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Comment

Clarity about pre-election contact with the Civil Service will lead to better government

Preparing for a possible change of government is responsible stewardship.

The better a political party prepares for government, the more likely it is to avoid the mistakes and problems that have repeatedly occurred in the life of new administrations. Crucial to this is how far the Civil Service understands the thinking and priorities of new ministers before they take office.

Since the first pre-election contacts between Whitehall and the Opposition began 50 years ago ahead of the 1964 election, various conventions and practices have grown up, as discussed in two IfG reports written by Catherine Haddon and myself (Transitions- preparing for changes of government published in November 2009, and Transitions: Lessons Learned - Reflections on the 2010 UK General Election and looking ahead to 2015 published in October 2011). These reports highlighted both the advantages and the inherent tensions involved in such contacts. The potential gains are obvious in helping a new government quickly get into its stride. The problems are more complicated, reflecting the uncertainties over the stewardship role of permanent secretaries in ensuring good government in the long-term, whoever is in office, as opposed to their primary constitutional duty of serving the ministers of the day. These conflicts are reconciled through ambiguity. Opposition parties are allowed to have confidential contacts with permanent secretaries, whose content is not shared with current ministers, but only at times determined by the Prime Minister and limited, in theory, to machinery of government and organisational matters. The Institute, in its forthcoming ‘Year Five’ report, will show how the existing understandings are being strained, not least through existence of the Coalition with two parties of government, and why greater clarity is desirable to ensure fairness to all. Both parties in office need not only to work together in handling immediate problems up to the election but also to have equal access to official advice on post-election policies. Guidance here looks likely soon. Contacts with the Opposition are trickier. In theory, a five-year fixed-term parliament should make it simpler than when the election date was unclear – though in practice governing parties ahead in the polls have invariably sought re-election after four years and those in trouble have waited until nearly the end of their term. The Institute – and former Cabinet Secretaries like Lord O’Donnell – has argued that contacts should start about a year before the election, or perhaps a slightly shorter period if they begin after the European and local elections on May 22. This would be ten months before the dissolution of Parliament. The latest signals from Whitehall suggest that the contacts may start later, to judge by what Oliver Letwin, the Minister for Government Policy, told the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee earlier this month. He argued that ‘you need to be in a position where you are near enough to the election so you do know what you are doing and you are asking very sensible, concrete questions’. You have, before beginning talks, to know enough about your policy programme so that ‘you have well-formulated questions about the mechanics of implementation and you are not simply having a pleasant chat with a civil servant about the possibility of the policy’. Otherwise, as Mr Letwin warned, talks could be useless. These are fair points but the risk of not starting the contacts until after the party conferences is that they will be too truncated. Earlier IfG reports have shown that there is a staged process, first of getting to know-you meetings, then broadening out into more substantive discussions. The previous maximum period of 16 months was too long, but six months or so may be too short. At the same hearing, Sir Jeremy also denied that the guidance on pre-election contacts had been unclear and confused. He claimed all parties ‘essentially know what these contacts are about’. He acknowledged the benefits to the Civil Service of understanding before the election what the Opposition’s plans would be, including issues which they would not want to make public, as well as legislative priorities for the early stages of a potential new government. There are, of course, clear advantages in ambiguity given the potential, and often actual, suspicion of some incumbent ministers about contacts with the Opposition. Yet it would be far better to acknowledge openly that, while the discussions should not, and must not, involve advice by officials, they do, and have, often in practice gone wider than organisational issues into costing, potential implementation challenges and early priorities. That happened in some departments in both 1997 and 2010, with successful results. Preparing for a possible change of government need not compromise loyal service to current ministers. It is part of the stewardship responsibilities of a permanent civil service.

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