Choice of ministers offers clues to how government will work
Date published:
The Chamber’s latest column for The Journal by Rachel Anderson, assistant director of policy.
You can come out now, the politics is all over bar the shouting and we can get back to more serious things like speculating on who will be mad enough to take on the England Football manager’s job or starting our Christmas shopping.
But there is, of course, the serious business of government to get on with and trying to deliver on at least some of the manifesto promises. For the political rune readers, there were some intriguing details in the selection of ministers and political jobs in the days following the election.
Similarly, in the King’s Speech this week, when you drill past the trumpeting heralds and inevitable questions, “Why is the Cap of Maintenance carried on a stick?”, “What is a Cap of Maintenance anyway?”, “How much is that person get getting paid for carrying?”, you get some clues on how this new government is going to work.
Long before the election, Keir Starmer set out a number of missions and said that a Labour government would work to fulfil them. Things like sustained growth, clean energy and reform of the NHS were on the list.
Governments of all colours have had similar ambitions over the years but have often hit the buffers when coming into contact with the government machine. Departments have always worked on silos, focusing on their own outcomes, sometimes to the detriment of others.
The latest ministerial appointments seem to suggest different thinking, for example a recognition that the mission of clean energy will need more than one department to deliver it. We saw the appointment of Sarah Jones, as Minister of State in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero but also in the Department for Business and Trade. If we are to deliver on the former, the private sector will have to play a role and it must be a priority for two departments working together. Previously, ministers have been locked in a single department.
The King’s Speech also had lots of the same, particularly in devolution, industrial strategy, planning and housing; significant hints that each of the bills will be a cross departmental effort. Each one cannot be delivered in isolation, and it seems like this is an attempt to build new government machinery from bits of the old.
Of course, it may be that good intentions don’t survive contact with reality, behemoth organisations often revert to type; but it looks like a good start.