Memorandum by Jonathan Powell, former
Chief of Staff to Tony Blair
I have six brief points to make on the subjects
the Committee is considering. They are based on nearly 30 years
experience in the public service including 10 years in Number
10 Downing Street.
In my view the Cabinet Office is one of the
most effective parts of the machinery of government. While perhaps
not quite the Ferrari referred to in Gerald Kaufmann's excellent
book How to be a Minister it is certainly in the top league.
The following are entirely personal thoughts.
First, in my view the Cabinet is not the right
body in which to attempt to make difficult decisions. It has too
many members for a proper debate. Many of those who are there
will not necessarily be well-briefed on the subjects under discussion
unless they come directly within the remit of their departments.
And many individuals whose input is necessary for well informed
decisions, e.g. the military chiefs of staff, are not present.
It is for that reason that since at least the late 1970s the Cabinet
has been used to ratify decisions rather than to take them. Cabinet
committees on the other hand are an essential instrument of government
decision making: all the relevant people can be there (and not
the irrelevant), they are focussed on particular decisions, properly
prepared and they have as much time as they need to reach a decision.
In my view therefore rather than arguing about the death of Cabinet
government, when it in fact died a long time ago, we should spend
more effort reinforcing the Cabinet committees and their supporting
infrastructure as a key part of government decision making.
Second, it is important to effective administration
that the Cabinet Office not become the proponent of the lowest
common denominator between departments but be the driver of government.
The analogy I always think of is that Number 10 should be the
gearstick in the Prime Minister's hand—light and responsive—and
the Cabinet Office should be the drive shaft—making sure
the wheels of government are all moving in the same direction
and at the same speed. So the Cabinet Office should not be some
neutral body mediating differences between departments but an
institution designed to drive through the policies of the Prime
Minister and the wider centre of government (including the Treasury).
This requires close coordination between Number 10, the Cabinet
Office and the Treasury and a clear plan of what the government
is trying to achieve. Departments should not be independent feudal
baronies paying fealty to the centre while getting on with their
own thing but part of a united government with collective responsibility
and a manifesto they are trying to implement. The Cabinet Office
should be the central body making sure that that plan is put into
practice.
Third, I do not believe the Prime Minister's
Office should be allowed to grow into a monstrous new department.
As I said above, it should be light and responsive to the Prime
Minister's intentions. Everyone in Number 10 should really know
what the Prime Minister thinks first hand rather than trying to
guess at it because they rarely or never see him or her, and then
create havoc by calling departments and saying "the Prime
Minister thinks." About 10 years ago a young official came
from the German Kanzleramt to study how Number 10 worked to establish
whether there were any lessons for Germany. When he left he said
to me that the one thing we should never do is try to replicate
the size of the Kanzleramt with its various Abteilungs or departments
in London or we would end up with an ungainly bureaucracy rather
than a light and mobile centre of government. So while it is tempting
to give the Prime Minister more staff to deal with the battalions
of Whitehall, I think it is more sensible to keep many of the
functions that would otherwise be placed in Number 10 in the Cabinet
Office. For example our innovation in government of double hatting
the European Adviser and the Foreign Policy Adviser in Number
10 as simultaneously the head of their respective secretariats
in the Cabinet Office reduced staffing and increased efficiency
enormously and above all put both on an equal footing with their
European opposite numbers, where these positions are both in the
office of the Prime Minister or President and well staffed.
Fourth, I continue to believe it would be sensible
to give serious thought to merging the public spending part of
the Treasury with the Cabinet Office in an Office of Management
and the Budget under a Chief Secretary, leaving the residue of
the Treasury as a traditional Finance Ministry. We looked at this
several times in government but did not in the end implement it.
Such a reform would make it possible to bring together the Public
Sector Agreement targets set by the Treasury with the separate
objectives set by the Prime Minister for the Delivery Unit, and
ensure that the levers of management and finance are all pulling
in the same direction.
Fifth, I think the principal job of the Cabinet
Secretary should be to manage the reform of the Civil Service.
He should set incentives for permanent secretaries and be able
to move around the top layer of civil servants between departments
so that we break out of the existing silo mentality in departments
and instead have a sense of a common service. Changes have been
made in this direction in recent years by the current Cabinet
Secretary and his predecessors but there is still a way to go.
And lastly I think there is a real danger of
the Cabinet Office becoming a dustbin for units that can't find
a place elsewhere in government. There is a good case for having
a clear out after every election and assigning most of those units
that have accreted to the Cabinet Office over the previous four
or five years to individual departments so that the Cabinet Office
can focus on its core functions. If a place really can't be found
for them elsewhere then we should ask ourselves the question whether
they are really necessary at all.
11 June 2009
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