I heard, yet again, David Cameron say on the Today programme yesterday that the new coalition government had ‘done away with sofa government’ and was making decisions properly around the table – they had ‘restored proper Cabinet government’. That might not be as good as it sounds.
This was in response to criticisms of the new policy on Child Benefit, which removes it from households with a higher-rate taxpayer in residence (although it entirely unclear how that can be enforced as we are all taxed separately now and child benefit is usually claimed only by the mother). The obvious anomaly generated by this scheme – that households with two parents earning just below the 40% tax threshold will get Child Benefit while one with only a single parent at work who earns just above the threshold won’t, seems to have passed by the decision makers.
And this highlights a phenomenon that has gone largely uncommented upon: the policy-making introversion of this government. It may be true that coalition has imposed more formalised, more traditional, decision making in Whitehall (although it’s not clear that is always the case) – but that does not mean that the decision making lives up to the best standards of policy-making.
The last Labour government tried – it did not always, or even often, succeed, but it did try – to improve policy-making standards in Whitehall. From the Modernising Government (1999) white paper onwards it published a series of guides on ‘professional policy making’, the ‘strategy survival guide’ and various other attempts. These were supported by the National Audit Office, which produced its own guidance and several parliamentary reports that reinforced the principles developed for best practice.
One key aspect of these principles was that policy-making should be more outward looking, open, consultative and transparent. What is interesting about this government is that the dynamics of coalition – coupled with an increasing siege mentality as the cuts programme develops – are forcing all its policy-making to be inward looking, closed, and very much not open to inspection.
It may be too early to conclude that this is going to lead to more episodes like Child Benefit – where the angry reaction was clearly not anticipated. But the signs do not look good. Perhaps ministers should go back and read the excellent book by David Butler, Andrew Adonis and Tony Travers on the poll tax fiasco and see how decision-making in government can go very badly wrong indeed.
Just because Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers, and their mandarins, are being terribly professional to each other it doesn’t stop them making ‘brave decisions’ as Sir Humphrey used to say. Certainly deciding to penalise the stay-at-home yummy mummies was ‘brave’ – that’s not a constituency I’d like to take on.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School. This post first appeared on Whitehall Watch
