July 14, 2024
Getting a Grip on the System
A new report by Policy Exchange published today, ‘Getting a Grip on the System: Restoring Ministerial Authority over the Machine’, exposes how power has slipped away from Ministers in recent decades – and why this needs to be reversed if difficult reforms are to be undertaken.
The report – backed by former Conservative Senior Cabinet Minister Rt Hon Michael Gove and former Leader of the Scottish Labour Party Rt Hon Jim Murphy – is based on in-depth interviews with former Cabinet Ministers of all major parties, top Special Advisers and two former Cabinet Secretaries, as well as their personal experiences within the Government system.
The report identifies that Ministers’ ability to influence the system has declined dramatically over the past 30 years as a result of:
- More complex landscape of arm’s length bodies with more limited ability for Ministers to influence them.
- The rise of judicial review.
- An increasingly independent civil service.
- A growing tendency to subcontract important political areas to regulators, advisory bodies and to set policy objectives and targets in legislation.
- Ministers’ reduced access to independent policy advice as parties’ membership and policy functions shrink.
The report also analyses features that have degraded the effectiveness of the machinery of Government, including rampant grade inflation and churn in the civil service accompanied by declining salaries and training. The Senior Civil Service has increased in size by at least 67% since 2013.
Churn has also affected Ministers. The average length of cabinet experience has declined from 60 months at the end of the Callaghan government to 38 months at the end of the Sunak government. The average ‘apprenticeship’ period Cabinet Ministers have spent as junior Ministers has fallen from 70 months in the last Major cabinet to 31 months now.
The report questions whether there is evidence that this ‘technocractic’ approach to policy making and delivery works and challenges its legitimacy.
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