Memorandum by the Better Government Initiative
(BGI)
The Better Government Initiative (BGI) is grateful
for this opportunity to give evidence to this inquiry into the
Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government. Many BGI members
have direct and indirect experience of the relevant issues. The
BGI is agreed on the central measures required to make the Centre,
and therefore the whole of government, work better. We echo—because
we could not better—what Sir David Omand, one of our members,
Professor Starkey and Lord Adebowale put in evidence to you. They
would:
"... like to draw to the attention of the
Committee to the importance to good government of having a constructive,
balanced, relationship in policy-making between `the Centre' and
Whitehall Departments. Strategic direction from the centre on
the priorities of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the day needs
to be complemented by effective Departmental capability to formulate
policies that are grounded in front-line evidence and professional
experience. Serious difficulties in securing the desired outcomes
of policy are likely if policy initiative comes to be seen as
a central function separate from subsequent Departmental consideration
of `delivery'." They go on to refer to: "barriers to
sought-for reforms. These difficulties include the experience
of over-hasty policy pronouncements and proliferation of policies,
and front-line professional alienation attributable to the perception
that the policy making process is perceived more as top-down command
and control than an engaged dialogue grounded in mutual learning.
The appetite of professionals for improvement in service quality
is seen as being undermined by a stream of top down, sometimes
conflicting, initiatives and changes (often media driven) in policy
priority."
We would stress the importance of setting out
and integrating across the Centre of government, which covers
not only Number 10 and the Cabinet Office, but also the Treasury,
what might be called a guide to practice or an operating model.
It already exists in patches. In some matters, however, there
has been a tendency to regard such guides as codes available on
the shelf, if there were a difficulty or disagreement, rather
than principles to be involved in designing actual working arrangements.
We think that this change would increase the efficiency of the
centre. Hence our reference to an operating model. We believe
it should cover 2 to 5 below:
1. By constitutional convention for some 200
years power was the collective responsibility of Cabinet. Statutes
attribute powers and duties to Secretaries of State, almost never,
and never in any significant regard, to the Prime Minister. In
recent years it has been widely thought to be a matter of politics
and political choice how collective responsibility is defined
on the spectrum from what is called presidential or prime ministerial
government to one in which the Prime Minister's role is that of
first among equals. However for the reasons we have endorsed above
we believe there are dangers in over-centralisation. Whatever
view is taken on that point the operating model should define
what must be done at the Centre.
2. The scale and complexity of modern government
is best served if there is clear attribution of responsibilities
to departmental ministers to be set out as far as possible in
the operating model. Among them in our judgement should be that
Secretaries of State and their Departments should normally have
primary responsibility for initiating, and always for developing
policies and legislation in their policy areas. In that and other
respects Departments ought to be allowed without micro-management
to get on with what is not assigned to the Centre.
3. Additions to the present central documents
on Ministerial and Civil Service Codes are needed to formulate
the proper role of the Cabinet. The documents should also set
out how Cabinet committees should operate and, so far as it is
relevant, interact.
4. The remit of the Centre should include producing
a workforce strategy for the Senior Civil Service as the Normington
report recommended. We have a number of suggestions to make on
its objectives and what it might contain.
5. We also believe the model should cover many
BGI recommendations on standards of preparation; collaboration
between Ministers and officials; collaboration between policy-makers
and the "front line"; and rebuilding the capabilities
of non-central departments, etc. We annex the recommendations
from our report Governing Well we believe most need to
be reflected in such an operating model.
6. There is a difference of opinion between BGI
members on one point: whether Number 10 and the Cabinet Office
are best kept separate or amalgamated into a Department of the
Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). You will be getting separate
evidence from BGI members on both sides of that important question.
In either case it would be appropriate to draw up an operating
model on lines suggested above.
The Better Government Initiative recommendations
referred to were published in its report, Governing Well,
(not published here) in 2008. That report was written for, and
has subsequently been widely discussed with, parliamentarians
and others with an insider's knowledge of Parliament and government.
The BGI is currently revising that report for a wider audience
and to provide more detail. Nevertheless the arguments of the
current website version remain valid. Central to its argument
is the need to end too high a volume of incomplete, poorly explained
and impracticable bills and other measures reaching Parliament.
(In this evidence we concentrate on the Centre of Government's
role in this regard. But to achieve it, as our report makes clear,
changes are needed in both Parliament and the Centre of Government.
Neither would be effective alone.)
We note that among the current objectives of
the Cabinet Office, Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO)2
is to: "Support the Prime Minister and the Cabinet in ...
policy making". Another is that of "making government
work better",[1]
while DSO 6 adds it is also to: "promote the highest standards
of propriety, integrity and governance in public life". We
accept that these terms allow for a good deal of discretion in
their interpretation but argue that the Centre, on either of the
alternative organisational schemes mentioned above could and should
consistently adopt an active interpretation on the lines we are
suggesting. The Cabinet Office in some ways already does so, for
example by sponsoring the recent report on policymaking, Engagement
and Aspiration: reconnecting Policy Making with Front Line Professionals.
But in other ways in our judgement they remain too narrow, for
example, in concentrating on procedure rather than the key policy
requirements in their recent guidance on legislation.
In responding to the Committee's invitation
of 27 March 2009, to provide evidence for its inquiry into the
Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government, we have seen and
endorse the evidence to you by one of our members Sir David Omand
(also an author of Engagement and Aspiration) in conjunction
with Professor Starkey and Lord Adewobale. We have also noted
Sir David Omand's 2006 paper, Improving the working of Central
Government and its relationship with Parliament. That paper
referred to evidence of "persistent under-performance"
by Departments and Agencies which it related to "underlying
problems with the proper and effective functioning of Central
Government in a modern context, including in its accountability
and legislative relationship to Parliament". We agree that
manifestations of under-performance—many in practice centrally
driven—include:
1. Departmental failure to meet key delivery
targets Government has set them;
2. periodic public service management crises;
4. failure to follow detailed provisions of the
Ministerial Code relating to Cabinet Business as for example in
the run-up to the Iraq war;
5. media management distorting the process of
policymaking; and
6. Parliament struggling with too large a volume
of legislation that has needed substantial re-working and where
doubts over its practicality and enforcement remain.
We believe that the Centre of Government's operating
model should have a key function in relation to all these if government
is "to work better". We would argue that in relation
to all these the Centre should go beyond laying down the procedures
ministers and officials ought to follow to establishing the requirements
needed to achieve satisfactory outcomes in relation to all these
and reflecting them as far as possible in the Centre's operating
model. However, in all these cases it must clarify the responsibilities
of Secretaries of State and their Departments. In so doing the
Centre must avoid micro-management.
We would also maintain that the changes we are
recommending are constitutional in the sense that they aim to
establish and maintain, over periods longer than a single parliament,
processes and practices that will support good government whichever
party is in power and reduce the risk inherent in our unwritten
arrangements without separation of powers that arises from the
freedom incoming governments have to adopt processes that are
liable to do lasting damage.
6 May 2009
Annex
— R2: Before policy decisions are taken
by the Government, proposals should be thoroughly tested by objective
analysis, by drawing on the experience of politicians in Parliament
and in Government and of officials (including people familiar
with delivery), and by wider consultation.
— R3: The Government should establish a
better balance between the strategic role of the Centre of Government
in determining the overall policy framework and the operational
role of departments in framing policies and delivering services
in their specialist areas of responsibility.
— R4: Service deliverers—such as
executive agencies, non departmental public bodies, the NHS and
local authorities—should be set clear objectives against
which their performance will be monitored, but they should not
be micro-managed by Departments or by the Centre of Government.
Stability of structures and of instructions from the Government
is clearly desirable.
— R7: The Resolution should ask the Government
for a public response setting out how it will ensure that its
proposals will meet the required standards; and ask Select Committees
to check compliance before the Government's individual proposals
reach the floor of the House in response to R6: In order to raise
the quality of legislative and policy proposals, Parliament should
pass a Resolution which sets standards for thorough preparation
by the Executive.
— R10: On tax, there should be a genuine
Green Budget, separating changes in tax rates from new taxes and
providing draft clauses on new taxes, all reaching Parliament
at least as early as the present Pre-Budget Report and preferably
earlier.
— R11: On expenditure, Parliament should
be involved at an early stage in the broad issues of Comprehensive
Spending Reviews. In the annual process the relevant Select Committees
should provide a commentary which the House would have when it
considered the Executive's proposed plans for total spending and
its allocation.
— R12: The "Red Book"—effectively
a White Paper on the Government's budgetary plans—should
be made available to Parliament in advance of the debate
— R17: The volume of legislation should
be reduced, and the quality of scrutiny (especially in the Commons)
thereby increased, through stronger pre-introduction tests.
— R20: The Government should commit itself
to provide Parliament with full and timely written explanation
of its legislative and major policy proposals, normally in the
form of Green Papers and subsequent White Papers.
— R21: Major changes in the machinery of
government should be accompanied by a written explanation and
a business case from Ministers on which there should be a debate
and a vote.[2]
— R22: Similar arrangements should apply
when other significant changes are proposed in the delivery structure
for public services or in Government guidance to public service
providers.
— R26: There should be a written framework
for the conduct of Cabinet business that unequivocally states
the personal responsibility of all Ministers, not excepting the
Prime Minister, to submit important decisions for collective consideration
by Cabinet or Cabinet Committees.
— R27: The framework should make it clear
that the Cabinet Committee process is required for all issues
that engage the collective responsibility of the Government because
of their importance, or that cut across Departmental boundaries
in a substantial way, or that require significant legislation.
— R28: The framework should be published,
and the Government should explicitly state its intention to adhere
to it and its readiness to be held to account by Parliament and
the public for any failure to do so.
— R29: The framework should make it clear
that the Heads of the Cabinet Secretariats, notwithstanding their
new role as Advisers to the Prime Minister, remain responsible
for ensuring that all Ministers are appropriately involved in
structured collective consideration of matters in which they have
a departmental interest.
— R30: The framework should also make explicit
the duty of the Cabinet Secretariats to ensure that proposals
are fully, fairly, accurately and clearly represented in submissions
to Cabinet Committees; they should have authority to require amendments
to, or reject, papers that do not meet the required standards.
— R31: Cabinet Committee papers and, where
relevant, Green and White papers, must be expressed in terms that,
however technical their content, enable the complete argument
to be followed by non-expert readers.
— R32: Proposals approved by Cabinet or
Cabinet Committees that require fresh legislation or substantial
resources should be subject to post-implementation reviews within
the three years following introduction, in particular to assess
the outcomes and costs actually achieved against those set out
in the initial proposal
— R35: The Intelligence and Security Committee
should proceed by consensus, with individual dissenting positions
reported by footnote or annex. Its staff should have previous
knowledge of the work of the intelligence agencies, full security
clearance and secure working accommodation.
— R36: The involvement of the Centre in
Departments' day-to-day operations should be reduced to a demonstrably
necessary minimum
— R38: Ministers and Departments should
not become too closely involved in the day-to-day operations of
service deliverers. The numbers of staff overseeing them should
be limited. Service deliverers need a clear and stable remit and
a manageable pattern of accountability.
— R41: Greater emphasis should be placed
by the Centre on training and career development for the Higher
Civil Service and its feeder grades, in particular in the skills
needed by departmental staff who directly manage implementation
and delivery and oversee delivery by bodies such as non-executive
agencies, non-departmental public bodies, the NHS and local authorities
and by the private and voluntary sectors.
1 In 2005 the fourth objective was to: "promote
standards that ensure good governance, including adherence to
the Ministerial and Civil Service Codes." Back
2
This would implement a proposal put forward by the Public Administration
Select Committee in June 2007. In this case, unlike our other
recommendations, some amendment of the Ministers of the Crown
Act 1975 would be needed. The business case should cover not only
direct financial costs but also the possible loss, in the words
of the PASC report, of "expertise, institutional memory and
strategic focus". Back
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