The role and powers of the Prime Minister

Written evidence submitted by Emeritus Professor George Jones, London School of Economics and Political Science

Q1. Is there sufficient clarity as to the Prime Minister’s role and powers?

1. The primary role of the Prime Minister is to exercise public leadership. But the nature of this role and the powers associated with it have always been characterised by amorphous informality. The book by Andrew Blick and George Jones, Premiership: the development, nature and power of the office of the British Prime Minister (Academic Imprint: Exeter, 2010) showed that, although the office of Prime Minister began developing in the early eighteenth century, there was only a gradual process of recognition of the post and institution of the premiership:

· The Times began regularly referring to this specific title in the early nineteenth century [ Blick & Jones, pp.111-112] ;

· The list of ministers printed in Hansard began using the title ‘Prime Minister’ in 1885 [B&J, p.113] ;

· In the minutes for the first meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1902, the ‘Prime Minister’ was referred to as being present [B&J, p.113] ;

· The Imperial Calendar (the predecessor to the Civil Service Yearbook ) referred to the ‘Prime Minister’ for the first time in its 1904 edition [B&J, p. 114] ;

· The Prime Minister was given a position in the order of precedence in 1905 [B&J, p.114] ;

· The first mention of the Prime Minister in statute came with the Chequers Estate Act 1917 [B&J, p.114] ;

· Reference to an explicitly labelled ‘Prime Minister’s Office’ in the Civil Service Yearbook did not take place until the appearance of the 1977 edition [B&J, pp.114-115].

2. At present much of the prime-ministerial role, including being the most senior adviser to the monarch and chair of the Cabinet, remains defined in convention and is often exercised under the Royal Prerogative. While some of the powers of the office – mainly about public appointments – exist under statute, the premiership has a slimmer statutory existence than many other offices of state. As of 2010, there were 92 pieces of primary legislation and 422 of secondary legislation referring specifically to the ‘Prime Minister’ (there are other references to the ‘First Lord of the Treasury’ and the ‘Minister for the Civil Service’). By contrast, the respective totals for the Secretary of State for Health were 662 and 7,205; and for the Business Secretary 577 and 2,221 [B&J, pp.116-117] .

3. While detailed codification of the role of the Prime Minister has been slow and remains incomplete, there is a well-established, long-standing general principle that the Prime Minister does not primarily perform his or her public-leadership role by direct involvement in specific policy portfolios, but operates through facilitating collective decision-making by senior ministers as the chair of Cabinet.

4. This principle is given satisfactory expression in the draft Cabinet Manual , an excerpt from which follows:

Principles of collective Cabinet government

133. Cabinet is the ultimate decision-making body of government. The purpose of Cabinet and its committees is to provide a framework for ministers to consider and make collective decisions on policy issues.

134. The Cabinet system of government is based on the principle of collective responsibility. All government ministers are bound by the collective decisions of Cabinet, save where it is explicitly set aside, and carry joint responsibility for all the Government’s policies and decisions.

135. In practice, this means that a decision of Cabinet or one of its committees is binding on all members of the Government, regardless of whether they were present when the decision was taken or their personal views. Before a decision is made, ministers are given the opportunity to debate the issue, with a view to reaching an agreed position. It is for the Prime Minister, as Chair of Cabinet, or the relevant Cabinet committee chair to summarise what the collective decision is, and this is recorded in the minutes by the Cabinet Secretariat.

5. Yet if these principles are to work in practice, they require both commitment from those who participate in government, and institutional support which traditionally has been provided by the Cabinet Office. An examination of the Cabinet Office Departmental Business Plan for 2011-15 suggests that both these essential components to Cabinet government may be lacking.

6. ‘Support effective cabinet government’ is described as only one of a number of ‘major responsibilities’ of the Cabinet Office; and the section dealing with this particular function makes no reference to Cabinet or collective government, and instead refers to supporting the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, other Cabinet Office ministers and programmes.

7. A considerable part of the Business Plan is concerned with the pursuit of specific policy agendas by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Much attention is devoted to the Prime Minister’s objective of ‘helping to build the Big Society’, and the Deputy Prime Minister’s plans to ‘rebalance power and accountability between state, communities and the citizen, and increase civil liberties’.

8. There is a lack of congruence between the role of the Prime Minister and the support provided by the Cabinet Office. Although the primary role of the Prime Minister is to exercise leadership through the facilitation of collective government, support for this role is not provided for by the Cabinet Office, which appears more as a means of providing No.10 with support for specific policy portfolios. This incompatibility is aggravated because many of the activities that No.10 engages in, with the support of the Cabinet Office, involve encroaching on areas for which departmental ministers possess legal responsibility, and for which they are held accountable by Parliament. Such interventions reach beyond Whitehall as well, into the remit of democratically-elected local government, creating further confusion.

Q1a. Should the Prime Minister’s role and powers be codified in statute or otherwise?

9. One possible means of addressing this lack of congruence would be through codifying the roles of Prime Minister and Cabinet more clearly in a single document that took priority over other documents. For instance, the Cabinet Manual could state explicitly that prime ministers exercise their leadership role primarily as chairs of Cabinet, and that normally other ministers are held legally responsible and accountable to Parliament in most significant policy areas (see below). At present the draft Cabinet Manual makes the unsatisfactorily vague statement that (para.77):

The Prime Minister has few statutory functions but will usually take the lead on significant matters of state.

With a strengthened statement in the Cabinet Manual , i nstitutional arrangements and descriptions of them, such as those in business plans or their future equivalents – would then be required to conform to such statements of principle.

10. How conformity with such a codification of roles could be secured requires further consideration. It does not seem appropriate for the courts to become involved in ruling on such political issues, but there may be some means of securing political accountability through Parliament, by possibly a joint committee of the two Houses. One approach may be to follow my written and oral evidence to your inquiry into the Prospects for codifying the relationship between central and local government, where I suggested that a statement of principles about the relationship between central and local government 'should be given a degree of permanency in a statute and protected by a Joint Committee of Parliament'.  A statement of principles about the relationship between the Prime Minister and Cabinet could be treated in the same way.

Q2. How has the role of the Prime Minister changed in recent years?

11. The disjuncture described above between the supposed collective nature of government and the unwillingness of those who drafted the terms of reference of the  

Cabinet Office to provide for its institutional support had already developed under the previous Labour government. It can be seen as the more formal recognition of a tendency for No.10 to commandeer sections of the Cabinet Office to support the Prime Minister’s personal policies, a trend that can be traced back further still, with such events as the relocation of the Cabinet Office to a building adjoining Downing Street in 1963, and the merging of the roles of Head of the Home Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary in the early 1980s.

12. The December 1998 Public Service Agreement (PSA) stated that an aim of the Cabinet Office was to help the Prime Minister and ministers collectively in making and implementing decisions, yet in 2000 reference to ‘collective decision making’ was dropped from the Cabinet Office’s terms of reference as included in its PSA. In July 2002, ‘Support the Prime Minister in leading the government’ was installed as the number-one objective of the Cabinet Office.

13. There followed a slight shift towards more traditional approaches. By 2006 ‘Supporting the Cabinet’ was once again described as a purpose of the Cabinet Office; and ‘Supporting the Prime Minister’ was listed without the words ‘in leading the government’ afterwards.

14. The neglect in the Cabinet Office Business Plan of the need to facilitate collective government suggests that the tendency formally to define the Cabinet Office as less an office for the Cabinet and more a vehicle for individual leadership by the Prime Minister has continued.

15. The Business Plan provides further evidence that the office of Prime Minister has moved into a new, third, historical phase. Phase one came from the initial emergence of the role from the early eighteenth century and ran until roughly the mid-nineteenth century. During this period, the Prime Minister was normally directly responsible for the Treasury and in this sense a departmental minister with a clear policy portfolio.

16. In the second phase, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the Prime Minister was normally supported by only a relatively small staff, and played more of a coordinating role, as chair of Cabinet, than a direct policy role.

17. In the third phase that has arguably emerged since around the turn of the twentieth/twenty-first centuries, the Prime Minister has once more assumed more of a departmental, direct policy role, expanding the numbers and scope of staff serving the Prime Minister at No 10 Downing Street and utilising the Cabinet Office to pursue such initiatives as public service ‘delivery’ (under Tony Blair), and the ‘Big Society’ (under David Cameron). But it remains possible that the development of a third phase, though appearing to take hold, could be reversed.

Q2a. How has this process of change been brought about and controlled?

18. The recent drafting and redrafting of the Cabinet Office’s terms of reference, formalising its developing status as a vehicle for direct prime-ministerial policy initiatives, has been executed unilaterally by the Prime Minister, presumably drawing on the authority of the Royal Prerogative. Though substantial constitutional issues have been involved, there has been no part played by Parliament or any other democratic process. Yet it should be noted that the ability of prime ministers to initiate and take advantage of these new arrangements is dependent upon the tacit consent of other members of Cabinet, who retain between them the ability to block No.10, should they be disposed to do so.

Q3. What is the impact of coalition government on the role and powers of the Prime Minister?

19. Changes to both the style and substance of the premiership are frequent. For instance, one tendency towards fluctuation in style – ‘zigzag’ – involves an exceptionally domineering prime minister being succeeded by a premier who is notably collegiate, and vice versa (for instance: James Callaghan to Margaret Thatcher; or Winston Churchill to Clement Attlee). Substantive development – ‘institutional fission and fusion’ – involves the extent to which particular organisations, personnel and functions move towards and away from the remit of the premiership, or in some cases are newly created or abolished. The formation and maintenance of the Coalition has entailed both significant stylistic shifts and substantive change of an unprecedented nature.

20. It is never entirely possible for prime ministers to operate without concern for political considerations such as the views of other Cabinet members, their party within and beyond Parliament , and public opinion. The way they function is determined not only by their own disposition and personal qualities, but the broader political environment. Coalition was once relatively commonplace in Britain; and prime ministers with reputations for being some of the most domineering – notably David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill – headed governments composed of more than one party.

21. Yet coalition imposes a particular set of considerations that can hamper prime ministers in their style of operation: they must work with one or more parties other than their own. What is seemingly unique about this Coalition is that the Prime Minister has formally accepted a set of substantive changes, involving the formal sharing of powers, laid down in a publicly-available document, entitled Coalition Agreement for Stability and Reform (May 2010). The status and ownership of this paper are not entirely clear, but it appears on the Cabinet Office website, suggesting some kind of official existence. It stipulates that:

§ allocations of ministerial posts must be in proportion to the parliamentary representation of the two Coalition parties [1.2].

§ The Prime Minister will make nominations for the appointment of ministers ‘following consultation with the Deputy Prime Minister’ [1.2].

§ The Prime Minister will nominate Conservative Party Ministers and the Deputy Prime Minister will nominate Liberal Democrat Ministers [1.2].

§ Any changes to the allocation of portfolios between the Parliamentary Parties during the lifetime of the Coalition will be agreed between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister [1.3].

§ No Liberal Democrat Minister or Whip may be removed on the recommendation of the Prime Minister without full consultation with the Deputy Prime Minister [1.4].

§ The establishment of Cabinet Committees, appointment of members and determination of their terms of reference by the Prime Minister has been and will continue to be agreed with the Deputy Prime Minister. The Deputy Prime Minister will serve, or nominate another member of the administration to serve, on each Cabinet Committee and sub-committee. The existence and composition of Cabinet Committees and sub-committees will be published [3.1].

§ The general principle will be that the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister should have a full and contemporaneous overview of the business of Government. Each will have the power to commission papers from the Cabinet Secretariat [3.3].

§ The Prime Minister, with the agreement of the Deputy Prime Minister, has established a Coalition Committee which will oversee the operation of the Coalition, supported by the Cabinet Secretariat. It will be co-chaired by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, with equal numbers of members drawn from the two Coalition Parties [3.4].

22. This Coalition Agreement formally requires the Prime Minister to share with the Deputy Prime Minister and the Liberal Democrat component of the Coalition powers which, by convention, prime ministers have previously wielded themselves, though subject to political realities and the personal style of the occupant of No.10.

23. Thus while the development of an entity akin to a department of the Prime Minister may suggest a move towards unilateral, prime-ministerial government, wider political realities – such as the emergence of a Coalition following an inconclusive General Election – can create a countervailing tendency.

24. Prime ministers would be able to function better if they accepted that British government – founded on parliamentary, and in particular House of Commons, confidence and the principle of collective responsibility - cannot operate effectively on the basis of dominance from No.10. Administrative structures should be readjusted to reflect this reality, with the Cabinet Office returned to its traditional role of facilitating collective government, and supporting the Prime Minister only in his or her role as chair of the Cabinet. As presently configured the Cabinet Office does not assist the Prime Minister sufficiently in the crucial task of managing collective processes. Instead, it facilitates and even encourages micro-level social intervention – such as the ‘Big Society’ initiative – which will serve to distract the Prime Minister from other more important tasks, and drain resources such as time, staff and political capital.

Q4. Are there sufficient checks and balances on the powers of the Prime Minister?

Q4a. If no, what additional or improved checks and balances are required?

Q4b. Is any further change required with regard to specific powers currently exercised under the royal prerogative, by transferring them to statute or otherwise?

Q5. Is the Prime Minister sufficiently accountable personally to the electorate, to Parliament, and otherwise?

Q5a. If no, how should his accountability be improved?

Q6. Are structures of power beneath the Prime Minister sufficiently clear and accountable?

Q6a. If no, how should this clarity and accountability be improved?

Q7. Should the Prime Minister be directly elected by the British people?

25. Questions 4 – 7 are dealt with together. The primary problem of checks, balances, accountability and structures of power is that prime ministers and their staff have increasingly taken on a direct role in policy, yet Parliament primarily holds to account individual ministers, in whom statutory and other responsibilities are vested for particular policy areas. Consequently there is a lack of clear democratic accountability.

26. In the last Parliament the House of Lords Constitution Committee recognised this problem in its report ( The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government (2009-2010, HL 30). However, rather than concluding that there should be a substantial prime-ministerial withdrawal from direct policy roles and a restoration of the clear ministerial responsibility that is essential to parliamentary accountability, the Committee argued that (paragraph 97):

"structures of accountability should mirror structures of power. Greater prominence in the role of the Prime Minister should be mirrored by increased transparency and more effective accountability. Whilst we welcome the biannual appearance by the Prime Minister before the House of Commons Liaison Committee, we do not believe that this goes far enough in securing the parliamentary accountability of the Prime Minister’s Office."

27. The Committee did not explain how this ‘more effective accountability’ was to be achieved. While the UK continues to have a system of parliamentary government and an underlying doctrine of ministerial responsibility, there are limits to how far a Prime Minister – who possesses few legal policy responsibilities – can be held individually accountable for policy interventions.

28. If the recent development in the direction of a quasi-departmental premiership is regarded as irreversible and/or desirable, then the clearest means of ensuring effective democratic accountability for the Prime Minister is for Westminster to abandon the Westminster system and introduce direct elections for the premiership. The head of government would then draw his or her authority from the electorate, not from Parliament. If this approach were favoured a variety of other decisions would need to be made about the precise constitutional structure to be adopted, taking into account varying models of ‘presidency’ such as the French and that of the United States of America.

29. But a preferable option would be based on the principle that collective government is more effective than the dominance of one person, and that the Prime Minister should return to being what was once termed ‘first among equals’ or primus inter pares . There are some tensions between the idea of collective government and individual ministerial responsibility. But these dual doctrines, when functioning properly with a prime minister enabling group decision-making, provide Parliament with a clear line of accountability, something which is lacking when prime ministers become excessively involved in the business of departments.

30. For this reason the most appropriate means of restoring accountability would be through the renewal of collective government, which could be enshrined in and to some extent brought about by codification of the sort mentioned in paragraph 10 above.

21 February 2011