Hilary ordered the pie, I ordered the Institute for Government, and only one of us was satisfied.
BRIGHTON, England (The London Prat) – I took the train down to meet Hilary for lunch, a woman who spent thirty-one years in a government department she still declines to name, and who now lives on the coast and reviews the pies. We chose a pub on a side street where the menu is chalked on a board and the board is wrong. I arrived with a folder of announcements. She arrived with an appetite. Between us we managed a three-course analysis of the week in government, which I now give in the order it came.
Starter: The Leaver Figures
Hilary ordered the soup and asked me what I was reading. I said the Institute for Government, which she greeted the way other people greet a dentist. Its comment on John Healey’s civil service targets says that at the last spending review Rachel Reeves set a goal of cutting departmental administration budgets by 16 per cent by 2029/30, implying 29,000 to 40,000 fewer civil servants. Healey, now Chancellor, has raised it to 20 per cent.
The civil service currently has 523,185 people in it. The authors note that about 37,945 left in 2025/26, down from 38,610 the year before, the third year running of falling exits, and that in one quarter this year the whole service shrank by 450. They say it is too early to call that a trend, which is a nice way of saying that the Chancellor’s target currently looks like a speech.
Hilary put her spoon down. “People do not leave,” she said, “when you tell them you want them to leave.” I found this the most useful sentence of the day, and it was free.
Main Course: Winter, Urgently
With the pie came the NHS. The government’s own announcement promises almost 140 million pounds for 14 new urgent care schemes in England, including urgent treatment centres, same day emergency care and ambulance fleets, with the largest sums going to Queen’s Hospital in Romford at 42.1 million pounds, a new urgent treatment centre at the James Paget in Gorleston at 10 million, and a 12 million pound ambulance hub in Shrewsbury. It says 25 new or expanded urgent care sites announced in April are due to open for winter, and that over 7.4 million flu vaccinations had already been delivered.
I want to be fair, because it is the kind of announcement that is easy to make fun of and hard to fault. It is concrete. It names places. It has a figure beside each one, which is more than can be said for most things I read. The release is also candid that the winter will be more challenging, and I am quite willing to give a government credit for telling its citizens to put on a coat.
Hilary’s response was to ask whether the sites would be open “for winter” in the sense that winter had begun or in the sense that it had finished. Neither of us knew.
A Side Order of Fire
The wildfire announcements arrived with the pudding menu. According to the official release on wildfires, RAF Chinook helicopters and A400M aircraft will be fitted to fight fires, the Ministry of Defence will develop a permanent UK-based aerial firefighting capability for the first time, and up to 45 million pounds will go to specialist wildfire teams and lighter kit. There is 25 million for peatland restoration, with the grant scheme expected to run from April 2027 to April 2029, and England is to have its first Wildfire Action Plan. This was the hottest summer on record, and the Met Office found climate change made the extreme heat around 130 times more likely.
I record, without irony, that this is a sensible package. It acknowledges a problem that has happened, and it spends money on the thing which will have to be done. The Prime Minister said “heroes shouldn’t have to fight with one hand tied behind their backs”, and I could not find the sentence’s fault.
I can only note that the same press release mentions a Wildfires AI Unit in COBR’s National Situation Centre and a summit attended by, among others, Airbus, Google and VodafoneThree. I have attended summits. They are what you do after you have already had the idea.
Pudding: The Transformation Fund
This brought us back to the Institute for Government, which points out that the Budget says the civil service savings will fund a 50 million pound “transformation fund” run by GovAI to expand the use of artificial intelligence in Whitehall. The authors argue that the money is tied to savings that are not yet secured, and that GovAI should focus on departmental outcomes rather than technology first.
I was reminded, with a sudden warmth, of a report about motivational quotes with a sense of humor replacing the posters in feed stores. A Whitehall corridor, I realised, has no such posters. It should. “Transformation is a destination you reach by cutting the people who are meant to travel there.” Hilary suggested a better one: “Please do not press the button marked efficiency.” We agreed to print it, and perhaps to frame it.
The Bill
The bill came to a figure that was, I admit, unrelated to any of the above, and Hilary insisted on splitting it, which was the only genuine efficiency saving of the afternoon. I walked her to the front, and we stood a minute looking at a grey sea that had not been told about any summit.
On the train back I made a list of what I believe about the week, in order of confidence. The urgent care money is real. The wildfire plan is sensible. The civil service target is unproven. The AI unit is a promise. If you would like a less respectful treatment of the same material, there is the British Onion, and a page on Cockney rhyming slang to take the sting out of a long week.
There is, as ever, more of my daily notes at The London Prat, where nobody has yet been asked to take voluntary exit.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
