Behind every great minister there is a great private office

A good private office will help their minister fulfil their basic functions; but a great one will help them achieve their goals. A minister is just one person, and they need a strong team to help them drive forward their often wide ranging priorities. Not only is this good for the minister – it's crucial for effective government.

Yet despite how important private offices are for ministers, these teams get little support to do their difficult jobs well. The Institute for Government has developed a new workshop to help with that.

Ministers appreciate the experience that private office can provide  

We know ministers move around frequently – Starmer’s first reshuffle, in September 2025, saw half of the cabinet move into new roles – and they are expected to hit the ground running, managing departments of thousands of civil servants and overseeing budgets of many millions of pounds. Private offices, who as part of the permanent civil service stay in post when ministers move roles, play a crucial role in helping their new ministers to ‘land’ in their department well and get to grips with their new brief.  

Jacqui Smith, current minister for women and equalities, told us:  

“I consider myself very lucky in my first ministerial job to have had a private secretary who was pretty experienced in having worked with other ministers beginning the role and provided me with the sort of guidance on [the] process and what a submission was and how the correspondence was dealt with and how you might go about agreeing or not agreeing to do a particular event.”

Private office is about people as much as priorities

“If you’ve got a good private secretary, you can achieve a great deal more.” 
Stephen Timms, current minister of state for social security and disability

Once they’re settled in post, private office play an important role in driving forward their minister’s agenda. Highly effective private secretaries will advocate for their minister’s interests and unblock issues in the system. Baroness Warsi, minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs from 2012–2014, described her private office as her “enforcement office”, valuing the work her team did to push her ideas forward across government.

The best private secretaries recognise that as much of their role is about people as it is about policies and process. Ministers are often pushing the civil service to deliver at breakneck speed to achieve ambitious priorities in challenging circumstances. Private office can build relationships with officials in the department and across Whitehall to ensure that the ‘human infrastructure’ and motivation is in place to support ministers to achieve their challenging objectives.  

Steve Webb, minister for pensions from 2010–2015, reflected how important it was to have “a sort of experienced hand in the private office who if I’d ruffled feathers could quietly nip downstairs and smooth them, or knew who in another department was the right person to talk to.”  

Private office’s role is to offer support – but they need the right support too

Despite all of the findings from our research that an effective private office is crucial for ministerial effectiveness, there is surprisingly little support for private office staff within government. New joiners are simply thrown into the role and expected to learn on the job – a high-risk approach to such a high-stakes role.  

Our 2023 report Strengthening private office recommended that the civil service introduce a formal induction process for new starters into private office. To follow up on this, the Institute has developed a private office induction workshop for new starters, as part of our commitment to supporting the valuable work of private office. This interactive workshop will share insights from our extensive research with ministers and build skills in the areas we know matter the most for new starters. The session also has a significant networking component, recognising the important interpersonal element of a role in private office.  

Our first session will be delivered in-person on Thursday 18 December, 09:00–11:00, and can be booked via the Government Skills Prospectus Online. Future sessions will be held quarterly, during parliamentary recesses.  

We look forward to supporting the next generation of private office staff to build the skills they need to manage such challenging roles.  

We also offer a range of bespoke workshops for private office teams to help improve their strategic thinking and effectiveness – contact us on [email protected] to find out more.