Helen MacNamara, the former senior civil servant, has been named as the new chair of the Future Governance Forum, the New Statesman can reveal. MacNamara, who served for decades in Whitehall including as deputy cabinet secretary, will formally join the think tank, which has close links to No 10, next month.
“If I’m totally honest, I did not have chairing a think tank on my bingo card of things that I would ever find myself doing in life,” said MacNamara in an interview with the NS. But she praised the FGF as an institution that was “fascinated by the ‘how’ of government, which is what I really care about”.
MacNamara, who also served as director general for propriety and ethics (succeeding No 10 chief of staff Sue Gray in this role), added: “The other thing I feel quite strongly about, having left it all behind me, is that nobody really thinks the systems and the way we govern our country work well for the public. I have yet to find a politician who thinks that they do.
“You’ve then got two choices: you can accept that and say ‘well these guys are the baddies and we’re the goodies and it’s going to be different because it’s us’. Or you can take a chance to start to think about how you actually make change happen.”
The FGF was founded last November by Nathan Yeowell, the former director of Progressive Britain and former co-director of Labour to Win, as an independent think tank focused on good governance. Its recent paper on “Infrastructure Investment Partnerships” – a new form of private-public collaboration – is being studied closely by senior civil servants and it has also published research on mission-driven government, devolution and power transitions.
“I am an unashamed enthusiast for mission-driven government,” said MacNamara of the approach championed by the economist Mariana Mazzucato and embraced by Keir Starmer. “What you won’t find from me is this ‘this is just joined-up working across government’. They [the missions] are a really great idea. I think it’s really hard to make the state work from an outcome backwards, but there’s nothing more fulfilling, interesting and important.”
MacNamara, who criticised “an absence of humanity” in Boris Johnson’s government during her evidence to the Covid inquiry in November 2023 praised mission-led government as “a much more human way of thinking about government, it’s how we make sure that ordinary life is better for people”.
The government’s five missions include achieving the highest sustained per capita growth in the G7, delivering clean power by 2030, halving serious violence crime, reforming childcare and education to break the “class ceiling” and building an NHS “fit for the future”.
MacNamara cited her experience preparing for the 2012 Olympic Games alongside the late Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell. “The model of the Olympic Games is a really good example of how you take an outcome and drive a massive collective effort to do a whole range of things but with one focus. The Olympics was delivered by national government, local government, the charitable sector, volunteers and business, it was a huge partnership. If you can get everyone lined up in the right direction working collectively for a shared purpose and endeavour you really can change the world.”
Asked whether she believed the Treasury wielded too much power in Whitehall, MacNamara replied: “We’ve had recent experience of people not paying attention to the Treasury’s professional job and that did not go very well.”
But she added: “You do have to think about the way in which investment decisions are made. I have long thought that you need to look at things like the Green Book [the Treasury guidance on government projects], which is the algorithm of the government, the thing that’s underneath the wiring that you don’t really see. How do you make sure that the spending decisions the government makes are about the most impact rather than the way in which things have always been done?”
MacNamara would not be drawn on the ongoing controversy over government special adviser pay and the speculation around Gray’s future inside Downing Street. After leaving the civil service in 2021, MacNamara worked for two years as chief policy and corporate affairs officer at the Premier League before standing down to focus on her Covid inquiry witness statement.
The FGF said: “As our new chair, Helen brings decades of experience of what works (and what doesn’t), a wide-ranging network and an unshakeable dedication to public service and the importance of getting things right.”
[See also: Rachel Reeves casts herself as the anti-Osborne]
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