Sunak turns down calls to break up the Treasury

RISHI SUNAK will reject a call from an independent review of the Civil Service to break up the Treasury.

A review by Lord Maude will be published tomorrow, including a recommendation that the Treasury should be split into separate departments for taxation and public spending.

Lord Maude, an ex-Cabinet Office minister, has previously said that Britain’s system of government is “archaic”.

He has argued that the UK should emulate countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, none of which “have a single ministry of finance”.

It follows criticism that the Treasury wields excessive influence and is prone to “orthodox” thinking on the economy.

However, the Government will rebuff Lord Maude’s recommendation.

Ministers believe it is the wrong time ahead of an election to embark on a major reorganisation of the Treasury when the Prime Minister’s priority is bringing down inflation.

The Maude review was commissioned by Boris Johnson in July 2022 to examine “the wiring of Whitehall” and the “efficiency and effectiveness of how government works”.

Other recommendations which are understood to be in his review include giving ministers powers to hire their own “maverick” civil servants to challenge groupthink and scrapping the position of Cabinet Secretary.

The Government will not initially set out its own formal response after tomorrow’s publication.

The recommendations are likely to feed into a separate civil service reform agenda being led by Jeremy Quin, the Cabinet Office minister, with announcements pencilled in for the New Year.

Mr Quin’s reforms will focus on opening up Whitehall to outside talent.

Attention is being paid to overhauling Whitehall’s tendency towards “generalism” among civil servants. It is believed Mr Quin wants “stronger career paths” for technical experts.

This is based on the idea that the Civil Service should be more accommodating to figures such as Ben Warner, the data scientist hired by Dominic Cummings who had an influential role in Britain’s response to Covid.

Another focus of the reform agenda will be accelerating the relocation of civil servants out of London. The Government’s ambition is to create a system where an official can rise through the ranks to become a permanent secretary responsible for a department without ever working in the capital.

It is also considering how artificial intelligence can be harnessed to cut Civil Service numbers.

Speaking last month, Lord Maude said that Whitehall’s impartiality rules should not mean that new recruits are “expected to come straight into government from a monastery”.

“There’s absolutely no reason why people shouldn’t become political servants who have a political background,” he said. The Tory politician first served as a minister in Sir John Major’s government in the early 1990s.

A Government spokesman said: “Through our ongoing work on government reform, we are already driving long-term change across the Civil Service to ensure that we are delivering for the public.”

Ministers believe it is the wrong time to embark on major overhaul when focus should be on inflation