“The metaphors of delivery are misleading. Policies aren’t the same as parcels. Competent public services are full of people with their own knowledge and ideas who aren’t willing to be reduced to being agents for leaders who know less than them”.
– Geoff Mulgan
Over the past eight months, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has been forced to navigate an almost unrelenting sequence of crises and shocks. Yet behind the daily grind of firefighting, there is a crucial long-term agenda to fulfil: achieving Labour’s five missions, championed in the “Plan for Change” launched in December.
Just as Michael Barber’s “deliverology” helped Tony Blair’s administration sharpen its focus in the early phase of public service reform, so Labour’s Five Missions provide a strategic anchor for the Starmer Administration. A key insight of the Mission-Based approach is that while traditional target-driven delivery can be a powerful tool for driving change in the public sector, the so-called deliverology approach needs to be radically updated for the 2020s and beyond. We are living through the fifth industrial revolution, marked by the rise of AI, automation, and big data, each capable of shifting how governments track the implementation of key policies and programmes. Rather than the quarterly box-ticking exercise long favoured by government delivery units, real-time data dashboards and “adaptive” feedback loops will allow faster corrections and deeper collaboration across departments, as long as the Whitehall culture changes too. That relies on full engagement of frontline practitioners rather than delivery strategy being determined by a narrow cadre of decision-makers at the centre.
So far, Starmer has signalled he recognises the need for a new approach. His No 10 Mission Delivery Unit, led by Clara Swinson together with the newly installed Policy Unit Director, Olaf Henricson-Bell, is trialling AI-driven analytics to tackle the NHS backlog challenge and oversee the expansion of breakfast clubs in primary schools. The aim is to detect blockages swiftly, whether resourcing shortfalls or poor cross-departmental coordination, moving to resolve them before problems spiral. The evidence suggests that the right combination of leadership, data and institutional culture can achieve rapid, iterative improvements.
The context facing the Government is no doubt tough: the post-election honeymoon never really happened, as Ministers grappled with the serious unrest that broke out in English towns in the summer of 2024. An attempt to define expectations about the state of the economy backfired as Ministers were accused of pursuing an overly gloomy narrative. Now, the public finances are under pressure and the difficult 2025 Spending Review looms. Chancellor Rachel Reeves must reconcile the government’s missions, often requiring upfront public sector investment, with a Treasury under intense pressure to keep spending under control due to the Government’s ‘iron-clad’ fiscal rules. Real transformation will demand both agility and adequate resourcing. If departmental budgets face heavier cuts than expected, even the best AI tools and evidence-based dashboards will have little impact if there is a lack of frontline staff and inadequate infrastructure.
We have already witnessed how political events overshadow otherwise sound plans. Brexit disruptions, continuing global shocks and Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency are creating fresh turbulence, leading to uncertainty over trade, inflation and future spending (including carrying the new burden of European defence). There is a danger that Cabinet Ministers, unsettled by a new wave of fiscal retrenchment, seek to defend their core department budgets by deprioritising cross-cutting projects – precisely the outcome the Plan for Change is supposed to avoid.
Yet, there is a lot in the new Government’s approach that is encouraging. For instance, “do-and-learn” pilots can inject insight about potential innovation, keeping delivery agile and flexible. The Cabinet Office is applying a “test-and-learn” mindset to government programmes in family support, housing, and skills. Drawing on the insight that frontline expertise needs to be fully integrated into policy development, these “crack squads” will combine policy officials, digital experts and local ‘street-level’ practitioners. Their mission: to diagnose problems quickly, experiment with solutions and scale up what works.
For example, teams in Manchester and Liverpool are working to reduce the costs of temporary accommodation. The approach is dynamic: real-time data helps local authorities track not only how many families are housed but how effectively services meet residents’ needs. If the pilot yields results, there will be fewer families stuck in emergency conditions with a better pathway into permanent housing. Such approaches infer that iterative, data-led policymaking is more responsive to local circumstances than rigid top-down targets.
Yet the Starmer Government’s success also relies on transforming the culture of Whitehall and central government. Over the last decade, Ministers too often sought to blame civil servants for policy failure and implementation blunders. But it is clear that the Civil Service often struggles with siloed structures and aversion to risk among Ministers, while the trend towards centralisation in England means that Whitehall is often trying to oversee and deliver too much from the centre. Central government needs more front-line delivery experience: it is striking that the Cabinet Office Minister, Pat McFadden, is promising to bring frontline experts, prison governors, social workers, and NHS managers into government on secondments. That could help to ensure local experience and knowledge shapes decision-making. An infusion of staff who know how to get things done should be augmented by bringing in the very best private and third sector talent identified through an open and transparent process and not an ‘old boys network’. This should help to address the skill deficit identified in bridging the gap between data-driven ambition and daily practice.
Rebuilding trust with local government is another crucial challenge. The missions cut across national, devolved and local competencies. Yet Whitehall still too frequently seeks to keep local public authorities at arm’s length. Improved linkages between the centre and local bodies are vital to sustaining technology-enabled reforms. Without it, even well-intentioned programmes risk stalling.
Finally, Ministers have to communicate their political story more effectively. Reforms will only resonate if the public recognises tangible benefits. Whether it is shorter NHS waiting times or cheaper, greener energy, voters need to see how these changes stem from Labour’s missions. If improvements remain scattered or undersold, the government risks losing credit for concrete progress.
However, pockets of “old school” delivery remain, undermining the government’s own mission-based rhetoric. Take, for instance, the new breakfast clubs policy. Frontline organisations complain that the Department for Education’s (DfE) approach has descended into a rigid set of directives that dictate staff numbers, operational hours and even meal formats. Rather than encouraging local experimentation and trusting schools to tailor solutions for their own communities, the department appears to be imposing top-down rules reminiscent of the very “command-and-control” methods the government promised to reject. This discrepancy highlights how easy it is for Whitehall to revert to static performance management, even when official policy trumpets agility and innovation. To be truly mission-led, government has to focus on minimising the rules and regulations that impact on the frontline.
Labour’s five missions are meant to transform Britain after years of upheaval. Yet Starmer’s team must navigate a tight fiscal settlement, external shocks and the inevitable inertia of big institutions. If they manage to combine effective resource allocation, agile “test-and-learn” pilots, an inclusive leadership approach and a sharpened public message informed by politics, they could demonstrate that missions, backed by updated “deliverology” methods, can reshape the country delivering lasting, tangible outcomes that restore faith in government and improve the lives of citizens.
