The power of the Office of the Prime Minister depends on who is staffing it

In reality, the Cabinet Office is already an Office of the Prime Minister in all but name, writes Sean O’Grady, and the simplest thing would be effectively to merge the two

Boris Johnson’s constitutional innovation came in response to Sue Gray’s report (Reuters)

Obviously, given all the revelations, the involvement of the police, and her stinging criticisms about the top of government, not much attention has been paid to the central recommendation in Sue Gray’s “update” to her investigation.

Gray suggests a reorganisation of the structure of the Cabinet Office, to improve coordination and control. In her own words: “The number of staff working in No 10 Downing Street has steadily increased in recent years. In terms of size, scale and range of responsibility it is now more akin to a small government department than purely a dedicated prime minister’s office. The structures that support the smooth operation of Downing Street, however, have not evolved sufficiently to meet the demands of this expansion. The leadership structures are fragmented and complicated and this has sometimes led to the blurring of lines of accountability. Too much responsibility and expectation is placed on the senior official whose principal function is the direct support of the prime minister. This should be addressed as a matter of priority.”

Straight away, Boris Johnson announced that there will be a new Office of the Prime Minister, with its very own permanent secretary.

Politically, the news was met with some indifference. For most members of the public disappointed, infuriated and upset by Partygate, it is unlikely that this constitutional innovation will appease them. It is obviously something that was not seriously considered before the scandal developed, and replacing the prime minister’s office with the Office of the Prime Minister may in fact mean little more than replacing some lower case type with upper case.

The more critical have pointed out that printing new stationery, reshuffling desks and officials and placing the Cabinet Office under direct control of the prime minister won’t automatically change the culture. Indeed in creating such a mega department it would make the PM even more powerful and would mark a significant shift towards a more presidential system, and an even weaker status for the cabinet, which is still supposed to be the governing body of the UK.

The creation of a distinct formal prime minister’s office has been debated for many years. There was always in fact a prime minister’s secretariat or staff, and still is, and the current operation is sizeable enough, comprising the Private Office (permanent civil servants), the Political Office (politically appointed special advisers), a policy unit, the press or media operation. Sometimes political appointees as “chief of staff” are given unusually strong formal powers over permanent impartial civil servants, such as Jonathan Powell was under Tony Blair.

Others, such as Dominic Cummings, have much the same effect through force of personality. “No 10”, a building as well as shorthand for the PM’s staff, has also from time to time had a permanent secretary. The private office and the PM’s principal private secretary is usually the centre of power, though subordinate to the cabinet secretary, whose status should give him or (not yet) her the authority to, stand up to a prime minister acting recklessly or unlawfully, in conjunction with senior law officers.

As in any organisation, personal chemistry between the teams is probably more crucial than reporting lines and job descriptions. Prime ministers like to surround themselves with people they can trust, whether inherited from the previous regime or not.

The wide-ranging policy unit and innovations such as a prime minister’s personal economic and foreign affairs advisers have arguably duplicated the work of the departments of state, and occasionally led to unsustainable frictions when the PM and a cabinet minister disagree on policy. The question is really about how much power and autonomy that, say, a chancellor and the Treasury enjoy over the prime minister and their economic adviser – notably when Margaret Thatcher fell out with Nigel Lawson, and Sajid Javid resigned rather than subordinate No 11/the Treasury to Johnson and Cummings in No 10.

An additional, inevitable complication to smooth administration is when prime ministers rely on informal advice from freelancing outsiders, and/or bypass cabinet committees by convening ad hoc or informal chats about policy, so-called sofa government.

Physically and organisationally conjoined is 70 Whitehall and the cabinet office, in effect the back door to No 10 in more ways than one. The modern cabinet secretariat was created by David Lloyd George in the First World War, to deal with the unprecedented changes of that time – prior to that and aside from defence and foreign affairs, central government didn’t do that much compared to today. As with the British parliamentary and cabinet system, where the prime minister is powerful chair and “first among equals”, the new cabinet secretariat was there to service the prime minister and the cabinet as a whole, analysing policy and implementing decisions directly and across departments.

Today’s cabinet office still works to the prime minister and the cabinet as a whole, though it mirrors the political realtors in that the prime minister calls upon it a good deal. The most recent obvious example of it operating as an auxiliary branch of No 10 was when Theresa May and Johnson both used it to deal with the Brexit talks, the agreements and their aftermath.

That said, the Cabinet Office and its ministers, often the chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster plus a minister of state, have their own particular formal responsibilities, such as intelligence and national security, constitutional reform, procurement policy, relations with the devolved administrations, government efficiency and ad hoc projects.

In reality though the Cabinet Office is already an Office of the Prime Minister in all but name, and the simplest thing would be effectively to merge the two offices, leaving a small vestigial cabinet secretariat to do things such as run the civil service and organise cabinet committees and the agenda for cabinet, so that senior ministers can at least have the opportunity to take an issue to cabinet without the prime minister’s approval.

But, to adapt the phrase, the prime minister in such a world would be even more first among equals; and therefore even more would depend on the character and integrity of the prime minister of the day. Therein lies the rub.