If our rulers make bad decisions, it is often because of an exhausting and unnecessary workload. Steve Richards asks if the system can be reformed

Phew! Most of the cabinet is on holiday. Exhausted ministers are relaxing on French beaches or by Italian lakes, resting their minds and bringing some colour to their pallid cheeks. Away from the frenetic daily routine in Westminster, between paperbacks or over a glass of chilled wine, any political thoughts will be of a more reflective kind.

How am I doing? How is the government doing? What job would I like next? Will I ever be offered another job, or am I in line for the sack when Tony Blair wants to prove his ruthlessness to a doubting media? While all such fleeting questions are perfectly understandable there is another that they should ask themselves as well: why was I so damned exhausted before I started my holiday?

The newspapers have been full of articles about how exhausted Tony Blair looked before heading for Tuscany, showing before and after pictures that gave the reverse of the usual cosmeticians' message: "become prime minister and age ten years in five". But the concern was not confined to Blair. The exhausted John Prescott, it was said, should be relieved of some of his duties. Senior officials at the Treasury are still getting over the shock of Gordon Brown's daily routine, which is much longer and more intense than that of his Tory predecessor, Kenneth Clarke.

Yet ministerial schedules under this government are not unusual. Entries in Tony Benn's diaries when he was a cabinet minister in the 1970s often open with the sentence "Up at 5.30 . . . " and end with "It is now two in the morning and I am jiggered". Barbara Castle's personal record shows that she was almost as energetic. The premature death of Tony Crosland in 1976 was put down partly to the stress of being foreign secretary. Norman Tebbit recalls a late-night meeting with Margaret Thatcher in which he made the mistake of yawning. Thatcher stared at him and asked, bewildered: "Norman, are you all right?" He looked at his watch and dared to respond: "I'm a little tired, Prime Minister. It is three in the morning." Harold Wilson used to say that prime ministerial vitality depended on eight hours' sleep a night, but in his first phase in Downing Street in the 1960s he was also keen on keeping a firm grip of his government in a way that demanded much late-night work. Unlike Blair, he also faced the draining task of managing a divided party and cabinet.

Not all cabinet ministers work ferociously. Some simply don't have much to do. Blair runs a heavily centralised administration and, when ministers aren't trusted, Downing Street and/or the Treasury will take the big departmental decisions. Even the highly regarded ministers don't get an entirely free rein. Further, Blair tends to appoint senior figures - Jack Cunningham, for example, and, before him, Peter Mandelson - to ill-defined jobs which don't actually involve doing much. Blair himself, before Northern Ireland and Kosovo made such taxing demands, was commendably ruthless about leaving time for his family. PMs who are relaxed about delegating (Blair is not) can find themselves unexpectedly free of continuous demands. The former BBC political editor John Cole tells of a meeting with Wilson in Downing Street when it was Cole who looked nervously at his watch and ran off to his next appointment. Wilson was urging him to stay for another whisky. Likewise, journalists who knew John Major well say that he sometimes had more time to chat than they did.

Nevertheless, though personal styles can transcend the pressures some of the time, the harsh reality, as Kenneth Clarke observes, is that British ministers "have to work damned hard". This is from a minister with interests outside politics. He told me: "I went home at night to dream other dreams. I've no idea how some of my colleagues who worry about politics day and night cope with it."

Some of the burdens on ministers have unavoidably increased, notably because of Europe. One of the attractions, for prime ministers especially, of the "special relationship" with America is that it is glamorous without being time-consuming: daytime meetings with the president and glittering concerts in the evenings. Europe, by contrast, is time-consuming and unglamorous: complex negotiations going on for sleepless days and nights. Northern Ireland is another time-consuming area, as is military conflict. (Since 1982, Britain has fought in the Falklands, the Gulf twice and the Balkans.)

On the domestic front, Whitehall pulls most of the strings, even though this government is committed to greater pluralism. British ministers take decisions that in more decentralised countries would be left to local government. The amount a council spends, and to some extent how the money is spent, is still a matter for Prescott, Brown and various departmental ministers such as David Blunkett at education. The expansion of the media is an additional strain. Ministers are in demand seven days a week from dawn to late at night to give interviews.

But to any outsider the equation between ministerial workload and what comes out in terms of policy and delivery seems ridiculously imbalanced. Red box after red box, a never-ending series of private and public meetings, round-the-clock interviews and still we have a transport crisis, low standards in schools and unacceptably high hospital waiting lists. What can be done? One solution is for ministers to challenge the Whitehall culture, which mistakes a busy ministerial day for a productive one. Told of his new job, a minister in last month's reshuffle went straight to his department to be given his first red box and his schedule for the next day. Senior civil servants do not seem to recognise the value of "thinking time".

Another practical measure would be to break down barriers between departments to avoid duplication of ministerial tasks. The Social Exclusion Unit is a good model. Instead of ministers from different departments rushing around separately trying to devise policies to tackle homelessness, their efforts are co-ordinated. It would also be sensible to free ministers from all their voting obligations in the Commons. It is farcical to have ministers hanging around the House into the early hours of the morning when voting could easily be done electronically. Recently I interviewed a minister who had been up most of the night. Happily, from my point of view, his exhaustion made him more indiscreet. Much more important, bad decisions can and do arise from sleepless nights in the division lobbies.

In Clarke's view, the quality of the junior ministers also matters. "If a cabinet minister trusts his juniors, he can delegate confidently. If not, he has to do it all himself, and there is too much going on to make that feasible for any length of time." Blair has reached the same conclusion, which explains the big reshuffle of juniors last month.

Some Blairite modernisers have more drastic solutions. The head of the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank, Matthew Taylor, has proposed that ministers should be taken away from the traditional departments and allowed to develop fresh ideas or to work on particular projects, liberated from the daily routine. The flaw in this proposal is that ministers are not that fertile when it comes to producing new ideas. There is a danger that such a freedom would produce more non-jobs along the lines of Cunningham's "cabinet enforcer" role.

Ultimately, ministerial workload defies objective reform. Ministerial behaviour is determined partly by the political cycle, partly by personal style. Some ministers are natural workaholics (Benn, Brown), others are so worried and neurotic they work extremely hard anyway. Some are more laid back (Cunningham enjoys his fishing, Ann Taylor rarely misses a Bolton Wanderers football match, Margaret Beckett enjoys her caravan, although it is a myth that she spent a week in it during the European election campaign).

Early in a government's life most ministers are driven by personal ambition and a genuine desire to do some good. During the dying years of the Major administration the dynamics were very different. Whitehall was not alive with the restless energy from enthusiastic ministers. Drained by years of power, some were spending more time with their families, and goodness know who else, while remaining in office.

Most ministers in this young government are still taken aback by the novelty of power. And plenty of backbenchers await the call, ready to work day and night when they get it. In September, ministers from Tony Blair downwards will look several years younger. Their glowing healthy looks will have gone by October.

---

A Day in the Life of a Cabinet Minister
Thursday 15 July
David Blunkett

---

7.10 Interview on Radio Sheffield on launch of Inner City Regeneration Programme

7.20 Work through red boxes

8.30 Launch of Inner City Regeneration Programme with John Prescott and Stephen Byers. Elland House, London

9.20 Visit to Haggerston School, Hackney, east London, with Chris Smith. Haggerston is a "beacon school"

10.30 Cabinet

12.00 A briefing over lunch to the Foreign Press Association on the New Deal

14.00 A meeting with senior officials and advisers to review progress of schools' policies

17.00 Meeting with Chinese Education Minister, Chen Zhili

18.00 Attends Education Millennium Lecture in Downing Street delivered by Sir Geoff Hampton

19.00 Dinner with Chinese dignitaries

22.00 Red boxes

1.00 Bed

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website