How will Starmer run his government?

Talk of "mission boards" and "breaking down silos" but what does it actually mean and will it really be different?

Introduction

This will necessarily be a relatively technical (and long) essay but I needed to write it (at least once) at some point and a story in The Financial Times on Friday and subsequent social media chatter prompted me to get on with it. I want to sift through the statements, ambitions, hints and snippets and see what we can say with any safety about the methods and structures that Sir Keir Starmer will employ in the business of governing, if the Labour Party wins the general election on Thursday 4 July. I first tried to trace the potential shape of Whitehall under a Labour government in April. In one section I looked at the machinery of government, and this will expand on that subject.

It is important to remember whenever you think about how Starmer will go about an activity that he is a lawyer and a senior civil servant. It is true that he was a relatively radical, left-leaning barrister in his younger days, working on the “McLibel” case on behalf of environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris and contributing to Socialist Lawyer, the newsletter of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. But he is also a man of institutions, acting as human right adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Association of Chief Police Officers from 2003 to 2008 before becoming director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

This last post, which he held for five years from 2008 to 2013, put him in charge of a non-ministerial government department with 8,000 employees and made him in all but name a Whitehall permanent secretary. Every week he would attend the meetings known as “Wednesday Morning Colleagues” (WMC), a gathering of permanent secretaries held in the Cabinet Office and chaired by the secretary to the Cabinet (in Starmer’s time, first Sir Gus O’Donnell then Sir Jeremy Heywood). There are roughly 40 permanent secretaries at any one time, one (occasionally more) in each government department and heads of various organisations not under direct ministerial control, from the chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs and First Parliamentary Counsel to the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the director general of the Security Service (MI5).

These meetings have no agenda and no minutes are kept, and, while they are partly intended as an opportunity for broad strategic discussions, they can also be an opportunity for senior civil servants to vent frustrations, especially about ministers, in a confidential setting. Although it is not true of every individual, there is a common accusation that WMC has a detached, aloof, slightly Oxbridge atmosphere and lacks focus and rigour.

I labour this point because it is an important element of Starmer’s professional background. If Labour wins the election, he will be the most senior former civil servant ever to become prime minister: Harold Wilson was director of economics and statistics at the Ministry of Fuel and Power during the Second World War, while Edward Heath came joint top in the Civil Service Examination in 1946, spent two years at the Ministry of Civil Aviation and was regarded as having the ability to rise to the most senior ranks of the service. There are no current permanent secretaries who overlapped with Starmer’s time as DPP but he is intimately familiar with the culture and the habits of the mandarinate.

The other vital factor is the influential place in Starmer’s counsels held by his chief of staff, Sue Gray. It is assumed that Gray will become Downing Street chief of staff in the event of an election win, and she has been making detailed plans for what Peter Hennessy called the “hidden wiring” of Whitehall, which is based on intimate experience. Gray was a civil servant for nearly 50 years, excepting a career break in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, and spent her last five years at permanent secretary level: as permanent secretary of the Northern Ireland Department of Finance 2018-21, then second permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office 2021-23, in charge of the Union and Constitution Directorate. The point is that Gray knows how Whitehall works not only in great detail but with recent experience. As Downing Street chief of staff, a political appointment, she will interact with civil servants who were colleagues not much more than a year ago.

Mission boards

Let’s start with the story from The Financial Times. The information came from “party officials”, so we can be sure that it not only reflects current thinking within Labour but also represents a message the party wishes to convey. We are told to expect “the biggest Whitehall shake-up in decades”, and the major development would be the creation of five “mission boards” to improve cross-departmental working and “reduce delays that can occur as measures pass between rival Whitehall departments and are split between different budgets”. These mission boards would mirror “Labour’s five missions to rebuild Britain”, the basis of Starmer’s policy platform, and we might as well restate them now.

1. Kickstart economic growth

2. Make Britain a clean energy superpower

3. Take back our streets

4. Break down barriers to opportunity

5. Build an NHS fit for the future

In addition to this mission boards, Starmer may also chair “an overarching board or committee that sits atop the five mission-specific boards”.

As she receives credit for little enough else, it is only fair to say that this approach to government has partly been inspired by former prime minister Theresa May. Starmer worked with May when she was home secretary and he was director of public prosecutions, and a Labour official told The Financial Times that “he has respect for the way she took charge of tackling violence against women and girls and chaired the task force to make sure it was delivering”.

We are told that these mission boards will not simply be ministerial meetings or civil service organs but will “draw on private sector expertise and may be granted powers to help deliver policy”, tapping into “more private sector and corporate expertise” and, as a Labour Party official told The Financial Times, providing “opportunities for experienced people from outside government”.

Some of this flavour of change has been suggested before. In March, Civil Service World reported that Starmer would appoint an “executive cabinet” to make the most important strategic decisions for the government. This would comprise himself, Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister, Rachel Reeves as chancellor of the Exchequer and Pat McFadden as an “enforcer” at the heart of government, possibly as minister for the Cabinet Office. Under this body, mission boards would ensure that policy remained focused on those five missions, and “business leaders and other experts from outside government could sit on the boards alongside civil servants and ministers”.

What does Starmer intend these mission boards to be, in reality? Are his plans fixed yet? The impression we are supposed to get, certainly, is that they are different from standard cabinet committees, with a broad potential membership, wide, inter-departmental responsibilities and a role in seeing policy from conception to delivery. This is important, because it is in cabinet committees that a great deal of heavy lifting in Whitehall is done. The full cabinet has been too large for some years now to be a practical forum for discussion and debate. It currently consists of 23 full members with another nine ministers who “also attend”; the latter status has exploded in the recent 20 years and is an awkward blend of including certain portfolios for discussions which directly involve them, demonstrating that certain issues are important by having them represented at the cabinet table and rewarding ministers who aspire to cabinet status with a consolation prize. But a table with 32 people around it simply cannot have a sensible discussion of any depth. This has pushed detailed consideration of policy options to other forums, whether cabinet committees, informal working groups of meetings within departments.

The size of the cabinet

This growth has been a quiet, niggling but significant change in Whitehall. The problem is not the size of the cabinet itself, which has barely changed over the past 30 years: John Major’s last cabinet in 1997 comprised 23 full members, as did the one which Tony Blair appointed to replace it after the general election. The cabinet of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition initially had 23 full members, which rose to 25 after a reshuffle in 2012, but David Cameron brought it down to 22 in 2015, and Theresa May maintained that size. Boris Johnson, never a man to impose restrictions on himself, appointed a cabinet of 24, but that still meant that numbers had been consistent between 22 and 24 since the 1990s. This is hardly surprising. The Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 imposes a limit of 21 ministers of full cabinet rank, in addition (until 2006) to the lord chancellor. Therefore any ministers beyond that 22 (21+1) had to be unpaid.

The game-changing factor has been ministers who “also attend” cabinet. Under John Major, there was only one such minister, the government chief whip (whose formal ministerial title is parliamentary secretary to the Treasury). It had been a convention for decades that the chief whip of course attended cabinet meetings, as the minister responsible for party management and the passage of legislation, but, lacking any policy responsibility, was not counted as a full member of the cabinet. In addition, from 1997 to 2005, Tony Blair added as “also attending” the attorney general, first John Morris, then Lord Williams of Mostyn followed by Lord Goldsmith, but he ended this practice forming his last ministry.

Everything changed when Gordon Brown became prime minister in June 2007. The cabinet consisted of only 22 full members, but five ministers “also attended”: the government chief whip in the House of Lords (formally captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms), Lord Grocott; the attorney general, Baroness Scotland of Asthal; the minister of state for Africa, Asia and the United Nations at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord Malloch-Brown; the minister of state for housing and planning, Yvette Cooper; and the paymaster general and minister for the Olympics, Tessa Jowell. In addition, the minister of state for children, young people and families (a junior minister at the Department for Children, Schools and Families), Beverley Hughes, attended cabinet meetings when her responsibilities were on the agenda.

This made the maximum headcount at the cabinet table 28, clearly too large to function as a deliberative body which could consider policy in any detail; even if ministers restricted themselves to two minutes, a debate to which every minister contributed would take more than an hour for a single agenda item. In some ways, it reflected a conflict within Brown himself. He sought to make conscious changes in style from his predecessor, and wanted to show that Blair’s increasingly presidential method of governing had given way to a return of collective government by cabinet. Indeed, there were tentative discussions with the Liberal Democrats about one or two senior Lib Dems joining the government, and the party’s former leader, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, revealed that Brown had invited him to be secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Brown also allowed longer and more substantial discussions than Blair had done by the end of his decade in office.

Militating against this was the sheer size of the cabinet: its very inclusivity, bringing in ministers who would not normally attend and accommodating a focus on potentially cross-departmental issues like the Olympics, housing and family policy, made it less effective. In any event, while Brown may have allowed longer discussions, it seemed to some ministers that he found them of little interest and sometimes actively irritating. Geoff Hoon, initially chief whip, said that, like Blair, Brown did not have “any time for ministers”, which made a damaging combination with his natural tendency to interfere and micromanage.

If there were specific reasons for the increase in numbers under Gordon Brown, it has been perpetuated by one of the strongest influences in British government, inertia. Once it was conventional to have a significant number of ministers “also attending” cabinet, it was much easier for successive prime ministers to use that capacity than cut it back. It has not only continued but intensified. When the coalition cabinet was formed in 2010, there were again five ministers “also attending”: paymaster general Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin, minister of state for universities and science David Willetts, Sir George Young, leader of the House of Commons (for whom there was no room in the full cabinet), and the government chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin. Dominic Grieve, attorney general, also attended when his responsibilities were discussed. That made a meeting of 29 ministers.

Again there were extenuating circumstances. The fact that the government was a two-party coalition introduced a new dynamic into ministerial appointments, and in 2010 there were disappointments to be managed and egos to be salved. Nine members of Cameron’s shadow cabinet did not make the transition at the same level, with Maude, Willetts and Grieve being compensated with attendance at cabinet but six others taking junior ministerial or Whips’ Office positions.

The ministerial reshuffle carried out in 2012 showed that matters were out of control. It produced a cabinet of 25 full members, 10 ministers “also attending” and two invited when their responsibilities were discussed, a maximum headcount of 37 (compared with John Major’s 24 maximum only 15 years before). When Cameron assembled a Conservative-only administration after the 2015 general election, this was reduced slightly to 22 full members and eight “also attending”, and Theresa May, with characteristic parsimony, whittled that to 22 and five “also attending” in 2016. Then Boris Johnson allowed numbers to explode again in 2019, appointing a cabinet of 24 full members and 10 “also attending”. Rishi Sunak started his premiership with 22 full members and nine ministers “also attending”, and that has since grown to 23 full members and nine “also attending”. To reiterate, the outgoing cabinet has 32 people sitting round the table.

I dwell on this for two reasons. The first is that it is now widely accepted that the size of the cabinet has effectively killed its role as a forum for discussion in anything more than a formal sense. This was distilled earlier this year by a report from the Institute for Government, Power with purpose: Final report of the Commission on the Centre of Government. I won’t deal with the recommendations of the report here—not least because I don’t wholly agree with many of them—but its diagnosis represents a consensus. It concludes that cabinet “has ceased to be effective. It retains an important constitutional and political role, but the big decisions are taken elsewhere.” Furthermore, “membership has also been driven more by considerations of political balance than capability”. The report identifies another factor which makes the cabinet less able to fulfil its traditional role, which is chronic leaking. I wrote about this in The Spectator late last year: there need to be much more severe sanctions for leaking to create “an environment in which the disclosure of classified information is an offence of horrifying gravity”. Discussion will not take place if there is no trust.

This leads to my second point. The way mission boards work will depend hugely on whether they exist alongside the current, largely dysfunctional cabinet system, or Starmer intends to tackle reform of that as well as everything else. If he appoints a cabinet of 22 or so full members and another eight to 10 also-rans, but uses a four-person “executive cabinet” and mission boards as his principal instruments of administration, that will effectively close the door on the cabinet as we currently understand it, leaving it looking more like the Privy Council as an imprint of a once-functional organ of government. It may not be very encouraging in this respect that Starmer’s shadow cabinet numbers 31.

On the other hand, Starmer and Gray could tackle the problem directly. After all, one stated objective to break down silos between government departments and more broadly make government more effective and efficient, and the size of the cabinet is clearly an obstacle to that. The first move would be effectively to end the practice of ministers who attend cabinet as non-members. Of the current nine, the chief whip should remain, restoring the status quo of 1997 and before. The chief secretary to the Treasury should probably be a full member of cabinet, as has been the usual practice since the position was created in 1961. There is no need for the attorney general always to attend cabinet, as the role of the law officers is a distinct and unique ministerial function. The paymaster general, who is a minister in the Cabinet Office, and the deputy foreign secretary, do not need to attend given that their departmental chiefs are senior members of the cabinet.

Esther McVey, minister without portfolio, attends cabinet in her laughable role as “minister for common sense”, tasked with “leading the government’s anti-woke agenda”. It is beyond parody. The ministers of state for security, veterans’ affairs and countering illegal immigration owe their presence entirely to a desire to advertise the importance the government attaches to those issues, and could easily be removed.

Starmer could go further and look at the fundamental structures of Whitehall departments, although he has indicated that this is not a priority; when Boris Johnson merged the Department for International Development back into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2020, Starmer’s instinct was to pledge earnestly and piously to reverse it, and he has maintained a separate international development portfolio in the shadow cabinet. That undertaking has now faded and it is unlikely that overseas aid will be restored to a separate department. Equally, when Rishi Sunak made major changes to the machinery of government in February 2023, creating several new departments, Starmer made a point of not changing his frontbench spokesmen accordingly straight away. However, when he reshuffled his shadow cabinet seven months later, he followed the new departmental arrangements. All of this suggests his instincts on this matter are not radical.

I will say a few words more generally on the issue of machinery of government at this point, because it is an issue which—improbably!—flickered into life on social media. An argument is occasionally made that there are simply too many government departments, with too many ministers, and a radical cull is necessary. When Dominic Cummings was appointed as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser in 2019, he arrived with a fully formed and far-reaching critique of the British state, one of which was that the departmental structure should be fundamentally shaken up. The Institute for Government compiled these rumours and provided a response, and, while the Johnson premiership saw modest changes, many of those mentioned later took place under Sunak.

It is, of course, impossible to make direct comparisons with different political systems, but it may be interesting to note that the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, has recently slashed the number of departments in his government as part of his wider radical changes to the size and shape of the state, cutting them from 18 to nine, then eight, then seven. Under the Decree of Necessity and Urgency, he abolished and redistributed the duties of the following ministries: Transportation; Public Works; Science, Technology and Innovation; Territorial Development and Habitat; Culture; Environment and Sustainable Development; Tourism and Sports; Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries; and Women, Gender and Diversity. A Ministry of Infrastructure was created then absorbed by the Ministry of Economy. The Ministry of the Interior was recently downgraded to the status of a secretariat, overseen by the chief of the cabinet of ministers.

The government now consists of seven departments: Defence; Economy; Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship; Health; Human Capital; Justice; and Security. It remains to be seen whether this enormous transformation will be successful.

In Whitehall, there are currently 19 major government departments headed by cabinet ministers:

• Department for Business and Trade

• Cabinet Office

• Department for Culture, Media and Sport

• Ministry of Defence

• Department for Education

• Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

• Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

• Department for Health and Social Care

• Home Office

• Ministry of Justice

• Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

• Northern Ireland Office

• Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

• Scotland Office

• Department for Transport

• HM Treasury

• Wales Office

• Department for Work and Pensions

If one wanted to reduce this number, the most obvious target is the trinity of “national” offices corresponding to the devolved administrations, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Given that there have been governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and (spasmodically) Belfast since 1999, the presence of three cabinet ministers to supervise relations with the devolved administrations and deal with reserved matters is excessive. From 2003 to 2010, the posts of secretary of state for Scotland and Wales were held in combination with other cabinet roles. Professor Robert Hazell of the UCL Constitution Unit has suggested merging these posts into a single secretary of state for the Union, giving form to the largely presentational title of “Minister of the Union” which was adopted by Boris Johnson in 2019 and has been attached to the premiership ever since.

Beyond that, making significant reductions in size becomes difficult. There are around 15 areas of policy which are obviously discrete and manageable, and if you start to yoke them together to cut the numbers of departments in a serious way then you are starting to create a very different administrative landscape. For example, could one practically have a single minister in charge of foreign affairs (including overseas aid) and defence and security? There is a theoretical logic but it would be a huge portfolio. One could suggest a coherence between health, social care, welfare, pensions, employment and policy on the third sector, but, again, this would be an enormous bailiwick.

This means that a figure of around 20 is more or less inevitable: the prime minister, 15 or so departmental ministers, the leaders of both Houses, probably the chief secretary to the Treasury with his or her specific responsibility for public expenditure and spending reviews, and the capacity for a minister without specific departmental duties to undertake some tasks the prime minister finds useful.

How mission boards might work

A best guess at this stage is that mission boards will sit alongside a cabinet of the current size, perhaps with some of the ministers “also attending” cut away, and a core decision-making body or “executive cabinet” of four (Starmer, Rayner, Reeves, McFadden). Let us assume that the mission boards will include the relevant cabinet ministers and a selection of junior ministers with relevant responsibilities, and the appropriate officials from across Whitehall. Then we have the “business leaders and other experts from outside government” which have been trailed.

Let’s think about the fifth mission, “Build an NHS fit for the future”, as an example. This mission is intended to ensure we have a health service “that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer.” (Of course, we need to remember that the UK government only has responsibility for NHS England, an executive non-departmental body run by a chief executive, currently Amanda Pritchard. There are separate organisations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each answerable to the devolved administration.)

On this board, you would have the secretary of state for health and social care, and some (if not all) of the junior ministers. There are currently five ministers underneath the secretary of state, of whom you would at least want the minister for mental health and women’s health strategy, the minister for health and secondary care and the minister for public health, start for life and primary care. (The individual allocation of responsibilities within the department will almost certainly change, of course.)

It would make sense for the chief secretary to the Treasury to be included, as she has responsibility for public sector pay and pensions, efficiency and value for money in public service, procurement, capital investment and skills and labour market policy.

The minister for science, research and innovation (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) might be a useful presence with his responsibilities for the domestic science and research ecosystem, including university research and public sector research establishments, and life sciences.

The minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education (Department for Education) would be a sensible inclusion in terms of training clinical staff. The minister for employment (Department for Work and Pensions) has responsibility for the labour market, labour supply and skills, which has a bearing on how the NHS works. You might also want representation of the Government Equalities Office.

These would be complemented by the appropriate civil servants: certainly these would include the chief medical officer for England, currently Professor Sir Chris Whitty, who is “head of the public health profession” and is supported by three deputy chief medical officers. There would be a strong case for the government chief scientific adviser, currently Professor Dame Angela McLean.

Beyond Whitehall, the list could grow like topsy. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing would probably seek to contribute, as would the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the General Medical Council, the NHS Confederation and NHS Employers. Other stakeholders could be as diverse as trades unions, patient representative groups, universities, local authorities and private healthcare providers. Inclusion will be driven partly by political considerations—a Labour government will have different attitudes towards Unison and Bupa—as well as the extent of the appetite for cross-departmental working and the involvement of non-governmental organisations.

What this tells you, purely in an illustrative fashion, is that the composition of the mission boards will be a key feature of how they work. There is a line between the valuable involvement of external expertise and a tent so big it is unmanageable that is not always easy to discern. Will everyone sit on the boards at the same level, or (somewhat like cabinet) will there be full members and those “also attending”? Will ministers and civil servants discuss and decide as equals, at least in theory? Will decisions be taken if necessary by a formal process of voting, or will the chair have the authority to “reflect” the views of the board?

Flowing from this, what will the exact role and powers of the mission boards be? Will they devise policy and hand it on to others for delivery, or, as Starmer will at first more likely intend, will they have a role in overseeing that delivery and monitoring progress? Will this be a formal and regularised process, or something that the board is entitled to do if there is a feeling that implementation is not moving quickly enough? And what will be the relationship between mission boards and the cabinet? In any bureaucracy, you have to make provision for the worst-case scenario, so what if a mission board reached a decision on some element of policy with which the cabinet, of very different composition and nature, disagreed? What would be the end of the line of that dispute, and how would it be resolved? Is the cabinet delegating responsibility to these mission boards—because my implication any authority which is delegated can also be taken away again—or do they derive their authority from the prime minister? Will there be a clear and formal “chain of command” or a wiring diagram?

Andrew Sissons, who worked at the Cities and Local Growth Unit in the Cabinet Office then at the Department for Communities and Local Government in the mid-2010s, set out his thoughts on cross-departmental working. He argues that mission boards chaired by Starmer, or another senior minister, could be valuable in driving policy, as then most potent weapon in Whitehall turf wars is the support of one of the most senior three or four members of the government. He warns, however, that Starmer would need to be focused and engaged, and that any loss of engagement would lead to a loss of momentum. In addition, Sissons says, there must be sustained focus, and mission boards “should track outcomes, hold departments to account, unblock barriers or adjust course wherever needed. Don’t assume announcing the policy means it will happen.”

Amy Gandon, who worked in a number of departments between 2017 and 2022, has argued that, while structures are important, success depends on the commitment of ministers and officials, and cross-departmental “activity relies on departmental ministers being happy to play the game as a team rather than individual sport”. Echoing Sissons’s caution, she says “if at any point Keir’s power starts to slip, or people jostle for position (incl. for the top job), then things could go awry”.

When I first looked at the possible ways a Labour government might work back in April, I was relatively cautious, and suggested some areas which might make or break Starmer’s new approach.

Mission boards are, prima facie, a sensible approach to focusing on what the government really wants to do and a way of making sure that Whitehall is “joined up”. But government relies on power and formal structures, and if these mission boards have a vague supervisory or consultative role but no levers to pull to make things happen, then it is hard to see them making any substantial difference to the way policy is carried out. They have all the methods and ambitions—working across departmental boundaries, using outside expertise, harnessing the methods of the private sector—that have been tried before but have not led to systemic or institutional change. Perhaps Starmer, with the assistance of Sue Gray, will find a way to unlock real reform, but he has not yet made any definite statements which suggest that is the case.

I stand by that. I should emphasise that I highlight all of these unanswered questions not as a criticism of Sir Keir Starmer or the Labour Party; there are some decisions they cannot be expected to take until they are actually in government, and it is a fair observation that, like most people, they were caught off-guard by the prime minister’s calling of an election for 4 July, so were probably working on a timeline which foresaw a transition in October or November.

I do hope that none of these questions would come as a surprise to the policy-makers in the Labour Party. If the process is led by Starmer and Gray, both former permanent secretaries, and has drawn on the access talks the Labour Party has had with the civil service, these are all areas which should have been anticipated as at least requiring some thought. We should also not expect any structures put in place in the first weeks of a new government to be the last and final word: if this really is about a new way of running Whitehall, there will inevitably be a degree of experimentation and adaptation.

It will, however, be hard work and required sustained effort. I’m relatively sceptical: in many areas I suspect new ministers will find that institutional change is not in fact necessary to achieve their ends. There is also an extent to which an opposition naturally wants to present itself as being as different as possible from the government it hopes to replace but then dials back the scale of reform when it settles itself in office. It may be that by the time we are facing the next general election in 2028 or 2029, the landscape of Whitehall and the way policy is devised, developed and delivered is very different. Equally the changes may only be cosmetic. In the long run, voters are utterly uninterested in how Whitehall works. Starmer and his advisers know that they will be judged on what they are able to achieve, not the elegant and inclusive processes they have constructed to achieve it.