Cabinet and its Committees
The list of Cabinet Committees shows Pat McFadden is helping run the show. But it also reveals that the architecture driving the Government's five missions seems deficient.
Yesterday, just before the Government’s 100 day mark, the list of Cabinet Committees was published.
A few things jump out:
The importance of Pat McFadden - the de facto Deputy Prime Minister;
The downgrading of the Chancellor’s role - she is not chairing the primary domestic policy Committee, and has no economic policy Committee of her own;
The fact that the ‘Mission Boards’ are not Cabinet Committees and will be chaired by the lead Secretaries of State, not by the PM.
Cabinet Governance
For Government to make decisions, things need to be collectively-agreed. This is an underpinning of collective responsibility and ‘Cabinet Governance’.
In reality most actual business in Government is not conducted around the table at full Cabinet, but in various sub-Committees. That isn’t a new thing - under Margaret Thatcher there were many different Cabinet sub-Committees, some focused on one relatively small policy area. Sometimes agreement is reached through a written process - a ‘write round’ (W/R in Whitehall jargon).
Why isn’t full Cabinet used to decide things? It’s partly because of the size of Cabinet - it’s too big to be a good decision-making body. For example, Keir Starmer has 22 full Cabinet ministers, with a further four ministers attending. I think at some point Rishi Sunak had around ten ministers attending Cabinet - bringing the total well above 30. As you can see, from the picture above (taken during the Johnson Government) it’s pretty crowded around the coffin-shaped table. An hour’s meeting only allows each minister to speak for a couple of minutes.
To my mind, full Cabinet has become too performative and too perfunctory. There’s now a reluctance by officialdom (in the Cabinet Office at least) to allow anything to be agreed by Cabinet. It’s just seen as a sort of opportunity for Ministers to get bland updates on progress, to hear from the Prime Minister, and for Downing Street to put out photos. I actually heard the Cabinet Secreteriat telling my former department that Cabinet should not be used as a decision-making body. That’s an unusual take on our Constitutional set-up.
Overall, it’s infantilising and destructive to deny Ministers the chance of proper policy discussions. There is simply no substitute for Ministers arguing about complex policy problems - things cannot all be decided by a Prime Minister, and his or her advisers sitting in a bunker. Yes, Cabinet discussions can leak and can expose divisions. But they nearly always lead to better policy decisions, which should be the primary objective of good Government.
Committees and Sub-Committees
The Prime Minister, acting on the advice of the Cabinet Secretary, can establish Cabinet sub-Committees and determine their membership. This is a key prerogative power. It allows the Prime Minister to elevate the importance of favoured Ministers, or ensure those opposed to his/her agenda can be out numbered by other colleagues. I always find it fascinating to see who is given a role chairing (or as deputy chair of) different Cabinet Committees. For example, Boris Johnson put his first Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove [my former boss], in charge of a crucial Cabinet Committee determining the operational issues around EU Exit. That ‘XO’ Committee met over 100 times in the run up to our departure from the EU.
Chairs of Committees are normally expected to take a relatively neutral approach. Things also tend to work best if a third-party department chairs a Committee, rather than the lead department. For example, the Health Secretary chaired a Ministerial Implementation Group (a Committee) during the early stage of the Covid pandemic. This was relatively quickly replaced with a Committee chaired by the Cabinet Office.
In practice, the Committees don’t always work as intended. For example, during the Coalition there was a Cabinet committee established to agree cross-party business. This basically never met, and was replaced with a Quad (PM, DPM, Chancellor, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury) - which actually usually met with David Laws and Oliver Letwin as well.
Labour’s Committees
The new Government has established the following Committees.
The National Security Council (NSC) - this is an innovation of David Cameron, which has survived successive Governments since the Coalition. It serves as the primary decision-making body for matters of defence and security. There are various sub-committees, and Starmer has established one on nuclear, one on Ukraine, and one on Resilience. Nothing hugely surprising there - but there’s been some commentary that the Deputy Prime Minster is not a member of the NSC or its sub-Committees. I thought it was interesting that there is no deputy chair for NSC or NSC (Nuclear), meaning the Prime Minister will have to chair all the Committees. That’s a nice idea, but I think establishing a clear deputy is actually helpful and allows delegation.
National Security Council (Resilience) - this sub-Committee of a Committee is chaired by Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Terms of Reference (TORs in the Whitehall abbreviation) don’t reveal much - ‘to oversee implementation and delivery of resilience matters’. But I think it’s obvious that the Government has more than one eye on the Covid Inquiry’s recommendations on Resilience. I will return to this topic in future, but it’s welcome that the Government is taking it seriously and that the Cabinet Office is stepping up to lead on this area.
Europe - the new Government has a single European affairs committee, chaired by the Prime Minister. So no division between a Strategic and Operational Committee. Again, there’s no standing role for the Deputy Prime Minister. But there’s also no Home Office or DEFRA (food and farming) minister either. That seems a strange choice when so many policy discussions will likely involve agri-food regulation or matters pertaining to our borders. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (SoSNI - pronounced ‘Soz-knee’) is a member, which makes sense. And of course there’s the Paymaster General (PMG), Nick Thomas-Symonds who leads on EU matters.
Union and Constitution - this PM-chaired committee includes the TOs (Territorial Offices ie the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). It has both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Pat McFadden). McFadden is the Deputy Chair.
The Chancellor is not a member, but the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is - that’s odd for a PM-chaired Committee. Perhaps the intention is for McFadden mainly to chair. For some reason the Justice Secretary is a standing member, but the Home Secretary is not. This is a bit odd. Justice matters are largely devolved (ie run by the Scottish and Welsh Governments, and the Northern Ireland Executive), whereas various Home Office ‘equities’ are reserved - security stuff, immigration etc. Perhaps it’s because of the Ministry of Justice’s responsibility for constitutional matters relating to the Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Mann). But if that’s the case then why isn’t the Foreign Secretary on the committee? He has responsibility for the British Overseas Territories [or at least the ones David Lammy hasn’t yet given up….]
Home and Economic Affairs - this is the key one. I suspect this will be the primary write-round Committee. Much of the more routine business of Cabinet is actually done via correspondence not in person. This committee is chaired by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Starmer has therefore chosen to give the chairing to the Cabinet Office and Pat McFadden; not HM Treasury.
I think that’s sensible as too often HM Treasury can exert a total choke hold over Government policy. It has long been a convention that HM Treasury cannot be ‘out voted’ in a Cabinet committee, but in recent years this has evolved to HM Treasury having a veto on presenting papers at Cabinet. This gives HM Treasury total control over what is discussed and stalls all sorts of sensible discussions. It’s note worthy that the Chancellor does not have any committee to drive economic policy of her own.
Future of Work - this Committee is clearly a face-saver for the Deputy Prime Minister, who is left without any other Committees to chair, was denied an Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (in the Cabinet Office), and who is not even directly in charge of policy on workers’ rights. The Committee will ‘consider and take decisions on matters related to the Make Work Pay package of reforms to the Employment Law framework’. I wonder if it will actually meet very often.
There’s then a Science and Technology Committee, chaired by the PM with no deputy (again, which suggests it may meet relatively infrequently). And a general reference to a Contingencies (COBR) committee. [See some of my previous thoughts on COBRs here].
And of course there’s PBL - the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee - which decides all matters relating to legislation, including the timing of bills, concession strategies, the tabling of amendments, and so on. As usual, that’s chaired by the Leader of the Commons and includes the Business Managers (Chief Whip, the Leader of the House of Lords, Lords Chief Whip); the TOs (the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) - given the interaction with devolved legislation and questions of legislative consent etc; and some law officers (the Attorney General, and the Advocate General for Scotland - who advises the UK Government on matters of Scots law).
What is not there
The list of Committees is interesting for what it does not include. There is no economic policy committee chaired by the Chancellor. Economic policy is subsumed into Home and Economic Affairs.
There’s also no regional policy committee, beyond the general Union Committee. So nothing on Industrial Strategy, which you might have expected to see in a Labour Government. There’s also nothing on other cross-cutting issues such as, for example, social mobility or child poverty. Nor is there anything devoted to climate change and Net Zero.
I think we can assume that the Paymaster General is to be the Prime Minister’s ‘blocker’ on Committees. Nick Thomas-Symonds has a seat on the Home and Economic Affairs Committee, Europe, the Future of Work, Union and Constitution, and PBL. I suspect he will be tasked with blocking policies that the Prime Minister doesn’t like, or putting down conditions on behalf of Number 10. Although this will be less necessary than it has been in the past, given the Cabinet Office is chairing the key domestic policy committee - not HM Treasury. I think we can assume that McFadden will be pretty aligned to the Starmer agenda.
Mission Boards
The Mission Boards are not Cabinet Committees. This means they will not have collective decision powers, and will only be able to operate within mandates set by a Cabinet committee.
The Cabinet Office has also confirmed that each Mission Board will be chaired by ‘the respective lead Secretaries of State (with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as Deputy Chair), with a remit to oversee and drive progress on the relevant mission’.
There is no longer a mention of the PM personally chairing the Mission Boards - although this had previously been briefed to the Press. It’s not clear whether the Chancellor will attend them.
I think it’s a mistake to set things up in this way. Cabinet Committees - Government Committees in general - always work better with a neutral chair in post. It’s just harder to get things done if a departmental minister, responsible for the lead policy area, is chairing his or her own Committee. How can he hold himself to account?
And, I think it will prove difficult for departmental ministers chairing Mission Boards to secure top level attendance from other departments and from the Treasury. It’s hard enough to persuade Secretaries of State to attend Cabinet Committees (other than those chaired by the PM). These Mission Boards aren’t even a Cabinet Committee.
The success or failure of the Missions will depend on what happens at the Budget and subsequent Spending Review. Unless serious resource is put behind some of the Missions, it seems unlikely that very much will happen. We will find out how serious the Treasury is later this month.
Thank you for raising the profile of Cabinet Committees.
A party prepared for government would have its Cabinet Committees prepared before the election and used the time before the elections to help officials understand what its intentions were.
The Cabinet Committee system is constitutionally sound (as the above makes clear) and is the route for politicians to engage with officials (through preparing briefing and correspondence) in decision making, legislating and implementation. The committees carry the authority of the Cabinet and are the proper and regular way of managing ‘cross-cutting’ issues.
They are an important part of the exercise of the PMs power of patronage - traditionally the way in which a PM is ‘first among equals’.
Cabinet Committees are managed by a secretariat which gives the Cabinet Secretary more opportunity to be effective in managing relationships within and between government departments.
Cabinet Committees require ministers to be on top of their briefs and to rely more on advice from officials - and maybe less on comms or spads - who understand the proper process of government and must develop a relationship of trust with their ministers.