Archive for September, 2010

Yes, Prime Minister is one of those rare television programmes that shaped the way we look at the world. For many people, the experience of governing is still defined by Sir Humphrey’s scheming and Jim Hacker’s spluttering. And it was superbly, wickedly, funny.

The Institute’s Shaping Up report in January concluded that Whitehall needed to make some changes to be more effective. In particular, the centre needed to become more strategic and better mechanisms were needed to promote joined up working.

Ministers have already said that the list does not represent current policy. But the desire to rein back the quango state was already clear in the coalition agreement and earlier announcements.

At a recent seminar, we decided to take a look under the hood of the Swedish and Canadian consolidations in the 1990s and find out what their administrations actually did. Senior civil servants from both countries gave us much food for thought.

Everyone agrees the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) needs not only to be independent, but also be seen to be independent of government. Otherwise it fails the credibility test. The Treasury Select Committee has therefore concluded the only way of giving it that degree of independence is to make it a non-Ministerial department.

The coalition has, so far, worked much better than anyone could have predicted before May — thanks obviously to the harmonious lead of David Cameron and Nick Clegg but also to the initial work by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat negotiators and by Sir Gus O’Donnell and his team in the Cabinet Office.