Government: Leadership Training

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend Lord Norton on his timely choice of subject and his speech. Yes, more should be done to train Ministers, but for some jobs there are no readily available courses. For Government Chief Whip, for example, you need a PhD in behavioural psychology, some time as a regimental sergeant major and a spell as director of adult services in a local authority in special measures.

More seriously, we all speak from our own experience. I started my ministerial career in 1979 and made many mistakes; it ended 40 years later in 2019, hopefully with fewer. I did 22 ministerial years in eight different departments under five different Prime Ministers. Like others, I had no formal training whatever. I bought Gerald Kaufman’s book How to be a Minister and learned by watching Ministers in the Chamber and in the media when we were in opposition. This can give one a basic grounding in some of the qualities needed to do the job, but it does not cover everything.

If I had to select one piece of advice, from many, for prospective Ministers—which may not be mentioned by anyone else in this debate—it would be to understand exactly how government accounting works. One of the most vital tasks of any Minister is negotiating your department’s budget, now under way in Whitehall. This can determine the success or otherwise of your department’s policies and sometimes your own future.

In the 1980s, that meant understanding the intricacies of the so-called Ryrie rules. Ten years ago, it meant knowing exactly what the DEL/AME switch was, DEL being departmental expenditure limits and AME being annual managed expenditure. Yes, one can rely on one’s civil servants for much of the briefing, but when it comes down to a bilateral with the Chief Secretary or a solo appearance before star chamber, or indeed an interview with a well-briefed journalist, you need to be right on top of your department’s finances. It may not be the most exciting part of the job, but it is crucial. If you are forced to make concessions, do not expect a Treasury Minister to appear on the “Today” programme to defend the cuts you are obliged to make.

Much of my party’s emphasis has been on getting the number of civil servants down, and when I became a Minister in 1979 there were certainly parts of government where sheep could safely graze. But I want to make the opposite point and argue that there are now too many Ministers in the Commons; Lords Ministers are overburdened. As a former Chief Whip, I understand the attraction of a large payroll and extensive patronage, but I believe the numbers are too high.

In 1979, when the Department of Transport was responsible for the nationalised airlines, railways and airports, it had two Ministers, my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. There are now six. In 1979 I was a Minister in the DHSS, which combined the responsibilities of the DWP and DHSC. There were five of us. There are now seven in DHSC and six in DWP. It may not make me popular with the Government, but I believe the numbers could usefully come down. It would enable us to reduce the cost of government and do away with the inequity of unpaid Ministers, not least in your Lordships’ House.

Related to that, Ministers are moved too soon and too often. In my first nine years as an MP there were two Housing Ministers, Reg Freeson and John Stanley. Between January 2015 and July 2019, there were six. I know from my own experience that it takes time to build up a relationship with social housing providers, local authorities, planners, architects and other stakeholders, and to understand the legislative and financial framework in which you operate. It took me two years before I was really confident in the job—and I was lucky; I did it on and off for nine years. There are too many other examples of swift turnovers. Between May 2015 and July 2019, there were five Lord Chancellors. Between March 2016 and September 2019, there were six Secretaries of State at the DWP.

I have a lot of respect for the Civil Service, but it is not only Ministers who move too quickly. Read my noble friend Lord Freud’s recently published book, Clashing Agendas: Inside the Welfare Trap, in which my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham stars. Of the introduction of universal credit, he writes: “In practice, I found that I was the only senior figure with an institutional memory for the totality of what we were trying to do … there were no fewer than six senior responsible owners and six programme directors in the first five years of building Universal Credit”. That is the other side of the coin, reversing the usual picture of transient Ministers and permanent civil servants.

He makes another point about the Civil Service with which I agree. The capacity of the Civil Service has been reduced by contracting out. My noble friend Lord Freud suggests bringing some of that capability back in-house. He says:

“Purely in terms of IT, the lessons learned imply bringing development capability back in-house; building big integrated teams to adopt agile technology”.


This debate is about becoming a Minister and I end, appropriately, with a wish that Ministers learn when to stop. More should resign when their behaviour is unacceptable or, as my noble friend Lady Sugg did, to her credit, when they disagree with government policy. Far from detracting from the authority and credibility of government, more resignations would actually enhance it.