The previous Government organised its programme around five “missions” — economic growth, clean energy, NHS reform, safer streets, and opportunity — set out in the 2024 manifesto and translated into numbered milestones in the December 2024 Plan for Change. To drive them, it established mission boards, inter-ministerial groups nominally chaired by the lead Secretary of State for each mission, alongside a Mission Delivery Unit in the Cabinet Office. Eighteen months on, the Institute for Government’s Whitehall Monitor 2026 records the Government’s own assessment that the boards “were not serving the delivery role that had been originally envisaged”, and that how they, the Delivery Unit, and newer Cabinet committees relate to one another “remains unclear”. The Institute’s own analysis goes further: it found “little evidence that the missions have truly gripped Whitehall”.
This is not a new problem for British government to face. The closest historical precedent, Tony Blair’s Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, concentrated attention on a small number of hard-edged targets with regular, PM-chaired stocktakes, and is widely credited with measurable results, though its returns diminished within a few years and it was wound down. The current architecture tracks a considerably broader set of milestones through a more diffuse structure, a difference that may itself help explain the grip problem Whitehall Monitor 2026 identifies.
The Prime Minister inherited this machinery rather than designing it, at the same moment his own devolution agenda is moving delivery accountability for related policy areas — growth, housing, skills — toward mayoral Strategic Authorities rather than Whitehall. This submission sets out four responses: retaining the current architecture as it beds in further; reviving a tighter, more centrally-gripped delivery-unit model on the Blair precedent; devolving mission delivery accountability to Strategic Authorities where the policy content allows; or resetting the missions and their governance together under the new Prime Minister’s own priorities. The choice engages both a machinery question and a more basic one — whether the missions, as currently defined, remain this Government’s own.
Ministerial submission
To: The Prime Minister
Issue
- The mission board and Mission Delivery Unit architecture established in 2024 to drive delivery of the Government’s headline priorities has, on the Government’s own published assessment, not performed the role originally envisaged, and its relationship to the wider Cabinet committee system remains unclear. This submission concerns whether, and how, that machinery should now be reformed.
Background
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The 2024 manifesto set out five missions — the highest sustained growth in the G7, a clean energy superpower with zero-carbon electricity by 2030, reform of the NHS, safer streets through additional neighbourhood policing, and breaking down barriers to opportunity in childcare, schools, and further education — translated into specific, numbered targets in the Plan for Change published in December 2024. Mission boards, inter-ministerial groups chaired by the lead Secretary of State for each mission, were established to drive delivery, supported by a Mission Delivery Unit in the Cabinet Office.
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This is not the first time a British government has organised itself around a small number of centrally tracked priorities. Tony Blair’s Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, established in 2001 under Michael Barber, tracked a deliberately small number of hard-edged, quantified targets across a handful of public services, with regular stocktake meetings chaired by the Prime Minister personally; it is widely credited with measurable improvement against those targets, though its returns diminished as the more tractable gains were captured, and it was wound down within the decade. The current mission architecture tracks a considerably broader range of milestones through a more diffuse structure of five separate boards, a design difference from the earlier precedent worth noting before considering how to reform what exists now.
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The Institute for Government’s Whitehall Monitor 2026 records that the Government itself has recognised the mission boards “were not serving the delivery role that had been originally envisaged”, and that their role, and how they relate to the Mission Delivery Unit and newer Cabinet committees, “remains unclear”. The Institute’s own assessment is that there is “little evidence that the missions have truly gripped Whitehall”, and separately notes that continuing civil service pay erosion, turnover, and morale problems compound the governance question: better-designed machinery is unlikely to succeed if the underlying capacity to deliver against it is also constrained, though workforce reform of that kind is a separate question from the one addressed in this submission.
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Since the mission architecture was designed, a parallel development has changed the wider context in which it operates. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, discussed in the companion submission on fast-track consenting, established Strategic Authorities, including directly elected mayors, with growing responsibility for strategic planning, some fiscal powers, and local skills and labour-market functions directly relevant to the growth and opportunity missions specifically. Mission governance and the devolution agenda have so far developed on separate tracks.
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You have not yet been asked to take a position on the future of the mission architecture specifically. You inherited it rather than designed it, and your own programme has been publicly framed around devolution — moving delivery levers toward Strategic Authorities and mayors — in a way that sits in some tension with a model of delivery accountability run centrally through Whitehall boards and a Cabinet Office unit. Officials should treat the question of whether the current missions remain the organising framework of your Government, addressed to Cabinet colleagues separately, as logically prior to the machinery question addressed in this submission, though the two may be decided together.
The General Case
- The case for reforming the mission governance architecture now rests on three grounds:
- (a) the Government’s own assessment, recorded in Whitehall Monitor 2026, is that the boards are not performing their intended function and that basic questions of institutional relationship remain unresolved eighteen months after their creation, a diagnosis of design rather than early implementation;
- (b) the mismatch between a centrally-gripped mission architecture and the Prime Minister’s own devolution agenda is likely to become more visible, not less, as Strategic Authorities acquire further powers directly relevant to specific missions;
- (c) a change of Prime Minister is a natural and low-cost moment to reset machinery inherited from a predecessor, before departments have invested a further set of planning cycles in the current structure.
- The case against rests on three grounds:
- (a) the architecture is barely eighteen months old, and the diagnosis that its roles are “unclear” may point to a clarification exercise — sharper terms of reference, a clearer statement of how boards, the Delivery Unit, and Cabinet committees relate — rather than to wholesale redesign;
- (b) machinery-of-government change carries genuine transition cost in official time and departmental attention, particularly if compounded with other recent changes to the centre of government, including the devolution-strategy function’s move to a dedicated unit under the First Secretary of State;
- (c) reforming the machinery before the substantive priorities it serves have themselves been confirmed or reset risks having to redesign it again shortly afterwards, an argument for sequencing rather than for inaction as such.
Options
Option A: Retain the current mission board and Mission Delivery Unit architecture
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Under this option, no structural change is made. Mission boards continue to be chaired by the lead Secretary of State for each mission, supported by the Mission Delivery Unit, with officials asked to produce clearer terms of reference setting out the relationship between boards, the Delivery Unit, and Cabinet committees.
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For:
- (a) avoids compounding the disruption already under way elsewhere at the centre of government, including the move of the devolution-strategy function to a dedicated unit under the First Secretary of State;
- (b) the Whitehall Monitor 2026 diagnosis concerns unclear roles and relationships, which a clarification exercise may resolve without the cost of a structural rebuild;
- (c) preserves the Prime Minister’s ability to reset substantive mission priorities separately, without having simultaneously to re-engineer the machinery that would deliver whatever priorities are eventually confirmed.
- Against:
- (a) eighteen months without resolving basic questions of institutional relationship is, on the Government’s own account, evidence of a structural rather than merely an early-implementation problem, which a further clarification exercise may not be sufficient to fix;
- (b) leaves unresolved the tension identified at paragraph 7(b) between the current centrally-run model and the Prime Minister’s own devolution agenda;
- (c) risks the mission framework losing credibility through drift rather than through a deliberate decision either to reform or to replace it, the least accountable way for change, or continued failure, to occur.
Option B: A tighter, centrally-gripped delivery unit on the Blair precedent
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Under this option, the number of closely tracked priorities would be reduced to a small set of hard-edged, quantified targets, narrower than the current Plan for Change milestones; the Mission Delivery Unit’s reporting line would run directly to the Prime Minister rather than being distributed across five boards each chaired by a different Secretary of State; and regular Prime Minister-chaired stocktake meetings would be reinstated on the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit model, possibly run out of “Number 10 North” as commented-upon.
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For:
- (a) the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit model has the strongest track record of any UK central-delivery mechanism, and concentrating attention on fewer targets directly addresses the “little evidence the missions have truly gripped Whitehall” finding by narrowing rather than diffusing focus;
- (b) a single reporting line to the Prime Minister resolves the institutional-relationship ambiguity identified at paragraph 4 more directly than a clarification exercise under Option A;
- (c) a smaller number of targets is more tractable for genuine, regular stocktaking at Prime Ministerial level than the current, broader milestone set.
- Against:
- (a) narrowing the tracked priority set requires dropping some current mission content from close central monitoring, a politically sensitive choice about what the Government is, and is not, prepared to be judged on;
- (b) recentralises delivery oversight at the exact moment the Prime Minister’s own agenda elsewhere seeks to loosen central grip in favour of Strategic Authorities and mayors, an internal tension considered further under Option C;
- (c) the original Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit’s returns diminished within a few years as the most tractable gains were captured and it was subsequently wound down; the recurrence of similar delivery units under most governments since suggests this may be a familiar and time-limited cycle rather than a durable fix.
Option C: Devolve mission delivery accountability where the policy content allows
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Under this option, missions with a strong sub-national delivery component — growth and opportunity in particular — would route delivery accountability through Strategic Authorities and mayors under the framework established by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026, rather than through a Whitehall mission board; missions that are inherently national or reserved, such as clean energy, would retain centrally-led boards.
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For:
- (a) aligns mission governance with the Prime Minister’s own stated devolution priorities, rather than leaving mission delivery as one of the few remaining centrally-gripped functions in an otherwise devolving system;
- (b) Strategic Authorities and mayors already hold levers directly relevant to growth and opportunity specifically — strategic planning, some fiscal powers, local skills functions — potentially closing the gap between national target-setting and the institutions that hold delivery levers on the ground;
- (c) distributes delivery accountability to bodies with their own direct local electoral mandate, rather than concentrating it, as Option B would, in a Whitehall unit further removed from delivery.
- Against:
- (a) this is a further instance of the devolution-versus-local-democracy problem set out in the structural-problems digest: coverage of England by mayoral Strategic Authorities remains partial, so devolved mission accountability would be uneven across the country in the near term, depending on whether a given area has an established mayoral authority;
- (b) national mission targets do not decompose cleanly into devolved components, and specifying which parts of each mission genuinely belong to Strategic Authorities and which remain reserved to Whitehall would itself be a substantial design exercise;
- (c) diffuses delivery grip in the opposite direction from Option B: a Prime Minister publicly committed to ending political instability through demonstrated delivery would be handing away some of the direct levers by which his own government’s success will most visibly be judged.
Option D: Reset the missions and their governance together
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Under this option, the 2024 missions and Plan for Change milestones would be formally replaced with a new set of priorities reflecting the Prime Minister’s own programme, and a corresponding governance model — which could itself draw on elements of Option B or C — would be designed from first principles rather than inherited from the previous Government by default.
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For:
- (a) gives the Prime Minister ownership of the priorities against which his own Government will be judged, rather than continuing to be assessed against a predecessor’s framework inherited by circumstance;
- (b) an explicit, public reset is a more accountable way of changing direction than the drift identified as a risk of Option A;
- (c) allows the governance question and the substantive-priorities question to be settled together, avoiding the risk under Options B or C of redesigning machinery to serve missions that may not survive a change of Prime Minister in any case.
- Against:
- (a) carries the highest presentational and administrative cost of the four options, effectively unwinding eighteen months of departmental planning, targets, and reporting built around the existing missions;
- (b) risks reinforcing a perception of policy discontinuity between successive Prime Ministers at the exact moment the Prime Minister has framed his premiership around ending instability, even where substantive continuity on specific commitments, such as NHS reform or neighbourhood policing, is intended;
- (c) until the substantive priorities are settled, a decision for Cabinet rather than for this submission, no governance design considered here can be finalised, meaning this option defers rather than directly answers the immediate machinery question.
Resource and Cost Implications
- None of the options carries substantial direct financial cost; the resource implications are principally of official time and the opportunity cost of departmental attention during any transition. Option A requires the least immediate resource, limited to producing clearer terms of reference. Option B requires the establishment of a smaller, more senior delivery function reporting to the Prime Minister, similar in scale to the original Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. Option C requires new coordination capacity between the Cabinet Office and Strategic Authorities, including agreement of reporting arrangements with each participating mayor. Option D carries the highest transitional cost of the four, requiring departments to re-plan against a new set of priorities and a new governance structure simultaneously.
Legal and Constitutional Considerations
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Machinery of government of this kind — the creation, alteration, or abolition of mission boards, delivery units, and Cabinet committees — is entirely within the Prime Minister’s prerogative and requires no legislation or Standing Order under any of the four options, a contrast with the companion submissions on Hybrid Bill procedure and prime ministerial succession, both of which engage the House’s own Standing Orders. Option C does not require new legislation either: it concerns how the Government chooses to route its own internal accountability, not the Strategic Authorities’ statutory powers, though it would require formal agreements with each participating mayor, who is a separately and locally elected office-holder not subject to Whitehall direction.
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Several of the missions concern wholly or partly devolved matters: the NHS, education, and policing are devolved in Scotland, and largely devolved in Wales, while remaining more mixed in Northern Ireland. Mission boards as currently constituted are, in substance, England-focused or Great Britain-wide framing devices for policy that is not uniformly reserved, a point the current architecture does not always make explicit. None of the options in this submission alters the devolution settlement itself, but officials should ensure that whichever option is preferred states clearly that mission governance addresses the England-applicable and reserved elements of each mission, and does not purport to direct devolved delivery in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland.
Requested direction
- The Prime Minister is invited to indicate whether the current mission board and Mission Delivery Unit architecture should be retained, with clearer terms of reference (Option A); whether it should be replaced with a smaller, more centrally-gripped delivery unit on the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit model (Option B); whether delivery accountability for missions with a strong sub-national component should be devolved to Strategic Authorities and mayors (Option C); or whether the missions and their governance should be reset together to reflect his own programme (Option D); and, given the logical connection between this question and the substantive future of the missions themselves, whether that connection should be resolved in Cabinet before a final machinery decision is taken.