Douglas Carswell: Restore the State (Part 2): Britain needs a Department of the Prime Minister

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.  He was previously the MP for Clacton. 

This is part two, of a weekly mini series exploring how to fix the workings of the British state. You can read part one, ‘Britain’s state of dysfunction’ here. 

Britain’s government is dysfunctional.

Over the past thirty years new prime ministers have entered No. 10 only to discover that the system around them is unwieldy and unresponsive.

They rapidly come to realise that it is a struggle to get anything done.  Far from executive power being concentrated in Downing Street, some other agency or authority always seems in the way.  Frustration ensues.  Public disaffection with politicians that never deliver on their promises grows.

It is time to reform in order to ensure Britain has an effective system of government.  A big part of this reform agenda must be to create a new Department of the Prime Minister to bring strategic coherence to the governance of the country, allowing elected leaders to deliver on their promises.

In the United States, the White House provides the President with the resources needed to wield executive power effectively.  It brings together hundreds of officials and advisory bodies with deep knowledge about economics and national security matters.  The President can count on top legal counsel and monitor in minutiae the federal budget.

A British Prime Minister by contrast has a tiny team in Downing Street, primarily dedicated to trying to keep ahead of the news agenda.

The Prime Minister’s Office, technically part of the Cabinet Office, is in reality at arm’s length from it.

The Cabinet Office, the central bureaucratic institution through which the Prime Minister is supposed to govern, notionally serves the whole Cabinet, not merely the Prime Minister.  From this institutional ambiguity flows the Cabinet Secretary’s often decisive influence.  He is not merely able to veto ministerial initiatives, operating as he does with the imprimatur of the Prime Minister.  The Cabinet Secretary can effectively script Cabinet decisions, and perhaps even involve the authority of the whole Cabinet to effectively overrule the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister might be First Lord of the Treasury in theory, but in practice the Treasury is all powerful when it comes to spending decisions.  Yet the Treasury struggles to ensure effective delivery.

The problem is not that executive power is excessively centralised, rather it is diffuse, fragmented between a triumvirate of disjointed institutions.

These institutional arrangements make inevitable the inertia, fiscal incontinence, and strategic incoherence that have been the hallmarks of British administrations in recent years.

It was this that caused Tony Blair, despite commanding a massive parliamentary majority, to complain about the “scars on my back” as he struggled to deliver reform. It’s why Keir Starmer today laments the civil service “blockers” that impede progress.

Previous efforts to overhaul the system, always tried in response to the frustrations in office, have been short-lived and ineffective.  Tony Blair’s created a Downing Street Delivery Unit, launched in 2001 to accelerate reforms in health, education, and transport. Early improvements fizzled out.  John Birt was then invited to consider some more substantial changes.  His proposals to shift budget oversight from the Treasury to Downing Street and strengthen No. 10’s control over the Cabinet Office, were fiercely resisted by vested interests and quietly abandoned.

Boris Johnson, too, despite having been offered a blueprint for reform at the outset of his administration, left it too late.  He only began to take anything resembling an interest once he discovered he could not get things done as he had once imagined.

It should not come as a surprise to us to learn that today Keir Starmer is now toying with the idea of creating a “Department of Downing Street” for much the same reason.  He, too, has woken up to the realisation that the British state is systemically failing, those with executive power unable to wield it effectively.  But will his proposals actually fix things?

The same entrenched interests that derailed John Birt’s proposals can be counted on to resist real reform again.  The ambiguity that arises in having a Cabinet Secretary serve the entire Cabinet, not purely the Prime Minister, enables officials to exercise enormous control.  The Treasury will fight tooth and nail to retain their grip on spending decisions.

A Department of the Prime Minister will only be effective if it has the right status, not just a new name.

As a new Department, it must effectively annex the Cabinet Office, and take from the Treasury the job of setting budgets across Whitehall.  Its leader must displace the position of Cabinet Secretary altogether, the new Department being run by the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, appointed by the Prime Minister and holding ministerial rank.

The new Departments needs not only status, but the right capabilities.  A Civil Service Unit, similar to Singapore’s Public Service Division, should oversee the management of the civil service. A Public Expenditure & Performance Unit, modeled on Ireland’s Department of Public Expenditure, should align budgets with outcomes, ensuring outcomes and delivery.

Rather than leave it to the Whitehall bureaucracy to appoint more mediocrities, an Appointments Unit should supercharge the power of patronage to ensure that those appointed to key positions share the elected governments priorities.

Rather than having to depend on the Solicitor General for legal advice part time, the Prime Minister’s Department should have a Legal Counsel Unit, capable of providing the legal information needed to overcome obstacles.  An expanded Policy and Strategy Units ought to allow the Prime Minister’s team to do more than try to keep ahead of the news agenda.

In order to exercise control over Whitehall departments, the Department of the Prime Minister needs new tools.  The first of these should be Charter Letters, issued by the Prime Minister at the start of a term, which would set clear expectations for ministers and civil servants as to their priorities.  These would inform each department’s strategic plans, aligning every department with the government’s overall agenda.

Second, Cross-Departmental Projects, backed by targeted budgets, would tackle complex issues that require drive and energy to tackle. Third, transparent Performance Reviews, conducted by the Public Expenditure & Performance Unit and published for public scrutiny, would hold ministers and officials accountable for results.

Some might see this as a centralisation of power – and it is.  But the failure of successive administrations in Britain has been a consequence of the fact that executive power has been dispersed across too many institutions for too long.  What needs to be done is not done.  Institutional inertia has prevailed.

Britain is in a pitiful condition.  It is not enough to elect a new administration to arrest our decline.

We need to ensure that those we elect to govern have a competent administrative machine through which they can govern.

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