Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
260-279)
Rt Hon Tessa Jowell
14 OCTOBER 2009
Q260 Lord Shaw of Northstead: Minister,
in your submission you state that the three core functions of
the Cabinet Office are: Supporting the Prime Minister; Supporting
the Cabinet; and Strengthening the Civil Service. Can the proper
balance of support for each of these be achieved if they remain
under one roof?
Tessa Jowell: The answer is yes, and I say yes
because the Cabinet Office obviously has a very close working
relationship with Number 10 and I have been interested to read
the arguments that have developed in the Committee about the competing
arguments in support of a Prime Minister's Department as opposed
to a Cabinet Office. In the real world of policy administration
there is a very clear distinction—sometimes creating tension—between
the role of Number 10 which provides the most immediate support
to the Prime Minister, and then the broader support function that
the Cabinet Office provides. It is also important to stress the
support that the Cabinet Office provides in servicing the range
of 46 Cabinet committees, which are very much the engine of so
much government policy development and policy recommendation,
which is then taken to Cabinet.
Q261 Lord Morris of Aberavon: Minister,
forgive me, there have been periods in my life when there has
been no minister in the Cabinet Office. I do not know how many
ministers you have but could you persuade me that any role that
you perform could not be performed by the Cabinet Secretary? Does
not your very existence diminish that role?
Tessa Jowell: Not in any sense at all and my
role as Minister for the Cabinet Office is unusual in that I also
have a number of other functions, perhaps most notably as Paymaster
General but also as Minister for the Olympics, a major national
project which relies entirely on close co-operation, working relationships
and delivery across a range of other departments. In relation
specifically to the Cabinet Office I have at the moment a team
comprising one other minister, which may be increased shortly
to two junior ministers, and if you looked at our specific ministerial
responsibilities—today I am publishing a parliamentary answer
setting out ministerial responsibility—you would see that
the areas of responsibility I carry and my junior ministers carry
are quite distinct from the overall co-ordination function, development
of the Civil Service in an organisational way, that the Cabinet
Secretary himself is responsible for.
Q262 Lord Rowlands: I would like
to clarify the role of the Prime Minister's Office and the Cabinet
Office in one respect. Reading your submission, heavy on capability
and reviews, the role it plays to bring efficiency to departments
et cetera et cetera, and yet now we have also got the separate
Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. Why do you have a Delivery Unit
in the Prime Minister's Office when it seems that the burden of
your submission is that the Cabinet Office is driving this efficiency,
driving a better delivery programme et cetera? Why do you need
a separate unit for the Prime Minister's Office?
Tessa Jowell: The Delivery Unit is now actually
in the Treasury because its focus is very specifically on measuring
the impact of public service reform. Public service reform at
the last reshuffle was aligned with public expenditure.
Q263 Lord Rowlands: It is no longer
the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit?
Tessa Jowell: It is still called the Prime Minister's
Delivery Unit but it is physically located in the Treasury.
Q264 Lord Rowlands: But who does
it answer to, the Chancellor or the Prime Minister?
Tessa Jowell: Ultimately we all answer to the
Prime Minister, but to the Chief Secretary and then to the Chancellor.
Q265 Lord Pannick: My question is
whether the Cabinet Office has too much on its plate, whether
you can at one and the same time meet the desire of the Prime
Minister for a stronger centre and yet also be the department
that is responsible for the whole of the civil service?
Tessa Jowell: You can take a snapshot of the
responsibilities that the Cabinet Office carries as of now, but
they would not necessarily be the same responsibilities in six
months' time or a year's time because, as I set out briefly in
my opening statement, there are areas where the Cabinet Office
will intervene and incubate and then the specific policies and
the units to support their development and delivery will be repatriated
to the relevant department. I think that is a very good and creative
role, and certainly if you had stasis at the centre where the
Cabinet Office was constantly initiating new areas of policy and
responsibility you would have confusion with departments, you
would have tension with departments and you would have, as you
suggest, overload. There is a pretty high level of vigilance about
the Cabinet Office workload and the relevance of functions at
any time being held at the centre rather than being sent out to
departments.
Q266 Lord Pannick: Do ministers resent
the supervision that you exercise?
Tessa Jowell: I do not think that my role is
a supervisory one. I certainly have to some degree a co-ordination
role, ensuring that where you have policies that rely on multilateral
relationships between departments for their delivery, that those
policies are given the necessary support and brokerage where necessary
in order that they be delivered. I have been a minister for 12½
years and if one looks back what is interesting is the way in
which the role of the centre has adapted and changed. It has had
different personalities organisationally at different times and
that is a matter of fact: it will change, it is never static.
It is shaped by this constant interaction of the constitutional
basis which I have outlined, the functional responsibilities of
keeping the whole show on the road, the personalities at any time
and the precedence of particular policies. To some extent it holds
a mirror to the priorities of government at any time.
Q267 LORD
RODGERS OF
QUARRY BANK:
If I may pursue that matter, it has been described that there
is a "dustbin" function within the Cabinet Office, at
another time as a "ragbag" and at another as a "bran
tub". If indeed you have seven permanent secretaries, where
are they and how do you fit them in? I would like to know just
as a factual point, if I may ask you, how many civil servants
there are within the Cabinet Office and where is it? Is it now
distributed around Whitehall or where is it—that is a factual
question which I do not ask you to answer immediately. I see that
in the foreword to the annual report of the Cabinet Office you
refer amongst others things to the role of the Cabinet Office
in dealing with "families hit hardest". Is this not
a good example of being involved in important detail when it should
be dealing with the big strategic issues and does it not diminish
the role of departments when these questions of detail are somewhere
around Downing Street? Is everything now pushing away from departments
to the Cabinet Office to deal with detailed matters as you say
in your foreword to this report?
Tessa Jowell: Thank you; let me answer your
various questions. The first is on numbers: there are about 1400
civil servants employed both in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office;
a little under 200 in Number 10 and about 1200 in the Cabinet
Office.
Q268 LORD
RODGERS OF
QUARRY BANK:
Are they officials working for the Cabinet Office and out of the
Cabinet Office, or are they present at the usual place, the numbers
you have given? Are they in outposts of one kind or another?
Tessa Jowell: Some will be working in locations
outside, at either 22 or 70 Whitehall, but that remains the centre
of the Cabinet Office with the link door to Number 10. There are
six senior officials of permanent secretary rank within the Cabinet
Office and, taking the point which I know was made in evidence
about the Cabinet Office doing too much—the dustbin function
or the bran tub analogy—I simply do not recognise that and
given that, from memory, these were observations by highly respected
commentators I would just say that the role of the centre, the
dynamic of the relationship between the centre of government and
other departments and Number 10 versus Number 11, this is the
stuff of endless and engaging commentary but it does not always
bear a direct relationship. This kind of laboratory view of government
does not actually properly reflect the day-to-day work. My answer
to the bran tub or the dustbin would be the point that I hope
I made earlier, that this is dynamic, and it is certainly the
case that sometimes functions which do not have a logical home
elsewhere may reside for a period of time in the Cabinet Office.
Where there is a particular urgency in getting a policy going,
like the Contest strategy, which involved very high-level negotiation
and co-ordination across key departments—the intelligence
services and so forth—it started in the Cabinet Office and
then it was moved out to the Home Office. Your very particular
reference to hard-hit families is part of the co-ordination and
delivery function across government that the Cabinet Office has
for the Building Britain's Future programme, which includes the
very large number of very specific sources of advice and help
to families up and down the country. The Cabinet Office is not
usurping the delivery function of Work and Pensions, the Department
of Health, the Department for Children, Schools and Families,
it is co-ordinating the communication because with these new programmes
public take-up relies very heavily on public understanding of
their purpose. The function to which you refer is one specifically
of communication and co-ordination.
Q269 LORD
ROWLANDS: I was very struck in
paragraph 5 of your submission where you drew to our attention
that there are 1500 fewer employees in the Cabinet Office than
there were in 1997. Where have they gone, or has the Prime Minister's
Department grown as a counter to it or what? What has happened?
Tessa Jowell: I can certainly supply the Committee
with the figures for the whole Prime Minister's Department going
back to 1997. The most recent figures indicate a reduction, but
remember that there has been a major efficiency programme that
has been operating across government, across all departments,
since the last Comprehensive Spending Review, so the loss of civil
servants will be accounted for in part by that, in part by relocation
of functions. I am very happy to supply some further information
on that.
Q270 LORD
ROWLANDS: You make the point in
your submission as you have made today about the dynamic nature
of it, that some have moved out, some have been made independent
and some have been wound up. I wonder if you could provide us
with a list of those that have gone out of the Cabinet Office,
moved on or what has happened?
Tessa Jowell: Yes, we can certainly do that.
Q271 LORD
WALLACE OF
TANKERNESS: In contrast to Lord
Rodgers' reference to a dustbin you have described the Cabinet
Office as an incubator. I just wondered, is that something you
have seen as an historic function of the Cabinet Office, what
examples can you give of what has been incubated and mainstreamed
and what are you incubating at the moment?
Tessa Jowell: A good example of the Cabinet
Office as an incubator is the work that has been done on social
exclusion, which you will understand was a very high priority
for the Government when we were elected in 1997. The then Prime
Minister established, under his direct control, the Social Exclusion
Unit, and what has happened over the last 12 years is that initially
the Social Exclusion Unit produced reports on the particularly
intractable aspects of social policy and then the relevant departments
were charged with implementing the recommendations. A lot of that
work has been mainstreamed in departments and a lot of it has
developed a further identity—if one takes the preoccupation
with antisocial behaviour, the establishment of the Respect Taskforce—and
so that is an example of a major area of government policy which
has been, in very particular respects, very successful and which
has seen a dynamic move from Number 10, with very intense levels
of prime ministerial involvement, very clear mandates for departments
to achieve change. Now the Social Exclusion Taskforce which is
in the Cabinet Office has identified three specific groups of
people who represent numerically about 55,000: young people leaving
care, people with learning disabilities seeking employment and
people with long-term mental health difficulties. These are people
whose problems in living normal life can be enormous and so the
focus has moved from street homelessness, teenage pregnancy, the
geographic distribution of worklessness to this very sharp focus.
That is an example of this dynamic process that I was trying to
set out for you earlier.
Q272 LORD
WALLACE OF
TANKERNESS: That is very helpful.
Let me just clarify my own mind: when the Social Exclusion Unit
was established under the personal guidance and direction of the
Prime Minister was it located in Number 10 or was it under the
aegis of the Cabinet Office?
Tessa Jowell: I am doing this from memory but
I think it was physically located in the Cabinet Office. The important
thing was that it enjoyed very strong patronage from the Prime
Minister. The other examples of units which have started in the
Cabinet Office and moved out would be, as I have mentioned, the
Delivery Unit now in the Treasury—and perhaps it is now
called the Delivery Unit rather than the Prime Minister's Delivery
Unit—the Better Regulation Unit which is now in BIS and
the Office of the e-envoy and e-commerce.
Q273 LORD
WOOLF: Not surprisingly you have
identified your views about the strength of the Cabinet Office.
With your experience of its workings are there aspects which you
regard as weaknesses which need to be addressed?
Tessa Jowell: I would define it as a fact of
life rather than a weakness. If you have responsibility for co-ordination,
for brokering on occasion agreements between departments through
the Cabinet committee structure or outside that, then if you bring
no money but you bring the authority of the Cabinet Office, a
successful result relies on the power of persuasion, the support
of the Prime Minister, and so it is an informal rather than a
formal relationship. That is a fact of life in any negotiation
in government. I also think that one of the changes that has been
achieved over the last 12 years is much more inter-departmental
working, so whereas back in 1997 essentially the way in which
thematic policy was implemented was driven on the initiative of
Number 10 or the Cabinet Office, departments now are much more
used to working bilaterally in order to achieve policy objectives.
Q274 LORD
WOOLF: One of the areas which
could possibly be said to be a weakness and has been identified
in the evidence which you will have read and observed, is that
the Cabinet Office has sometimes allowed new policies and initiatives
to be announced without any recognition of the implications of
those initiatives and the difficulty of implementing them. I have
got in mind in particular here the constitutional changes that
have been announced in a rather half-baked way.
Tessa Jowell: The particular issue to which
you refer was one where the policy was right and the outcome was
right but everybody recognises that there were some mistakes made
in the process of implementation. You are going to have to rely
on diaries over the next 10 or 15 years to understand fully how
the situation arose, but if I understand you, Lord Woolf, a policy
which altered the role of the Lord Chancellor and disaggregated
the three functions was one which reflected the need for change.
Any error was in implementation.
Q275 LORD
WOOLF: What I was interested in
is whether it is one of the tasks of the Cabinet Office to see
that a change of that nature is not implemented or set out without
the problems being identified?
Tessa Jowell: I do not think that that is the
responsibility of the Cabinet Office.
Q276 LORD
WOOLF: Whose responsibility is
it then?
Tessa Jowell: I was not party to those discussions
but that would have been discussed at a Cabinet committee, in
bilateral discussion with the Prime Minister, but this is where
the Cabinet committee structure is so important. Yes, you are
right that the Cabinet Office services the Cabinet committee but
the decision that you have used as an illustration of your point
was a highly political decision, taken for very good constitutional
reasons. One has to have realistic expectations of what the Cabinet
Office can achieve by way of a timely intervention to prevent
mistakes happening. It certainly does happen and the occasions
where it works successfully are largely undocumented because the
problem was averted. There was a problem in relation to this but
it was a problem that was recovered, and the policy that we now
have or the effect of the policy is undoubtedly the right one.
Q277 LORD
LYELL OF
MARKYATE: Coming, Minister, if
we may, to the interaction of key players in the centre—and
you made the point about the importance of being flexible and
responsive, and the word joined-up comes to mind—yesterday
Sir Ian Johnston reported on the Damian Green affair. Did you
have any part in this? How could it happen that the Cabinet Office
did not warn that that whole area of immigration had been removed
from the criminal law as far as matters of leaks and that sort
of thing were concerned? How could it happen that no warning was
given to the Home Secretary or indeed that the Home Secretary,
who must also be in the centre, did not realise that it was utterly
inappropriate for the anti-terrorist police to go in and start
making arrests and raids on Parliament?
Tessa Jowell: I was not Cabinet Office Minister
at the time but I know that there was no ministerial involvement
in the decisions taken to take action in anticipation of a potential
breach of the Official Secrets Act. I really have nothing to add
to the report that has been published but it will be very important
that lessons are learnt from that. You will know very well about
the importance of ministers being kept out of decisions where
any subsequent charge of political bias or political interference
could have a material bearing on any subsequent inquiry. I was
not in the Cabinet Office at the time, I have obviously been briefed
on what happened at the time, I know that my predecessor Liam
Byrne, now Chief Secretary, was not involved and I do know that
the decision was taken because of what was considered to be a
breach of the Official Secrets Act.
Q278 LORD
LYELL OF
MARKYATE: This is what I am trying
to pursue; how can the Cabinet Office legal advisers, who are
usually of very high quality, not have been consulted and not
have warned that since 1989 when Douglas Hurd changed the law
this had not been an area for the criminal law at all? Why on
earth was that not brought to the attention of the Home Office,
though one wonders why they did not know themselves? Is this not
precisely a Cabinet Office co-ordinating function as it used to
be?
Tessa Jowell: I do not know whether 20 years
ago the Cabinet Office would have responded differently but what
is quite clear from my understanding of the Cabinet Office's response
is that they took precautionary action. The fact that the leaks
did not in fact represent a risk to national security is a judgment
that was made on the basis of the inquiry and with the benefit
of hindsight.
Q279 LORD
LYELL OF
MARKYATE: It was not a judgment
on the basis of the inquiry, it had been removed from the criminal
law altogether, it did not matter what the facts were.
Tessa Jowell: Again, My Lord Chairman, I am
very happy to provide further information on the basis on which
the Cabinet Office legal advisers considered advice at the time.
It may be necessary for that to be provided in confidence but
I am certainly very happy to ensure that you get further information.
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