It’s a pity that Dominic Cummings’s rude WhatsApp messages dominated the headlines following his appearance at the Covid inquiry this week. Boris Johnson’s estranged consigliere had plenty to say about the problems with Whitehall – much of which risks getting ignored because of the focus on leaked messages. One of his targets was the cabinet, which was sidelined during the pandemic because of leaks.
‘Cabinet was largely irrelevant to policy or execution in 2020,’ Cummings wrote in his inquiry evidence. ‘Its constant leaks meant it was seen by everyone in No. 10 as not a place for serious discussion.’ Cabinet became a cipher, and ‘real discussions happen(ed) elsewhere’.
Cummings has a point here: under Boris Johnson, discussions between ministers frequently ended up on Twitter and in newspapers before the government had formally announced them. It caused confusion for Brits, many of whom were stuck at home, as to what rules were, or weren’t, about to be rolled out.
There is a tool prime ministers can use to crack down on the leakers
Part of the problem is that the cabinet has become too big. Winston Churchill ruthlessly kept it to 15; nowadays, Rishi Sunak gathers 31 ministers around a specially extended table. This size – and the weakness of a string of embattled Tory prime ministers – has made it far more likely that dirty laundry gets aired in public. Theresa May’s 2016-19 ministry was the nadir of cabinet confidentiality: Gavin Williamson was sacked as defence secretary following an inquiry into a leak from a confidential National Security Council meeting. Yet within three months, May had resigned and Williamson had become education secretary.
But there is a tool prime ministers can use to crack down on the leakers. The Ministerial Code requires ministers to observe ‘the privacy of opinions expressed in Cabinet and Ministerial Committees’. Cabinet is also, in theory, a sub-committee of the Privy Council, members of which swear an oath on appointment to ‘keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated of secretly in Council”. To leak, then, is to violate the terms of a sworn oath.
If a minister is proven to have leaked, he or she can (of course) be dismissed from cabinet for breaking the Ministerial Code. Breaches of this code are dealt with by the cabinet secretary, but the prime minister has the ultimate authority over what sanction to levy on transgressors. But this is a political process. The last minister to resign for breaking the code was Suella Braverman, who improperly shared a draft written ministerial statement, but her exile lasted six days before she was reappointed to the Home Office. It is not, by any means, a robust or transparent system.
Ministers could also be removed from the Privy Council. This happened to former Labour minister, Elliot Morley, who in 2011 was sent to prison for false accounting over his parliamentary allowances. A few weeks later, he was struck off the Privy Council. Although membership is largely an honour, it is a more serious and lasting mark than simply resigning as a minister.
The tools are there, but using them effectively to punish cabinet leaks would need steel and determination. No prime minister likes to make enemies, but the gravity of the offence would only be made real if punishment was public and effectively permanent, with no realistic prospect of appeal. It would have to be a quasi-nuclear option, and over the course of a parliament would create implacable internal enmities in the governing party. But this is a price worth paying to preserve the secrecy of cabinet.
Leaking is hardly a modern phenomenon. In 1936, the colonial secretary, J.H. Thomas, had to resign after leaking details of forthcoming Budget measures to City friends while playing golf. The whole culture of leaking for personal advantage was well established enough to be a running theme in Yes, Minister by the late 1970s.
Any organisation which relies on secrecy faces huge challenges. The young Ben Franklin was quite right when he observed, ‘Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead’. What Cummings told Baroness Hallett’s inquiry was that the inevitability and the ubiquity of leaking was having a corrosive effect on the way government worked. Cummings concluded that cabinet had to be bypassed as a forum for decision-making because nothing could be said in confidence. It was a legitimate conclusion to come to.
This is more than just an issue that affects those in Westminster village. If the cabinet can’t be trusted, the whole system of government breaks down – and we all end up paying the price. Ministers should work in an environment in which the disclosure of classified information is an offence of horrifying gravity. So the prime minister should make the rules of engagement as clear as possible: if Downing Street is satisfied you have leaked, you will be dismissed, you will be struck off the Privy Council and your career will be at an end. There will be no redemption. Otherwise the whole system comes unstuck.
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