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The Impact and Effectiveness of Ministerial Reshuffles House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee The impact and effectiveness of ministerial reshuffles Second Report of Session 2013–14 Volume I: Report, together with formal minutes and oral evidence Written evidence is contained in Volume II, available on the Committee website at www.parliament.uk/pcrc Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 13 June 2013 HC 255 [Incorporating HC 707-i to vii, Session 2012-13] Published on 14 June 2013 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider political and constitutional reform. Current membership Mr Graham Allen MP (Labour, Nottingham North) (Chair) Mr Christopher Chope MP (Conservative, Christchurch) Paul Flynn (Labour, Newport West) Sheila Gilmore MP (Labour, Edinburgh East) Andrew Griffiths MP (Conservative, Burton) Fabian Hamilton MP, (Labour, Leeds North East) Simon Hart MP (Conservative, Camarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) Tristram Hunt MP (Labour, Stoke on Trent Central) Mrs Eleanor Laing MP (Conservative, Epping Forest) Mr Andrew Turner MP (Conservative, Isle of Wight) Stephen Williams MP (Liberal Democrat, Bristol West) Powers The Committee’s powers are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in Temporary Standing Order (Political and Constitutional Reform Committee). These are available on the Internet via http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmstords.htm. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/pcrc. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this volume. The Reports of the Committee, the formal minutes relating to that report, oral evidence taken and some or all written evidence are available in a printed volume. Additional written evidence may be published on the internet only. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Joanna Dodd (Clerk), Adele Brown (Senior Committee Specialist), Emma Fitzsimons (Legal Specialist), Tony Catinella (Senior Committee Assistant), Jim Lawford, (Committee Assistant) and Jessica Bridges-Palmer (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6287; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. The impact and effectiveness of ministerial reshuffles 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 Background to the inquiry 5 Background on reshuffles 6 Reasons for reshuffles 7 2 Impact of reshuffles 10 Policy making and delivery 10 Effectiveness of Government and Parliament 11 Speculation 11 Adjusting to a new brief 11 Relationships with the civil service 12 International relationship-building 13 Accountability 14 How long is long enough? 14 3 Improvements to the reshuffle process 16 Handovers 16 Training 17 Feedback and appraisal 18 Planning 19 The role of Secretaries of State in selecting a ministerial team 21 Number of Ministers 21 Parliament’s role in reshuffles 22 Conclusions and recommendations 24 Annex A: Terms of reference 27 Formal Minutes 28 Witnesses 29 List of written evidence 30 List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament 31 The impact and effectiveness of ministerial reshuffles 3 Summary Some reshuffling of Ministers is inevitable: there will always be occasional resignations, illnesses and even deaths. However, reshuffles have become a habit in UK politics: we have a reshuffle culture. There should always be a good reason for a reshuffle. No reshuffle should ever take place simply because it is assumed that there should be one. We commend the current Prime Minister for the comparative restraint he has shown in reshuffling his Ministers and urge his successors to follow his example in this regard. Reshuffles have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the Government. Even the most able Minister needs time to become familiar with a new brief. Whenever someone is moved to a new post, there will be an inevitable delay before they are fully effective. This is particularly the case when the new Minister has no previous experience of the subject area. There will be occasions when a fresh perspective is useful, but we believe that most major Government policies will benefit from having continuity of Ministers within the responsible Department. This also enables Parliament more effectively to perform its function of holding the Government to account: it is difficult to hold Ministers to account for policies they oversaw if they have moved to new posts, and it also takes time before a new Minister is in a position to respond to detailed scrutiny from parliamentarians. Ministers should be left in post long enough to make a difference. Secretaries of State should be left in post for the length of the Parliament and more junior Ministers for a minimum of two years. This will not always be possible, but we would like it to become the norm. In addition to our main recommendation that there should be fewer reshuffles, we draw attention to several areas where we think there could be improvements to the reshuffle process. In particular, we recommend that there should be a specific Minister within the Cabinet Office who is given responsibility for ministerial development. This Minister should oversee improved training and appraisal for Ministers, as well as regularly reviewing the human resources the Government has at its disposal, and should become a source of advice to a Prime Minister who is contemplating a reshuffle. In this report, conclusions are printed in bold, and recommendations (calling for action) in bold italics. The impact and effectiveness of ministerial reshuffles 5 1 Introduction Background to the inquiry 1. Reshuffles are accepted as part of political life in the United Kingdom, but in other contexts, and particularly in the world of business, regularly moving groups of key people to new posts would be regarded as extraordinary. Steve Richards, chief political commentator at The Independent, stated: “I cannot think of any other area where you would have a Transport Secretary every six months. Virgin Trains does not get rid of its chief executive every six months, for instance.”1 There were six Secretaries of State for Transport between 2001 and 2010, and there have already been three Secretaries of State for Transport since the 2010 general election. Of the nine post-holders over the past 12 years, four were in post for less than a year. The Rt Hon Charles Clarke told us that when Tony Blair was Prime Minister he “reshuffled Transport almost incessantly”.2 By contrast, between 2001 and 2013, there have been only two chief executives of Virgin Trains.3 2. The Department for Transport has seen a particularly high number of ministerial moves, but other Departments have also been subject to frequent changes. In May 2011, the Institute for Government published a report that noted that, while some posts, such as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary, tended to be relatively stable, “during the 13 Labour years in office, there were six defence secretaries, eight trade and industry secretaries, eight business secretaries, and six home secretaries (including three in four years).”4 A briefing paper by the think-tank Demos, published in June 2009, stated that since 2005 the average tenure for a Minister had been 1.3 years.5 3. Reshuffles are not uncommon in political life in other European and Commonwealth countries, but in some of these countries they take place significantly less frequently than in the UK. For example, Germany had only six mid-term reshuffles between 1949 and 2006.6 The Rt Hon Peter Riddell, Director of the Institute for Government, told us that Germany had had 15 business Ministers since 1949, whereas the UK had had 35.7 He stated that when the Institute for Government wanted to discuss reshuffles with a visiting delegation from Germany, they found it “very difficult to get the concept over to them” because the German delegation simply “did not understand what on earth we were talking about.” 8 4. Comparisons such as those outlined above encouraged us to explore why reshuffles are used in UK politics, their impact and whether there are any ways in which the reshuffle process could be improved. We launched our inquiry on 18 May 2012 with a call for written evidence. The inquiry’s terms of reference can be found in Annex A. We held 1 Q 322 2 Q 184 3 Chris Green, 1999 to 2004, and Tony Collins, 2004 to present 4 Institute for Government, “The Challenge of Being a Minister”, May 2011, p 20 5 Demos ,“The ‘culture of churn’ for UK Ministers and the price we all pay”, 12 June 2009 6 “The Challenge of Being a Minister”, p 42 7 Q 8 8 Q 7 6 The impact and effectiveness of ministerial reshuffles seven oral evidence sessions with witnesses including former Secretaries of State and former and current senior civil servants. We also received written evidence from a former Prime Minster: the Rt Hon Sir John Major. We are grateful to all who contributed to the inquiry. Background on reshuffles 5. The power to appoint and dismiss Ministers, and to move existing Ministers to new posts, is a prerogative power exercised by the Prime Minister. We are exploring prerogative powers as part of our inquiry into the role and powers of the Prime Minister. 6. There are some legislative constraints on the appointment of Ministers. The maximum numbers of paid ministerial posts is laid down in schedule 1 of the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 and is 109.
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