With the Conservatives ahead in the polls, David Cameron must be using the summer break thinking of whom to place around the Cabinet table. But he would do well to also think of what ministerial portfolios should exist at all.
Prime Ministers have the greatest leeway to reshape the government’s machinery upon taking office. Then it gets trickier as voters expect results, not tinkering with bureaucratic arrangements. A number of institutional changes are both needed and politically expedient.
First, a Tory government should create a new Cabinet-level Secretary of State for Veteran Affairs – with a department underneath – appointing a senior politician, or perhaps a former 4* soldier like General Charles Guthrie to run all veteran-related affairs.
Nothing would signal as powerfully that a new government wants Britain’s veterans to be taken care of. The new Veterans Secretary could then be tasked to draft a new Veterans Bill for the government’s first Queens Speech laying out a new approach to ex-combattants.
Second, a Prime Minister Cameron should create a Secretary of State for Climate Change If an election comes before the Copenhagen Climate Conference, then this is an obvious priority for a new Climate Secretary.
Once climate has been elevated to a Cabinet-level position, the rest of the current department, i.e. Food and Rural Affairs, should be merged with the Department for Communities and Local Government. The new Department for Local Affairs could be run by someone who can advance the Tory’s decentralisation agenda.
Then there is DfiD. It will be too unpopular – and counterproductive – to merge the department back into the FCO. But steps need to be taken to ensure greater collaboration between DfiD and the military. A Tory government should re-draft the International Development Act, establishing a Department for International Development and Stabilisation and appoint someone to run it who can balance Britain’s commitment to poverty-alleviation with the need to advance the country’s strategic interests and work with the Armed Forces.
Finally, with a commitment to establish a US-style National Security Council, a Tory government will need to think through how it wants to change the centre of government. Now Dame Pauline Neville-Jones shadows Lord Alan West but the job of a National Security Adviser is different. And there is precious little detail of how a Prime Minister Cameron would want to run security policy.
The commitment to restore Cabinet government not only sits uneasily with a directive NSC but it underplays the problems the Cabinet system and the Civil Service face in dealing with today’s complex, cross-cutting security challenges. In other words, much thinking to fill a holiday with – before even getting down to the who-sits-where question that usually dominates Westminster politics.
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