Tag Archives: Cabinet Office

The unanswered questions posed by Labour’s plan for a new Ethics and Integrity Commission 

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Labour’s manifesto proposes a new independent Ethics and Integrity Commission to oversee and enforce ethical standards in government, but offers no real detail on the remit and powers of this new body, or how it will fit into the wider standards landscape. Peter Riddell outlines some of the difficulties in designing the new Commission and argues that it is crucial that the country’s constitutional watchdogs are both independent of government and accountable to parliament.  

The familiar landscape of standards in public life could be about to change. The Labour manifesto proposes to ‘establish a new independent Ethics and Integrity Commission (EIC), with its own independent chair, to ensure probity in government’. This is a major part of its aim ‘to restore confidence in government and ensure ministers are held to the highest standards’. The pressures for changes in the standards regime have only been increased by the latest scandal over allegations of insider betting by mainly Conservative candidates and party officials on the election date. 

Yet while the direction of change is clear, there is still considerable uncertainty about how the new EIC will work, what its powers and remit will be, what its relations will be both with the main constitutional watchdogs and, in particular, with the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL). There is a need for much greater clarity if the new arrangements are to work. Labour has also made separate proposals on the powers of some of the regulators. 

There are all kinds of models for an EIC. Public comments by Shadow Cabinet member Nick Thomas-Symonds before the election indicate that Labour has rejected a super-regulator combining some or all of the current constitutional watchdogs, which anyway perform very different functions. This points to an umbrella organisation, which would be headed by a new independent chair. It is important for public credibility and accountability that this new chair is chosen as a result of an open public competition which could be held in the late summer or early autumn after the role and remit of the EIC have become clearer.  

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Seven steps to restore trust in government ethics  

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The Constitution Unit today publishes a joint statement with the Institute for Government and UK Governance Project proposing seven steps for the new government to restore trust in the regulation of ethics in public life. This is summarised in a letter to The Times, signed by the leaders of these three groups and numerous others.

Trust in politics in the UK, and in the people and institutions of public life, is at an all-time low. Recent reports from the Institute for Government, Constitution Unit and UK Governance Project have identified important, practical reforms to the current system for setting out, monitoring and enforcing standards in public life.

A new parliament offers the opportunity for a renewal of the standards which protect our democracy. This document sets out key priorities, all of which can be easily implemented straightaway.

As soon as possible after the general election, to demonstrate clearly that a page has been turned, the Prime Minister should make a statement to parliament setting out his priorities for ethics and integrity in public life, including committing to:

  1. Publish, promote and provide independent enforcement of a new Ministerial Code designed to guide the ethical conduct of ministers.
  1. Enable ministers, senior public officials and special advisers to identify, manage and report conflicts of interest, by establishing a fair and robust new system.
  1. Ensure lobbying of ministers, senior public officials and special advisers is transparent, by building a new clear, coherent and consistent system.
  1. Regulate the post-government employment and appointments of ministers, civil servants and special advisers with a more rigorously enforced, fair and transparent system.
  1. Reform the appointments process to ensure that appointments to the House of Lords are made on merit, with the purpose of enhancing the work of parliament.
  1. Ensure public appointments are rigorous, delivered through an independent, transparent and timely process.
  1. Enhance the standing of the honours system by strengthening its independence and ending the practice of prime ministerial personal patronage.
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Changes in electoral practice since 2019

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The coming general election is the UK’s first in approaching five years. Many changes have happened in how elections are done – partly through legislation, but partly also through informal shifts in the media, AI, and electoral administration. In this post, Sanjana Balakrishnan summarises all that is new.

The general election on 4 July will be the UK’s first since 2019. The intervening years have seen many changes to electoral process. These include important amendments in electoral law – most notably, but not exclusively, through the Elections Act 2022. They also include more informal shifts in, for example, the operating practices of social media companies and the capacity of local electoral administrators.

The breadth of these institutional changes means that July’s vote will be different from any previous UK general election. This post surveys the key points. It begins with legislative changes (on which the Hansard Society has offered an excellent and more detailed account) before turning to other innovations.

Elections Act 2022

The biggest set of reforms was introduced by the Elections Act 2022. Some of these changes related to local elections – see posts by the Unit’s Alan Renwick on mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections. The focus here is on those relevant to parliamentary elections.

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An inquiry into inquiries: why the House of Lords has established a Statutory Inquiries Committee

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As the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry and the Covid-19 inquiry continue their work, Philip Norton explains how public inquiries can operate very differently, depending on how they are established. He discusses the numerous ways inquiries can operate, analyses post-legislative scrutiny of the relevant legislation, and outlines the aims of a new parliamentary inquiry on the subject, which he chairs.

Recent years have seen some notable disasters and scandals, including the Manchester Arena bombings, the Grenfell Tower fire, the miscarriage of justice in the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, the use of infected blood, and child sexual abuse. Whenever they occur, there is a natural desire to identify what went wrong and what can be done to prevent a reoccurrence. These tasks are typically vested in a public inquiry. Such inquiries have become a significant feature of public life. 

Setting up public inquiries is not a new activity. However, as a study by the Institute for Government has shown, public inquiries have become more numerous. Prior to the enactment of the Inquiries Act 2005, there were different statutory bases for inquiries. The principal one was the Tribunals and Inquiries (Evidence) Act 1921. It was regarded as cumbersome, requiring both Houses of Parliament to approve a Secretary of State establishing an inquiry with the same powers as the High Court. When inquiries were established, they tended to be lengthy and expensive.   

As the government’s figures show, not all public inquiries are established by statute. Ministers have the option of setting up an inquiry on a non-statutory basis. These tend to be favoured for reasons of time and cost. A non-statutory inquiry can be conducted relatively quickly. However, public pressure often leads to the creation of a statutory inquiry or a non-statutory inquiry being converted into a statutory one. Statutory inquiries have the advantage of being empowered to summon witnesses and take evidence under oath. Despite the Act imposing a duty on chairs to consider financial cost, they can still be expensive as well as lengthy, sometimes costing millions of pounds and sitting for years. Although ministers may be critical of this, the public tend to favour the statutory over the non-statutory. A survey carried out by Crest Advisory found that 75% of those questioned felt that an inquiry should investigate the event or events as thoroughly as possible even if this means the inquiry taking longer or costing more than was originally anticipated. 

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The Maude report: institutional fixes for political problems

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Cat Little today takes over as Cabinet Office permanent secretary at a time when how the centre of government operates is the subject of much debate. One recent report, overseen by former minister Francis Maude, was commissioned by the government and then shelved as soon as it was published. Max Emmett argues that it largely suggested institutional fixes to political problems and that successful reform will require strong ministerial support.

Introduction 

The Independent Review of Governance and Accountability in the Civil Service is not a plan for civil service reform. The report’s author, former Cabinet Office Minister, Lord (Francis) Maude of Horsham, was explicit at a event hosted by the Institute for Government that the report should not be understood as an attempt to fix the problems of the civil service, but contains recommendations for the preconditions needed for effective and long lasting change. Whilst Maude outlines a number of critiques of the civil service – its closed culture, reliance on generalists, churn and emphasis on policy over implementation, among others – his recommendations generally do not focus on solving these specific problems. 

What the Maude report aims to do is to provide both diagnosis and solutions to why these problems, well known and longstanding as they are, have not been effectively dealt with in government. The report highlights ineffective leadership and accountability for the civil service, in particular for the reform agenda, and an institutional centre ill-equipped to manage it. The proposed solutions include major reforms to the centre of government. Many of the functions of the Cabinet Office and the Treasury would be merged into a new Office of Management and Budget with the remaining cabinet support functions folded into an expanded Prime Minister’s department and the Treasury’s economic policy and tax raising functions remaining in a smaller more economy-focused department. The new Office of Management and Budget would be led by a permanent secretary-level civil servant who would act as the Head of the Civil Service and be responsible for driving forward the reform agenda. The Cabinet Secretary would lose their Head of the Civil Service role and retain their position as the most senior civil service advisor to the Prime Minister. 

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