Shuffling the pack: what is the point of the cabinet reshuffle?

This event followed the publication of the Institute’s paper on how and why the prime minister should reshuffle his ministerial team: Shuffling the Pack. The event took place one week after the first ministerial reshuffle of the Coalition Government.

Speakers:

• Baroness (Hilary) Armstrong, former Chief Whip under Tony Blair between 2001 to 2006 and, until 2010, MP for Durham North West.
• Lord (Andrew) Turnbull, former Cabinet Secretary between 2002 and 2005. Earlier in his civil service career, Lord Turnbull also served as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister between 1988 and 1992.
• Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Conservative Home website.
• Ann Treneman, parliamentary sketchwriter for The Times.

Chair:

• Peter Riddell, Director of the Institute for Government

The discussion began by considering what the purpose of a reshuffle is. Hilary Armstrong made the constitutional point that there is no separation of powers in the UK, and that instead the executive is drawn from the legislature. There are few MPs who enter parliament with no desire to be a minister, so the reshuffle is therefore primarily about deciding careers – who from the legislature becomes the executive – and provides a crucial tool for party management. Tim Montgomerie placed reshuffles in perspective, suggesting they were of limited importance. However, he did argue that they were important for party morale, as well as management. Andrew Turnbull remarked that while any company has management changes, the major difference is that ministerial reshuffles are separate from a performance assessment process. Also, when someone leaves the government, they remain in the closed parliamentary talent pool to potentially cause trouble. Reshuffles have a ‘repercussive effect’.

The importance of assessing performance emerged as a key theme throughout discussion. Hilary Armstrong argued that ministers should not be chosen as managers to implement policy, as they are instead political leaders of their departments. Ann Treneman reflected, on seeing the new ministers debut in the chamber, that little thought appears to be given to how well people will perform. During the Q&A, a former secretary of state raised the issue of there being no performance management process. Hilary Armstrong said she had tried to pilot a form of this, but it ran into difficulties due to being leaked. Any form of modern personnel management practice she tried to implement was undermined by being portrayed – often by the press – as showing a problem with Labour MPs. She did ensure, for a time, that each incoming secretary of state received a letter of appointment from the prime minister, outlining their responsibilities. The need to prepare ministers properly is why Tim Montgomerie thought the ideal time for a reshuffle was just before the summer recess. This year the need to keep key ministers in place for the Olympics made an earlier reshuffle impossible. While agreeing that delaying the reshuffle until midway through the parliament was broadly sensible, he suggested that saving up so many changes for one go was a mistake. It has led to high levels of ministerial turnover in some departments.

Discussion then moved on to consider the process of the reshuffle. Hilary Armstrong said it “never works smoothly”. Some people cannot be contacted on the day, often deliberately. Some people are offered promotions, but refuse to take them. Cabinet ministers sometimes refuse to take the junior ministers they are given. All of these problems take time to resolve, with the added time pressure of a 6.00pm deadline, Andrew Turnbull added. It is very hard to meet this, and final decisions over titles and exact responsibilities take longer. Mistakes get made.

When asked who influences the decisions, Andrew Turnbull said that permanent secretaries function as a sounding board, and so sometimes suggest if a minister has particularly good, or poor, relationships or reputation among officials or ministerial colleagues. But he insisted that the chief whip has far more influence. Hilary Armstrong described the prime minister bringing his list of who he wanted moved and where, and she would ‘disabuse’ him and give her frank assessment. This would start the decision-making process. The chief whip has a particular eye on party management, while the prime minister often focused on who he wanted to deliver his programme. Hilary Armstrong recalled that Tony Blair found it bewildering that ministers would resent being sacked or moved, and would not use the honours system to soften the blow. This made party management more difficult for her.

Ann Treneman described the journalist’s view of the reshuffle, which consists of standing outside No 10 and watching for the details of which ministers pull faces, and who arranges for their car to pick them up directly outside the door rather than speaking to the cameras. Tim Montgomerie added that Twitter had brought a new dimension to this reshuffle, as news was leaked even earlier, sometimes by the sacked ministers themselves the night before. The strength of blogs is allowing space to ‘obsess’ over the details, such as his campaign for a Welsh Conservative Welsh Secretary (David Jones is the first since 1987). Hilary Armstrong thought that the advent of Twitter in fact made the process of a reshuffle even more difficult, by precluding proper discussion of appointments.

Discussion next turned to how a reshuffle should be judged a success. Hilary Armstrong thought that no reshuffle was totally successful or not. In her view, Tony Blair was happy when he had people in place who knew what they wanted to do and could do it. In contrast, her view of a good reshuffle was appointing secretaries of state who could run effective political teams. She valued those ministers who could manage the politics as well as the policy. Andrew Turnbull stressed the need to prepare adequately, not least to ensure the messaging was correct and to consider better succession planning and transitions. While Ann Treneman thought the latest reshuffle showed David Cameron as weak, this was rejected by Tim Montgomerie, who thought instead that the prime minister had been able to make every appointment he had wanted.

There was some discussion of the coalition dynamic, although Ann Treneman did not think the Liberal Democrat changes were widely noticed. Tim Montgomerie thought that the reshuffle signalled a shift in policy direction in a few areas, but stressed the high degree of policy continuity in key areas including welfare and education. All speakers commented on the lack of women in government. Tim Montgomerie suggested that the Conservatives were hampered by too small a pool of women to promote more than the prime minister did. In Hilary Armstrong’s view, the government needed to adopt a positive policy of promoting women. She said that not only her, but Sally Morgan and others, were around Tony Blair to ensure he did so.

A timely event to begin the autumn at the Institute, this discussion shed light on reshuffles and the key issues: the role or lack of performance management; how to judge personnel changes as a success; the reality of the process; the influence of the media; and the uniqueness of the Coalition. The event concluded with general agreement that while reshuffles were important, personnel changes alone will not determine the success, or failure, of the government.

Josh Harris

Associated publications: 

Shuffling the Pack

Associated blog posts: 

Reshuffle: the verdict

The Coalition after the reshuffle