This paper reviews the Labour Party's reaction to developments in the civil service in the 1980s and 1990s under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and discusses Labour's own plans for Whitehall and the experience of the first five to six months of the new Blair government. It focuses on relations between Labour ministers and the mandarins (including problems of the ‘transition’), the party's plans for freedom of information and better accountability, and Labour thinking on agencies, ‘charterism’, market-testing and contracting-out. The paper concludes that Labour cannot afford to halt the ‘management revolution’.
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