Examination of Witnesses (Question
Numbers 60-74)
Professor Martin Smith, Dr Richard Heffernan and
Professor Dennis Kavanagh
Dr Heffernan: I am Richard Heffernan. I teach at
the Open University and I am a professor at the University of
Notre Dame.
10 JUNE 2009
Q60 Baroness Quin: Picking
up Dr Heffernan's last point, I think perhaps back-of-envelope
problems have been going on for a very long time. The example
was given of the American Department of Homeland Security, as
opposed to some of our sort of instantaneous departmental changes.
I remember being part of a parliamentary committee visiting the
States at that time and it was very much seen as a presidential,
almost panic initiative to the issue of terrorism. The different
departments of security within the United States were at that
time quite worried that they would not be able to reorganise within
this department at the same time as trying to tackle the terrorist
issue. So it seemed to me that, rather than being a contrast with
our system, it was similar to our system. Although I think this
has existed for a long time, I wonder if, following Professor
Kavanagh's point, it has been heightened by the kind of 24/7 media
environment, so that, if you have media on the hoof, you also
have government on the hoof. I wonder if there is some way in
which this has become an unreasonable way of operating, and that
government as a whole should somehow signal that this is not the
way to operate for the future.
Dr Heffernan: The strength
of our system is that we can respond quickly and organically to
present circumstances. The difficulty in the United States is
that the system prevents government from doing things in terms
of setting up departments. I think that there is a happy medium
between these two. It would be against the British tradition of
doing politics where the executive had to ask Parliament for permission
to change the machinery of government; but nonetheless Parliament
could insist upon some process by which the machinery of government
is altered, and you need not do it in such an ad hoc way.
That is a problem in terms of the way we do politics and there
are numerous examples of it. That is why I think that one of the
strengths of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, in trying to engineer
a more powerful and authoritative centre, was probably a good
thing, provided that it is transparent and can be held to account
by other members of the Government.
Q61 Lord Rowlands: In
many ways you have answered our fifth question, which is what
you would identify as the key issues or problems that the Cabinet
Office and the wider centre of government have faced since 1997.
That is what we have done for the last 45 minutes. Perhaps the
best thing for us to do is to clarify where we stand as a result
of the evidence of the last 45 minutes. Do I take it, first, there
is a ground of agreement that there was a need for some kind of
joined-up government but the efforts to do it since 1997 have
not been successful? Secondly, as a result of the means by which
they tried to do this, Cabinet Office roles have become complicated
and incompatible. Thirdly, there has been a blurring of responsibilities
and therefore a lack of parliamentary accountability. Is that
a reasonable summary of what we have said in the last 45 minutes?
Professor Kavanagh: Yes,
I would agree with that very much.
Q62 Lord Rowlands: In
that case, Dr Heffernan has been very consistent in his evidence
suggesting that we should have a Prime Minister's Department proper.
Do the other two of you agree with that?
Professor Smith: In a
way, I think it is not my decision but—
Q63 Lord Rowlands: Would
you recommend it?
Professor Smith: In a
way, it does not really matter. What we need to do is be clear
about how the centre of British Government is organised. It could
be the Cabinet Office or it could be the Prime Minister's Office
or it could be the Treasury, but what it cannot be is three departments,
and maybe more, fighting over who has control of the centre and
nobody actually being clear about what those rules are and who
should be in charge of the centre.
Professor Kavanagh: A
Prime Minister's Department has been mooted, in 1982 and on at
least one other occasion. It was the Cabinet Secretary on both
occasions who objected strongly to this. If we did have a proper
Prime Minister's Department with a Permanent Secretary overseeing
officials, there is no doubt it would raise serious questions
about the role of the Cabinet Office, the role of the Cabinet
Secretary and, dare I say it, the role of the Cabinet and secretaries
of state. It would be a recognition and a formalisation of what
Britain is moving towards, definitely. You do get the old romantics.
They want to go back to cabinet government. They have this idea
of a mythical age of cabinet government and a different kind of
Cabinet Office. It is really between changing both of these. It
is interesting to look at Australia and Canada, which have kind
of prime ministerial-cabinet-parliamentary systems. Cabinet and
its Cabinet Office equivalent have been in decline and both have
moved towards the creation of strong Prime Minister's Departments.
I do not know whether my co-author and good friend Dr Anthony
Seldon will speak to you at some time, but he has made the recommendation
that it would be good to look at some other exemplars of British-type
political arrangements, of how they are dealing with these questions.
Because, as Professor Smith has said, the problems of co-ordination,
of joining up departments with very long histories and long-established
pools of wisdom and so on—these are ever-present and they
are probably getting more intense as government is moving out
into new fields. Many departments go back 50, 60 years and some
of them go back centuries; and if you were starting British Government
as of now to deal with the particular problems of the elderly
or single parents, inner city problems and so on, you may well
end up with a very different departmental structure than the one
that was formed by and large before 1914. Someone raised the question
about the coming and going of departments, the merging of departments,
the separation of departments and so on. It is a very British
style of intuitive, ad hoc, incremental adaptation. That
is the essence of the British constitution. We all know that.
But I have to say that if you were starting from now, you probably
would start off with a powerful Prime Minister's Department and
probably short-term departments, set up to deal with particular
problems; then they may be wound up after 10 or 15 years, as the
problems redefine themselves.
Professor Smith: The other
big difference between Britain and Australia and Canada is that
they are federal systems, and so Prime Ministers do not get bogged
down in questions of whether street crime has gone up in South
Yorkshire.
Professor Kavanagh: Britain
is moving slowly towards a quasi-federal system.
Professor Smith: Maybe
the fundamental problem for the failure of co-ordination is that
British Government at the centre tries to do too much. If more
of it was done in the localities, they would not be bogged down
in all these particular little issues.
Q64 Lord Rowlands: I gather
that we have one definitely for, one half and, Professor Smith,
I am not sure where you stand on the question of a Prime Minister's
Department.
Dr Heffernan: We have
one already. It is simply formalising it and then making the Cabinet
Office do a better job of doing what it should do.
Q65 Lord Rowlands: Would
not the advantage of a Prime Minister's Department be that there
would be a corresponding select committee to scrutinise it?
Dr Heffernan: Yes.
Professor Kavanagh: Of
course.
Q66 Lord Rowlands: You
can establish a line of accountability.
Professor Kavanagh: You
would have to.
Q67 Lord Peston: I was
going to ask a question about what improvements you would recommend
to the centre. Do I understand it that you feel, all three of
you, you have answered that question? You have given us your improvements?
Dr Kavanagh: Lord Peston,
I do not know whether you are anticipating question 9.
Q68 Lord Peston: Yes,
that is what I am doing, in order to save time.
Professor Kavanagh: Can
I answer very briefly? I have four points but I will mention only
one. I think all the worries, all the plans for creating new machinery
and creating new units for co-ordination can never compensate
for poor policy, lack of good judgment, lack of political will/authority,
and weak departmental leadership. We do not talk about those,
but you can draw up the most perfect schemes, like you drew up
Westminster-type constitutions in many newly independent African
countries in the 1950s and 1960s, and they just disintegrated.
Peter Hennessy last time was quoting his colleague Tony Wright's
lecture that he had given about political culture, which was much
more important than changing rules, conventions, and so on. That
is what I would come back to. I do have other recommendations,
but essentially that is what it is.
Dr Heffernan: I have two,
if I may be so bold. If there is a formalised department of the
Prime Minister created, I think that the Cabinet Office role should
be seen, whatever its title, as a kind of department of public
service. Presently, the Cabinet Office identifies six departmental
strategic objectives. The first one is "To build an effective
UK intelligence community". That would be by the Cabinet
Office. "Improved outcomes to the most excluded people in
society and enable a thriving third sector"—that was
an objective done by the Cabinet Office. So too "Building
the capacity and capability of the Civil Service to develop the
Government's objectives". At present, we hide the Civil Service
away, since we abolished the Civil Service Department. It is a
lot of work for the Cabinet Secretary in addition to his or her
other responsibilities. I think that there is an argument to regularise
that within the Cabinet Office. "Promote the highest standards
of propriety, integrity and governance in public life"—that
would be a responsibility for a Cabinet Office. I have one other
general point. When I was preparing to come here today, I looked
at the list of Cabinet Office ministers who had had the title
since 1997. There are 12 of them. That is one for every year.
It is seen as the most junior position of the Cabinet. It is not
a Secretary of Stateship. There is an argument that, to reform
the centre, you would create a much more powerful position for
a ministerial head of a reformed Cabinet Office. Sir David Clark
was the first one and essentially was the deputy to his deputy,
Peter Mandelson—because politics will always take precedence.
That is necessary and inevitable. However, it is a place where,
as I said before, those on the way down go, Hilary Armstrong and
Jack Cunningham—I mean no disrespect; I am just observing
career trajectories—or those on the way up, John Hutton,
Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne most recently. But I cannot imagine
that you would be able to get as the head of the Cabinet Office,
as the Minister for the Cabinet Office, any ability to work out
how the Cabinet Office itself works, let alone co-ordinate or
help co-ordinate government when having a post for less than a
year. It is an absurdity that we reshuffle now for the sake of
reshuffling, or sometimes for the sake of our political lives—which
is absolutely necessary, and that is politics—but I think
that that is one issue that your Lordships' Committee may wish
to consider. The turnover of Cabinet Office Ministers, and that
it is a place on which you perch on the way up or on the way out,
is not really helpful for the work of the Cabinet Office in terms
of dealing with the three functions it has at present, given that
the lines of accountability are skewed and that the role of the
Prime Minister in helping co-ordinate its work is now pretty much
its principal function
Q69 Lord Lyell of Markyate:
I agree with that and I agree with Professor Kavanagh about the
importance of judgment, policy and will. However, I am sceptical
about a large Prime Minister's Department that tries to do everything.
My short ministerial experience was in the Department of Social
Security. That is incredibly detailed. It takes time to realise
that the difference between those who are paying for the social
security and those who are getting it in income, on general terms,
is tiny; the tapers, and all that sort of thing. You have to have
a department which is steeped in it to make the country work,
and I think that goes to other departments too.
Professor Kavanagh: I
gave a very conditional assent to the idea of a Prime Minister's
Department. My first recommendation that I jotted down was "trust
the departments", because they are the repository of experience,
of staff, of knowledge, with people on the frontline, knowledge
of the pressure groups, et cetera. The Prime Minister may have
one or, if he is lucky, he may have two people advising him on
that particular area, and it is a mismatch; it is ridiculous.
There is this danger. Some departments do feel cut off from Number
10. They do not get phone calls. They only get phone calls when
there is a problem; perhaps a media-generated problem that Number
10 has to deal with. Then they come to the department running.
I think that a real problem, as with the US presidency, is that
if you create a powerful centre, it would probably increase the
distance between the centre and the decision-making body in the
departments. I think that would make for bad governance. Basically,
I would agree with you. It would be particularly acute in certain
departments, like social security. I would strongly endorse the
point that Dr Heffernan raised. Studies have been done about the
turnover of ministers in this country—
Q70 Lord Rowlands: Dr
John Reid, for example.
Professor Kavanagh: He
had seven jobs in six years! It is not just the Cabinet Office.
The Cabinet Office is an illustration of a general problem. Ministers,
on average, serve for less than two years. It means that they
have been spending a couple of months learning the job, and the
last few months they are reading the newspapers about the way
they are on their way out! Can you think of any other walk of
life—a university, a school; a bank is not a good example!—but
any of the other great areas of life where there would be such
a turnover of its chief executive, or where the short-lived chief
executive was meant to make a difference? If you are the Prime
Minister and you are turning them over so rapidly, it seems to
me that you are not expecting very much of them.
Professor Smith: Actually
this goes to a deeper problem which has come out in some of the
other questions, which is about the adversarial nature of British
politics, so that so often the role of ministers is actually not
about making policy but about defending their decisions, defending
themselves and defending the Government. As a consequence of that
the decisions that are made about removing ministers then are
political decisions, they are not policy decisions, but that opens
up a big Pandora's box.
Q71 Lord Norton of Louth:
If I can pick up on a point that Professor Kavanagh has touched
on and we were dealing with earlier. You have identified this
tension at the centre but there is also tension between the centre
and departments, which has clearly changed quite significantly
over the years. We have some idea of the sense of what is happening
but what should happen, what would be the ideal relationship between
the centre and departments? Is the centre role really that of
co-ordination, is it that departments, as Professor Kavanagh was
just indicating, should be the prime movers in policy-making or
should it be somewhat different?
Professor Smith: Again,
to some degree it goes back to a big constitutional issue about
in a sense what the rules are, what should be the functions and
responsibilities of departments and what should be the functions
and responsibility of the Prime Minister. Part of the problem
is, again, the idea of cabinet government. We had a solution to
that in the sense that the Cabinet sat there and made decisions
and departments implemented them, but we know that never really
happened. I think the problem now is that departments have built
themselves up as extremely strong organisations in the sense,
as Professor Kavanagh said, that they have the expertise. Often
the ministers have high degrees of authority and what you then
get in a sense is a power battle between an increasingly powerful
Prime Minister's Office and departments of varying strengths,
and unless that relationship is worked out it is very difficult
to resolve that.
Q72 Lord Rowlands: A question
which I had not really thought about until a few minutes ago when
you were talking about centralisation and decentralisation is
to what extent does devolution have an effect? There are three
parts of the kingdom where all sorts of policy are no longer the
responsibility of central government. Do you think the whole of
this argument or the issues we have talked about have taken into
account and been able to understand the consequences of devolution?
Dr Heffernan: The fact
that it meant for Tony Blair that he did not get blamed for NHS
failures in Scotland was probably a source of strength to him
really; the fact that if you devolve authority you also devolve
responsibility. That is why comparing unitary states to federal
states is an interesting way of working out how centres operate,
but ultimately the role of Whitehall is to set the agenda and
for good or ill, whether we like it or not, it falls to a politically
successful and electorally popular Prime Minister to do that on
behalf of his or her party. There is a model of leadership now
which has been established; political parties are now hollow shells
of what they previously were, inevitably, and that is a comparative
process. David Cameron, if he is to become Prime Minister, will
operate according to the Blair mark one model par excellence;
Gordon Brown if he were more powerful would do so as well—he
was a very authoritative Chancellor and is still a powerful Prime
Minister despite his travails in recent time. But I do think that
if the centre does set the policy agenda through the interests
of the government then creating a Prime Minister's Department—I
will not hammer on about it again, we have moved on I know—would
help the Cabinet Office to then agenda set on behalf of ministers.
It may well then play a role in which it communicates from departments
to the centre and from the centre to departments—it is a
clearing house of ideas in a way—and I do think that Dennis's
advice is very sensible: one should trust the departments. Inevitably
in contemporary politics there will be issues on which the Prime
Minister will feel obliged or be obliged to take an interest and
in Tony Blair's pomp, as I said earlier—the phrase is in
one of Peter Hennessy's books on the Prime Minister—"Tony
wants" was the watchword, everything fell into place if it
was capable of falling into place. That is inevitable. I would
like to go back to cabinet government where everybody sat around
for eight hours—Tony Benn is always going on about it—having
wonderful discussions, putting in papers: those days are gone,
they are not coming back, so your Lordships' Committee would be
advised, if I may be so bold, to recognise that reality. In identifying
the fact that the Prime Minister is the major player you can then
think about ways in which the centre can check or balance him
or her and the way in which Parliament then can check or balance
an executive which is hierarchical, which is operating on the
basis of concentric circles. It has always been the case, there
is nothing new in this, there has always been a hierarchy in government
but it is a more obvious hierarchy now and the Cabinet Office's
problem is that it is caught between two sticks, supporting the
rest of government and supporting the Prime Minister.
Chairman: Gentlemen, you
have covered the ground extremely comprehensively; Lord Rodgers,
did you want to ask one final question?
Q73 Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank:
Can we think of think tanks and of policy units and things of
this kind. We have not talked much about it, but going back not
only over the last 30 years but further back as well there has
been a constructive tension, if that is the right word, between
the outsiders brought in, some more independent than others. How
far has this been a relationship which was useful, more creative
or not? Has there been more creation and more tension over the
period?
Professor Smith: Again
this goes back to the Fulton Report in a way and the fact that
civil servants were identified then as generalists and not necessarily
experts in particular policies, and I think in a way the think
tanks and the external advisers have to some degree filled that
vacuum. It is actually a positive thing for the country and if
we had more debate within government, not just within Parliament,
a more open debate about what the policy options were, what practicalities,
what different ways are there of thinking about issues. Again,
that goes back to moving away from adversarial politics because
of course adversarial politics leads politicians to keeping everything
in and not actually opening up the policy process and not letting
different actors and institutions into it.
Q74 Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank:
Going back for example to Ted Heath's period with Lord Rothschild
at that time?
Dr Heffernan: Yes,
Minister has done a great disservice to the practice of central
government. When I was an undergraduate we would have lectures
on the civil service, we would endlessly rehearse the stories
about Sir Antony Part's battles with Tony Benn and the Department
of Industry, that the civil service was a block on reform, that
it said "No". I actually think that over the last 25
years the civil service has got very good—perhaps too good—at
saying "Yes, minister, what is it you want us to do?",
so there is a real suggestion of being open to advice, to discussion
and a permeation from without Whitehall that helps Whitehall work
its business. That is to be encouraged. Going back to special
advisers, ministers should be advised to take on more technocratic
special advisers, people who come in to advise on the expertise
they have—not to leak or brief or to bag carry as is often
the case now, to help the minister with his or her political work.
Of course there is a very interesting study—John Keene has
recently published a 950-page book on democracy, rather long,
but the executive summary of it suggests that he thinks one of
the developments is that contemporary politics is about a monitory
democracy, where there are lots of checks and balances from without.
Liberty is essentially an external arm of the Home Office and
the Ministry of Justice now because it will shout when they do
things and we as citizens will take notice, which influences the
way in which politics works. That would probably need to be encouraged,
one might argue, although there are problems with it. I think
this is to be encouraged, it is a positive sense and that is one
thing the Department of Public Service could actually encourage
if the Cabinet Office had a different function.
Professor Kavanagh: Can
I briefly pick up Lord Rodgers' point? The Civil Service has shown
itself to be, over the last 20 or 30 years, much more open to
outside advice. There is competition of ideas, there is more plurality
in policy ideas and many more links with think tanks outside the
UK. Lots of policy ideas have come from the United States, from
the Netherlands, from Scandinavian countries. What is interesting
is Mrs Thatcher who, early on, made great use of the free market
think tanks in large part to challenge the established lines of
policy in certain departments; Mr Blair as well, since 1997, also
made use of the think tanks. What we have not talked about today
of course has been the role of the Strategy Unit which brings
in lots of outsiders—I am thinking of Lord Birt on transport,
Ayling on pensions. The Strategy Unit has provided a vehicle for
the Prime Minister to bring in outside advisers and go and talk
directly to senior civil servants, to experts in the field and,
if I can end on a controversial note if we are drawing to an end
now, some of these papers were personal to the Prime Minister
and neither the Secretary of State nor the Permanent Secretary
had sight of them.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank
you very much indeed for joining us this morning and for the evidence
you have given. It has given us a great deal to think about; thank
you very much.
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