Starmer promised to ‘rewire the state’ so why is the civil service bigger? |
Civil service headcount has reached a 20-year high, bigger than it was during Brexit or Covid. Yet more proof that this Prime Minister’s only belief is in bigger government, says Eliot Wilson
When Sir Keir Starmer appointed a new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service at the end of 2024, he made a notably cautious choice. He picked Sir Chris Wormald, an Oxford-educated mandarin who had been a permanent secretary for 12 years and had never worked outside Whitehall, but praised his “wealth of experience… at a critical moment in the work of change this new government has begun”. He went on to promise “nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform”.
It has not quite worked out like that. In the year to September 2025, civil service numbers grew by 4,000 to reach 520,440 full-time equivalent posts, the highest level in 20 years. The expansion is not evenly distributed: since 2010, middle management grades have grown by 132 per cent, while the senior civil service (deputy director/Grade 5 and above) has expanded by 52 per cent.
Consider that. The civil service is now larger than it was during Brexit or the Covid-19 pandemic. Reductions by the coalition and then the Conservative government had reduced the total to 384,000 just before the Brexit referendum, more than a quarter smaller than today.
There has been a simultaneous and contradictory diminution of authority as executive power and influence over policy have dissipated........