A Department of the Prime Minister won't fix Whitehall

Meritocracy is the only solution

The idea of a ‘Department of the Prime Minister’ has been endorsed by the in-house think tank of the civil service, the Institute for Government (‘the Left’), since 2024. It has been endorsed by think tanks and commentators increasingly associated with the Right since last year, like Ben Judah; Reform U.K have flirted with the idea but it is unlikely this represents a cast-iron commitment. The idea behind a ‘Department of the Prime Minister’ is that the P.M should have a much bigger private office, with more researchers working for them, information presented in a friendlier way and a designated head who is authorised to communicate with other branches of the service. This will give the P.M the intellectual heft to win disputes with recalcitrant department and treasury bureaucrats. It is likely to be tied to something like Sir Keir’s ‘mission boards’ allowing the P.M’s office to monitor progress towards manifesto promises.

There’s only one problem, we already have a Department of the Prime Minister. Before the First World War there was no Cabinet Office, Cabinet meetings weren’t even properly minuted, ministers genuinely ran their departments and the Cabinet was an actual tool for consensus building. Control of the Civil Service’s pay, manpower and establishments was exercised by the Treasury which is why, when an official ‘head of the Civil Service’ was created it was automatically filled by the Treasury’s permanent secretary. The Cabinet Office has its origins in Lloyd George’s “War Cabinet”, which was perceived by many as dictatorial and when it was made permanent in 1922 it was accused of being a “Prime Minister’s Department.” This, indeed, is not wholly inaccurate. The Cabinet Office gives the P.M access to a superbly powerful civil servant, with theoretical power over discipline and appointments, who has the indisputable ability to talk to any other departmental civil servant. It may organise and chair Cabinet committees bringing together officials and ministers from different departments to focus on the P.M’s agenda.

Another example it will be fruitful to dwell upon is the short-lived Civil Service Department which existed between 1968 and 1983. The Prime Minister, with this department, became the de jure “Head of the Civil Service” and the Department had authority over all personnel and training issues pertaining to the service. However, by the late 70s Parliamentary committees were already calling for it to be scrapped and Margaret Thatcher duly followed the flow of opinion when she abolished it towards the end of her second term. Once again, we see a Big New department set up for the purpose of facilitating change becoming swiftly identified as a superfluous and alien impediment to it.

The Prime Minister essentially wants a situation where they can give orders to officials, like a general in an army and see them immediately carried out; with any problems being swiftly identified and reported back to them for further action. The Prime Minister wants to be a manager. However, the Prime Minister also wants to be a leader: they want to come up with new policies with their research team. Finally, the Prime Minister, in our preposterous system called Democracy, must manage a 24/7 media circus which includes devoting 48 hours every week to shouting at another portly middle aged person in the House of Commons to zero effect.

Because of these overlapping responsibilities, the Prime Minister has to delegate, he has to appoint certain people to positions which have power over these things to do them for him. When you delegate power, you have to make sure the job you are creating has enough power of its own so that other people will do what they say, balancing this against the fact this individual might be more powerful than you. All of this takes place within a system where the majority of employees are permanent officials whom even the most complacent ministry suspects of not fully sharing the political programme of the ruling party. A very powerful official may very well act as the mouthpiece of these officials as much as your factotum while political appointees will have to command the respect of these officials to do their jobs. Finally there is the fact that all power, excepting perhaps that wielded personally by the P.M, relies on patronage: i.e, the ability to give money to people and this power is held by The Treasury.

An example, it is possible, as many plans for a DoPM include, that responsibility for managing the civil service is transferred to a new role. It is quite possible to reduce this role to a glorified H.R manager who basically investigates ethics complaints, comes up with new situational judgment tests and devises training exercises. Inevitably, such a person will have no clout within government to force policies through. When the P.M inevitably finds something pertaining to the structure of the service is getting in the way of their agenda, or should they wish to ‘reform’ the civil service, they will be stunned that the ‘Head of the Civil Service’ has no power to fix this; there will be calls, within 10 years time, for the Head of the Civil Service to be integrated with the Cabinet Office in a new super-ministry, so that PMs can combine administrative reform with policymaking. Dear oh dear, back to square one.

What would a Department of the Prime Minister do? If it is a sort of beefed up policy research unit then most PM’s will want it to be led by a political appointee, rather than a civil servant, in which case this person (basically a glorified Chief of Staff) will spend a lot of time on political issues and struggle to give orders to permanent officials like the Head of the CS or the Treasury. If it is to be led by a civil servant then will this person be the most senior civil servant in government; and how does this work with a separate Head of the Civil Service? And, if they are a civil servant, how will the PM rebuff allegations civil servants are making policy? Can the P.M sack the head of his own department?

For any ‘Rasputin’ role they basically become one of three things. The first is an instrument for winning policy debates with other ministries at the behest of the ruling party. This is what the CSD and arguably Blair’s Number 10 Research unit did. The second is a personal factotum to the Prime Minister along the lines of Morgan McSweeney, Nick Timothy or Dominic Cummings in which a heavy amount of the work is party-political. The third is as an actual manager of the civil service on behalf of the P.M which is the role fulfilled by most Cabinet Secretaries, most extravagantly by Jeremy Heywood.

If you choose first option this means the new body won’t actually do anything, the Civil Service Department had the seniority to win debates with the Treasury but because it didn’t really have a portfolio it wasn’t like Ted Heath could order its head to come up with a new way of organising coal stockpiles. Bodies like this quickly attract allegations that they are useless. Furthermore, when the Prime Minister does want something actually done they may find that getting to the person who can do this is hard, when their own ‘Department’ is more like a personal think tank. The second sort of job is often useful to individual Prime Ministers but by its nature the responsibilities of their officeholders will be protean and contingent; ill-suited for long-term schemes of change. The third sort of job can, in some cases, function as ‘the man who pulls the levers’ but they will also necessarily be much more powerful than the Prime Minister themselves and fulfil a dual function as representative of the deep state writ large.

None of this is to say that there are not good reasons to establish a Department of the Prime Minister but don’t expect it to be a panacea for the woes of the British state, or even particularly long-lived. The P.M obviously needs people who can explain the precise models of tank used by the British army, in a procurement decision, in plain English but this is a thankfully less ambitious task than changing the way government works. The civil service will only be ‘fixed’ when the discussion changes to how it actually selects personnel, makes decisions and, crucially, its legal role in the constitution: the formermost topic is unlikely to be taken up by SW1 because it means realising ‘ideology’ and ‘theory’ are actually crucial to ‘delivery.’ You would love me to describe what exactly this means, to sketch out the REAL reform of the civil service so you can steal it and pretend you came up with it yourself in a new op-ed for the iconic Sunday Times, so that you can ponce around on X making videos, so you can water it down and detach it from the grand strictures of Polygyny. Alas, Britain needs leadership and I am increasingly sure that only I can provide it. Watch this space!