Ed Balls Ed Balls Ed Balls: Spad, Official or Both? The Joys of Research and Government Transparency

May 10, 2013 Leave a comment

It is occasionally suggested by Whitehall veterans that Ed Balls began as a spad and ended as a civil servant. We have no such evidence that this happened. The confusion seems to lie in the fact that the previous person with the title ‘Chief Economic Adviser’ was a civil servant—Sir Alan Budd), as is the current one (David Ramsden).

But in the period that Balls was ‘Chief Economic Adviser’ he was also a special adviser. He was clearly stated as such in parliamentary questions between 1997 and 2001.[1] The records are not clear for 2001-3 (Balls is not named in the records we have seen),[2] but the Chief Economic Adviser in this period is specified as a special adviser in Hansard. We’re presuming that person is still Ed Balls. So the story seems to be that Gordon Brown as Chancellor decided to appoint Balls to a role which was conventionally held by a civil servant or formal employment terms. But Balls remained a spad.[3] That is our understanding. But we would welcome—indeed, encourage—corrections.[4]

This is nerdy stuff, but it’s important. This is what research is all about: grappling with imperfect information. It’s assumed that everything in government is always perfectly recorded, but it is not. For instance, there is an expectation of regular, annual data releases on numbers and names of special advisers. And for the first two years of the Coalition numbers and names were released at regular intervals—roughly, every four months. There has not been a new release since October 2012—seven months.[5]

Does this matter? It matters to researchers like us. Imperfect or faulty information means we may make faulty inferences. So for instance the lack of up to date data on special advisers means it is difficult to determine tenure of spads with consistency. Data releases on spad numbers never talk about spads leaving, only entering government—so we have to infer from their absence that they have left.[6] Tenure is important because it would help us understand the nature of the work that spads do: for example, if tenure is short, it may suggest short-termism; if tenure is changing, it may suggest the nature of the job is changing.

But there is a deeper point here: government transparency.[7] Some people have already taken office in the period since October 2012 as special advisers, but they are not listed anywhere. Would it not be advisable to list their names and details so that people with relevant interests and concerns might be in contact with these advisers? More generally, if spad numbers have dropped or risen, that might also be useful so that the public to know, so that they can appraise the current government’s use of special advisers, and their numbers.

[1] See, eg., HC Deb 28 July 2000 vol 354 cc972-4W.

[2] See, eg., HC Deb 16 July 2003, cc328-9W. In fact there is generally very little Hansard coverage of special advisers in that period.

[3] Brown had a way of doing such things: he had a ‘Council of Economic Advisers’ which was for all intents and purposes simply another group of special advisers—if one looks at the annual data releases on special advisers, those ‘sitting’ on the Council of Economic advisers were included, oddly, as a footnote, as if to suggest they were not special advisers. Needless to say the Cabinet Office continues to follow this obfuscatory practice.

[4] Tweet us!

[5] To be exact: there was a (poorly edited) release on 19 October 2012—see Matt Honeyman’s spellbinding post on this. But there has since been a revised version of those special advisers employed as of October 19 2012 published 17 February 2013. But all that did was revise the earlier release: it does not tell us who was a spad as of 17 February 2013.

[6] Of course we can work this out in other ways, but they are less authoritative than government statements.

[7] Liz Fisher from Oxford University is similarly critical of the transparency agenda: see

http://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2013/05/09/liz-fisher-gov-uk/.

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A split over the Permanent Secretary?

November 30, 2012 Leave a comment

Posted on behalf of Peter Waller

The press has reported today that No 10 has rejected the potential appointment of David Kennedy, currently CEO of the Climate Change committee as Permanent Secretary at DECC. Yet again this is seen as a sign of a coalition split and of meddling by No 10 in civil service appointments.

There is no reason to doubt the underlying accuracy of the story, though we can rest assured that nothing will be disclosed on the record. But does that mean either the coalition is yet again in crisis or that No 10 is throwing its weight around? Possibly but probably not.

From the outside, a strong case could be made for two types of appointment to DECC at present.

First there is the case for someone with business credibility in the energy industry given the need, as Ed Davey said in Parliament yesterday, for £110 billion private sector investment in our energy infrastructure by 2020.   This is a huge challenge – and the Department will need to be strongly business facing in the next few years.  Moreover, Ministers always start by trying to attract suitable individuals with a business background, though are seldom successful.

Second, usually as fallback, there is a case for a Whitehall insider, someone who knows how to manage a Whitehall Department at a time of significant downsizing and structural reform. And who will know how to keep the show on the road.

But David Kennedy did not really tick either box. Kennedy is hugely respected for his knowledge of climate change and if the Department had been recruiting a head of policy development, then he would have been an outstanding candidate. But his background is neither a business one, nor a Whitehall insider. And the role of Permanent Secretary is no longer, if it ever was, about being the principal policy adviser to Ministers. It is primarily a managerial role, making sure the Department delivers what Ministers want.

All this is, of course, speculation on my part. But I do recall one appointment in my civil service career where my Department was on the verge of appointing a totally “outside the box” candidate to a senior role – but we were saved from doing so by  a wise soul in No 10 telling us to think again.  Six months later we were all grateful to No 10 for their response. This case is not remotely like that one and Kennedy might well have been successful in the role. But a No 10  veto can always be exercised wisely as well as wilfully.

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Not all splits are coalition splits

November 29, 2012 Leave a comment

Posted on behalf of Peter Waller

The political commentariat love nothing more than predicting the end of the coalition, driven by splits and crises. And we have seen a rash of such stories this week over both energy policy and Leveson.

But the truth is a bit more complicated – and more interesting  -  than that.

Energy first. Until the middle of this year, DECC had been a beacon of coalition harmony in that both a Lib Dem Secretary of State and a full team of Tory Ministers were happily pursuing  a common policy with no obvious internal rows. There were admittedly some well reported disagreements with both George Osborne and Vince Cable -  but no one in Whitehall would regard those as anything other than conventional Departmental tensions not coalition ones.

But then Cameron sacked the mild mannered and coalition friendly Charles Hendry and replaced him with the much more populist and known climate change sceptic John Hayes. The only way to interpret this change was that the Tories were aware of growing unrest on their own backbenches – mainly on windfarms but also on energy costs  – and decided to throw them a little red meat.

And Hayes immediately decided that his new role entitled him not only to be a flagship for those restive backbenchers but to use his new role to attack his own Department’s policy in public. He hasn’t exactly been successful in that in that Ed Davey has first rebutted him and then proceeded to issue an Energy Bill which is far closer to existing policy than anything Hayes would support. DECC hasn’t got everything it wanted in the Bill – but what is missing can be put down to  the traditional funding concerns of the Treasury.

So is this a coalition split? No, for the very good reason is that it is actually a clear case of our old friend, the Tory split. Certainly the other leading Tory in DECC, Greg Barker, seems to have not the slightest problem with the policy he had been pursuing first with Huhne and now Davey.

Similar considerations apply to Leveson – though it is early to predict exactly how that will pan out when people have actually read it.  The interesting thing here is that over 50 Tory backbenchers have already come out in favour of statutory back-up to the press regulatory system. So again, it seems that the Tories are split rather more than the coalition is split.

But there are interesting lessons to be learnt from both energy and Leveson. We at the Constitution Unit have long believed that there will be no coalition split because it is highly unlikely to benefit either partner from ending it before 2015.  But what we are now seeing is the impact of the coalition on the way that politics is conducted in the UK.  That means a junior minister can attack his own Departmental policy and not be sacked. Government backbenchers don’t wait until their Prime Minister has announced his response to  a report before announcing how they will vote. And the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister can argue their different cases at the dispatch box on the same day.

To my mind that is nothing but healthy. As a former Whitehall civil servant, I know there are numerous issues on which there is genuine disagreements behind closed doors. If coalition means we see a few more of those disagreements out in the open, then three cheers!

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Francis Maude’s Ambitious Civil Service Review

September 15, 2012 1 Comment

In the mid-term ministers’ fancy lightly turns to thoughts of civil service reform. The current government is no different. In recent months, various figures in the Coalition have expressed growing frustration about the performance of the civil service. And so it comes as no surprise that Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, announced at the beginning of August that he would commission a review of government structures in other countries and multilateral organisations. This review would include examining various governments’ operation and accountability, identifying best practices and making recommendations for how these could be adopted in the UK. It’s a competitive bid, all for the princely sum of £50,000.

You can read the Cabinet Office’s proposal here. It’s certainly ambitious. The Constitution Unit was mentioned as one of the possible contenders for the bid, which was very flattering, but unrealistic, for reasons we set out below. And it has recently emerged that a number of other think tanks have also politely declined to submit a bid.

It’s worth thinking about the practical aspects of the proposed review. The terms of reference are very, very broad. The successful external consultant is expected to look in detail at six different countries’ bureaucratic systems at a minimum; and to look not just at the relationships between ministers and the bureaucracy, and how policy advice is provided, but successes and failures, public and parliamentary accountability mechanisms … the list goes on. Some of these six countries—New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, France, the United States, Sweden—actually have very different systems with very different experiences. The review also insists on examining the European Union (why?).

The vast scope of the proposed review means that the external organisation would need a substantial number of staff already in place, or else a very, very quick recruitment process. That would exclude a good number of organisations (like the Unit, for instance). And the comparative nature of the review also means this large project team would probably need to be already familiar with the countries in question. So not just a large team, but a large expert team. Experts or consultants cost money. That sum of £50000 begins to look less and less realistic.

Moreover, the final report is meant to be ready within two months. That is a very short time indeed. As a point of comparison, the IfG—one of the biggest, most well-staffed think tanks in the UK—is taking one year to examine many of the issues raised by the Cabinet Office proposal.

The final kicker is that the external consultant is expected to meet regularly with the Minister so that he can discuss progress and ‘provide direction’ for the project. This, coupled with the implied requirement of familiarity with comparative public administration across six countries, the short time within which they are expected to deliver, and the low sum of money being offered, raises real issues of neutrality and impartiality. The terms of reference suggest that Maude already knows what he wants, but that he needs an ‘external’ consultant to somehow legitimate it.

A final point. Francis Maude is asking for too much, too quickly. If these are the kinds of goals he thinks are realistic, is it any surprise that he and his colleagues are disappointed by the performance of the civil service?

EDIT 28 September 2012: since this blog post, Maude has announced that the Institute for Public Policy Research has won the £50,000 contract.

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Making Coalition Government Work: Lessons for the Future

July 24, 2012 Leave a comment

In 2011 the Constitution Unit spent one year examining how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition works. We interviewed almost 150 people about the Coalition: individuals from both parties—both in and outside Parliament—as well as civil servants, journalists, and interest groups. We have just published the result of our study in a book: The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Works.

We are particularly grateful to all those Lib Dems who were so generous in giving their time to be interviewed, and for Mark Pack’s very kind review of our book. And in the same spirit, we offer some thoughts on lessons for the future. Professor John Curtice argues that the conditions that led to a hung parliament in 2010 remain; and even if the boundary reforms goes through, the possibility of a hung parliament is still quite high. Even if, as some suggest, the Liberal Democrats will lose a large number of seats in 2015, they may still be in a position to determine the shape of a new government. So what lessons are there to be learned from the last two years of the Coalition, and how might the Lib Dems approach a hung parliament in 2015?

Our project was about making coalition government work. But how coalition works depends on the observer and their point of view. So some suggestions will be in tension with others: lessons for the smaller party may be at the expense of the larger party; lessons for the backbenchers may be at the expense of the frontbench, and so on. With this caveat in mind, here are some obvious suggestions.

Write a manifesto which is not geared towards single party government.

Think carefully about manifesto pledges: which ones are non-negotiable; which are bargaining chips? The party might be more careful about making firm commitments on unachievable goals. They might also think about having a more detailed manifesto. Many of the Programme for Government’s pledges are Conservative pledges because it was the Conservative manifesto which deal most with detail.

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

One of the key lessons from the 2010 hung parliament was that prior contacts and preparation made all the difference. Good relationships with the leaders and senior members of the other parties should be maintained, not least because they may become members of the negotiating teams. The other parties’ manifestos should be analysed for points of agreement and disagreement. Labour failed to do much of this, and it showed. For the Lib Dems, the problem was not so much a failure of preparation for a hung parliament, as it was a failure to prepare for government.

Take your time in negotiations over government formation.

Easier said than done. But arguably the five days to negotiate the formation of the 2010 Coalition was rushed: several Lib Dem interviewees regretted this. One Lib Dem minister we interviewed said:

If we’re going to be in coalition for five years, then you do want to spend a bit of time and avoid having tired people make a decision over four days . . . what I would do differently is to at least have a fortnight doing these things and getting things like support and . . . protocols. . . . and not having to backfill the whole time. And we’re still backfilling.

The 2010 negotiations focused mostly on policy, and everything else was secondary. The result was that the allocation of ministerial office was somewhat rushed, and the very important issue of party funding (Short Money and Cranborne Money) was completely forgotten. The latter in particular continues to have an impact on the capacity of the Lib Dems to act quickly and effectively.

Balance visibility and influence

The smaller the party, the more difficult it is to maintain visibility in the eyes of the public. The international experience is that the smaller partner in a coalition is often overshadowed by the larger partner, and in fact tends to do disproportionately badly at the second election.

In 2010, the Lib Dems went for breadth over depth: they sought to cover most of government by having a Lib Dem minister in all the Whitehall departments. That may have given the Liberal Democrats influence, but it may have come at the cost of visibility. A similar approach was taken to policy. In the future, an alternative for the Lib Dems might be to aim for visibility and limited influence, perhaps by taking a smaller number of high profile departments closely connected with the party’s key policy priorities.

Prioritise.

The decision to go for breadth over depth has a much broader impact for the Liberal Democrats. In trying to cover everything, the smaller party in the Coalition risks both overstretch, but also early exhaustion. This is not just so for the Lib Dem ministers in departments; Lib Dems in parliament have also struggled to maintain coverage.

Leaving aside whether or not one goes for depth over breadth, the Liberal Democrats need to think carefully about what is achievable. Aim high, but aim for tangible achievements. Instead of aiming for little wins across government, aim for a smaller number of high profile, high quality policies. Indeed, there are some signs that senior Lib Dems are beginning to focus and communicate in a more integrated way their key priorities.

Again, all easier said than done. Being the smaller partner in a coalition is never easy. But recognition of one’s weaknesses might be one place to start.

The Constitution Unit’s research on coalition government was generously funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

This blogpost was cross-posted at Lib Dem Voice.

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The Cabinet Manual: where’s the beef?

November 9, 2011 Leave a comment

After almost two years of drafts, three select committee reports, the UK now has a Cabinet Manual. I received my shiny grey copy of the first edition of the Manual a few days ago, and am only just beginning to read it. The grey cover is completely appropriate of course: it is a civil service document through and through. Truly, it is—as Lord Hennessy suggested memorably—a herbivore’s document. Nothing wrong with that.[1] But this is not a manual that ministers will use. It is far too formal for that. That’s a shame, but early days: this is only the first edition.

As with all good and great things, the Cabinet Manual has begun to develop its own little academic industry—which, of course, one can only applaud. But it’s easy to talk about what could and should have been in the Manual: eg., more about the Human Rights Act, Europe, a better discussion of parliament and its conventions, etc etc…. the list goes on. Instead, I would like to briefly talk about two matters, which are connected.

First point: it’s a surprise that the Manual was published at all. It needs to be recalled that prior to 2010 there were a fair number of executive guidance documents of varying size and accuracy scattered in different locations, and in some areas of executive practice there was no guidance at all. There was little understanding that this might be a problem—not just because of the possibility of a hung parliament, but because the scattered, incomplete nature of these documents might impact upon executive effectiveness. More generally, there was a need for greater transparency or at least openness about government. Robert Hazell and Peter Riddell’s original submission calling for a Cabinet Manual was made with all three considerations in mind. And if you read the submission, you will notice that many of the points are made quite cautiously. That is because there was no guarantee that anything would be done. To put it differently, the Manual’s publication was by no means inevitable.

The second point is from my brief experience in the Executive: the aphorism ‘bills are made to pass like razors are made to sell’ applies equally to executive guidance documents. Just because a need has been identified doesn’t mean it can be answered in an ideal form. There is a process, or processes by which things happen within the executive; and the executive is not a monolith—it consists of different groups with different interests. And sometimes the silences, omissions and ambiguities of the Manual are unintentional, and sometimes they are deliberate. That is the nature of the executive, because it does not necessarily speak with one voice, and because the executive also has to be aware of the other branches of government.

Is this cryptic? I hope not. But my basic point is this. The Manual is an imperfect document. But to me it is still a surprise that we have the document at all. [2]

[1] So perhaps it should have been called ‘the Cabinet Office Manual’, as all three select committees recommended. That would make it clear that it is a manual for officials rather than for ‘Cabinet’.

[2] This is not a veiled way of saying ‘be pleased with what you got’. I only wish to point out that two years ago no such document existed.

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Why Written Constitutions are a Good Thing

November 7, 2011 1 Comment

The historian Linda Colley has written an article in the Guardian on the British experience of constitution-making. It is an argument about the uses of history. For too long, Colley argues, the British (the British elites, perhaps) have had a selective memory about constitutions and constitution making. Until the 19th century, there was a ‘cult’ of devotion in Britain towards various written constitutional documents—the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, and above all, the Magna Carta. This receded over time, and although this is not stated in the article, it may have been a response to the proliferation of ‘written’ constitutions, particularly on the Continent, and the need for Britons to distinguish themselves as different. Having said that, the British continued to draft written constitutions for their colonies well into the 20th century.

Colley’s point: it is not un-British to have or engage in a process of drafting a constitution. Britons have been interested and engaged in constitutional processes in the past; it is quite possible they still are. Colley ends by suggesting that years of ad hoc reforms and the increasing disunity of the United Kingdom may make a written constitution more important than ever. Whatever the drawbacks of a written/ codified constitution, one benefit may be it would offer “a single, recognised source from which citizens can learn about how their state is supposed to operate.” As they say, read the whole thing.

As an aside, the finalised version of the UK Cabinet Manual was published last week (more on this another day). I raise it not to point to its (murky) constitutional status, but rather to point to it as a neat inversion of Colley’s description of how constitutional ideas were transmitted from the centre to the periphery: the NZ Manual was the inspiration for the UK Manual. And so, New Zealand gives back to the Mother Country. It’s the least we could do.

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A good day to bury news? More spads for the coalition

October 14, 2011 Leave a comment

Yes Liam Fox has resigned after a week of speculation. But this has mostly gone unreported—from the FT’s Westminster blog two days ago: “Liberal Democrats will have a new special adviser covering the House of Lords and five more special advisers covering the work of government departments where the party has no ministerial support.”

See here. And here.*

*Shameless plug for previous blog post.

EDIT: since special advisers work for ministers, how can they cover departments where the Lib Dems have no ‘ministerial support’ (ie., DEFRA, DCMS, DFID, NIO, WO)? The answer is that they will probably be responsible to Nick Clegg.  It’s  worth noting that the Lib Dems now have a number of special advisers disproportionate to the number of seats won at the 2010 election. But on the other hand, as the Constitution Unit has suggested,** the Lib Dems are in dire need of extra support.

**plug.

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Strange Love: Or, How Conservatives and Lib Dems Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coalition Government*

June 20, 2011 1 Comment

We published our interim report on coalition government Inside Story: How Coalition Government Works [1] a couple of weeks ago, and it behooves me to be grateful for the press our interim report, received. Thus: “How David Cameron and Nick Clegg decide policy – by phone”! and “Lib Dems and Tories get on better than Blair and Brown”!

Alas—that is not quite what the report says. What we say is that formal cabinet government has returned; but that coalition issues are mostly dealt with through informal mechanisms, of which the Cameron-Clegg weekly bilaterals are but one mechanism—to be sure, the most important, but not the only one. None of this means policy is ‘decided on the hoof’: just that coalition issues are decided in informal channels. That’s slightly different.

Do Tories and Lib Dems get on better than Blair and Brown? Well, yes and no. Yes, there are strong relationships within the executive. Yes, it is true that Cameron and Clegg, Letwin and Alexander, work well together. And that makes executive government much smoother. But, but… in Parliament, the parties operate as they always have. The relationship between the parties is cordial at best. And it is at the parliamentary level where problems may emerge.

It’s also important to address a couple of criticisms of our report. One: how can we claim that ‘the coalition is working well’ when a good part of the report is devoted to the problems that the Lib Dems are having? Two: it’s too process-based; too structural. These two criticisms merge into each other.

On the coalition working well: the problem is that there are two measurements of ‘success’ are being run together here. One measure is how well the two parties are working together; the other is the ability to implement party policy and/or the ability to project party distinctiveness. I take the point that perhaps we weren’t clear enough on what our measures of coalition ‘success’ were.

On the first measure, it’s worth bearing in mind that prior to May 2010 coalition government in Westminster was thought to be a recipe for unstable, unworkable or inefficient government: that two national political parties could not work together. But at least in the first year, that doesn’t seem to be so: there is no sign of imminent collapse; and decision-making hasn’t slowed down at all. That is what we meant by ‘working well’. (Yes, now there are the NHS reforms, but is this a coalition issue? There are differing schools: one school pointing to a Lib Dem response following the failure of the AV referendum; the other school suggesting a U-turn from the Conservatives themselves because of a fear of ‘retoxifying’ the Conservative party. And anyway, it’s not clear that this is a systemic problem—yet).

On success in implementing policy—how can we talk of success if the Lib Dems are doing so poorly? And are we not being myopic for simply looking at process over policy? We did say this was not a review of policy. And it seemed to us that there had already been plenty of discussion in the media about the Lib Dems’ failure to have a noticeable impact in government in terms of policy implementation, but very little discussion of some of the very substantial structural problems the Lib Dems have. We thought it worth stressing that the Lib Dems made some crucial choices at the formation of the coalition which continue to hamper their ability to push their policies within government—losing short money, accepting the cap on special advisers, and most of all going for breadth over depth in terms of the allocation of Lib Dem ministers.

But anyway—as I said at the beginning, I’m grateful for the comments and criticisms. We will try to address some of these issues in the next report.

*Next week’s post: Tainted Love: Or, “It’s not you, it’s me”

[1] Thank you to all the interns who have worked on the coalition government project so far. Thanks to Ruchi Parekh (aka: Ms Doubtful), Jessica Carter, Ian Jordan, Alex Jacobson, Patrick Graham, Andreas Kutz and Chris Appleby. Props to y’all—except maybe you, Ian!

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The Inside Story: How Coalition Government Works–A Summary

June 3, 2011 Leave a comment

The Coalition in Whitehall

  • Finding a balance between unity and distinctiveness is the key problem for coalition government. The current coalition has successfully ensured unity, and stability; but struggles to allow the two parties to express their distinctiveness.
  • Formal cabinet government has been revived: Cabinet and cabinet committees now meet regularly, but these are mostly forums for dealing with interdepartmental issues rather than specifically coalition issues.
  • The main forums for reaching agreement between coalition partners are informal. Coalition issues are often dealt with before they reach the formal machinery of government.
  • This informality of coalition decision making is based on high levels of trust between the leadership of the two parties. Trust, and the importance of compatible personalities, are essential for coalition government.
  • However, this informality has one drawback: it means that the Lib Dems are often unable to demonstrate their influence in government.
  • Some machinery has surprisingly not been effective in coalition brokerage—in particular, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, special advisers, and Liberal Democrat junior ministers.

The Coalition in Westminster

  • Flexibility within the executive is not always matched by flexibility in parliament. Compromise hammered out in government has led to excessive rigidity when policies are introduced into Parliament.
  • The informality and relatively close relationships in the executive are not matched by similar relationships within Parliament. In both houses, the coalition is tolerated rather than embraced.
  • Coalition governments often lead to a divide between the frontbench and backbench. Rebellions in this parliament are historically at record highs.
  • The parliamentary parties have begun to modify their backbench committees to prevent the divide between frontbench and backbench widening.

The Dilemmas for the Junior Partner

  • The Lib Dems are still reeling from the loss of their state funding, given only to opposition parties. This has led to the loss of many of their staff. It may help explain their under powered performance, particularly with the media.
  • By going for breadth over depth, the Lib Dems have spread themselves too thinly. They need to prioritise. Given the numbers they have, what can they realistically do which will have an impact with the public?
  • In a future coalition, the junior partner might seek to specify the support to be made available to them, in terms of special advisers, expanded Private Offices, and additional support for the parliamentary party.

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