Labour apes ex-Tory aide Dom Cummings’ plan to recruit ‘weirdos and misfits’ into reformed Civil Service as minister Pat McFadden tells ‘innovators and disrupters’ that ‘Britain needs you’_Nhy
Labour today echoed a plan by a former Tory aide to Boris Johnson to bring ‘weirdos and misfits’ into the Civil Service as it seeks to reform Whitehall.
Pat McFadden namechecked a 2020 plan by former No10 chief of staff Dominic Cumming to recruit into Downing Street from outside the usual gene pool of Oxford and Cambridge graduates.
In a speech in east London today the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster outlined plans to reboot the Civil Service, including asking tech whizzkids to do a year-long tour of duty in the public sector to share their working practices.
Mr McFadden ‘You might remember a few years ago, there was a call for weirdos and misfits in the system.
‘Well, whatever term you want to use, we do want innovators and disrupters and original thinkers.
‘My message to creative thinkers is this is your chance to serve your country, use your brain power, your technological talents, to fix some of the biggest problems we face today.
‘Britain needs you, and if you choose to serve I want government to empower you to help us deliver, to move fast and build things.’
However, the decision to namecheck Mr Cummings plan may attract controversy – he left government after a string of controversies including breaking Lockdown rules.
And one of his hires was forced to quit over social media posts including discussing forced contraception of the ‘underclass’.
Pat McFadden namechecked a 2020 plan by former No10 chief of staff Dominic Cumming to recruit into Downing Street from the usual gene pool of underperforming Oxford and Cambridge graduates.
However, the decision to namecheck Mr Cummings plan may attract controversy – he left government after a string of controversies and one of his hires was forced to quit over social media posts including discussing forced contraception of the ‘underclass’.
In January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic hit, Mr Cummings used a blogpost to unveil plans to shake up recruitment to No 10, adding: ‘We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole.’
He said that ‘confident public school bluffers’ need not apply – and warned that those who failed to make the grade would be ‘binned’ within weeks.
He later claimed more than 35,000 self-styled ‘weirdos’ and ‘misfits’ applied.
However the next month adviser Andrew Sabisky was forced to resign over past comments in which he talked about forced contraception of the ‘underclass’ and suggested black people had lower IQs.
Other historic posts surfaced in which Mr Sabisky, then aged 27, apparently advised a woman that her boyfriend liking pornography about incest, paedophilia and rape was not ‘all that much to worry about’.
According to Reddit posts unearthed by The National, Mr Sabisky also said he had ‘a thing for incest erotica myself despite never having had those fantasies relating to my actual family’.
The following July a second advisor, Will O’Shea, then 57, who was a data architecture and governance specialist in the Cabinet Office, was sacked after saying police should use ‘live rounds’ on Black Lives Matter protesters.
Mr McFadden said today that ‘world-class technologists’ could come into central government for ‘a six or a 12-month tour of duty and use their digital and data experience to help us tackle a number of challenges’ through a Number 10 fellows programme.
He had earlier said the Civil Service needs to take tech tips from the likes of Sportify, WhatsApp and Airbnb.
He said reform of the state is ‘essential’ and suggested the Government could learn from the ‘creativity’ of start-ups.
It is likely to be seen as another shot across the bows of civil servants, with ministers growing increasingly frustrated in public at poor performance in Whitehall.
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer came under fire after he said ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’. And Rachel Reeves will this week launch a crackdown on wasteful departmental spending.
Asked about his plans before the speech, Mr McFadden told Times Radio: ‘What I’m talking about today is reform of the state, and I think reform of the state is essential.
‘We all depend on the state for lots of different services, but in some ways it does things in the same way as it’s done for a long time and we’re in a world where things have changed very rapidly in the private sphere.
‘I’m talking today in my speech about businesses that didn’t exist maybe 15 or 20 years ago, like Airbnb or Spotify or WhatsApp, and they’ve completely changed the way that we think about travel or the way that we consume music, and so on.
Andrew Sabisky was forced to resign over past comments in which he talked about forced contraception of the ‘underclass’ and suggested black people had lower IQs.
People will be asked to put their skills to use to tackle challenges such as criminal justice or healthcare reform and the Government’s five missions
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer came under fire after he said ‘too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’. And Rachel Reeves will this week launch a crackdown on wasteful departmental spending
The minister will also launch a £100 million ‘innovation fund’ to underpin his plans, which will be used to deploy ‘test and learn teams’ in public services around the country.
The test and learn approach is used across the business world, and allows new ideas to be tried out on a small scale to see their impact before being rolled out more widely if they are successful.
Under the plans, the test and learn teams will be set a challenge, and allowed to experiment and try new things to meet it.
Mr McFadden compared these reforms with what he will describe as the ‘pointless distractions’ and ‘headline grabbing gimmicks’ of the previous government.
Two projects on family support and temporary accommodation will be the first outing for the test and learn approach.
These will begin in January 2025, with teams deployed in Manchester, Sheffield, Essex and Liverpool.
While Mr McFadden acknowledged ‘each of these projects is small’, he said ‘they could rewire the state one test at a time’.
