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The prime minister is right to apply his Brexit management model to coronavirus

The prime minister’s new coronavirus cabinet committees, based directly on the model he used to “get Brexit done”, should help improve government co-o

The prime minister’s new coronavirus cabinet committees are based directly on the model he used to “get Brexit done” last year. That should help improve government co-ordination, but despite handing his key operations committee to Michael Gove, Boris Johnson needs to be on top of the detail, says Alex Thomas

The prime minister is making changes to the organisation of his senior team to respond to the pandemic emergency. He is scrapping the four cabinet committees that were set up to co-ordinate work on healthcare, the economy, public services and foreign affairs. Instead there will be two new cabinet sub-committees, one chaired by Boris Johnson that will meet weekly to agree the strategic response (“CS”) and one chaired by Michael Gove to lead on significant operational issues (“CO”) that will meet twice a week. A short daily meeting with the prime minister continues to examine health and economic data and any critical emerging issues. The No10 line is that the prime minister will now “take direct control”.

But apart from at the peak of his illness, when Dominic Raab deputised, the prime minister has been responsible for the government’s activity throughout the crisis. The prime minister and his advisers are trying to demonstrate authority and may want to distance Johnson from mistakes already made, but it is revealing that the government is effectively implying that the prime minister has not been in full control up to this point.

The decision to pass the operations committee to Gove means that in one sense Johnson will have less control, not more. It is entirely reasonable for a prime minister to delegate operational work to others, but as his government will be defined by its response to the pandemic, Johnson will need to be close enough to the detail to be able to get directly involved where necessary. There are some problems that only a prime minister can solve.

The new committee structure helped during Brexit – but also has weaknesses

It is striking that the prime minister is applying the model he used to co-ordinate activity on Brexit last year, and it makes sense to bring together the government’s response in this way. The four existing committees have been separately covering public services, healthcare, the economy and foreign affairs. While that was logical at the beginning of the crisis when senior ministerial time was thinly stretched, joining things up will now allow ministers to make links and discuss trade-offs across these areas. The change also addresses the problem that ministers were chairing committees which were holding their own departments to account. CS and CO will allow Johnson and Gove to put ministers and officials on the spot about their performance.

But this structure also has flaws. During last year’s Brexit preparations, the strategy committee became unmoored from some departments and took decisions without key players in the room. This time CS has a larger membership which includes Priti Patel, the home secretary and Alok Sharma the business secretary. They join Rishi Sunak, Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove as the chairs of the four predecessor committees. All the same, it remains a small strategy committee which means some ministers will still feel excluded. That will store up problems for the future when Johnson needs cabinet buy-in to contentious government decisions.

The Brexit operations committee successfully galvanised ministers and officials to take timely decisions and hit deadlines, but the need to service daily meetings at times overwhelmed departments and over time the meeting lost focus on its core agenda. Gove holding his meetings twice a week shows he has rightly decided that a less frequent and more disciplined approach is the way to proceed this time.

Governing takes more than committee meetings

The government needs to be clear on the role and remit for each committee, the responsibilities of the ministers and public officials who attend, and the limitations of committee activity. Most work needs to be done in departments, so it is critical to be precise about how these meetings relate to each other and the vast number of other discussions happening across the rest of the system.

But committees, papers and meetings are just one part of government. The prime minister must also use his authority to intervene on intractable issues, resolve disputes between ministers and to set direction. Bolstering this aspect of the prime minister’s role is what lay behind the appointment of Simon Case as a permanent secretary in No10.

All prime ministers take time to settle on a central structure that works for them, and Johnson is no different. He needs to organise No10 to ensure that it is set up in a sustainable way for dealing with the immediate crisis but is also investing time in the long term objectives for the government. Whatever the role or status of Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s senior aide, Johnson needs a resilient organisation that is not reliant on one adviser.

The prime minister might find he has given up some control

Up to now Johnson has been chairing a daily C-19 committee that has been taking the key decisions. A daily meeting continues but delegating some matters to Michael Gove will leave the prime minister with less operational control. In normal times it is entirely reasonable for the prime minister to focus on strategy, and Gove has a good track record of getting operational things done, but in a crisis like this there can be no substitute for a prime minister being directly engaged at every level of the government’s response. Johnson will need to be across the detail and to grasp the bigger picture. He will need to use his daily meeting to be close enough to events to know when to delegate and where his power should be deployed.

That will take enormous energy, and he must do it while leading the government through a crucial six months on Brexit and responding to all the other domestic and overseas problems that hit the prime minister’s desk. The team in No10 believe that their Brexit model worked for them last year. Boris Johnson will be hoping that it does the same as he grapples with the biggest public health crisis in a generation.

Country (international)
European Union
Administration
Johnson government
Publisher
Institute for Government

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