8th February 2022
From an earnest perspective, there are three ‘great offices of state’ – the Exchequer, the Foreign Office, and the Home Office.
And from an ironic perspective, there are also three ‘great offices of state’ – Charles Dickens’ Circumlocution Office, Yes Minister’s Department for Administrative Affairs, and our very own, real-life Cabinet Office.
The Cabinet Office is where policies and reforms and ideas – and careers – go to die.
Why is this?
Part of the reason is that the department itself has no real gravity in Whitehall – major policy is made elsewhere; other departments own major external relationships; and it is not a large spending department.
Any Cabinet Office influence within central government rests upon persuasion and coordination, rather than because of any inherent power.
When I was a civil servant there was a joke: if a senior official is invited to to a meeting at Downing Street, then that official attends; if invited by the Treasury, then they send a deputy; and if invited by the Cabinet Office, they send an apology.
But again and again there is some whizz-bang idea about cross-government coordination, and the implementation of that policy goes to the Cabinet Office.
And you then rarely hear about the policy thereafter.
From time to time you also hear that the Cabinet Office is to be ‘beefed up’ – but usually that lasts as long as it takes to read the relevant news article.
In essence, it is a department which gives the illusion of things being done, rather than the hard crunchy slog of policy formulation and implementation in the larger departments that actually do things.
(The Cabinet Office is also woeful in respect of Freedom of Information.)
And so it is appropriate that today’s reshuffle – conducted by a weak Prime Minister with no serious notions of policy or reform – simply led to yet more ministers at the Cabinet Office, at least three of which will now “attend cabinet”.
Both Dickens and Sir Humphrey would understand such appointments only too well.
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Ministers to watch the PM closely?
When we start discussing the various departments and branches of government, I am reminded of an excellent cartoon that circulated towards the tail end of the Iran-Contra scandal that engulfed Ronald Regan’s Presidency. In that two-picture illustration, the first contained an accurate pictorial map of the three branches of government and the various top-level departments each contained. In the second diagram, just three boxes were shown. The first was labelled “Ron” (for Regan); the second “Ollie” (for Colonel Oliver North) and the last, “Shredder”.
(As an aside, based on recent reporting, a new variation of that cartoon, with two boxes (“Don” and “Shredder”) might well end up making the rounds some time soon).
The suggestion of that first cartoon – that the various branches of government amount to nothing when there are just a couple of determined people willing to lean against the levers of power – may well be some sort of “past as prelude” introduction to what we see now.
Two things fascinate me about the UK government: first, that it is so outrageously bloated that it is not remotely surprising that there are entire offices of staff that add no measurable benefit to the tax-payer. Back in 2016 there were reportedly 1,200 Quangos, spending up to 40% of central government’s budget. As shown on civilservant.org.uk…
https://www.civilservant.org.uk/spads-statistics.html
the Johnson government has a record 114 Special Advisors, of which 51 work for the Prime Minister…
This isn’t to say that allowing an administration to organise itself to meet the needs of the day is inherently bad, but what seems to have happened is that each successive administration has taken it upon themselves to significantly increase the size of the administrative service, whilst almost certainly cutting back on front-line staff.
I think that it would be unwise to prohibit reorganisations to meet genuine need [for example, like it or loathe it, Brexit would be classed as an extraordinary event that needed serious support]. On the other hand, it is equally unwise to allow government departments and ministers un-checked freedom to hire – and most especially freedom to form Quangos and staff them directly [all too often with “friends” or even family] and also SpAds.
It seems entirely plausible that one reason that the Cabinet Office may lack a clarity of purpose or authority is because of the creation of Quangos, the appointment of SpAds, or the countless little empires and fiefdoms that get set up in the halls of power once people get their feet under a desk.
In a more sane world, we would approach this with some form of central “structural planning” function that ensured that all the various parts of government had clearly-defined remits, boundaries, authorities and budgets. The fact that we *don’t* do this today suggests two leading explanations: first, that successive governments remain singularly incompetent in this arena, unable to manage themselves, let alone a country. (Plausible, I have to admit). The second would be that successive governments actually rather enjoy the byzantine complexity of the bureaucracy, because it is a perfect way to hire friends, spend public money with companies run by more friends, that sort of thing.
It would be both fascinating (and I suspect frightening) to see all of this costed out. Exactly how much are we paying for Mr. Johnson’s 51 dedicated SpAds? Are we really expected to believe that we are so short of necessary skills in Whitehall that we need so many external advisors? If so, can somebody please find and sack the Civil Service “Head of Personnel” for gross incompetence?
I’m way off topic, for which I apologise. Although I agree with David on his observations, I can sum-up by observing that the challenges we face with our Executive run far broader and far deeper than one single office.
Depressing and expensive, but not entirely surprising…
Perhaps I’m not the only one to find it interesting to ask “how did we get here”.
The Cabinet Office was formed in 1916 to support Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, and made itself useful enough to be retained as the secretariat of the peacetime cabinet thereafter. Maurice Hankey was first cabinet secretary and remained in post for 22 years, then Edward Bridges for the whole of the second war up to 1947, and then Norman Brook for 15 years until 1962.
As things stand today, the Cabinet Office has about 2000 or 8000 employees, depending on whether you believe its own website or the ONS. It also has 12 ministers, more than any other department, which tells you something about the priorities of the government.
Special Advisers were created in modern times by Harold Wilson in 1964, to bring in external expertise – among the first were the eminent economists Thomas Balogh, Nicholas Kaldor, Robert Neild, at a time when the archetypal civil servant was a supreme generalist – but also to overcome (what he expected to be) the inherently conservative mindset of a civil service that had served successive Tory governments since 1951. They were put on a statutory footing by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. e.g.: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/25/section/15
As I understand it, each of these SPADs is a “non official extra civil service public appointee seconded to the [relevant] minister in an advisory role” – quoting the cartoon on the cover here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/sites/constitution_unit/files/158.pdf – that document also has a fascinating anecdote in Appendix C, on how SPADs could oil the wheels between the minister, the civil service, parliament, the press, and private bodies, to secure a better outcome for the families who lost money in the Farepak insolvency in 2006, but I wonder how typical that is.
So we the public are paying for the Prime Minster to have 51 people providing him with political advice. Knowing that, I’m a little surprised so few turned up at his parties.
Thank you for this comment, which triggered more questions and sent me off looking for more detail. On the main UK Government web site, I found the “Cabinet Office Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021 to 2022”, published 15 July 2021.
It makes terrifying reading.
For example, it has a “Departmental Expenditure Limit” of £1.73 billion. Which seems rather a lot. Let’s get back to that.
Under a heading of “Breakdown of resource by work”, it indicates that taxpayers currently employee 258 staff to “Ensure the benefits of the Union are clear, visible and understood by all citizens”.
So think about that for a minute. There are at this time no changes to the nature of the Union that I’m aware of. I don’t think the Isle of Wight is planning on seceding or otherwise declaring independence. Although if I lived there, I might push for it. In other words, the Union is currently a relatively static “thing”, with no immediate plans for major change.
So why would the Cabinet Office believe that they need 258 people to ensure that the benefits of the Union are clear?
What is the measure, the test that “benefits of the Union are clear, visible and understood by all citizens”?
What are the consequences if this is not the case?
Who gets to set and approve these goals? How do the goals tie back to national interest? Or the need to develop the economy? Or drive job creation? Or address Quality of Life issues?
There is a scene in the 1993 Ivan Reitman movie, “Dave” (Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella) where Dave (Kline) has been told that if he can save a bunch of money from the federal budget, a kids homeless shelter can be saved from closure. One of the activities that came up for review [and was cut] in the fictional story, was an advertising campaign designed to “make people feel better about a car they had already purchased”.
I was reminded of that specific scene, in conjunction with what I read on the Office web site and plan document, because they are both completely ludicrous.
I can’t help but wonder: if I had enough time to read through the 2022 plans for all UK Government departments, exactly how much of them would feature the sort of pointless activity and waste glimpsed through this one example.
I fear that we would be stunned and enraged if we knew the truth.
Until recently (and still?) they did at least keep their eyes open for UK-relevant cases at the CJEU and plan and oversee our responses.
This may be a very puerile comment; the PM has an administration in No 10 with, seemingly, hordes of staff, SpAds, and the ilk. There is talk of an “Office of the PM”. Yet next door, there is a Cabinet Office.
I’m not clear which is the superior “office”; sometimes it seems as if the Cabinet Office is, sometimes not.
I can imagine that the no 10 Office “supports the PM”, especially as government here changes from “collective responsibility” to “presidential”. But just what is the Cabinet Office for? Who benefits from it?
You do get the feeling that Mogg’s move to a back office, probably bombproof, is one of ‘Job Done’, his ERG oversight of Johnson no longer required so time to duck and cover from the predicted fall out of the Boy Blunders demise, What better place to go than a totally fictitious office of Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency and avoid the taint of what it about to happen.
I would not be so sanguine. A warrant of appointment as a senior cabinet minister bestows executive power and is a tool that a determined ideologue with daily walk in access to an empty vessels of a PM can use. Think of the IMO irreparable damage Frost did to the UK’s reputation in his time in cabinet.
Trump’s WH Economic Advisor & former Chair of Goldman-Sachs Gary Cohn, resigned in frustration and remarked that US policy was that of ‘whoever Trump last spoke to’. He also said that Trump’s attention span on any issue was so short (especially if it did not offer opportunities to grandstand) that he & other senior staff used to take memos away from the Oval Office when Trump was not in.
BJ is desperate to stay in office for his (pathological) ego and also far more prosaically, his finances since even he must now be aware that unlike all other ex PM’s no one will be lining up to offer him juicy non executive directorships.
In short the hardliners now have him nicely triangulated. Rees-Mogg may seem a preternatural character from Dickens but that’s a very conscious image he projects masking the mind and will of a true fanatic and now he de facto shares an office with the PM and has him on a short leash.
To follow up on my comments relating to your Ombudsman article of 6th February, the Cabinet Office have yet to respond to my enquiry of 15th December and reminders sent in January and February. The longer they delay, the less likely it is they have a lawful reason for ‘extending’ the Ombudsman’s tenure for two years.
The refusal to respond means the issue has been re-referred via my MP who I am sure will not be best pleased that I am seeking his involvement again.
So much for openness and transparency. Perhaps the Cabinet Office should be re-named “The Filing Cabinet Office”
When starting work in a local authority, my boss, the Director of Planning pointed out that I worked for two ‘masters’, elected members and him. No choice about who was the more important.
I was much struck when the PM said, in the questions following his statement on the Sue Gray update, that there were over 400 staff working in No. 10 Downing Street. I went back to my well thumbed copy of Peter Hennessy’s “Whitehall” to see how the numbers in the PMO and the Cabinet Office looked in 1986-7 (a period when, at the time, almost evil ill was placed by Tory MP’s at the feet of a bloated civil service but which now the current crop of Tory MPs believe was a halcyon age).
Then the PMO was a lean 63 staff and the whole Cabinet Office comprised 1,690 staff (working with a budget of £49m). In 2020 those numbers were 400+ in the PMO and 8,270 in the whole Cabinet Office with a budget (current and capital) of £2.5bn. The minister for government efficiency will at least have plenty to work with close to home, and yet, somehow, I doubt, if the knife falls, it will be there.