Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle has confirmed a new set of government departments focused on science and business, and a new party chair. That’s all well and good: the Prime Minister is very keen to make Britain a science superpower and wants to put the right people in the right jobs as he prepares for the next election. Civil servants are moving into new jobs, as are ministers. The new departments will use the existing government estate, but it isn’t yet clear where they’ll all be. But there are a number of potential problems with what’s been announced today.
Is this the right reorganisation of Whitehall?
Changing government departments can sometimes just be a matter of redesigning the letterhead to reflect your priorities as an administration, such as the rebranding of Labour’s Department for Children, Schools and Families to the Tory Department for Education. Today’s reorganisation is bigger than that, splitting Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy into three new departments: Energy Security and Net Zero; Science, Innovation and Technology; and Business and Trade. That third department also subsumes International Trade. These will be big reorganisations in themselves, with civil servants moving buildings and a new ministerial team getting to grips with different sections working together under one roof for the first time – or at least the first time in a while.
But shaking up one section of Whitehall does raise the question of why other departments are staying as they are. There has not been a big political operation rolling the pitch so that the need for this reorganisation has been made clear. No. 10 insisted today that ‘it’s been put forward from a number of individuals that business and trade naturally go together, and that when you’re planning trade deals to benefit UK business, it makes sense to link them together under one Secretary of State.’
There has, though, been such a steady flow of stories showing that if the Home Office is not fit for purpose, it is at least too big to succeed. This behemoth of a department has so many different policy priorities that it is impossible for one Home Secretary to stay across illegal immigration, asylum, immigration, policing, counter-extremism, violence against women and girls, anti-social behaviour, drugs policy, fire safety and passport services. It’s difficult enough to read that long list without drawing breath, let alone keep all of these very serious briefs in check. When she was Home Secretary, Theresa May survived largely by being a control freak on every policy area, with her lieutenant special advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill working frantically to stay on top of everything. Since then, there has been much discussion in Westminster about breaking up the Home Office so that there’s a chance areas under severe pressure will gain sufficient oversight from the Secretary of State. The last time this was seriously considered was when Boris Johnson was prime minister. Then, the plan was to remove immigration and border security from the Home Office and put them in a new department. Johnson’s team eventually abandoned the change on the basis it would create too much upheaval when they were also trying to reform the immigration system.
Now, a regular complaint in Westminster is that Home Secretary Suella Braverman is too focused on small boats – one of Rishi Sunak’s immediate proprieties that he named at the start of the year – to be able to stay across the necessary reforms in policing, for instance. At yesterday’s Home Office questions Braverman was again grilled on when the government would be changing the law to make it easier for chief constables to suspend or sack police officers who were accused of criminal behaviour or other professional misconduct. The complaint from Labour was that the whole process was taking too long: Braverman’s argument was that she was considering changes through various reviews. But with tough new immigration legislation on the way, she won’t have a great deal of bandwidth for those changes.
Rough justice
Dominic Raab is still in the Ministry of Justice, which isn’t a surprise as Sunak has been very clear he wants to stick to due process while the minister, who insists he has done nothing wrong, is investigated for allegations of bullying officials. If he is forced to resign, then there will need to be another mini-reshuffle in the next few weeks: why not wait until then to do the big overhaul rather than having two periods of government upheaval?
Beyond the personnel problem, there is widespread acceptance that the MoJ is a basket case of a department, and often more of a corridor for ministers on their way elsewhere. It is subject to huge turnover within the individual ministerial roles. That prisons and courts are in crisis seems to have been accepted and then ignored by the wider political machine. If there was a department that was ripe for some kind of reform, the MoJ would be it.
Does this really change the narrative?
One explanation for the timing of today’s announcements and the partial nature of the changes is that this reshuffle allows Sunak to seize back control of the news agenda after the inconvenient interview and article from Liz Truss over the past few days. Using a reshuffle to regain control of a narrative is a classic lever that Downing Streets of all political colours have pulled over the years when the inhabitants are in a bit of a bunker mentality. It is obviously not without risk because it leaves certain ministers – and civil servants – very bruised and more likely to cause trouble, though this mini-reshuffle has the virtue of not sacking anyone and just rearranging desk chairs.
But it’s worth pointing out that Truss’s most potent criticism is that there isn’t a proper plan for growth, and most Conservative MPs want to see action from the Treasury on the tax burden, rather than science, as the answer to that.
Greg Hands as Tory chair is an interesting appointment. He is a very tribal politician, someone who sees the political opportunity in anything and everything. He takes on a depressed and disorganised CCHQ which is still rather hollowed out after Boris Johnson left. He will also be concerned that there is a lack of partisan energy on the backbenches in Commons debates and question sessions, and will be keen to corral Tory MPs into being more vocal in their support for Sunak and the wider government machine. But he is a London MP, has a big majority, and is seen by some MPs as being a bit too much a creature of the Westminster corridors rather than someone who comes across well in marginal seats. He is, though, deeply loyal to Sunak, which the Prime Minister desperately needs.
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