Cabinet Office: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I endorse in every respect the tributes paid by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. They are richly deserved.

It was timely of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution to choose the Cabinet Office and the centre of government as a subject for inquiry in the period leading up to the general election. It was timely for two reasons. First, the committee’s report could inform a new Government. Secondly, it is clear from the report of the committee and from the evidence taken that the centre of our government had become something of a mess. The committee puts it more diplomatically, referring to,

“a complicated and at times confusing web of offices, structures, jobs and personalities”.

The reason why that situation developed is clear. Recent Prime Ministers have tried to adapt an organisation designed for Cabinet government to a system more like the American presidency. There used to be a clear distinction of function between the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Office. The function of the Prime Minister’s Office was to serve the Prime Minister exclusively, whereas the function of the Cabinet Office was to serve the Cabinet collectively, including the Prime Minister as chairman of the Cabinet. Of course, since the Cabinet Office had responsibility for Civil Service management, it also supported the Prime Minister as the Minister for the Civil Service.

During Mr Blair’s premiership, the role of the Cabinet Office was formally changed in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, described. The Cabinet Office was given a separate and specific remit:

“Supporting the Prime Minister—to define and deliver the Government’s objectives”.

Professor Peter Hennessy told the Constitution Committee that the Cabinet Office had become a Prime Minister’s department in all but name. The present Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, in his evidence to the committee, said that,

“there is one Cabinet Office of which Number 10 is a subset”.

I found myself asking what Winston Churchill would have said about his office being a subset of the Cabinet Office. The logic would suggest that, in this respect, the Prime Minister is junior to the Minister for the Cabinet Office.

There is no doubt that the role of Prime Minister has become more dominant within the Government in recent decades. Media attention focuses on the Prime Minister, who is expected to answer for any aspect of government in Parliament. The Prime Minister deals with other heads of government not through the Foreign Office but by picking up the telephone. However, it does not follow that the Prime Minister should take on the role and trappings of a president. The Prime Minister certainly needs people in the Cabinet Office to advise him and to enable him to monitor the Government’s progress. However, he should not have, in No. 10 and the Cabinet Office, executive units that usurp the role of departments and bypass Secretaries of State. Dr Tony Wright, the former chairman of the Public Administration Committee in another place, said that he had found the number of units that had come and gone in the past 10 years “utterly bewildering”. The organogram at Appendix 4 of the Select Committee’s report of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office is like a demented knitting pattern.

This confusion of roles at the centre of our government matters, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, said. We are aware of things that have gone wrong; to some extent they have gone wrong as a result of this confusion. The Constitution Committee, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, looked in detail at just one episode—the Government’s attempted abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor. As the noble and learned Lord said, the Government would not release the papers that would have enabled the Select Committee to get to the bottom of this episode. Even so, it is clear from the evidence that one government hand did not know what the other hand was doing and that the Prime Minister acted in ignorance of factual advice that was available to him.

Fortunately, one of the many advantages of the coalition is that it will force some of these muddles to be sorted out. Decisions will have to be discussed and properly recorded and something approaching Cabinet government will be—perhaps is being—restored. It is generally agreed—I know that this is the view of my noble friend Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who could not take part in the debate because of its postponement—that the Cabinet Office in general, and Sir Gus O’Donnell in particular, performed superbly both in the lead-up to the general election and in the negotiations leading to the coalition.

The noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, referred to the three functions of the Cabinet Office, but I have looked at the Cabinet Office website and I am glad to be able to say that that is now out of date. The website says:

“Following the outcome of the general election … the objectives and business plans for the Cabinet Office are being revised”.

I am very pleased to hear it. I hope that, under the coalition, the Cabinet Office will no longer be a Prime Minister’s department, because who would then support the Deputy Prime Minister? Will the Minister assure us that the new terms of reference and objectives of the Cabinet Office will revert to being to support an effective system of collective Cabinet government?