MICHAEL GOVE has announced plans for “reform” that look designed to give favoured corporations and Tory insiders more control of the supposedly independent Civil Service.

He wants to turn government into “Gove-rnment,” a system that hands over public services to his mates, so they can make a profit at our expense.

Gove pushed the plans at a conference arranged by a former Tory MP’s personal think tank. The event was funded by a former Tory adviser’s company, one that tries to win public-sector contracts for corporations — which rather gives the game away about what is being planned here.

In his speech Gove claimed the Covid-19 pandemic showed the government needed reform. But he didn’t say it showed the government struggled to contain the crisis because it relied too much on crony companies after they had starved or ignored the public sector. Quite the opposite.

Instead of worrying about the weakness of the public sector, Gove wants to give more influence to the private sector, to say the pandemic shows we need more “willingness to draft in outsiders” — meaning Tory-linked businesspeople.

Gove was launching a Declaration on Government Reform that has three ways of increasing Tory-friendly corporate influence on government.

More corporate executives will be brought in to run the Civil Service, civil servants will be sent out to work for corporations and the Tory-friendly businesspeople serving as “non-executive directors” will get more power.

The “reform” is based on the idea that government should “procure” — meaning buy — services, instead of building up public institutions like the National Health Service, or state schools, or the welfare state. The government will pay private corporations to do the job.

Gove wants to increase the amount of government work outsourced to privatisers.

His declaration says: “We will operate more seamlessly with institutions outside government, building partnerships with the wider public sector, private sector and community organisations to secure the best outcomes for citizens.”

The Tories typically make noises about involving “community organisations” in the state, but it’s the private sector — especially the growing number of outsourcing specialists like Serco, Mitie, Amey, G4S and Capita — that get the big contracts.

To increase this outsourcing, Gove plans to “reform” the central Civil Service by further commercialising and politicising it.

Firstly, Gove will recruit more top civil servants directly from industry for short periods, where they will naturally outsource more work to corporations, before they return to the businesses who profit from the process.

Secondly, Gove wants existing civil servants to spend time working for private corporations, so they become more in tune with their suppliers.

Gove says: “It should be natural for people with careers and skills from business to serve in government for a period and for those in public service to spend time in organisations which are not dependent on public money.”

This is so Gove can “bolster dialogue between leaders from all sectors to make sure we are spotting and tackling problems together and explore new forms of collaboration in service delivery.”

Which is a fancy way of saying everybody should think like the bosses of privatisation corporations and try find new slices of the public sector to hand over to Serco et al.

There are already schemes for corporate executives to have “secondments” in the Civil Service and for civil servants to spend time working for private firms.

But Gove wants to extend this to the top jobs, to “open all senior appointments to public competition by default” and to make it possible for business executives to serve a “shorter tour of duty” in the Civil Service before returning to private corporations.

Gove’s third idea is more power for the “non-executive directors” of Civil Service departments.

These are part-time directors appointed to the boards overseeing departments: they are political appointees, chosen by ministers and are very often politically linked businesspeople.

Gove says the government will “implement consistent non-executive director challenge of departmental performance, under the leadership of the government’s lead non-executive director.”

This means giving these politically linked “non-executives” more power over Civil Service decision-making and organisation.

The real lesson of Covid-19 procurement is that bringing politically connected people into the Civil Service — like putting Tory businesswoman Dido Harding in charge — just leads to more wasteful privatisation.

Gove’s reforms will give Tory-linked businesspeople more power over the Civil Service and increase the outsourcing of state functions to politically favoured corporations.

Gove gave his speech on “reforming government in the shadow of Covid-19” at a June event organised by the Commission for Smart Government. This is run by the Project for Modern Democracy, which sounds very grand, but is really just the personal think tank set up by former Tory MP Nick Herbert.

“Modern democracy,” it turns out, means ministers discussing Civil Service “reform” at an organisation set up by their Tory mates.

The event was sponsored — meaning funded — by a company called Public, which generally funds the Commission for Smart Government.

Public was set up by Daniel Korski, a former special adviser to David Cameron. Korski’s firm makes money by advising tech companies how to win government contracts — what it calls “govtech.”

Korski’s firm typically asks for shares in companies that want to win government contracts in return for a six-month programme of the “tailored support, strategy and networks they need to succeed.”

The firm says that Korski has “20 years of experience in senior positions in government” and “was most recently deputy head of policy at No 10 Downing Street,” which presumably gives him access to the “networks” which help firms win contracts.

Public also charges corporations to take part in conferences and seminars where they can meet top government officials, events which “bring together public and private sectors to break down the barriers to digital transformation.”

So Gove gave his speech on transforming the Civil Service at an event funded by a former Tory insider’s firm — a firm that tries to win more privatisation contracts.

It couldn’t be clearer that these “reforms” are meant to promote the further privatisation of public services, favouring politically connected firms.