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Why the Prime Minister is wrong on pre-election contacts

Both in principle and in practice.

The Prime Minister is wrong not to authorise pre-election contacts between the Opposition and the Civil Service until October. He is wrong both in principle and in practice.

Of course, Labour and Whitehall will cope – as the Senior Civil Service always do. But the risk is that the preparations for a possible change of government will be less good than they should, or easily could, be. Pre-election contacts are crucial. They are far from foolproof: politicians rarely concentrate on what they will do as ministers until they are in office, and many shadows do not get the same post in government. But the lesson of Institute for Government research into past transitions in Britain is that the better a political party prepares for government – and the clearer the Civil Service is about an Opposition’s thinking and priorities before polling day – the more likely that a new administration can avoid the mistakes and problems that have repeatedly occurred. For the Civil Service, this is part of their stewardship role in ensuring good government in the long-term, whoever is in office. The objection in principle is that the decision on the timing of pre-election contacts should no longer be at the discretion of the Prime Minister, but should be made largely formal, and predictable. This should have been made much easier by the certainty of the Fixed-Term Parliament Act. Ahead of the 1970 election, Wilson and Heath sparred over the timing, though Sir John Major saw the good sense in allowing ample time for such contacts. There is no reason why such talks – always confidential and subordinate to the Civil Service’s prime duty of serving the government of the day – should be a political football. It is also a matter of fairness given that the coalition parties will have access to the Civil Service over their policy preparations. Balancing the two coalition parties and the main Opposition party is obviously more complicated, but underlines the need for explicit fairness. In the past when the length of a parliament was flexible, it was, in theory, a matter of chance. Contacts were usually authorised about 16 months from the last possible election date. This would mean just three or four months if it was a four-year parliament, or 16 months if it went to the maximum term. But, in practice, the shorter period has rarely been relevant since governing parties ahead in the polls have invariably sought re-election after four years, and have succeeded in every case since February 1974. But governments in electoral trouble have gone to nearly the end of their five-year terms, permitting a longer period for contacts. The Institute view is that 16 months is too long but four months – or even the six months implied by the Prime Minister’s decision – is too short. The IfG view – to be set out in our forthcoming Year Five report and in a briefing paper by Catherine Haddon and Siddharth Varma – is that 12 months is the right length, or, in practice, nearer 10 months if the talks had started after May 22 elections. Lord O’Donnell, who as Cabinet Secretary handled the last transition, similarly argued in evidence to the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for a 12 month period to be formalised and put into the Cabinet Manual. This is not an arbitrary figure. As Lord O’Donnell told MPs, 16 to 18 months is too long because the Opposition is not properly engaged then. Oliver Letwin, in his evidence to the PCRC, argued in favour of a shorter period because ‘you need to be 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 to know enough about your policy programme to be able to ask ‘well-formulated questions’ about the mechanics of implementation. This is a strong argument, but underestimates the necessarily phased nature of the contacts, from getting to know you, through an explanation by the Permanent Secretary about how a department is organised (especially important after the upheavals since 2010), and only then broadening out to include other members of shadow teams and other senior officials and covering the Opposition’s priorities. That takes time, and the risk in the Prime Minister’s decision is that this will too hasty and truncated before campaigning starts. Moreover, proper discussion, between the Civil Service and both the coalition parties and the main Opposition party, is even more important to allow sufficient planning and preparation by politicians and officials for a very difficult public spending review and decisions after the election. The timing is, of course, a judgment call, but the Prime Minister risks making it a party political matter, rather than an agreed, and necessary, part of good government – from which the Conservatives benefitted in 2009-10.

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