A few weeks ago, commenting on the recession, Alistair Darling said: ‘One of the biggest mistakes is that we didn’t have a system capable of recognising where problems were beginning to arise.’ The chancellor’s comments echo John Reid’s complaint to the Commons home affairs select committee in 2006 – that the civil service is not ‘fit for purpose’.

Many political commentators were shocked by the former home secretary’s assertion. It is unusual for a minister to talk about what goes on behind the Whitehall net curtains. It is unusual for anyone to talk about it. For politicians – and the media – it is too often seen as a boring subject. They prefer instead to talk about ‘policy’ and ‘delivery’.

In a new cross-party report, Fit for Purpose, published by the thinktank Reform, my co-authors and I argue that the recession means that now is the very time that the performance failures in the machinery of government must be tackled. In such times, it becomes all the more galling to voters when ministers pull on the levers but nothing happens. The civil service’s own capability reviews – initiated by cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell in 2005 – are evidence of the failings. They point to taxpayer money wasted by reinventing the wheel, poor project management and delivery and lack of accountability. Recently, the communities and local government select committee declared that it had seen no sustained evidence that the Department for Communities and Local Government possesses the full range of skills required for the effective formulation and delivery of the policies for which it is responsible.

Most voters assume that ministers have a far greater role in ‘delivering’ services than they actually have. In consequence, it is politicians who are soaking up a great deal of the public’s anger for such shortcomings. Politicians must change the system so that it responds to them. It is only they that can – and if they cannot, then voters will continue to desert the polling booths and people will look to other ways to make themselves heard. And voters will question the effectiveness of the salaries they pay for ministers and, ultimately, for officials too.

Public services need to be more effective at delivering what the public wants and needs. It is by sustaining public confidence in their effectiveness that they justify the benefits of collective provision and the extra investment that is often needed to provide the quality of service that people want. The complacency and waste that does exist serves only to provide a pretext for those who would scrap collective public services in favour of an ‘I’m all right Jack’ opt-out.

In our research we have interviewed excellent civil servants who embody what a real ‘public service ethos’ might be. They want to do their best for the public. But they do this despite the structure of Whitehall, not because of it.

The evidence in the capability reviews show that civil service reform is not some optional luxury that only an incoming first-term government should contemplate, but an essential underpinning to sustaining a renewed and election-winning fourth-term Labour government.

Action is needed to build a more effective civil service, through recruiting openly and meritocratically for all posts. The current centralised grades-based recruitment system is a barrier to the best people being recruited to do the jobs that are needed. Discrimination of ‘internal’ over ‘external’ candidates should be abolished and line managers empowered to recruit their teams.

Civil servants at all levels need to be empowered to get on with the job, with clear lines of responsibility, accountability and the resolution of conflicting priorities. And they must be democratically accountable. It is difficult to see how this can be achieved without ending the doctrine of ministerial responsibility which shields officials from taking personal responsibility for their actions, and draws ministers into the process of delivery. And without giving democratically elected politicians the power to appoint top civil servants (with greater scrutiny of appointment by parliament and the National Audit Office). These are nettles that need to be grasped if government is to make progress on social mobility, public services and economic performance.