PicoBlog

I  am (up to a point*) quite a fan of Dominic Cummings so I hope he won’t mind my republishing this interesting (lightly edited) extract from an early 2022 Cummings Substack post.

Very few ... actually understand how power really works in this country.

The power of [the Cabinet and] ministers is massively exaggerated.  The power of the Cabinet Secretary is massively under-reported. The latter has something like 100X, perhaps 1000X, more true power than the average minister. Who gets the media coverage?

Another example is the lack of coverage of the PPS role. The media portrays No10, as a building and office, as controlled by political people. This is largely false but most MPs believe it.

The most senior ‘No10 official’ in the sense of having formal powers over No10 is the Principal Private Secretary (unless there happens to be a more senior civil servant appointed, as with Heywood or Case when they were ‘Permanent Secretary of No10’).

The PPS exercises far more influence and actual power over many issues than Cabinet ministers. He can nudge policy, he can nudge vital appointments (real power). He can and does walk into the PM’s office and exclude all political people ‘on security grounds’.

If you want to change how officials in the press office treat, say, how the PM speech goes on the website, and officials are resisting, you will need to speak to the PPS ... No spad can make them change policy.

If you think the PM’s treatment of STRAP material (highly sensitive) risks getting people killed, it's pointless speaking to a spad. You have to speak to the PPS because it is the PPS who speaks to the deep state officials who control things like the physical security of the box, protocols for collection, what goes in when and so on. Apparently quite junior officials have more power over such things than the grandly and wrongly titled ‘chief of staff’.

In all the coverage of the trolley’s uselessness, there is huge discussion of No10 spads.  There is almost no discussion of Private Office.

Most MPs also do not realise how powerful the private secretaries are and how many issues reported as about spads are actually about officials.

For example, the PM’s Private Secretary on Brexit, a brilliant official, had FAR more influence on the negotiations than any minister including Gove and the Foreign Secretary. If I wanted to speak to ‘C’, this is the person I spoke to — not anybody political.

The PM’s Private Secretary for Treasury matters has FAR more influence on economic policy (and many other things) than any No10 policy spad and any minister other than the Chancellor.

The PM’s Private Secretary on security issues in 2020 was a brilliant young woman wired into the deep state across Whitehall. On many things she was (thankfully) far more influential than any minister.

The Private Office has many great officials who work extremely hard and a few duds.

For good and ill, you see no coverage of it. Almost all political coverage focuses on a very small portion of the landscape. Much of the most important things about real power happens away from the lights.

This is partly why I refused the title ‘chief of staff’, a misguided Westminster import of a West Wing concept. It’s a classic sign of bad management to give yourself a fake job title. Unlike James Baker, you are literally NOT ‘chief of staff’. I gave myself the title ‘Assistant to the PM’ instead but the media used the West Wing title they prefer.

No10 would work much better if there were an actual ‘chief of staff’ but of course Whitehall by design breaks a basic principle of high performance management — having responsibility and authority in the same place (cf. General Groves on the crucial lessons of the Manhattan Project’s success). In the chaos that this inevitably causes, officials you’ve never heard of wield real power while the people you vote for have Potemkin photo ops in Downing Street.

Comment

I agree with much of the above, but would add that it follows that Private Secretaries throughout Whitehall, and particularly in No.10, are expected to exercise their power responsibly. They are an elite (as defined by Douglas Board) in the sense that their phone calls and emails are never ignored. But they are exercising power on behalf of their principals and should not substitute their own views and prejudices. They cannot, therefore, save their principals from the consequences of the principals’ policies (or lack of them).

Permanent Secretaries (Heads of Departments) have quite different responsibilities. They should give strong policy advice and should feel a degree of responsibility if the department’s policies are seen to fail. They are powerful to the extent that they succeed in speaking truth to power - which suggests that the current crop are somewhat less powerful than their predecessors.

My main disagreement with Dominic Cummings’ analysis is with his characterisation of the power of the Cabinet Secretary. I have heard more than one Cabinet Secretary complain about their lack of power. They have, for instance, relatively few ways of influencing the performance of Permanent Secretaries who, day to day, often feel greater loyalty to their Cabinet Minister.

* I of course recognise Dominic Cummings’ failure to prescribe appropriate medicine to cure the ills that he identified.  (See here, for instance.) A short sharp revolution may have seemed attractive, as might hiring a few misfits into Downing Street.  But it would have been much more effective – if less exciting – to carry out a root and branch review of Cabinet government and the relationship between Parliament, Ministers and the civil service.

Martin Stanley - Editor - Understanding the Civil Service

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