Matthew Honeyman

As part of our project on special advisers the Constitution Unit has produced a brief research note looking at special advisers who went on to become Cabinet Ministers. This blog post picks out some key findings and offers some thoughts about what the findings tell us about special advisers and wider concern with the professionalisation of politics.

In this project, we are building an evidence base that will provide the most detailed description yet of who special advisers are. We are therefore interested in what special advisers go on to do after their time in government.

Among the many destinations for special advisers later in their careers are the most senior posts in British politics. The Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition were both special advisers and the speed of their ascent to the head of their parties has been noted by Phil Cowley as exceptional in post-war British politics. Both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have experience as Cabinet ministers but that is relatively rare among their fellow special advisers.

As the Unit’s research makes clear, just 16 Cabinet ministers were previously special advisers. To provide some context: Cabinet usually has 22 full members at any time; and there have been over 500 individuals who were special advisers before May 2010. Less than 5% of special advisers go on to become Cabinet ministers. This suggests that the widespread perception of special advisers as simply politicians in training is mistaken.

British Cabinets are still largely made up of people who have not served as special advisers to Ministers. The Labour government more than doubled the number of special advisers in post at any time, and it is associated with a handful of high profile special advisers turned Ministers. Under Gordon Brown,four former special advisers were brought into the Cabinet. From 2007-2010, former special advisers made up nearly one third of the Cabinet: the highest ever proportion in British political history, though this seems low for the supposed age of the professional politician Whether such levels will be reached or surpassed again is a matter for speculation.

Lord Adonis is on record as praising the experience of being a special adviser as an excellent apprenticeship for future Ministers. He says he benefitted from it. Nowhere else does one get the opportunity to experience life at the top of government as a political actor, learning how Whitehall responds to your requests. Nowhere else can one see the difficulties, pitfalls and routes to success for a Cabinet Minister so closely. Like all apprenticeships, taking this experience on board and putting it into practice when your turn comes round can surely aid performance.

The fact that only a minority of Cabinet ministers were previously special advisers serves to remind us that there is no one route to the highest offices in government. That will come as a relief to critics concerned about the professionalisation of politics and as a disappointment to Adonis and his ilk. In relation to the special advisers project, this information helps us to think clearly about the sort of skills, experience and other benefits that special advisers receive from their job. How much of the success of Cameron, Miliband et al., is due to the skills and political networks they developed during their time as a special adviser?

———————–

The research note contains more detailed information than this blog post and we encourage you to download it here.

The full breakdown of special adviser movement.
Note: an asterisk denotes change due to Lena Pietsch’s return from maternity leave; SSoS refers to ‘Senior Secretary of State’.

Last Friday, the Cabinet Office published the first list of special advisers (spads) in post since the September 2012 reshuffle.

It appears they were uploaded at 7.08pm that night. An hour earlier, Andrew Mitchell had resigned his post as Chief Whip. Mitchell had only just appointed a new spad, Meg Powell-Chandler, and he may have been planning to appoint another. Since spads’ appointments are technically terminated when their appointing Minister leaves office, Powell-Chandler’s tenure was abruptly cut short.

Andrew Mitchell’s replacement as Chief Whip is Sir George Young, who left the Cabinet only six weeks earlier. His return brings the possibility that Robert Riddell, his spad as Leader of the House (2010-12), will make a return to government. Young is unlikely to keep on Powell-Chandler or appoint anyone else, because the Chief Whip under Coalition has so far only taken on one on spad, giving the other ‘slot’ to their deputy from the partner party.

Since the reshuffle, a couple of significant appointments have been made at the centre of government, with Oliver Dowden and Ryan Coetzee being brought in to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister’s offices, Dowden as Deputy Chief of Staff And Coetzee as Clegg’s chief strategy spad.

Some line departments now have more than two spads. Michael Gove and Iain Duncan-Smith now have three spads each. Another impending appointment means that BIS will now have four spads in the department: two for Vince Cable, two for the Conservative ‘junior’ ministers, Michael Fallon and David Willetts.

Jeremy Hunt has kept one of his spads from DCMS, Sue Beeby, and has agreed to appoint a second spad, Sam Talbot-Rice. Talbot-Rice is not included on Friday’s release because he had not started in his post. The Constitution Unit understands that he will take up his post on November 19 and will act as Hunt’s ‘policy special adviser’. Chris Grayling (MOJ) and Maria Miller (DCMS) are two Secretaries of State likely to hire a second spad soon.

Both of Andrew Lansley’s spads at DH have left the government, unique among spads with reshuffled ministers. The only spad to leave their post without their minister being reshuffled was Bridget Harris. She was one of the six Lib Dem ‘departmental’ spads appointed to monitor developments across government, reporting to Nick Clegg.

Three spads have moved to work for different ministers in different departments. Amy Fisher has moved from Defra to MOJ; Victoria Crawford from DFT to DFID; Guy Levin from DCMS to DFID. That is unusual: spads are usually personal appointments, and move with their minister.

Jonathan Caine is unique as spad to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. As predicted in a previous blog post, he is the only spad who has remained in a department in spite of a change of Secretary of State. That may be explained by his previous history: he was a spad in NIO under John Major for five years before being brought back in 2010. Arguably, he is an ‘expert’ spad.

But it is worth noting that the pending appointment in DH and BIS means that the Government will soon set a record for the number of spads in government. With fourteen joining and only ten leaving, the number of spads in post increased between July and October 2012 from 81 to 85. But the reported appointments at DBIS and DH as well as potential appointments in the Whips’ office, MoJ and DCMS mean that the number of spads can be expected to reach 87 and perhaps as high as 90, topping the previous record of 85 spads in 2004 under Labour. The rise in numbers may be brought about by the fact of coalition (and the need for greater cross party interaction); and recognition of the need for more politically committed advice and assistance to Ministers. But it is also a product of the rise in the number of ministers in the Coalition Government—especially ministers attending Cabinet.

Last weekend, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) published its report ‘Special Advisers in the thick of it’. The Committee came out against a cap on the numbers of spads. That was sensible: the focus should be on the effectiveness of special advisers, not their numbers. Spads are here to stay, and the sooner we have a dispassionate and informed debate about their role, the better. But whether or not the public and Westminster observers will agree is a different matter.

[This post was edited on 23/10/12 to take account of Coalition practice in appointing spads to whips.]