Valley come after a decade.

00:22:00So they're actually thinking about that.

00:22:01In Downing Street, you're lucky if they're thinking 10 days ahead.

00:22:05So you have very, very big problems regarding timescales.

00:22:11And finally, some basic issues about skills.

00:22:16A lot of people doing policy are not suited for doing policy.

00:22:19The quality of project management in large parts of White's Wall is awful.

00:22:25Project management's not on the SPAD code, but that took more of my time than anything else,

00:22:33just trying to drive projects through the system because the system itself is not set up to do that well.

00:22:40All sorts of very basic skills have gone the journey.

00:22:43So even just basic correspondence is very hard to get right.

00:22:46When we started off, more than 9 out of 10 letters were sent back because of basic spelling mistakes.

00:22:51And unfortunately, it was roughly speaking a change from about 2012 onwards,

00:22:55but it was roughly true at the start to assume that every budget you look at will be wrong,

00:22:59every contract process will go wrong,

00:23:01and every procurement will blow up in your face,

00:23:04and legal advice will probably be wrong.

00:23:07So if you can't procure things in your own building properly,

00:23:09what are the odds that you go to procure things effectively for 20,000 schools?

00:23:13The odds are very small.

00:23:15And that's why you see constantly, whenever you see the same cycle of inquiry over and over again,

00:23:20why did this go wrong?

00:23:21And the answers were always the same.

00:23:23So-and-so signed a duff contract, but then so-and-so moved.

00:23:25And then the person in charge says, well, it's not my fault because I wasn't there then.

00:23:28I've taken over this process, and the cycle constantly repeats.

00:23:32If you want to see faces shocked in Whitehall,

00:23:35then when something goes wrong, suggest to them,

00:23:37we want to pursue the people responsible to their new job in a new department.

00:23:41And the reaction is along the lines of, oh my God, you couldn't do that.

00:23:46If we did that, where would it all end?

00:23:48Which just about sums it up.

00:23:51So finally, you have all of these individual problems,

00:23:54but then lots of them sort of smash together.

00:23:57You have problems with the EU, EU procurement rules, things like that.

00:24:01You have problems with the European Convention on Human Rights.

00:24:03You have a problem with how internal legal advice is incentivized inside the system.

00:24:07You have civil service HR, and you have judicial review.

00:24:11And all of these problems interact in very nightmarish ways

00:24:16that make it very difficult to solve things.

00:24:17So you're constantly faced with things that go wrong,

00:24:20that all of those different elements will feed into the problem.

00:24:24And almost none of them does the ministers actually have any really direct control over.

00:24:31So I'll just very briefly talk about,

00:24:34so you have this huge system in Whitehall.

00:24:38In my opinion, it's largely dysfunctional for the various reasons that I've suggested.

00:24:42It's all programmed to go wrong.

00:24:44There's no way it can work.

00:24:45There's no reason to expect that it's suddenly going to change tomorrow.

00:24:49How can it?

00:24:52The whole wiring of it means that you're going to keep seeing the same kind of problem over and over

00:24:56again.

00:24:57So you look at the sort of things that this system is going to have to face.

00:25:02In Britain, you've got huge debts.

00:25:03You've got massive, wide variation of performance in public services.

00:25:08You've got huge dependence on financial sector, which is appallingly regulated and programmed to blow up periodically.

00:25:16If you look around the world, we've got a familiar issue about a couple of billion Asians joining the economy.

00:25:21But you've also got a couple of billion people about to be born.

00:25:24We're going to be moving into cities.

00:25:26It's going to be, it seems, more cities being built in the next 30 years

00:25:29than the entire building in the whole of human history put together.

00:25:33These people are going to be mobile, which we're already experiencing some of the effects of that.

00:25:42This is going to have huge disruption to existing markets and businesses,

00:25:45huge demands on pension health systems, and huge demands on energy and other resources.

00:25:52At the same time, you have some extremely disruptive technologies hitting,

00:25:57from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence, which I won't go into.

00:26:02But overall, you have, it seems to me, a very powerful mismatch.

00:26:08On the one hand, you have the scale and complexity of these problems that are hitting the world.

00:26:14On the other hand, you have this institutional system and people who are supposed to cope with it.

00:26:21And there's just absolutely no way that these two things,

00:26:24that this combination is not going to produce crises and frequent spectacular failures.

00:26:31So what do we do about it?

00:26:33It seems to me that it's fairly obvious that neither of the political parties,

00:26:39none of the two main political parties now really have a clue what to do.

00:26:42The left won't face the scale of a debt.

00:26:44It won't face the problems of large bureaucracies and all the things that I've just talked about.

00:26:48And it often doesn't have a very good understanding of the amazing ability of markets to solve problems.

00:26:56And the right also has an awful lot of blank spots.

00:26:59It won't face the scale of inequality, problems with financial markets,

00:27:03bloated pay in the private sector, lots of issues like that,

00:27:07the way that the rich are cheating taxes, all of those sorts of things, it doesn't want to talk about.

00:27:11It doesn't understand why people are resistant to the spread of markets.

00:27:16And lots of people seem to think, well, can we not just go back to the old world,

00:27:20get out of the EU and put up the borders and go back to a world pre-1914

00:27:25in which you have mutually antagonistic nation states competing with national self-interest.

00:27:30That's quite a good world.

00:27:33It doesn't seem to me like a very good world.

00:27:34It seems to me that if you combine the pre-1914 world of competing nation states

00:27:43or pursuing their own interests with the technological developments,

00:27:47then we're absolutely doomed.

00:27:50So what do I think needs to be done about it?

00:27:54First of all, I would argue that we need to think very carefully about our national goal.

00:28:02Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, famously said after World War II

00:28:06that Britain had lost its empire but hadn't found a role.

00:28:09And that remains true.

00:28:12We're grumpy in the EU but won't leave.

00:28:15We're rude about it.

00:28:17And the whole process has become embarrassing.

00:28:22I don't think the answer is either the special relationship or return to pre-1914 or the EU.

00:28:29What I would suggest is that our role should focus on making ourselves the leading country in the world

00:28:33for education and science.

00:28:36Pericles described Athens as the school of Greece and we could be the school of the world.

00:28:40We've already got many advantages.

00:28:41We've got brilliant universities.

00:28:43We've got some of the best schools in the world.

00:28:45This would provide an organising principle for a new policy agenda

00:28:48and it would focus resources.

00:28:50It would give us a central role in building new international institutions that we need.

00:28:54It would require and enable fundamental changes to how the Constitution and Westminster and why it all work.

00:29:00And it's a noble goal that reflects the best of human nature

00:29:04and therefore I think it could transcend a lot of differences

00:29:06and get a lot of support from people of very different politics.

00:29:14So that's the first thing, a goal, a national goal of making ourselves the leading country for education and science.

00:29:21Secondly, more specifically, I think that there are all sorts of things that need to change inside the education system.

00:29:26But one in particular is for leading politicians and officials.

00:29:30We need what the guy who discovered the quark, the physicist Murray Gell-Mann,

00:29:34called an Odyssean education, something that integrates knowledge from maths and science on the one hand,

00:29:40from the humanities and social sciences on the other hand, and training in effective action.

00:29:44The current systems, as I discussed, I think don't work and we need new ones.

00:29:50We need new degrees instead of replacing things like PPE.

00:29:54There are various experiments and interesting developments happening with this already.

00:29:57Tetlock, the guy who I mentioned earlier, who did all this work on expert judgment and why it's terrible,

00:30:02is doing a fascinating thing in America now, working actually with the U.S. intelligence agency,

00:30:08but I think most of the work is in the public domain, called the Good Judgment Project,

00:30:13which involves a systematic attempt to try and train people in different cognitive methods

00:30:18that will improve judgments.

00:30:20And lots of it's relatively simple stuff, and it's had dramatic results,

00:30:26much more dramatic results than people ever thought was possible,

00:30:29and I think that that's very encouraging.

00:30:33So that's item two.

00:30:37Third, in terms of institutions, at the moment our institutions are not focusing expert attention

00:30:43on the important problems.

00:30:44The most obvious example is in the financial markets.

00:30:47We have the cleverest people in the world, educated at vast expense by the taxpayer in maths and physics,

00:30:55and then we funnel them into high-frequency algorithmic trading systems,

00:31:01which is where a massive number of them now are getting sucked into.

00:31:04It's an absolutely crazy mismatch between the importance of the problem for humanity

00:31:09and the nature of the people that we're pushing into it.

00:31:14So we need to change how institutions work so that they're actually incentivising the cleverest people,

00:31:18the most able problem solvers, to look at the problems which we know are the most important.

00:31:24And I'll finish just by talking briefly about some specific changes to Whitehall.

00:31:31The first is a sort of mass refocusing.

00:31:34So when Steve Jobs came back into Apple when it was nearly bankrupt in the mid-90s,

00:31:38the first thing he did was bin a massive amount of what they were doing.

00:31:41He came in and said, right, you've already got 30 different computers.

00:31:44There's going to be four computers.

00:31:46We're not doing printers.

00:31:47We're not doing this.

00:31:47We're not doing that.

00:31:48We're not doing the other.

00:31:49All closed immediately.

00:31:50And he shut it down and had ruthless simplification and ruthless focus.

00:31:54And that's the sort of process that needs to happen in Whitehall.

00:31:58It's totally disincentivised now inside the system.

00:32:04Secondly, we need to reorient Whitehall to think about how to incentivise goals,

00:32:09not micromanage methods.

00:32:11So if you look at what's arguably the most successful bit of bureaucracy in the Western world

00:32:16in the last 40 years is DAPA, Defence and Finance Research Projects Agency,

00:32:19which built the internet and stealth fighters and all that.

00:32:21Some interesting features about how it works.

00:32:23It's totally outside all normal Washington rules of procurement, HR, etc., etc.

00:32:29And it doesn't have its own labs.

00:32:31What it has is it has goals and it hires people in specific labs to do specific things.

00:32:36And then it very ruthlessly culls after a few years and says,

00:32:39failure, stop, success, reinforce.

00:32:42So we know that there are ways in which we can change how bureaucracies work

00:32:46to have much higher performance than they currently have.

00:32:51Third, a very simple thing, is we just need to massively reduce the number of people in the system.

00:32:57When we said in the DFE we're going to reduce it, everyone said,

00:33:01oh my God, the whole system will fall apart.

00:33:03But in fact, getting rid of thousands of people in the DFE system improved performance considerably.

00:33:10And I'm absolutely convinced that if you cut the DFE by another half or even more, ideally,

00:33:15it would also improve.

00:33:16And I think that's true across Whitehall.

00:33:20Fourth, end this whole human resources system that currently makes it impossible to hire, fire,

00:33:26and train people intelligently.

00:33:27The whole system needs to be binned.

00:33:31Fifth, end the concept of the permanent civil service in general.

00:33:36I think it's an idea for the history books.

00:33:40In particular, I would get rid of the idea of permanent secretaries.

00:33:44At the moment, a permanent secretary has a role that's a combination of a chief policy officer,

00:33:49chief policy advisor, a department CEO, and a fixer.

00:33:52And it's a crazy combination.

00:33:54You're asking people to have the skills of Michael Quinlan,

00:33:57the famous official at the Ministry of Defence to draft policy,

00:34:01combined with the skills of Bill Gates,

00:34:02combined with a Machiavellian character to make everything just smooth out of the edges

00:34:08all day every day as things just about teeter off the brick.

00:34:11It's crazy to expect that we're going to find all these people

00:34:14that combine all of these three things.

00:34:16It's misdefining the role.

00:34:18So what you should have here is a chief policy officer for the department.

00:34:21And I think it would be good to have a very, very, very small team

00:34:26that fulfills that role, preserves institutional memory,

00:34:29has proper libraries, runs proper records.

00:34:31But this chief policy advisor, who I think should be a very prestigious role

00:34:36and a well-paid role, should have no responsibility for management and implementation.

00:34:40They're a policy advisor only.

00:34:44And move all the idea of a CEO or COO of the organization

00:34:49to a completely different position.

00:34:55Next, the unglamorous process of rebuilding core skills

00:34:58from correspondence to spreadsheets.

00:35:01Whitehall's MPs and officials are constantly giving the rest of the world

00:35:05advice on skills gaps and what they should do about it.

00:35:08It needs to start looking at its own skills gaps.

00:35:12Next, I think number 10 should, the whole cabinet office structure

00:35:16and the number 10 structure is completely broken.

00:35:18Anyone who has to deal with it knows that the system is absolutely dysfunctional

00:35:21and that has to change very, very significantly.

00:35:25Next, open things up very radically.

00:35:28You see in the science world now, mass collaborations have,

00:35:31changing all sorts of things, from things like polymath,

00:35:35where you now have mathematicians solving problems collaboratively,

00:35:39or the Foldit program on PlayStation.

00:35:42There's all sorts of things which are changing the world in science

00:35:45and tools that are being developed.

00:35:47Those tools and those methods should be imported into Whitehall.

00:35:54Next, greater cognitive diversity.

00:35:56The Prime Minister should be able to appoint whoever he wants as a minister.

00:35:59And there's a very simple mechanism, I think, for doing this.

00:36:01You whack them in the House of Lords,

00:36:02and then you give Lords rights of audience in the House of Commons

00:36:06and you strengthen the select committee process.

00:36:10And I understand, having talked to some old-timers in the House of Lords,

00:36:14that you could maybe do this very, very quickly.

00:36:16So that would be on my to-do list.

00:36:17If I ever managed to successfully get control of number 10,

00:36:21one of the first things I would do would be some orders in council

00:36:24whizzed through at 2 a.m.

00:36:25that gave the Prime Minister the right to do this.

00:36:30So on the one hand, bringing people from wherever

00:36:32and making them ministers, whack them in the House of Lords,

00:36:34which would help as well with the division

00:36:37and have the legislature far more just as a legislator.

00:36:43And bringing the other aspect that needs to be embedded much more carefully

00:36:46is scientific advisors and the whole business of evidence-based policy.

00:36:50That needs to be put at the heart of how secretaries of state operate

00:36:53rather than an add-on or, like in the EU,

00:36:56something which you can just simply abolish if you don't like it.

00:37:00You've got to shrink the cabinet.

00:37:01I've almost finished, don't worry.

00:37:03Shrink the cabinet.

00:37:04The idea of a cabinet of over 30 people is complete farce.

00:37:08It should be maximum of probably six or seven people.

00:37:11Break the power of the Treasury.

00:37:12The Treasury, as I said before, doesn't care about saving money.

00:37:17The government account system is based on funding money.

00:37:20The spending review process does not work at all.

00:37:24And I think the next spending review, if they try and do another spending review

00:37:26with the current conventional process, given the numbers that they face,

00:37:31it's going to be an absolute nightmare for whoever tries to do it.

00:37:38And finally, Warren Buffett proposed something very interesting in the corporate world,

00:37:42which I think we should think about.

00:37:43He was talking about the problem whereby egomaniac CEOs pursue takeovers of businesses

00:37:50because they get massive kickbacks from it personally.

00:37:53And he said,

00:37:54It appears to me there's only one way to get a rational and balanced discussion.

00:37:58Directors should hire a second advisor to make the case against the proposed acquisition

00:38:02that's fee contingent on the deal not going through.

00:38:07This seems to me to be an extremely cunning idea.

00:38:10And something like that, proper red teams in Whitehall that are institutionalised,

00:38:15that can't be easily cheated.

00:38:16Of course, the CIA famously closed down its red team on WMD in Iraq.

00:38:21So these things are very hard to do in politics.

00:38:23But I think we need to think about changes to the system like that.

00:38:29So that's it.

00:38:30In summary, my answer to the problems is the national goal is not a special relationship

00:38:38and it's not the EU.

00:38:39It's making Britain the leader for education and science.

00:38:41We need to reorient Whitehall in order to achieve this.

00:38:45We need very different education and training for senior politicians and civil servants.

00:38:50We need to bin some institutions, create others,

00:38:52but make them more like the immune system than like traditional hierarchies.

00:38:56We need to break the concept of the permanent civil service

00:38:59and open things up to genuine problem solvers.

00:39:03And people will say it's impossible to do this,

00:39:06but people told me that a lot of things are impossible.

00:39:08People said you'll never beat Blair on the Euro.

00:39:10People said you'll never get more than a fraction of your crazy plans through the DfE.

00:39:14Things are possible, particularly possible when crises hit.

00:39:18Monet created the whole EU pretty much on the basis of what you call beneficial crises.

00:39:23And because of the nature of the world and where things are going,

00:39:26I think we're going to be seeing lots of beneficial crises shortly,

00:39:29which will enable us to change things along the lines that I've suggested if you want to.

00:39:34Thank you very much.

00:39:43Many thanks indeed, Dominic.

00:39:45That was incredibly interesting.

00:39:50I'm going to start, if I may, with a question, really,

00:39:55which is about how this change would happen.

00:39:56I mean, you opened your remarks by saying whether Ed Miliband or David Cameron becomes prime minister in May,

00:40:04you know, nothing will change.

00:40:05And you ended with a very radical agenda for, you know, a set of big changes.

00:40:09And I suppose the question back to you then is, you know, where does politics come into this?

00:40:13What are the mechanisms by which the sorts of things you're advocating for could actually happen?

00:40:19Well, that is a very tricky question.

00:40:23I'm not, as I said, I'm not enormously hopeful with the current people.

00:40:27But the British system is so flexible, and I think the scale of the crisis is so big,

00:40:32I think that some sort of change is going to happen.

00:40:35I personally think it's possible that both leaders will be gone within the next 18 months,

00:40:41or free leaders will be gone within the next 18 months.

00:40:44They're all physically failing.

00:40:46None of them can make any progress.

00:40:48None of them know what to do.

00:40:49Everyone outside a very closed world knows the system is knackered.

00:40:53So you've got very, very powerful conditions for things to change.

00:40:59It only needs, I don't think, partly because the system is so centralised in England,

00:41:06I think it would be in a way actually much harder to change America

00:41:08because of the very deliberate checks and balances built in,

00:41:11hardwired with the system by the founding fathers.

00:41:13But I think here the system is so flexible and so oddly centralised

00:41:18that if a group of people did take over one of the main parties,

00:41:22well, there's two obvious mechanisms.

00:41:23One is a group of people take over a party

00:41:25and very radically change what they're doing.

00:41:29I think because the system, the system is the way it is,

00:41:31you could actually change an awful lot very quickly.

00:41:35And the second is outside competition.

00:41:38Now, obviously, part of the vicious circle is that outside competition is very hard.

00:41:42It's very hard for new people to break in, but it's not impossible.

00:41:46And one of the effects, possibly, of UKIP and the Greens coming up

00:41:50is going to be to force everyone in Westminster to re-evaluate.

00:41:56So will things change in the next year?

00:41:58No, I'm not very hopeful.

00:42:00But I think within the next five years,

00:42:02I think just the scale of all of these pressures is such that somebody's going to have to give.

00:42:10Let me just ask you a follow-up question.

00:42:12When you worked for Michael Gove, you spoke about your experiences in the DfE.

00:42:17Many people, whether you agree with what he did or not,

00:42:19many people would say that he distinguished himself as a minister in this government

00:42:24by having an agenda and prosecuting an agenda.

00:42:28What is it about Michael Gove or the things that you, you know, decided to do?

00:42:35Why was he the minister that he was in education?

00:42:39It's a complicated question, I guess.

00:42:42It starts, I suppose, personally.

00:42:44He's an adopted kid.

00:42:45He genuinely cared about it.

00:42:46Whether you agree with what he did or didn't do,

00:42:49there's no doubt that he thought every day,

00:42:52with a flick of the cord in my life,

00:42:53my own person, my Michael Gove's life could have been completely different.

00:42:56I could have gone to parents who didn't value education,

00:42:58who didn't send me to a good school.

00:42:59What on earth would have happened to me?

00:43:01He thought about that about his own life, I think,

00:43:03and that made him think very hard about the system overall.

00:43:08So I think that's relatively unusual, probably, in Westminster.

00:43:12He was extremely highly motivated.

00:43:15Secondly, he was prepared, his view was that he was happier,

00:43:22he was much more interested in having an impact

00:43:25doing what he could to improve schools

00:43:27than he was in having a successful political career.

00:43:29So his approach was,

00:43:31I don't mind if at the end of four or five years' time,

00:43:35I'm gone and that's the end of me.

00:43:38If we've achieved a considerable amount of what we want to achieve,

00:43:42then the thing will be worth it.

00:43:44And thirdly, we built a team who had the same attitude.

00:43:48All of us wanted to be MPs,

00:43:49all of us were interested in making friends in Downing Street

00:43:51or anywhere else.

00:43:53And I think that gave us a lot of freedom

00:43:56just to put our foot down and do what was possible

00:43:58because our attitude was,

00:43:59what's the worst that could happen?

00:44:00The worst that could happen is we'd get fired.

00:44:02So what?

00:44:02We don't care about that.

00:44:03So why not try?

00:44:06Very, very interesting.

00:44:07I think you certainly scored on that last point

00:44:09about not needing or wanting to make friends

00:44:13with other politicians in other bits of Whitehall.

00:44:15But I want to now open up to some questions from the floor.

00:44:20I think we have a microphone, or OB microphone.

00:44:22If you could say who you are, that would be great.

00:44:25I think we need a bit of mic down here.

00:44:27This isn't...

00:44:27Can you hear something?

00:44:28Yeah, actually, if you go to the back, yes.

00:44:32Oh, it is working.

00:44:32Okay.

00:44:33So say who you are and where you're from

00:44:34and then put your questions.

00:44:37So a gentleman here first, yeah.

00:44:42Just to ask you...

00:44:44Just say who you are first.

00:44:45Yes, sorry.

00:44:46Wrong letter.

00:44:46I'm from the Open University.

00:44:49Just to ask you...

00:44:50Sorry.

00:44:51Could you...

00:44:52That's it.

00:44:53Okay.

00:44:53Thank you very much indeed.

00:44:55About procure...

00:44:56You said something about procurement,

00:44:58and I think that's such an important issue

00:45:00because there's so much of it going on.

00:45:01Can you say a bit more about what the problems are?

00:45:03And the other thing I wanted to ask you,

00:45:05I want to get the other one very quickly,

00:45:06is what you're saying,

00:45:08many policies that are developed by politicians

00:45:11are actually experiments,

00:45:13but they're presented as solutions

00:45:15rather than actual experiments,

00:45:17and that's the way we should actually look at it.

00:45:19That's what I'm...

00:45:20Sorry, could you say that second bit again?

00:45:20Pardon?

00:45:21Could you say that second bit again?

00:45:22The second bit is whether a lot of the policies

00:45:24that politicians are presenting to us

00:45:27and saying this is the answer,

00:45:29we have the answer,

00:45:31that they're actually no more than experiments

00:45:32because of the whole complexity of the system

00:45:35that you were talking about at the beginning,

00:45:37but I particularly like to hear what you've got to say

00:45:38about procurement and the problems there.

00:45:42Okay, on the procurement front,

00:45:44there's a combination of things.

00:45:48So on the one hand,

00:45:48you have national systems devised in Whitehall

00:45:51which are very complicated

00:45:53and don't work very well.

00:45:54You also have the fact that

00:45:58on almost all the important things,

00:45:59the rules are actually EU controlled,

00:46:02not national.

00:46:03So you have Whitehall systems

00:46:05that don't work very well.

00:46:06On top of that,

00:46:07you have EU systems that are very complicated.

00:46:09You have all the traditional problems

00:46:11with how the civil service gold plates things.

00:46:14You have another problem

00:46:16which is huge risk aversion

00:46:18and the legal advice.

00:46:20So you have very complex system A,

00:46:23national.

00:46:24Very complex system B, EU.

00:46:27Legal advice about both,

00:46:28which will probably be wrong.

00:46:32You have civil servants

00:46:34who are incentivised not to take risks.

00:46:37So it's a black mark

00:46:38if say you get an infraction letter

00:46:41from the European Commission.

00:46:43And you have all of the standard problems

00:46:45with how Whitehall struggles

00:46:46to introduce EU legislation.

00:46:50And then you have judicial review problems

00:46:52on top of that.

00:46:53So you'll often have,

00:46:57I had involving actually one of the people

00:46:59in this room,

00:46:59but I won't say who,

00:47:01a procurement process

00:47:02in which they were spat out

00:47:03as the winners of the procurement process.

00:47:05And then we were given legal advice

00:47:07that said if you carry on

00:47:07and give them the project,

00:47:09you'll be judicial reviewed and you'll lose.

00:47:11If you stop and redo it,

00:47:13you'll be judicially reviewed and lose.

00:47:15If you pause,

00:47:16you'll be judicial reviewed and lose.

00:47:17Whatever you do,

00:47:18you're going to be jr'd

00:47:19and you're going to lose.

00:47:21And that's the kind of minefield

00:47:23that you're stuck with.

00:47:25And that happens very, very routinely.

00:47:28And then when you dig into it,

00:47:30you find that the people that signed it

00:47:31have usually gone.

00:47:33Well, first of all,

00:47:33they weren't experts in the process

00:47:34in the first place.

00:47:35So you've got non-experts

00:47:36seen with very technical issues.

00:47:37Then they've gone off

00:47:38to take another job somewhere else.

00:47:40So the person now in charge of it

00:47:42says, well, it wasn't me.

00:47:43I don't really know why this was done.

00:47:44And obviously it's stupid,

00:47:45but you can't blame me for it.

00:47:46So you have all these things.

00:47:47You have HR, judicial review,

00:47:49legal advice going wrong,

00:47:51national, EU.

00:47:52You have all these different things

00:47:53interacting in ways

00:47:55which no one really has the authority

00:47:57to break out of.

00:47:58The Secretary of State can't say

00:48:00that the most that we did really

00:48:01to break out of this problem

00:48:02was to just go and hire

00:48:04top-notch lawyers.

00:48:05Almost the only budget,

00:48:06if not the only budget,

00:48:07we increased in the DfE

00:48:08was the lawyer budget.

00:48:09because it was much easier

00:48:11to go and just hire

00:48:13the absolute top-notch specialist

00:48:15on some branch of EU law,

00:48:17get a decision like that.

00:48:19But also from someone

00:48:20who could say,

00:48:21we could task and say,

00:48:22our goal is to achieve X.

00:48:25Give us legal advice

00:48:26that we can use

00:48:27in an argument

00:48:28with the European Commission

00:48:29and the rest of Whitehall

00:48:30that will enable us to do X.

00:48:32Ah, right.

00:48:33Here's your legal advice.

00:48:34This is why X is arguably legal.

00:48:36Right.

00:48:36Thanks very much.

00:48:37Off we go.

00:48:37This is why we're going to go ahead

00:48:39and do that.

00:48:40And that was a very important tool.

00:48:42Without that,

00:48:43an awful lot of things

00:48:44that we wanted to do

00:48:44would have been blown up

00:48:46on the launch pad

00:48:46because someone would have said,

00:48:48some people did say all the time,

00:48:49that's illegal.

00:48:50They're very simple things.

00:48:52Sorry, I'm straight off point.

00:48:53So I'll shut up there.

00:48:57Your point about experiments,

00:48:59I don't really understand

00:49:01what you mean.

00:49:02If you mean,

00:49:02are they sort of accidentally experimenting

00:49:04and you don't really understand

00:49:05what they're doing,

00:49:05then yes, that's true

00:49:06in various ways.

00:49:10I think it would be better probably

00:49:12if people were more explicit

00:49:14about experiments

00:49:15when they're doing it

00:49:16and said,

00:49:17we don't know what the answer to this is.

00:49:19Therefore, we're going to experiment.

00:49:20And if it works,

00:49:22and here's a robust way

00:49:23of evaluating it,

00:49:24we'll press on.

00:49:24And if we don't do it,

00:49:26then we'll immediately bin it

00:49:27and the people involved in the project

00:49:28will stop being involved

00:49:29and stop being paid.

00:49:30That's how DARPA works.

00:49:31That's why DARPA is such a success.

00:49:33It doesn't create these institutions

00:49:35that then have a bureaucratic life

00:49:36of their own

00:49:37which just keeps saying,

00:49:38oh, well,

00:49:38just keep funding us forever.

00:49:39Then they become permanent parts

00:49:41of the system.

00:49:42Okay.

00:49:43So I'll take a few,

00:49:45if I may.

00:49:46So quiet at the back,

00:49:47then Julian,

00:49:48and then gentlemen at the front.

00:49:49So three questions.

00:49:54Thanks.

00:49:54Really interesting talk, Dominic.

00:49:56Daniel Kremen

00:49:56from King's College London.

00:49:58So I was keen sort of observer

00:50:00of your sort of time

00:50:02in DFE in my old role.

00:50:04And one of the things

00:50:04that I thought was really interesting

00:50:05was when Michael started

00:50:07to kind of get real traction

00:50:08was when he got the right people

00:50:10appointed to lead certain reviews,

00:50:12people that you could trust

00:50:13to get on.

00:50:13To lead certain reviews,

00:50:14do you say?

00:50:14Certain reviews

00:50:15of the key sort of,

00:50:17you know,

00:50:17there's key policy frameworks

00:50:18where you actually needed

00:50:19to make changes

00:50:20and you need to make the case for it.

00:50:22So people like Alice and Wolf,

00:50:23for example,

00:50:23with vocational education.

00:50:25Yeah.

00:50:25Getting the right people appointed

00:50:26from that external world

00:50:28is really important.

00:50:30But the other thing

00:50:30that I think Michael did

00:50:31that was really interesting

00:50:32is his non-executive directors

00:50:34for the department board

00:50:36and some of the other,

00:50:37so that Ned sort of role

00:50:39within Whitehall,

00:50:40the challenge that provided

00:50:41to the department,

00:50:42but also more informally,

00:50:43the way that he was able

00:50:45to leverage expertise

00:50:46from certain head teachers

00:50:47to come in and challenge

00:50:48that conventional thinking

00:50:49was really good.

00:50:51Why do you think

00:50:52that doesn't happen

00:50:53more widely in Whitehall?

00:50:54And what do you think

00:50:55are the sort of the ways

00:50:57to unblocking it?

00:50:58Because I look at most

00:50:59of the other Ned

00:51:00sort of structures

00:51:01in Whitehall departments

00:51:02and you don't have

00:51:03that sort of same caliber

00:51:04of people as the sort

00:51:05of the John Nashers

00:51:06that were coming in

00:51:07the Theodore Agnews.

00:51:08It's not so attractive

00:51:09to get people coming in

00:51:10and be part of

00:51:11Whitehall departments.

00:51:12It tends to be people

00:51:13as well often

00:51:14at the very end

00:51:14of their career

00:51:15who often played it safe.

00:51:17Yeah.

00:51:18Okay.

00:51:18Thanks very much.

00:51:19And then Julian McRae here.

00:51:22Julian McRae

00:51:22from the Institute

00:51:23for Government.

00:51:24I came into Whitehall

00:51:26about 10 years

00:51:27into my career.

00:51:28So there were various

00:51:29things you were throwing

00:51:30out there

00:51:30which were really reminiscent

00:51:31and the obsession

00:51:32with CC lists

00:51:33which is vaguely bizarre

00:51:35when I got there

00:51:36and I became totally

00:51:37minded of when you were Ian.

00:51:40I'm just really interested

00:51:41in two of the sort of changes

00:51:43that you picked out.

00:51:45One was around treasury

00:51:47and the spending review.

00:51:48I think most people

00:51:49who look at this

00:51:49know that you can't run

00:51:50that spending review process

00:51:52in the same way again

00:51:53including I think

00:51:54some people in treasury

00:51:56but they're really struggling

00:51:57to articulate

00:51:58or what actually

00:51:59should we do

00:52:00how can we run it

00:52:01given the real constraints

00:52:02of politics

00:52:03that play into spending reviews.

00:52:06So just be interested

00:52:06in your thoughts

00:52:07of what's a solution

00:52:08to that.

00:52:09The second one

00:52:10a lot of the quality

00:52:11at least in the policymaking side

00:52:13Chris Wermold

00:52:14the DFE

00:52:15is leading a lot of work

00:52:18across the civil service

00:52:19at the moment

00:52:19to try and increase

00:52:20the quality of policymaking

00:52:21I was just interested

00:52:22in what your thoughts

00:52:23were about what Chris

00:52:24is doing.

00:52:25Is that the right direction?

00:52:26Is it kind of missing the point?

00:52:27What do you think about that?

00:52:29Okay thank you Gillian

00:52:30and the gentleman

00:52:30here at the front here.

00:52:33George Jones

00:52:33I agree very much

00:52:36with what I think

00:52:37your main theme

00:52:38that British government

00:52:39is over centralised

00:52:41that the centre

00:52:42can't deal with

00:52:43the complexity

00:52:44and you need

00:52:45to decentralise

00:52:46to hubs.

00:52:48Two points

00:52:49you said

00:52:51that we all know

00:52:53that the Cabinet Office

00:52:54number 10

00:52:56link

00:52:57is

00:52:58dysfunctional

00:52:59but I'm afraid

00:53:00we don't all know

00:53:02because that's one

00:53:03of the

00:53:03hidden areas

00:53:04so I wonder

00:53:05if you could spell out

00:53:06what are the

00:53:07dysfunctional aspects

00:53:08of that relationship

00:53:10and secondly

00:53:11if you're so much

00:53:13in favour of

00:53:14hubs

00:53:16decentralised hubs

00:53:17why did Mr Gove

00:53:19and you at DFE

00:53:20undermine

00:53:21elected local government

00:53:23which did offer

00:53:25the possibility

00:53:26of being

00:53:27a decentralised

00:53:29hub in our system?

00:53:33Okay thank you

00:53:35very much

00:53:35I'm okay

00:53:37so the first question

00:53:39yesterday

00:53:40the importance

00:53:41of bringing people

00:53:42in like

00:53:43Alison

00:53:44and also

00:53:45the Neds

00:53:46other people

00:53:46have said to me

00:53:47that the way

00:53:47that our Neds

00:53:48worked was

00:53:48no one else

00:53:49really has done

00:53:50the same thing

00:53:51I don't know

00:53:51if that's true

00:53:52or not

00:53:52but certainly

00:53:53they were extremely

00:53:54important

00:53:55I think

00:53:55probably the main

00:53:57aspects of it

00:53:58are just very

00:53:58simple really

00:54:00they were very

00:54:01determined people

00:54:03and high quality

00:54:03people

00:54:04but also

00:54:05we made clear

00:54:06to the department

00:54:07that we expected

00:54:09senior officials

00:54:09to work closely

00:54:10with them

00:54:11and we gave them

00:54:12specific things

00:54:12to do

00:54:13so in many ways

00:54:15our Neds

00:54:16were almost like

00:54:17other junior ministers

00:54:18they were obviously

00:54:20not called that

00:54:20but in lots of ways

00:54:23they are particularly

00:54:25Theo

00:54:26in the academy's

00:54:27system

00:54:30and

00:54:31I think it was

00:54:32past the transition

00:54:33in the department

00:54:33of education

00:54:34so obviously

00:54:34everyone knows

00:54:35we had a very

00:54:35difficult time

00:54:36to begin with

00:54:37and lots of problems

00:54:38but as things

00:54:39changed

00:54:40and the senior

00:54:40people changed

00:54:41and the relationships

00:54:42changed internally

00:54:45then the new

00:54:46perms like Chris

00:54:47Wormald and others

00:54:48knew that we wanted

00:54:49them to work

00:54:50with these guys

00:54:51but they also

00:54:53realised that

00:54:53these guys could

00:54:54help them

00:54:55you know

00:54:56if you've got

00:54:56someone like

00:54:56John Nash

00:54:57who's made

00:54:57an awful lot

00:54:58of money

00:55:00with certain skills

00:55:01then I think

00:55:02Chris and other

00:55:03senior officials

00:55:04realised

00:55:04well

00:55:05instead of fighting

00:55:06this

00:55:06which is the

00:55:06normal white hall

00:55:07way

00:55:07why don't we

00:55:08do deals

00:55:09and why don't

00:55:10we cooperate

00:55:10because maybe

00:55:11we could all

00:55:12come out ahead

00:55:12and also

00:55:14Gove's team

00:55:15isn't really

00:55:15giving us

00:55:16an option

00:55:17they're telling

00:55:17us that we've

00:55:18got to do that

00:55:18so you know

00:55:19there's carrot

00:55:20and stick involved

00:55:21but I think

00:55:21probably the carrot

00:55:22in the end

00:55:23was more

00:55:23to begin with

00:55:24the stick

00:55:24was more important

00:55:25but in the

00:55:25second half

00:55:26I think

00:55:27the carrot

00:55:28and just the

00:55:28obvious dynamics

00:55:29of it

00:55:29and I think

00:55:30if you ask

00:55:30Chris Wormald

00:55:31you'd say

00:55:32annoying in

00:55:33various ways

00:55:34but also

00:55:34helpful in

00:55:36various ways

00:55:37too

00:55:39why does

00:55:41why don't

00:55:42just

00:55:42you ask

00:55:43why doesn't

00:55:44that more

00:55:45simply because

00:55:46of the things

00:55:47I described

00:55:47the bureaucracy

00:55:48is programmed

00:55:49to resist

00:55:50to expel

00:55:51outsiders

00:55:52it doesn't

00:55:53want outsiders

00:55:54coming in

00:55:54saying why

00:55:56are you doing

00:55:56things like this

00:55:57and you can do

00:55:57things much better

00:55:58doing it like that

00:55:58it's the nature

00:55:59of fundamental

00:56:00nature of

00:56:00bureaucracies

00:56:01so I don't

00:56:02think there's

00:56:02anything really

00:56:03mysterious

00:56:04about that

00:56:07the

00:56:08IFG guy

00:56:09you asked me

00:56:10about the

00:56:10spending review

00:56:11how it could

00:56:12be done better

00:56:15well

00:56:16again I think

00:56:17it partly goes

00:56:18back to

00:56:18incentives

00:56:19if you think

00:56:20about the

00:56:20system now

00:56:23so to take

00:56:24quite a crude

00:56:24example

00:56:25Dove is

00:56:26is in

00:56:28politics terms

00:56:28a much

00:56:29closer friend

00:56:30of the

00:56:30prime minister

00:56:30than most

00:56:31people are

00:56:32in that

00:56:32minister and

00:56:33prime minister's

00:56:33position

00:56:34but the

00:56:35whole structure

00:56:36of Whitehall

00:56:36puts him

00:56:37in a position

00:56:37where he

00:56:38is encouraged

00:56:39to treat

00:56:40the spending

00:56:40review process

00:56:40as a

00:56:41hostile

00:56:42entity

00:56:43he's encouraged

00:56:44not to tell

00:56:45number 10

00:56:45and the treasury

00:56:46the truth

00:56:46about what

00:56:47the real

00:56:47numbers are

00:56:48and so

00:56:49what you

00:56:49have is a

00:56:49kind of

00:56:50odd dance

00:56:50the opaque

00:56:52accountancy

00:56:53system means

00:56:53that the

00:56:54treasury knows

00:56:55that all the

00:56:56departments have

00:56:57got money

00:56:58squirreled down

00:56:58the back of

00:56:59the sofa

00:57:01and they're

00:57:02right

00:57:02they do all

00:57:03have money

00:57:03squirreled

00:57:04down the

00:57:04back of the

00:57:05sofa

00:57:05and it's

00:57:06not only

00:57:07squirreled

00:57:07down the

00:57:07back of the

00:57:08sofa

00:57:08hidden away

00:57:09from the

00:57:09centre

00:57:09it's also

00:57:10hidden away

00:57:11from their

00:57:11own ministers

00:57:12so there's

00:57:13two different

00:57:13levels of

00:57:14hiding going

00:57:15on

00:57:15so the

00:57:16officials

00:57:16are not

00:57:16necessarily

00:57:17incentivized

00:57:17to tell

00:57:18the ministers

00:57:18where all

00:57:18the cash

00:57:19is

00:57:19and the

00:57:20ministers

00:57:20are not

00:57:20incentivized

00:57:21to tell

00:57:21the treasury

00:57:21where it

00:57:22is

00:57:22because if

00:57:22you tell

00:57:22the treasury

00:57:22where it

00:57:22is

00:57:23they might

00:57:23just say

00:57:23oh well

00:57:24we'll have

00:57:25some of it

00:57:26even if

00:57:26it's stupid

00:57:30so that's

00:57:31one big

00:57:32problem

00:57:32but also

00:57:36there's no

00:57:37people aren't

00:57:38encouraged to

00:57:39think of this

00:57:39as any kind

00:57:40of collective

00:57:40exercise

00:57:41so there's

00:57:41no collective

00:57:41priority

00:57:43setting

00:57:43and it's

00:57:44particularly

00:57:44bad with

00:57:44Cameron

00:57:44there

00:57:45because there

00:57:45are no

00:57:45priorities

00:57:46under Cameron

00:57:46whatsoever

00:57:47which makes

00:57:48hard

00:57:49but because

00:57:49of that

00:57:49there's no

00:57:50sense of

00:57:50what do we

00:57:51actually really

00:57:51focus on

00:57:52here

00:57:52okay we're

00:57:53going to

00:57:53make sacrifices

00:57:53here in

00:57:54order to

00:57:54protect this

00:57:55and reinforce

00:57:55that

00:57:56you know

00:57:57that a lot

00:57:57of decisions

00:57:57are just

00:57:58being made

00:57:58completely

00:58:00arbitrarily

00:58:00and that

00:58:01encourages the

00:58:02people out

00:58:02in the

00:58:03departments

00:58:04to keep

00:58:05lying and

00:58:05cheating

00:58:06because

00:58:06why would

00:58:07you

00:58:07if you've

00:58:08got this

00:58:09bizarre

00:58:09process

00:58:09to make

00:58:10decisions

00:58:10effectively

00:58:10randomly

00:58:11why on earth

00:58:12would you

00:58:12offer

00:58:12tell the truth

00:58:13about where

00:58:13money is

00:58:16so the

00:58:17only way

00:58:17of changing

00:58:17that fundamentally

00:58:18is to change

00:58:19the nature

00:58:19of ministerial

00:58:20responsibility

00:58:21and to change

00:58:22the whole culture

00:58:23about how these

00:58:24decisions are

00:58:24made

00:58:24as long as you

00:58:25keep this

00:58:25competitive system

00:58:26in which you

00:58:27make a bid

00:58:28and the treasury

00:58:28examines it

00:58:29and then comes in

00:58:29to find out

00:58:30if you're lying

00:58:30and you try

00:58:31and lie even

00:58:31more

00:58:32you can't

00:58:33escape

00:58:33I don't

00:58:33think

00:58:33this process

00:58:35on top of

00:58:36that there's

00:58:36also a skills

00:58:36issue

00:58:37so the treasury

00:58:37as I said

00:58:38before

00:58:38isn't really

00:58:38interested in

00:58:39saving money

00:58:39as far as I

00:58:40could ever tell

00:58:40it's interested in

00:58:41control

00:58:42a lot of people

00:58:42there also

00:58:43don't have the

00:58:43skills needed

00:58:44to cut budgets

00:58:45effectively

00:58:46they've never

00:58:46worked in

00:58:47businesses

00:58:47where suddenly

00:58:47got a cut

00:58:48cost by 30%

00:58:49in a year

00:58:49for a lot

00:58:50of the people

00:58:50in the treasury

00:58:51cutting cost

00:58:51by 3%

00:58:52in a year

00:58:52it's oh my god

00:58:53I can't do that

00:58:54everything will

00:58:54fall apart

00:58:55in a way

00:58:56which would seem

00:58:56very bizarre

00:58:57in the private

00:58:57sector

00:58:57so I think

00:58:58again skills

00:58:59are just a

00:59:00crucial aspect

00:59:00of it

00:59:01I think if you

00:59:02put in a team

00:59:03like Arnett

00:59:03like John Nash

00:59:04Theo and Paul

00:59:05Marshall

00:59:05and put them

00:59:06involved in spending

00:59:08with you

00:59:08then I think

00:59:09you'd have a

00:59:09very different

00:59:10kind of spending

00:59:11review indeed

00:59:14why doesn't

00:59:15number 10

00:59:15work my lord

00:59:16that's

00:59:18the simple

00:59:19answer is to

00:59:20read my blog

00:59:20and that will

00:59:21explain all of

00:59:22the reasons why

00:59:22number 10

00:59:22doesn't work

00:59:23it's a mix

00:59:24number 10

00:59:24in cabinet office

00:59:25you mentioned

00:59:26the two together

00:59:27yes

00:59:27it's a mix

00:59:29of personalities

00:59:31people

00:59:32skills

00:59:33and structure

00:59:34so

00:59:35the nature

00:59:36of

00:59:37the nature

00:59:37of the Cameron

00:59:38team

00:59:39simply

00:59:40is

00:59:40chaos

00:59:41it's all

00:59:42they know

00:59:42it's all

00:59:42they've ever

00:59:43known

00:59:44they operate

00:59:45in a bubble

00:59:45which is at most

00:59:4610 days

00:59:46planning

00:59:47and is usually

00:59:48about 48 hours

00:59:49or 72 hours

00:59:50ahead

00:59:50that's it

00:59:51there is no

00:59:52long term

00:59:53priority

00:59:53there is no

00:59:54long term

00:59:55plan

00:59:56so you have

00:59:56the central

00:59:57people

00:59:58operating with

00:59:58that kind

00:59:59of culture

00:59:59and they don't

01:00:00think anything

01:00:00can change

01:00:00they just

01:00:01think that's

01:00:01politics

01:00:02they're

01:00:02completely

01:00:02astonished

01:00:03if anyone

01:00:03says

01:00:03what on earth

01:00:04are you doing

01:00:04you could do

01:00:04this differently

01:00:05they have

01:00:06no idea

01:00:06what you're

01:00:06talking about

01:00:08the mental

01:00:09people who

01:00:10are the prime

01:00:10minister's

01:00:11advisers

01:00:11are Ed

01:00:11Llewellyn

01:00:12and Craig

01:00:12Oliver

01:00:13both of them

01:00:13are totally

01:00:14and utterly

01:00:14useless

01:00:15it's not their

01:00:16fault

01:00:16they're just

01:00:17in the wrong

01:00:17job

01:00:17they've been

01:00:18put in the

01:00:18wrong job

01:00:19it's not their

01:00:19fault

01:00:19the fault

01:00:20lies with

01:00:20Cameron

01:00:21for having

01:00:22put them

01:00:22there

01:00:22so if you

01:00:23have the

01:00:23prime minister

01:00:24who has no

01:00:25sense of

01:00:25priorities

01:00:25and can't

01:00:26manage his

01:00:26way out

01:00:26of a paper

01:00:27bag

01:00:27and then

01:00:28there's two

01:00:28chief

01:00:28advisors

01:00:29of people

01:00:30who've never

01:00:31heard anything

01:00:31themselves

01:00:32don't know

01:00:32what they're

01:00:32doing

01:00:33Craig Oliver

01:00:33running around

01:00:34with this

01:00:34ridiculous

01:00:35grid

01:00:35which is

01:00:36worrying about

01:00:36twitter

01:00:37and the news

01:00:37cycle

01:00:38for the next

01:00:39three hours

01:00:39of course

01:00:41it's going

01:00:41to be a

01:00:41farce

01:00:42of course

01:00:42you're going

01:00:42to see

01:00:43what you

01:00:43see all

01:00:43day

01:00:44it can't

01:00:44be anything

01:00:45else

01:00:46and then

01:00:46you have

01:00:47the cabinet

01:00:47office system

01:00:48internally

01:00:48which also

01:00:49doesn't work

01:00:50and which

01:00:50doesn't connect

01:00:51properly

01:00:52to the number

01:00:5310 system

01:00:53so you have

01:00:54totally

01:00:54dysfunctional

01:00:55number 10

01:00:55system

01:00:56dysfunctional

01:00:57cabinet office

01:00:57system

01:00:58and the

01:00:58connections

01:00:59between them

01:00:59a complete

01:01:01chaos

01:01:02hence you have

01:01:03the Prime Minister

01:01:04bumbling out of

01:01:04EU press

01:01:05conferences

01:01:06making up his

01:01:07own media grid

01:01:08on the hoof

01:01:08saying stop

01:01:09this announcement

01:01:09tomorrow morning

01:01:10do this

01:01:11we're not going

01:01:11to pay this

01:01:12bill

01:01:12oh we are

01:01:13going to have

01:01:13to pay

01:01:13this is

01:01:15that is how

01:01:16that is normal

01:01:17it's not abnormal

01:01:18and a big part

01:01:19of the reason

01:01:20why people

01:01:20can't understand

01:01:21what's happening

01:01:22in politics

01:01:22is they keep

01:01:23looking at

01:01:23and thinking

01:01:24this must be

01:01:24some aberration

01:01:24somewhere

01:01:25there must be

01:01:25some quiet

01:01:26calm centre

01:01:27like in a

01:01:28James Bond movie

01:01:28where you open

01:01:29the door

01:01:29and that's

01:01:30where the

01:01:30ninjas are

01:01:31who actually

01:01:31know what

01:01:31they're doing

01:01:32there are

01:01:33no ninjas

01:01:33there is

01:01:34no door

01:01:35what you see

01:01:36is all you

01:01:38get from

01:01:38those people

01:01:39so it's

01:01:40partly people

01:01:41it's partly

01:01:42skills

01:01:42and it's

01:01:43partly structure

01:01:44local government

01:01:46well my

01:01:47argument on

01:01:49that would

01:01:50be that

01:01:51if a government

01:01:52entity is going

01:01:52to run

01:01:53something

01:01:53then it'd

01:01:53be better

01:01:54for it to

01:01:54be local

01:01:55government

01:01:55than central

01:01:57government

01:01:57but there's

01:01:58a fundamental

01:01:58problem with

01:01:58that in

01:01:59England

01:01:59which you

01:02:00know I'm

01:02:00sure a thousand

01:02:01times better

01:02:01than me

01:02:01which is

01:02:02the problem

01:02:04of how

01:02:05money is

01:02:05developed

01:02:06now you have

01:02:07a system

01:02:07in which local

01:02:07government is

01:02:08nominally responsible

01:02:09for various things

01:02:09but it's not

01:02:10responsible for any

01:02:11of the cash

01:02:11and that's a fatal

01:02:12disaster

01:02:13it's why so many

01:02:14problems happen

01:02:15it's why no one

01:02:16really has a clue

01:02:17who's genuinely

01:02:17responsible for what

01:02:21in a rational world

01:02:22you would try and

01:02:22solve this problem

01:02:23in my world

01:02:24you'd have massive

01:02:25central tax cuts

01:02:26and much more

01:02:27taxation pushed

01:02:28down locally

01:02:28and local

01:02:29government

01:02:29responsible for

01:02:30far more

01:02:30things

01:02:31but there's

01:02:32very little

01:02:32appetite for that

01:02:33in the Conservative

01:02:33Party

01:02:34and I think

01:02:35little appetite

01:02:36really in the

01:02:36Labour Party

01:02:38as well

01:02:38there's just a

01:02:39vicious circle

01:02:40in which people

01:02:40think to get

01:02:40anything done

01:02:41you've got to

01:02:41centralise it

01:02:42and try and

01:02:42force it through

01:02:43from the middle

01:02:43which I think

01:02:44in the long run

01:02:44can't work

01:02:45but that's what

01:02:46all parties

01:02:47seem to think

01:02:49the reason why

01:02:49I don't feel guilty

01:02:51about what we did

01:02:51is because what

01:02:52we were trying to

01:02:53do is empower

01:02:53parents directly

01:02:55and in our ideal

01:02:56system in which

01:02:58we move to a

01:02:58national funding

01:02:59formula and a

01:03:00kind of pseudo

01:03:01voucher system

01:03:02effectively in which

01:03:03people can control

01:03:03right I'm going to

01:03:04go here you get

01:03:05my 5k but your

01:03:06crap I'm moving

01:03:07you now get my

01:03:085k then you have

01:03:09a system of

01:03:10accountability

01:03:11and responsibility

01:03:11in the school

01:03:12system which does

01:03:14not rely on

01:03:14politicians making

01:03:15intelligent judgments

01:03:16and that's what I

01:03:17thought a very

01:03:17important goal

01:03:18of what we were

01:03:18trying to do

01:03:19is we wanted

01:03:20to make the

01:03:21education system

01:03:22school system

01:03:24as independent

01:03:25of the quality

01:03:26of decisions

01:03:27made in Whitehall

01:03:28and West

01:03:29possibly could

01:03:30we had

01:03:31two attentions

01:03:32in that

01:03:32I was much

01:03:32more in that

01:03:35direction than

01:03:36Michael was

01:03:36and we had

01:03:37disagreements

01:03:37about certain

01:03:38things and

01:03:38how to do

01:03:39that but

01:03:40overall that

01:03:40was our

01:03:41approach

01:03:42I'll take

01:03:43one more round

01:03:44of questions

01:03:44I know that

01:03:44people still don't

01:03:45want

01:03:45so gentlemen

01:03:46here

01:03:47and then

01:03:47gentlemen

01:03:48here

01:03:49you suggested

01:03:50that one of

01:03:51the things

01:03:51sorry

01:03:52Alastair Smith

01:03:53University of

01:03:53Sussex

01:03:53sorry not

01:03:54academic

01:03:55you suggested

01:03:56one of the

01:03:56things that

01:03:57could be done

01:03:57with the

01:03:58civil service

01:03:58system

01:03:59is split

01:03:59the role

01:03:59of permanent

01:04:00secretaries

01:04:00and have

01:04:01a

01:04:01have

01:04:02the chief

01:04:03policy officer

01:04:03role away

01:04:04from the chief

01:04:05managing officer

01:04:06or chief executive

01:04:07officer

01:04:07we've had a

01:04:08small experiment

01:04:09in that

01:04:09direction

01:04:10with the split

01:04:11of job

01:04:12between the

01:04:12cabinet secretary

01:04:13and the

01:04:13head of the

01:04:14civil service

01:04:15doesn't seem

01:04:16to have been

01:04:16a huge success

01:04:19okay

01:04:19a gentleman

01:04:20behind

01:04:25Mark Foden

01:04:26and I work

01:04:27in a consultancy

01:04:27to do with

01:04:28IT reform

01:04:28in government

01:04:30there's a great

01:04:30deal of enthusiasm

01:04:31from

01:04:32using digital

01:04:33technologies

01:04:34to change the way

01:04:34government works

01:04:35what prospect

01:04:35for success

01:04:37okay

01:04:38any more

01:04:39questions

01:04:39yeah

01:04:40yeah

01:04:41gentleman here

01:04:42yeah

01:04:43come on

01:04:43yeah

01:04:45I'm just interested

01:04:48that you were

01:04:48talking about

01:04:49cutting down

01:04:49the number of people

01:04:50in the department

01:04:50which is fine

01:04:51until things go

01:04:52wrong

01:04:53if you haven't

01:04:54got people

01:04:54in the department

01:04:55who should be

01:04:56doing

01:04:57those

01:04:58activities

01:04:59which they're

01:04:59then criticised

01:05:00for not doing

01:05:00quite frequently

01:05:02okay

01:05:03and then let's

01:05:04just

01:05:04we can speak

01:05:05one more

01:05:05in

01:05:05sure

01:05:06thank you

01:05:08Helen Gardner

01:05:10do you still

01:05:11want to open

01:05:11a free school

01:05:17okay

01:05:17let me try

01:05:18and get

01:05:18the

01:05:19so

01:05:19the first

01:05:21question was

01:05:22about the

01:05:22permanent secretary

01:05:23is that right

01:05:24yeah

01:05:25yeah

01:05:26so

01:05:26what

01:05:27I

01:05:27what I

01:05:28what I'm

01:05:29proposing

01:05:29is

01:05:30you say

01:05:32here's a CEO

01:05:33or COO

01:05:33of the

01:05:34department

01:05:34for education

01:05:35and here's a

01:05:36chief policy

01:05:36or advisor

01:05:38doesn't mean

01:05:39that the secretary

01:05:40has to do

01:05:40what this guy

01:05:41says

01:05:41to all

01:05:42but

01:05:43there would be

01:05:44a permanent

01:05:45role with some

01:05:46senior people

01:05:46serious people

01:05:47around them

01:05:48to give

01:05:49policy advice

01:05:51but the COO

01:05:52role

01:05:52could be

01:05:53whoever

01:05:53if Michael

01:05:54wanted to put

01:05:54John Nash

01:05:55in as COO

01:05:56then you could

01:05:56just do that

01:05:59I think there

01:05:59are all sorts

01:06:00of reasons

01:06:00why that would

01:06:00work better

01:06:01I don't think

01:06:02your analogy

01:06:02with the

01:06:04experiment

01:06:04with Jeremy

01:06:04Haywood

01:06:05is a very

01:06:06good analogy

01:06:07for some

01:06:07for various

01:06:09reasons

01:06:10first of all

01:06:11in that

01:06:12everyone knows

01:06:13that Jeremy

01:06:13Haywood

01:06:14is in charge

01:06:14of everything

01:06:16so there's

01:06:17a formal

01:06:17division of

01:06:18responsibility

01:06:18supposedly

01:06:19but it's

01:06:20all

01:06:20it's not

01:06:21real

01:06:21Jeremy

01:06:22Haywood

01:06:23is

01:06:24more important

01:06:25than anyone

01:06:26else in the

01:06:26cabinet

01:06:27apart from

01:06:27Cameron

01:06:28and Osborne

01:06:28and arguably

01:06:29more important

01:06:30than Osborne

01:06:31he sits right

01:06:32next to the

01:06:32prime minister

01:06:33has him

01:06:33completely by

01:06:34the balls

01:06:34and Cameron

01:06:35doesn't do

01:06:35anything without

01:06:36Haywood's

01:06:37permission

01:06:38so when they

01:06:39made that

01:06:39division

01:06:40I don't think

01:06:41it's a real

01:06:42division

01:06:42because everyone

01:06:42knows that

01:06:43Haywood is

01:06:45really in charge

01:06:46of these

01:06:46he's not just

01:06:47some

01:06:47isolated

01:06:48he's just a

01:06:49policy advisor

01:06:49to the prime

01:06:49minister

01:06:50but he doesn't

01:06:50really have

01:06:50any institutional

01:06:51power anymore

01:06:52that power

01:06:52resides with

01:06:53X

01:06:53no

01:06:53that power

01:06:54does not

01:06:54reside with

01:06:55X

01:06:55X does

01:06:55what Haywood

01:06:56tells them to

01:06:56do

01:06:56and you

01:06:57can see

01:06:57what's

01:06:57happened

01:06:58there

01:06:58with the

01:06:58whole

01:06:58COO

01:06:59business

01:06:59which they

01:07:00talked

01:07:00about

01:07:00all the

01:07:01COOs

01:07:02this new

01:07:03COO

01:07:03figure

01:07:04who's his

01:07:05boss

01:07:06Haywood

01:07:07it's not

01:07:07the prime

01:07:08minister

01:07:09so it's

01:07:10not

01:07:10so the

01:07:11problem

01:07:11that you're

01:07:11describing

01:07:12kind of

01:07:13makes my

01:07:13point

01:07:16the

01:07:17question

01:07:17about digital

01:07:17from a technical

01:07:18perspective

01:07:19yes obviously

01:07:19there's all

01:07:19sorts of

01:07:20ways in which

01:07:21it could happen

01:07:21but I think

01:07:22practically you

01:07:23would hit a lot

01:07:23of these issues

01:07:24that I just

01:07:25talked about

01:07:27now I could

01:07:28be wrong about

01:07:29this because in

01:07:29my time there

01:07:30to begin with

01:07:31it was abysmal

01:07:32trying to get

01:07:32anything done

01:07:33like that

01:07:34but in the last

01:07:35year or so I

01:07:35would say

01:07:35some things

01:07:36started to

01:07:36change

01:07:37and in the

01:07:37last three

01:07:37months I

01:07:38had some

01:07:38very interesting

01:07:38conversations

01:07:39with people

01:07:39from the

01:07:39centre

01:07:40that suggested

01:07:41that some

01:07:41quite big

01:07:42things might

01:07:42change

01:07:44and Nick

01:07:45mentioned earlier

01:07:46when we just

01:07:47met that he

01:07:48heard about

01:07:48some things

01:07:48that could

01:07:49change

01:07:49so my

01:07:50feeling for

01:07:50this could

01:07:51be very

01:07:51out

01:07:51stage

01:07:51technologically

01:07:52obviously

01:07:52there's

01:07:53massive

01:07:53things

01:07:53that could

01:07:53change

01:07:54but you'd

01:07:54have to

01:07:55deal

01:07:55with

01:07:55these

01:07:55connected

01:07:55problems

01:07:56that I

01:07:56discussed

01:07:56of

01:07:57procurement

01:07:57systems

01:07:58the EU

01:07:59HR

01:08:00legal advice

01:08:01and that

01:08:01whole

01:08:03mishmash

01:08:03of problems

01:08:05if you

01:08:05can't

01:08:06deal

01:08:06with

01:08:06so

01:08:07sorry

01:08:07I haven't

01:08:08explained this

01:08:08very well

01:08:08in a nutshell

01:08:10of course

01:08:10there's loads

01:08:11you could

01:08:11do

01:08:11but the

01:08:12technological

01:08:13problems

01:08:13are not

01:08:13the problems

01:08:15it's the

01:08:16core issues

01:08:17that I

01:08:17think I

01:08:17discussed

01:08:20you asked

01:08:20about

01:08:21calling people

01:08:21who would

01:08:22do things

01:08:23well

01:08:23depends

01:08:24whether or

01:08:24not you

01:08:24actually

01:08:25think

01:08:25things

01:08:25should

01:08:26be done

01:08:27first of

01:08:28all

01:08:28you could

01:08:28do

01:08:29so take

01:08:30for example

01:08:30the free

01:08:30schools

01:08:31team

01:08:31it's now

01:08:31got hundreds

01:08:32of people

01:08:32in it

01:08:33if you

01:08:35actually go

01:08:36to reorganize

01:08:36that department

01:08:38properly

01:08:38and have

01:08:39proper HR

01:08:40system

01:08:40you could

01:08:41do it

01:08:42for

01:08:42with

01:08:43I reckon

01:08:44the most

01:08:45a third

01:08:46of the people

01:08:46that are

01:08:47currently

01:08:47involved

01:08:47and maybe

01:08:48something like

01:08:48a seventh

01:08:49or an eighth

01:08:49of the people

01:08:50involved

01:08:50it doesn't

01:08:51need all

01:08:51those people

01:08:52and if you

01:08:53had a much

01:08:53smaller team

01:08:54that was

01:08:54actually

01:08:55properly

01:08:55managed

01:08:56and with

01:08:57a serious

01:08:58HR system

01:08:59then also

01:09:00a whole load

01:09:01of the problems

01:09:01that currently

01:09:02exist

01:09:02wouldn't exist

01:09:03in the first

01:09:03place

01:09:04so just

01:09:04be a much

01:09:04smoother

01:09:05and simpler

01:09:06system

01:09:06well lots

01:09:07of other

01:09:07things

01:09:07there's a

01:09:08prior question

01:09:09should the

01:09:09department

01:09:10be doing

01:09:10that

01:09:10at all

01:09:11sorry

01:09:12that's

01:09:12a big

01:09:12question

01:09:13should the

01:09:14be doing

01:09:14yeah

01:09:14and that's

01:09:15a very

01:09:15you know

01:09:15in the end

01:09:16that's

01:09:16a political

01:09:18question

01:09:19in various

01:09:20ways

01:09:20I would

01:09:23I'll give you

01:09:24one example

01:09:25it says

01:09:26quite a lot

01:09:28when we

01:09:28started

01:09:29all sorts

01:09:30of things

01:09:30were completely

01:09:31blowing up

01:09:31around us

01:09:32couldn't get

01:09:32anything done

01:09:32on x

01:09:33y and z

01:09:33that were

01:09:34all vital

01:09:34and all

01:09:35I got

01:09:35in my

01:09:36first two

01:09:36months

01:09:37pretty much

01:09:38it was

01:09:38memos

01:09:39on why

01:09:39we had

01:09:39to do

01:09:39this

01:09:40that

01:09:40and the

01:09:40other

01:09:40on

01:09:40careers

01:09:41careers

01:09:41you've got to create a new career service

01:09:43we're going to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on careers

01:09:45no end to careers

01:09:46endless memos on careers

01:09:49we're not doing careers

01:09:50this department can't even write its own letters

01:09:53accurately

01:09:53there's no way

01:09:54the last career service was a complete disaster

01:09:56we're having to make loads of cuts

01:09:58we just shut down the last career service because it was such a disaster

01:10:00we're not starting a new one

01:10:02it's not on our priority list

01:10:03we're not doing it

01:10:05the memos keep coming

01:10:06stop sending me memos on careers

01:10:08memos keep going

01:10:09and you end up to walk in with the senior official to michael and say

01:10:12tell this guy never to write another memo about careers

01:10:15and we're shutting the whole careers division down this problem

01:10:17and everyone's going to start working on it

01:10:19michael says

01:10:20that's what we're going to do

01:10:21uh-oh

01:10:22uh-oh

01:10:24once passed

01:10:25well the careers numbers have gone down

01:10:27so we ended up by kind of crazy determination

01:10:30we ended up cutting the career service

01:10:32cutting the number of people doing it

01:10:35but we could never quite kill it

01:10:36and every time we got close to killing it

01:10:39bloody cameron or clegg

01:10:40would come along and say

01:10:41oh i've got to do a speech at cbi tomorrow

01:10:43and i can't think what to do

01:10:43i want to say something about careers

01:10:44and then of course

01:10:46there's probably

01:10:46oh yes well we've got all these lovely memos on careers

01:10:49here we are before you know it the memories of careers have got the number 10

01:10:51and some clown number 10's already briefed it to the telegraph

01:10:54and we're now creating some new careers thing

01:10:56so it's very very hard to stop these sort of dynamics

01:11:02and actually stopping things completely

01:11:05which is vital if you're really going to change how whitehall works

01:11:08is incredibly hard

01:11:10it's incredibly hard actually to close something down

01:11:12and say we're not doing it

01:11:14and michael was the only minister

01:11:16i had a conversation about this

01:11:18and i ended up pinning all the ministers

01:11:19i said

01:11:21which one

01:11:21we're stopping doing careers

01:11:22which one of you is going to go on tv

01:11:24and say this department doesn't do careers anymore

01:11:27well i don't want to

01:11:29no i don't want to either

01:11:31michael legram

01:11:31all of them said

01:11:32i'll do it

01:11:34he was the only minister

01:11:36in the department of education

01:11:37or in number 10

01:11:38or a clegg

01:11:39or any of them

01:11:40who was actually apparently going on tv

01:11:41and saying

01:11:41the department of education should not be in the business of careers

01:11:44schools should sort out careers for themselves

01:11:45we've closed the team save taxpayer this many millions of pounds

01:11:48and if you don't like it

01:11:50vote for someone else

01:11:51but of course he wasn't allowed to do that

01:11:53because cameron said

01:11:54oh clegg hates that

01:11:55we've got to do some gimmicks on careers

01:11:57so you can't close it down

01:11:58and that's just one tiny area of the department

01:12:00that i think

01:12:01roughly was probably employing a few dozen people

01:12:04when we started

01:12:04maybe 30 or 40 people working on careers

01:12:07and i think

01:12:08well i was told we got it down to three

01:12:10people

01:12:11that's probably

01:12:11a dozen again

01:12:13i don't know someone who could tell me

01:12:14but don't say

01:12:16so it's just extreme

01:12:17so it's extremely

01:12:17it's extremely hard

01:12:18and it goes back to the point

01:12:20that secretaries of the state are not really in control

01:12:22i mean

01:12:22we only did that

01:12:23we only got it cut at all

01:12:25because of the force of changing relationships inside the department

01:12:28we have no official power to close the careers department

01:12:30or even to cut it by one person

01:12:32we only did it because we said to the permanent secretary

01:12:35we're not doing this

01:12:37stop it now

01:12:38and we've got to make all these cuts

01:12:40it's crazy to spend all this money on these things

01:12:42but we actually need this money

01:12:43and these people

01:12:45redeployed elsewhere

01:12:46because of the spending review

01:12:47and because of all sorts of other pressures on us

01:12:53last question

01:12:54free school

01:12:55no i've decided i'm not a good person to set up a free school

01:12:57as clearly said man's got a nose limitations

01:13:00i would be a very

01:13:01i think i would be a bad person to

01:13:05set up a school

01:13:06i've helped a few schools get going

01:13:07and i think that's probably where my

01:13:10where my help is best used

01:13:14i'm very happy to answer more questions

01:13:15if people have got them

01:13:16okay let's take one more

01:13:18yeah yeah

01:13:18could i just ask a subsequent question

01:13:22this complexity thing interests me

01:13:24what response do you get

01:13:25talking to senior folks around

01:13:27about complexity

01:13:29and problems that it's causing

01:13:30do people understand it on an intellectual level

01:13:32or do they resist it or what

01:13:36i'd say

01:13:37by far the most interesting thing

01:13:39responses i've had

01:13:40i've had

01:13:41i've been from fields medalists

01:13:43and nobel prize winners

01:13:44and whatnot

01:13:44sending me random emails saying

01:13:46very interesting about blah blah blah

01:13:47what do you think about this

01:13:48why does public's not understand

01:13:50so i think in the science and maths world

01:13:54for them this sort of stuff is completely second nature

01:13:56intellectually

01:13:57i mean it's their world

01:13:58they created it

01:13:59so it's not surprising

01:14:00but in whitehall it's like an alien language pretty much

01:14:03no one really is

01:14:04if you've gone through

01:14:05even if you're a very high performing person

01:14:07like say cameron

01:14:08in a traditional sense

01:14:10you've gone through eton

01:14:11you've gone to a good school

01:14:12you've then gone on

01:14:13and done some kind of humanities course or ppe

01:14:15that doesn't expose you really to any of this thinking

01:14:18so unless you're an intellectually curious person

01:14:21which cameron spectacularly is not

01:14:23then there's no reason why you'd be exposed to this sort of

01:14:27to this sort of thing

01:14:27i mean there's one guy

01:14:28i've noticed a guy called andrew holdane

01:14:30at the bank of england

01:14:31who talks about this sort of thing

01:14:33and right

01:14:33and just gives some extremely interesting

01:14:36um lectures

01:14:38i slightly worry about him

01:14:40and i wonder if anyone

01:14:41in whitehall takes what he says seriously

01:14:43i hope they do

01:14:44but he's almost the only senior person

01:14:47i've seen who is involved with that sort of intellectual agenda

01:14:52and is talking about it in a public way

01:14:55i think that's very good that he's there at the bank of england

01:14:57and i hope that senior people there listen to him

01:15:00but someone else here will know much better than me

01:15:03whether he has any real clout

01:15:08is anybody pursuing this

01:15:10i mean presumably you are

01:15:11trying to explain that this complexion thing exists

01:15:14and there's a different way of responding to it

01:15:16i mean my experience is when i've got half an hour to talk to someone about it

01:15:19that intellectually at least

01:15:21they won't understand it

01:15:22we can't help thinking if some effort is put into explaining this stuff

01:15:27there might be a bit of progress

01:15:29it's not it's not really fixed in an afternoon

01:15:34there's a few there's a few things that that that i'm thinking about

01:15:37um i'm i'm going to try and and talk to

01:15:41well i'm going to try and talk to to some universities about creating new courses

01:15:46so as i said in my talk we need alternatives to ppe

01:15:48and one of the obvious things that will be part of that

01:15:51would be would be um teaching the basics of that of that subject

01:15:56um i'm also talking to some physicists who are interested in running some training

01:15:59courses uh in westminster for mps um to try and teach them some of these

01:16:05things and basic probability and how um how the tools used in in physics in

01:16:11particular can be applied to all kinds of complex problems

01:16:15and if you look another i mean one of the one of the projects i'm most proud of

01:16:19actually that we did in 2012 um i went to see a guy called tim

01:16:24garrows at cambridge university who's a professor there's a fields medalist

01:16:26he's one of the cleverest people in the world

01:16:28and i was talking to him about various things

01:16:30and he said what i want to do is create a course 16 to 18 maths course for

01:16:35level maths i'm sort of maths for presidents type type type course

01:16:40and i thought that's a brilliant idea and talked to michael about it we ended up

01:16:44bunging i think about half a million quid to mei to work with garrows to develop

01:16:47that course and it's now real there are there are modules of the course there's

01:16:52teacher training going on it's going to start in schools in september 2015 well

01:16:56it's been trialed now but although that's 16 to 18 maths course which i hope will

01:17:00have a big effect on school if you go and read his bloody google his blog a lot of the

01:17:04problems in it are things that you could use in a training course for mps so i think

01:17:09there'll be a lot of guys like a maths um the most popular course in berkeley is

01:17:13often voted the president physics for presidents course there's a brilliant book on it which

01:17:17i would advise anyone to to to buy um and i think there's a huge scope potentially for

01:17:23developing um courses like that no one has to be able to go and do advanced calculus that's

01:17:27not the sort of thing that i'm talking about um but having basic conceptual understanding

01:17:33of these things and understanding when science when maths and physics in particular might

01:17:37be able to help you uh and when they can't when you're on your own even just knowing that

01:17:41would be a um would be a great advance but when you have people now who've got no concept

01:17:48of what randomness means or what probabilities you can't as that statistical survey showed

01:17:52just do the most basic questions and they're voting and deciding on crucial questions of risk

01:17:57involving billions or tens of billions of pounds you're obviously going to have a lot of

01:18:01things go wrong so you know the the risk reward of trying to get some things like the gower's

01:18:07course into mps's brains i think is is is massive great okay well dominic thank you very much

01:18:14indeed i mean that was really really stimulating and i i first came across dominic's work when

01:18:17reading his essay when published first i think via the guardian and if you haven't read it you

01:18:22know i mean anybody with a modicum of intellectual curiosity not to find it really interesting like

01:18:26i do encourage you to to read it and dominic i would encourage you to set up an odyssean free

01:18:31school i think you don't want to take us for it um it'll be very interesting and i hope you

01:18:34can come

01:18:35back and talk to us again actually about this central national mission you talked about about

01:18:38making britain the world leader in education science because i think that's a very interesting

01:18:41and important uh idea and we should explore it further but can i ask you to thank dominic in the

01:18:55usual thank you thank you very much for coming bye-bye

01:19:23you

Dominic Cummings speech at IPPR - The Hollow Men (2014) political lecture Brexit

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