Successive governments have failed in their attempts to reform the civil service. The reason the Coalition, just like New Labour before it, has struggled to deliver real reform is a reluctance to appreciate the scale of the problem it faces and an unwillingness to acknowledge that some of the answers might lie outside the Government. Britain is at a crossroads. The decisions taken by the next Government will determine the welfare of its citizens and its place in the world for decades to come. To make the right choices, national leaders must be supported by a system of governance designed for the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth, including:

• A Parliament properly able to scrutinise legislation and hold the executive to account.
• A government freed from silo thinking, led by fewer ministers with clearer objectives
• A Civil Service with the flexibility, capability, confidence and mindset to take risks, embrace innovation, and deliver much more for much less.