Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we'll look at the government's plans to reshape and rewire how the state operates.

After Keir Stahmer gave a speech announcing the scrapping of NHS England,

as the first step on the way to fundamentally altering the culture and performance of the civil service. So we're asking what this all means for staff numbers in Whitehall,

with the headcount currently at the highest it's ever been, what input this will have on the delivery

of public services, and how briefings about so-called Project Chainsaw have gone down with

mandarins. With me to discuss all that, I'm delighted to be joined by Max Blaine, who was the official

spokesperson for three prime ministers, and it's now director at the global advisory

firm Portland, as well as Hannah Keenan, Associate Director at the Think Tank, the Institute

for Government, and also Susanna Bretnell, co-editor at our CIS publication, Civil Service

World.

So I'll start with you, Susanne.

Just talk us through at that speech up in Hull,

what the Prime Minister announced

and what the kind of broader issues

that he's trying to achieve are.

So in terms of our central beat civil service,

actually very little was announced,

which we think a bit of a missed opportunity, really,

in terms of we'd seen a lot of pitch rolling Pat McFadden over the weekend and briefings around,

this was going to be his big moment for setting out his vision on reform.

And actually what we saw, it's big news in itself.

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