Ministers
For our more up-to-date analysis, read our Whitehall Monitor 2021 report.
After nearly a decade of coalition, small-majority and minority government, the 2019 general election gave Boris Johnson the largest parliamentary majority since 2001 and the largest Conservative majority since 1987. This should make it much easier for his government to get legislation through Parliament and to deliver its agenda – but turnover of ministers and special advisers, as well as possible changes to the structure of Whitehall departments, could add other difficulties.
The 2017–19 parliament began with Theresa May as prime minister, governing thanks to a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, having lost the slender Conservative majority in the 2017 general election. That parliament encompassed an unprecedented number of ministerial resignations, more changes of political allegiance (as MPs defected or had the whip removed – and restored) than in any other parliament since at least the second world war and more government defeats in the House of Commons than in any parliament since the 1970s, thanks largely to the political consequences of Brexit.
It ended with Boris Johnson as prime minister, who then led the Conservatives to a comprehensive victory in the December 2019 general election.
A working parliamentary majority of 87 should make it easier for the government to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (at the time of publication currently in the House of Lords, third reading scheduled for 21 January), which should lead to the UK formally leaving the EU on 31 January 2020. The new government will also want to stamp its authority through reshuffles and changing the departmental landscape.
But with this comes possible pitfalls: excessive ministerial turnover could disrupt the government’s attempts to deliver on its promises, with three quarters of all current ministers already having only been in post since July 2019. Similarly, the process of creating, merging or abolishing government departments costs time and energy.
The Johnson government has the largest parliamentary majority since 2001
When the MPs that do not vote (the Speaker, Deputy Speakers and Sinn Féin) are taken into account, the government has an effective working majority of 87.[1] This should make it much easier for it to pass legislation – in stark contrast to the parliamentary and political complications of the previous parliament.
In the course of the 2017–19 parliament, in which Theresa May was prime minister for all but three months, the government lost 39 votes in the House of Commons. Tony Blair’s majority government lost only five in 10 years; Margaret Thatcher’s just four in 11 and a half. James Callaghan is the only post-war prime minister to have suffered more Commons defeats than May.
There were 89 changes of allegiance, by 52 different MPs, as they defected or resigned the whip – or had the whip suspended, removed and restored. These were prompted variously by disagreements over Brexit policy and party leadership, allegations of sexual harassment and criminal investigations. This is a post-war record – more than the 35 changes during the 1979–83 parliament, when the Social Democratic Party was formed, and the 56 in 1966–70, which included 24 Labour MPs having the whip withdrawn for a month.
By way of illustration, the Liberal Democrats had 12 MPs after the 2017 general election, lost one (Stephen Lloyd) over their position on a second EU referendum, but gained one through a byelection victory and eight through defections from other parties – a number of whom had left their original party for Change UK/The Independent Group for Change, and then left that party for The Independents.
The Conservatives lost 22 MPs on a single day in September 2019 – most dramatically Phillip Lee, who ‘crossed the floor’ to defect to the Liberal Democrats as Johnson was delivering a speech in the Commons. The party then withdrew the whip from 21 MPs, including former Cabinet ministers, over their voting against the government on a no-deal Brexit.
Perhaps most infamously, 38 ministers, including 11 ministers in or attending Cabinet, resigned outside reshuffles during the parliament. This does not include Alun Cairns, who quit as Wales secretary the day after Parliament was dissolved; Gavin Williamson, who became the first minister to be sacked outside a reshuffle since 1981; three other ministers who announced in advance they would stand down at a reshuffle; or one who stood down temporarily.[2] On one day in November 2018, four ministers resigned – the most in a single day since 1932.[3]
May’s premiership included a record number of ministerial resignations under a British prime minister since at least 1900 – 36 in all, including 24 over political or policy disagreement, 22 of which related to Brexit (the other two being Greg Hands over Heathrow, and Tracey Crouch over fixed-odds betting terminals).
Four ministers then resigned in the first four months of the Johnson premiership: George Young (who has served as a minister under every Conservative prime minister since Thatcher) over Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament; Amber Rudd over Brexit and the decision to expel the ‘rebel’ Conservative MPs; Jo Johnson (the prime minister’s brother), who was “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”; and Alun Cairns over claims he knew about a former aide’s role in the collapse of a rape trial.[4]
Although the December 2019 reshuffle was minimal, recent ministerial turnover remains high
Following the 2019 general election, only one Cabinet position changed hands, with Simon Hart replacing Alun Cairns as secretary of state for Wales. Nicky Morgan (who did not stand in the election) and Zac Goldsmith (who lost his seat) both maintained their positions in and attending Cabinet respectively after being elevated to the House of Lords. Excepting where the party of government changed, this was the lowest percentage turnover following a general election or change of prime minister since at least 1997.[5]
Johnson’s July 2019 ‘reshuffle’ – in effect, the formation of a new government – after becoming prime minister was a very different story.[6] A higher percentage of ministers – 22 out of 33, or two thirds – entered Cabinet than at any other reshuffle after a general election or change of prime minister since at least 1997 (again excepting where the party of government changed). Nineteen ministers left Cabinet altogether – higher than the reshuffles when John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher, Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, and Theresa May succeeded David Cameron.
Thirteen ministers attended Cabinet for the first time – again, higher than the number following any recent change of prime ministers from the same party.
Six of those entering Cabinet had previously served and then resigned under May: Boris Johnson himself, Dominic Raab (foreign secretary), Priti Patel (home secretary), Andrea Leadsom (business secretary), Esther McVey (housing minister) and Jo Johnson (universities minister; he resigned in September 2019).
Six ministers stayed in the same role: Steve Barclay (Brexit secretary), Matt Hancock (health secretary), Amber Rudd (work and pensions secretary; she also would resign in September 2019), Baroness Evans (Lords leader), Alun Cairns (Wales secretary; he resigned in November 2019) and Geoffrey Cox (attorney general).
A new prime minister will obviously want to put a stamp on his or her new administration through appointing people to new roles. But the Institute for Government has written extensively about the disruption caused by extensive ministerial turnover, as both new ministers and their departments take time to adjust to new priorities and personalities. Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke told the Institute that:
“After six months… you have got an agenda. You know exactly what you are going to do. The next stage, after two years, you are really on top of it. I mean, you really are comfortable, you are doing things. But you realise that the decisions you took after six months were wrong and you have changed your mind. After two years, you are sitting in control now, behind your desk, where you are really going to do this, this, and this. And then the phone rings and the prime minister is having a reshuffle and you move on to the next department and you are back at the beginning, there you are, panicking again.”[7]
Some departments have had more changes at the top than others over the last decade. Nicky Morgan is the eighth secretary of state at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) since May 2010 – a department that has grown considerably (a 77% increase in staff numbers since 2010) and taken on significant new responsibilities including government data, the digital economy and the charity sector.
Robert Buckland is the seventh secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) since 2010 (and the fourth since July 2016), a department which has had to deal with issues from rising prison violence to probation reform. Thérèse Coffey is the seventh secretary of state at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – which has been grappling with the Universal Credit rollout – in the same period, and the sixth since Sir Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation in March 2016.
Before his resignation, Alun Cairns had been the longest-serving Cabinet attendee in the same post, David Cameron having appointed him as Wales secretary in March 2016. This leaves Nick Gibb (a junior minister at the Department for Education, DfE), Lord Keen of Elie (advocate general for Scotland) and Lord Howe (deputy leader of the Lords) as the only ministers across the whole of government still in posts given to them by David Cameron.
Turnover at junior ministerial level also matters, with junior ministers often doing much of the work driving policies through and representing their departments in Parliament. Across the whole of government, nearly three quarters of all ministerial roles – the majority of which are at junior ministerial level – are held by ministers appointed since July 2019 (and one in 10 by people appointed in that December). In some departments, every minister is new to their role since summer 2019, including DCMS, MoJ, the Ministry of Defence (MoD, although some ministers have at least been promoted to new roles within the department) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
Ministerial changes often prompt turnover of special advisers (SpAds; temporary civil servants who provide political support to ministers).[8] Sixty-three SpAds who were in post in December 2018 had left government by December 2019, more than between any of the other annual data releases since 2010 – including the departure of all Liberal Democrat SpAds in 2015 and the transition from Cameron to May in 2016. Only 14 stayed in the same post (fewer than at any other point since 2010) and 21 moved between departments.
More than half (58, or 53%) of the current total are new to government, while 16 are returning to government after some time away. This number includes Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, who was a SpAd at the Department for Education (DfE) between 2011 and 2013. There are also more SpAds – 109 – than at any point since at least 2010.
There may be more change to come
Further ministerial change is expected shortly after 31 January 2020, when the UK formally leaves the EU. But reports in the media suggest that the prime minister could implement ‘machinery of government’ changes as existing departments are created, merged or abolished.
Since 2010, three new departments have been created, all in July 2016: the Department for International Trade (DIT), Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which brought together parts of the old Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
There have also been a few name changes: the Department for Children, Schools and Families became DfE in 2010, ‘Digital’ was added to DCMS’s name in 2017, while in January 2018, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and Department of Health (DH) became the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) respectively, without those departments gaining any additional policy responsibilities.
There may be good reasons for a new government wanting to reshape departments to bring together particular policy areas and focus on new priorities.[9] But creating and dismantling departments comes with a cost: direct costs of around £15 million (m), and up to £34m in productivity costs as staff settle into the new institutional arrangements – although it has been much higher in some cases. The estimated cost of setting up DWP in 2001 exceeded £170m.[10]
The government has confirmed that DExEU will close at the end of January 2020, with responsibility for the EU negotiations moving to the Cabinet Office. This is a sensible decision that allows the prime minister, to whom the Cabinet Office is directly responsible, to keep a close eye on future negotiations.
Other possible changes that have been mooted include spinning out borders and immigration from the Home Office (which the Institute for Government has previously argued should be considered);[11] resurrecting a standalone department to tackle climate change; replacing the territorial Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland offices with a department of the Union; and various changes involving BEIS (whether taking over DIT or parts of DCMS’s brief). In all of these cases, the government must think carefully about what it is trying to achieve, especially given the scale of some of the possible changes.
The Johnson administration has already made changes to part of the government machinery: Cabinet committees. These are groups of ministers smaller than full Cabinet that can take decisions that are binding across government.[12] Before May stepped down as prime minister, there were five Cabinet committees, 12 sub-committees and seven implementation taskforces, a Cameron-era innovation designed to ‘monitor and drive delivery’ of key, cross-cutting government priorities.
By contrast, Johnson’s government started life with just six Cabinet committees (a seventh, on climate change, was created in October 2019):
- EU Exit Strategy (XS)
- EU Exit, Economy and Trade (XET)
- EU Exit Operations (XO)
- Domestic Affairs and the Union (DAU)
- Parliamentary Business and Legislation
- National Security Council.
This considerably slimmed-down system of committees appears to reflect the belief that the Cabinet is too big for making decisions, held by the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who has said: “The idea of a cabinet of over 30 people is a complete farce; it should be maximum of probably six or seven people.”[13] Although the Cabinet itself is currently as large as it has ever been (with 33 ministers attending), this number would naturally fall if Johnson moves to abolish or merge departments after 31 January (though probably not as drastically as Cummings has suggested).
And there could be further reforms to Cabinet committees, with suggestions they could be “replaced by groups in which ministers, officials and advisers from across departments worked together on specific projects”.[14]