Labour inherited the worst of everything, including prisons beyond breaking point, court backlogs as bad as NHS waiting lists, children cast into exceptional destitution, the National Grid unable to cope with demand, reservoirs unbuilt while sewage poured into rivers, high debt, no money and deep public distrust in politics. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were honest about what they found.
The Conservatives are calling for a proposed renovation of the Houses of Parliament to be paused and "refocused" over concerns about costs potentially running into the tens of billions. MPs have been presented with proposals to refurbish the ailing Palace of Westminster, including a plan that could cost almost 40bn and take 61 years to complete. The project team has warned delaying the restoration of the historic building, which costs 1.5m a week to maintain, would lead to "an expensive managed decline of the Palace".
He said performance indicators for senior officials would be set by ministers and those civil servants not meeting expectations would be shown the door. Instead of the sideways shimmy to another team or department if you fail to perform, I'm afraid you will be sacked, he said, adding that the doers, not the talkers would be in line for promotion.
The reason for that is simple: the British state is big and getting bigger but as an agent of change it is not up to the job. This is true at both central and local levels. Over the years, the capacity of government to intervene has been pared back and professional expertise has been lost as council services have been outsourced.
Civil service morale rose slightly after Labour took power in 2024, with the biggest jumps in satisfaction in the energy and health departments, an annual Whitehall monitor report will show. The survey from the Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank, due to be published this week, found that morale rose from 60.7 to 61.2% on the civil service employee engagement index. This is a composite measure that captures civil servants' feelings about how things are done in their organisation, and their pride in where they work.
James Evans has been removed from the shadow cabinet and had the whip withdrawn making him an independent, Tory Senedd leader Darren Millar has said. Millar said he did so on Tuesday morning "after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the party in spite of his personal assurances on Friday that he had rejected an approach they initiated last week".
