'No way to run a life let alone a country'

The coalition government's first hundred days have been clocked up, and new ministers are getting over the euphoria of office. Some – like the secretaries of state for energy and for education – have a few scars to show from early experience at the dispatch box. On their return from their summer breaks, all will now be warily discovering that government is a marathon not a sprint. The deputy prime minister has recently spoken of the need for just such a long time-horizon. So maybe now is the time to remind ministers of the salutary experience of some of their predecessors. Interviewing eleven of them in the year before the last election, I found that many were very ready to share what had gone well and less well in their ministerial lives and with that crucial minister/civil service relationship. The ministerial life Lord Chris Smith, former culture secretary, was one witness. Remembering his early days in office, he told me: "The officials themselves were on the whole bright and helpful. But coming into office as a new minister, I found the official machine much too inclined to overload and overwhelm me with paper. Initially I found myself being presented with as many as five boxes a night, which was plainly ludicrous. Given the tendency for many ministerial diaries to be filled with engagements through the day, and for there to be demands from the parliamentary timetable too, boxes were often waiting to be addressed into the early hours, with unacceptable effects on private life and sleep. "That was no way to run a life let alone a country...." This kind of story was repeated by nearly all the other witnesses to whom I spoke. They had either taken corrective action or rued that they had not. Charles Clarke, the ex-home secretary was very clear: Ministers needed to be in control of their diary and a critical appointment is a good diary secretary the minister can trust. But apart from controlling the paper and the diary, what is it that these now more leisured ex-ministers felt would have made most difference to them? The three things that stand out most were about consultation, control, and continuity. Consultation and interaction On consultation, they were all clear that they wanted to be involved earlier in discussion with a wider range of players on initial work on policy development. In line with a perceptive report, Closing the Gap, by the Whitehall and Industry Group last year, they wanted to be involved before things had become set, and they wanted the chance to interact with key players, both inside and outside their departments. What they disliked, as Nick Raynsford, former environment minister, told me, was the approach where they were presented largely on paper with the results of prior work by teams of officials at a late stage of policy development or when faced with a crisis, and with little time to make an input. Control and Priority To make time for early involvement, and to take strategic not reactive control, they were prepared – or said that they were prepared – to be ruthless about setting priorities and be involved in less. As Clarke put it: "In my view, greater efforts should be made both to delegate more decisions to junior ministers and to arrange business so that fewer decisions needed to be put to ministers at all. "Civil servants need to be cleverer in getting ministerial agreement to criteria for decisions to be taken under delegated powers. Ministers needed to be cleverer at refusing to be seduced into believing that they need to take every decision or know every individual policy detail. The culture for ministers and officials needs to be changed." Continuity and Learning Raynsford was very clear that one aspect ripe for change in the culture involved continuity of ministers in post. He said that his successors as ministers for construction had spent successively two years, one year, one year, seven months, and seven months in the job! Raynsford felt rapid moves meant there was too short a time to ensure that those involved learned from what went right and wrong. Several of his colleagues suggested that the lessons of experience ought to be shared more regularly and frankly between ministers and former ministers, and with officials. But will current ministers and their officials be able to steal time for such reflection? That may be one of the most critical decisions that they make. David Laughrin is currently a fellow of the Public Leadership Centre at Ashridge Business School and author of the Ashridge Learning Guide on working effectively for ministers