Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
257-259)
Rt Hon Tessa Jowell
14 OCTOBER 2009
Q257Chairman: Minister, good morning, and a
very warm welcome on behalf of the Committee; thank you very much
indeed for being with us. We are being televised so before inviting
you, if you would like, to make a brief opening statement, can
I ask you to formally identify yourself for the record?
Tessa Jowell: My Lord Chairman, thank you very
much indeed. I am Tessa Jowell, I am the Minister for the Cabinet
Office, the Paymaster General and Minister for the Olympics.
Q258 Chairman: Do you want to say
a few words?
Tessa Jowell: If I may perhaps, in response
to your very kind invitation, just set the scene. The first point
I wanted to make, having read a lot of the evidence of the sessions
that you have already had, is how valuable an inquiry I see this
as being and I look forward to your report and looking at the
recommendations that you make, and I would also like to commend
the constructiveness of your approach. I would like to just frame
the following points that perhaps we could explore further. The
first, the "centre" as we describe the collective functions
of the Cabinet Office, Number 10 and the Treasury, is and must
be flexible and responsive to the demands of the day. We will
no doubt explore this more fully but this has always been a changing
relationship and I am quite sure will continue to be so. The second
point is that there is no single template or blueprint for the
way in which government should be run and again, perhaps, this
is something that we can explore further, but it is the heady
mix of manifesto commitment, constitutional responsibility and
clear departmental brief driven by a professional and impartial
civil service, but it will always be coloured by the personalities
of the day. That is why any single prescription is never likely
to sustain much scrutiny or survive outside the laboratory of
this kind of inquiry. I would point to ways in which the Cabinet
Office and the Centre have adapted to some of the more contemporary
changes. For instance, in the downturn, co-ordinating the work
of the G20, establishing the National Economic Council, but there
are also other examples—the establishment of e-government,
better regulation, the Contest strategy which then obviously went
out to the Home Office, initiatives which were incubated, if you
like, in the Cabinet Office and then mainstreamed within the relevant
department of government. Bringing together, as we do, the policy
co-ordination function and the civil service HR function we are,
I hope, doing everything we can to ensure that the bedrock of
delivery, propriety and transparency right across government—the
professional modern civil service—has the skills and flexibilities
to deliver high quality policy in what is a very rapidly changing
world.
Q259 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed, Minister. Can I begin by asking you if there are any major
constitutional issues relating to the Cabinet Office and the centre
of government which you think it would be helpful for the Committee
to focus on in our report to the House?
Tessa Jowell: I thought about this quite a bit
when preparing for this session and actually the best way to define
the constitutional basis is in the context of the obligation of
impartiality, professionalism and the other values of the civil
service, enshrined in the Civil Service Code, that will shortly
be put on a statutory footing. That is a very important thing.
Maintaining impartiality and professionalism perhaps represents
the constitutional bedrock together with, obviously, overseeing
the propriety in the discharge of government functions, the conduct
of ministers and so forth. That would be my short answer to your
question.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Lord Shaw.
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