“It’s a sign of the times that John Major and I find ourselves more on the same side, than on opposite sides”. Gordon Brown shared a platform with his fellow ex-Prime Minister at the launch of the Commission on the Centre of Government’s final report on “Power with Purpose”.
The one-time Labour and Conservative leaders came together because they both agree that there must be a change. Central government isn’t working efficiently. Consequently, the public is being failed and the nation is in decline. That was the consensus view of the politicians, cabinet secretaries, civil servants and quangocrats in attendance at the Institute for Government, which set up the Commission.
The report concludes that “No 10 Downing Street, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury are not capable of meeting the challenges facing the United Kingdom in 1920s and beyond” and has produced proposals to make things better.
It is already proving influential. Sir Keir Starmer is building on one of the suggestions by planning a “gang of four” executives to run his potential government, made up of himself, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner and Pat McFadden, a minister under Blair, who has already taken up the role of enforcer of spending plans and policy implementation.
Sue Gray, the top civil servant turned Starmer’s chief of staff, is studying the Commission’s other recommendations closely. They are all centred on how to balance power between the Prime Minister, the Treasury, the Cabinet and the civil service. This may sound wonkish but those involved insist better delivery to the public, both short-term and long-term, will only be possible if the government machine works better.
The Commission’s specific ideas are more likely to become talking points for action than definitive plans judging from those at the launch, including Brown and Sir John Major. They gave it a more nuanced reception than Sir Keir appears to be doing.
Brown paraphrased WB Yeats: “The centre cannot manage”. He warned this is “a make-or-break decade for our economy and there has got to be a turnaround strategy”. Major described himself as the type of Conservative who preferred evolution to radical change. He bemoaned “the prime ministers in one parliament”, the Supreme Court ruling that the government was in breach of the law, and inexperienced special advisors overruling the advice of civil servants.
Commission member Baroness Louise Casey is an outsider called into Whitehall to troubleshoot a range of issues including rough sleeping, football violence and the Metropolitan police. She highlighted the “growing distance between the centre and people living their lives”. As for today’s pressing problems of social care, housing and immigration, “we don’t have a plan”, she said.
The academic and chronicler of prime ministers, Sir Anthony Seldon, co-chaired the commission and claimed that present structures of government were the product of “capricious ill-considered decisions”. Now, he argued, was like the changes of government between parties in 1945, 1964, 1979, 1997 and 2010, a moment which must be “seized”.
There was much head-shaking about “bloated bureaucracy”. Major claimed the number of Downing Street staff had gone up from 100 in his day to 350 now, while this century the Cabinet Office had grown from 1600 to over ten thousand. The Cabinet had to be cut down to size – “not just at the table but around the back of the room” insisted another Commission member, the former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell. There were so many officials and additional “ministers attending the cabinet” meetings had become extended briefing sessions.
The commission recommends an “Executive Cabinet Committee” of a few key ministers. Neither of the ex-prime ministers supported the idea, worried that it would alienate other cabinet ministers. Major was also against the idea of a refocused No. 10 and Cabinet office as an “office of the prime minister” insisting, “we are not a presidency, I do not want to see an increase in the power of Number 10”. He preferred ad hoc committees or ministers, perhaps with one senior representative of the Prime Minister to lighten the load – although, he said, there were not many people around like Willie Whitelaw or Michael Heseltine.
Gordon Brown mocked “Quadruverates” pointing out that King Herod had been in one, so had the SDP’s Gang of Four, and neither had turned out well. His proposal was for a National Economic Council bringing together politicians and officials from the Treasury, Number 10 and other key departments. In a working paper for Keir Starmer Brown has already proposed a separate Council of Nations and Regions which would bring together central government with First Ministers and big city Mayors.
O’Donnell, who was a permanent secretary at the Treasury before moving to Cabinet Secretary, said there was a great need for civil servants and their political masters to meet together regularly – as on the National Security Council. Taking up an old theme, he believed that the Treasury should be an economic ministry, proposing economic strategy as well as an Exchequer counting the beans.
O’Donnell also endorsed the Commission proposal that a government should set out its priorities at the start of a parliament, in a “modernized King’s speech” but suggested this would be even better “ex ante” before an election than “ex post” afterwards.
The current Cabinet Secretary Sir Simon Case is widely expected to be replaced after the election but, personalities aside, there is vigorous debate about what his job should be. The Commission thinks the job should be split. With the Cabinet Secretary assisting the Prime Minister and Cabinet Office team with day-to-day activity and initiating what the government wants to do. He or She would give up their job as Head of the Civil Service, the person in that role would report instead to a new Minister “First Secretary of State”, who would oversee the implementation of policy.
The idea is that this would take the pressure off. It was impossible for the Cabinet Secretary to do both jobs properly, it was argued. Delegation would give the Prime Minister and his team more time to think strategically. Others warned that the split has been tried before unsuccessfully, when Jeremy Heywood was Cabinet Secretary and Bob Kerslake headed the civil service. Kerslake ended up running a glorified HR department with no significant political influence and no improvement in government performance.
I spotted two current ministers in the audience, Steve Baker and John Glen. The Institute for Government is non-partisan but this report is clearly aimed at what Labour might do after the next election. From Sir John Major and Gordon Brown down, despair was evident with the direction in which the country is heading under the current government. In the words of cross-bench peer Louise Casey, “Ministers and civil servants need to stop blaming each other”. If they do, then that would indeed be a “moment of change”.
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