NewIn Conversation with Mike Driver CB: Value for Money at the Heart of Decision Making

With the Spending Review 2025 underway, there is much talk of “Value for Money”, “reducing waste” and keeping spending “under control”. But what does this mean in practice for Civil Servants working to deliver departmental budgets and priorities? How do they make decisions covering essential public services such as the NHS, schools and transport, and how are decisions made to drive the Government’s wider macroeconomic priorities such as economic growth?

In our first In Conversation event of 2025, Director of International Partnerships Jonathan Pearse will meet former Head of the Government Finance Function Mike Driver to discuss his experience of delivering value for money at the heart of decision-making. 

Mike joined the Department of Health & Social Security in 1979 straight from school and spent his first 6 years in the Civil Service delivering services to customers. He then moved into regional management and thereafter fulfilled a range of policy and finance roles. He is a CIPFA qualified accountant, and has held a variety of FD roles, both corporate and operational. He was promoted to Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at the Department for Work & Pensions in 2012. From 1 April 2016, he was appointed the CFO for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and from July 2017 to August 2020 Mike was Head of the Government Finance Function, HM Treasury, driving forward the agenda to substantially strengthen the finance function’s critical role at the heart of government, ensuring better political and business outcomes.

Topics of discussion will include holding departments to account, value for money frameworks, the role of the Government Finance Function, and how Civil Servants work with their political masters when setting budgets.