UK Government; The Executive - relationship to the cabinet Flashcards
What are institutional resources and powers?
There are four areas Blick and Jones have identified as resources the PM can draw upon: Institutional resources, constitutive resources, political resources and personal resources.
- Institutional resources are the team of civil servants and special advisors that comes with the office.
Institutional powers -
- Appointing and dismissing ministers and undertaking cabinet reshuffles
- Chairing weekly meetings of the cabinet and setting the agenda
- Arranging and sometimes chairing cabinet committees
- Dictating policy priorities
- The Cabinet Office
- As party leader, usually being able to command a Commons majority to get legislation through
- Issuing honours such as life peerages
Why did the earliest prime ministers actually have considerable institutional resources?
How were these resources lost?
- The earliest PMs enjoyed considerable institutional resources.
- They led and were supported by the largest department in government- the treasury.
- They held multiple offices so had huge support of offices behind them, especially the treasury.
- Today the PM still holds the more ceremonial ‘First Lord of the Treasury’.
- 1841 - PM Robert Peel delegated responsibility for managing the Treasury to a separate Chancellor of the Exchequer, hoping to instead influence policy across the whole government.
- Then PMs lacked their own department and specific policy area, reducing their direct institutional resources
How has the size and role of the Prime Minister’s Office in No.10 changed in recent decades?
- In 2020, 51 out of 116 special advisors were based in No. 10.
- IN recent years, NO. 10 has only had around 100 members of staff- this is far more than the team of 35 that supported Harold Wilson in 1964.
- Although it has grown, it is still relatively small, recognising the numbers of departments (which are far better resourced) and civil servants to influence policy.
- MInsters complain the PM tries to micromanage the gov, encroaching on departmental policy making and media relations.
- But while No. 10 receives briefings and correspondence from across gov. - with limited time and resources there is only so much that can be done with all this information.
What are constitutive resources? Why is it difficult to identify the PM’s constitutional powers?
- Responsibility they are given by statute/convention, to make decisions and take certain actions - resources from the constitution
- The UK lacks a codified constitution to neatly outline the PM powers and responsibilities
- The position of the prime minister evolved gradually, and was not officially recognised for a long time.
- The idea that a particular minister could become ‘prime minister’ was initially so controversial that the first PM, Robert Walpole, denied that the position even existed.
- The first Act of Parliament to recognise the existence of a PM was the Chequers Estate Act (1917)
- The PM has few statutory functions and powers.
Why are the Royal Prerogatives an important source of prime ministerial power?
Royal prerogatives - The PM relies on the royal prerogative
- Refers to the power that the commons law recognised as belonging to the Crown alone.
For example, the power to…
- Appoint and dismiss ministers
- Deploy the armed forces
- Make treaties.
- Convention - By conventions, the Royal Prerogative powers are today used on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet.
What are examples of recent legal and non-legal limits that have been imposed on the Royal Prerogatives? How effective are these limits?
Legal limits on RP:
- FTPA - imposed a statutory limit on the prerogative power to dissolve parliament and trigger an election.
- Theresa May was still able to use the terms of the statute to call an early General Election in 2017
Non - legal limits:
- Parliamentary Approval for military action Convention
- The developing convention that parliament should debate and vote on the use of the armed forces
- Theresa may authorised air airstrikes in Syria in 2018 without first obtaining parliament’s approval
The Supreme Court recently ruled on the way that the royal prerogative could be used, and in the case of Miller v Secretary of State for Exiting the EU (2017) they stated that since the Case of Proclamations (1610) and the Bill of Rights (1689) that the royal prerogative cannot be used to amend or repeal existing laws, as leaving the EU would removed primary legislation rights - also affected ability to dissolve parliament
What is patronage? How does this power help the PM? What constitutional and political limits are there on the use of patronage powers?
Power to hire and fire ministers and reshuffle cabinet
- Allows PM to surround themselves with like minded allies encouraging loyalty from backbenchers which want a promotion one day
- They do not have complete freedom when choosing ministers
There are many limits on the use of these powers;
- Limited talent pool → by convention most cabinet ministers must be MPs
- Increasing pressure to appoint a diverse cabinet that represents the population
- Rivals → some senior party figures might be too popular/influential to overlook or sack
- Reward loyalty → need to show good behaviour leads to promotion
- Party factions → pressure to ensure that different factions are represented
Theresa May needed a balance on leave/remainers in her 2016 cabinet in order to get a range of opinions on how Brexit should happen
How does the PM’s position as the head of cabinet, and their control of the cabinet system, help them to influence policy making?
- PM who calls and chair cabinet meetings and they decide how often they are, how long they are and the agenda
- As the chair, the PM decides who speaks, gets to sum up the discussion, and what has been decided at the end (which becomes policy)
- They have discretion on what the cabinet has approved as they rarely vote
- There are political risks to repeatedly ignoring and overlooking concerns raised by senior cabinet members
- The PM also has the power to manage the wider cabinet system
What is ‘sofa government’, and why is it controversial?
- As the cabinet system is governed largely by convention, some PMs use the ambiguity and flexibility of the rules to circumvent the cabinet
- Sofa government - Some PMs (like Blair) prefered to make key decisions in bilateral meetings with individual ministers, or small groups of ministers and advisors in No.10
- It is controversial as it creates an imbalance of power between the cabinet and the PM, and excludes the interconnected nature of the core executive
As the head of government, to what extent can the PM reshape the structure of government?
- PM also has the power to reshape government to suit their policy agenda
- May created the Department for Exiting the European Union
- Dissolved by Boris Johnson in Jan 2020 after Brexit happened
- Practical and political limits on the PM’s ability to control the cabinet system and so they have limited time and resources to chair every cabinet committee, but their formal powers often rely on their informal powers to help them control the executive
What are political resources? What factors help to give the PM authority and influence within the executive?
- This is the power to persuade / influence that results from popularity, seniority and success - PMs are able to draw on their authority as leader and support from the cabinet or public to inspire or coerce government into doing what they want
- Unlike their cabinet peers, the prime minister won a leadership election being given a mandate to lead by fellow MPs and grassroots supporters - this gives them some authority
- General elections have become more focused on party leaders, leading to some prime ministers to also claim a personal mandate from voters having led their party to victory which makes it difficult for other ministers to challenge their authority
- The PM also enjoys more media attention and name recognition than other ministers - it is the PM, rather than cabinet, that many consider to represent the government
- As a result, MPs and members discouraged from criticising the PM too strongly, because doing so undermine the government as a whole
- However, being a figurehead can also be a double edged sword
Personal and political powers of the PM:
- The momentum and political capital that comes from leading their party to victory in the previous election, which enables them to persuade and lead more effectively
- Effective management of colleagues both in cabinet and on the backbenches
- Personal qualities as an effective communicator and national leader
- The ability to unite and rally their own party
- Skill in managing the economy and handling unexpected challenges faced in office
Under what circumstances will a PM’s political power be at it strongest and weakest?
- When the prime minister has won a large majority in the House of Commons, when the economy is growing, wages are rising and unemployment is low, when the public and media approves of the prime minister’s performance and when backbench MPs are united in support of the PM’s policy agenda - there political power is strongest and they will have substantial political resources, enabling them to make full use of their powers
Backbench support gives a string voting base on the legislative agenda, makes cabinet reshuffles easy and means there is little opposition - However, if things are negative for the PM, their political resources diminish such as when the prime minister loses seats, is leading a coalition, or if the economy goes into a recession, wages fall and unemployment rises, if public approval drops and the media begins to target the PM, and if the backbenches become rebellious and begin to talk of leadership challenge
- They may have to rely solely on formal powers and forgo informal powers, cabinet reshuffles become difficult as a strong supportive cabinet cannot be found in the backbenchers and ministers may become less responsive and formal powers become harder to use
Context of the power of the PM:
- Opinion poll ratings, and the results of more recent elections such as by-elections and local council elections
- Personalities in their cabinet and party at the time
- Potential leadership challenges / strength of Commons majority
- The strength and threat posed by the main opposition party
What are personal resources? Why might two different PMs, with the same institutional, constitutive & political resources, still have varying degrees of influence within the executive?
- Character traits, skills, expertise and ways of working that make it easier to influence - two PMs could be dealt with the same bad hand of political cards, but their personalities could lead them to play them in very different ways
- Some PMs are more confident and charismatic, providing a better media presence and becoming more convincing to backbenchers and get voters to back their proposals
- Some PMs have much stronger ideological visions and clear policy aims that inspire them to push through legislation with or without cabinet support
- And other PMs are more willing and capable of working, long and difficult hours, showing their commitment to the role and impact their influence on the amount of policy decisions across the executive
- Also if they have more experience and relevant expertise, they will have more influence over policy and make it easier to challenge departments
- Power is vast, but conditional
Powers of the PM - Patronage powers and the cabinet
What are patronage powers?
- These include the ability to hire and fire ministers at will without the approval of anyone else, and often when first appointed, even PMs from the same party will alter the makeup of their new cabinet to place a personal stamp on it
Examples -
- Theresa May removed 15 ministers from Cameron’s office in 2016, including key figures such as the Chancellor George Osborne and former education secretary and later justice secretary Michael Gove
- When Boris Johnson took over in 2019, he too created a new cabinet, some who had previously served, dismissing 11 senior ministers and a further 6 declined to serve
- The top 3 offices were held by incumbents, Raab at the Foreign Office, Sajid Javid as Chancellor and Priti Patel in the Home Office
- This led to MP Nigel Evans describing Johnson’s changes as a ‘massacre’ and the ‘Night of the Blond Knives’ as an allusion to both the Macmillan 1962 reshuffle of a third of ministers and the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 Germany
What are the limitations on patronage powers?
- Despite being a powerful and largely unchecked power, some major limitations include maintaining a careful balance within the cabinet in terms of gender, ethnic and other forms of diversity. They must also be careful with who and how many people are sacked from their cabinet.
Examples -
- Theresa May had to include both Leave and Remain ministers in her cabinet
- Tony Blair had to include a ‘big political beast’ like Gordon Brown alongside a deputy PM John Prescott whose style and background complemented his leader, as he had worked in the Merchant Navy and was the son of a miner, and so was a link to Labour’s W/C roots in a way that educated Tony Blair was not
Powers of the PM - Patronage powers and the cabinet 2
Issues with sacking cabinet members:
- Having an ex-minister on the backbenches can result in damaging consequences. Also, resignation speeches given by sacked ministers can be powerful and damage the credibility of a Prime Minister. Too many reshuffles can also make a leader appear weak or difficult to work with.
Examples -
- Thatcher’s demotion of former foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe in 1989 and his subsequent resignation the following year triggered a leadership challenge from another ex-cabinet minister Heseltine which would lead to her downfall
- Howe’s speech criticised Thatcher’s attitudes to Europe negotiations, and coming from someone who had served in the cabinet for over 10 years, this was a damaging criticism of her inability to provide ministers with the resources to negotiate effectively
Impact of coalition governments on patronage powers:
- This constrains patronage powers, as under the terms of the Coalition Agreement, Cameron effectively ceded patronage power over 5 cabinet posts to the Liberal Democrats - these appointments were made solely by Deputy Prime Minister and LibDem leader Nick Clegg.
Examples -
- Cameron and Clegg - Clegg appointed 5 ministerial positions himself, not Cameron
Powers of the PM - The Cabinet Office
What is the role and purpose of the cabinet office?
- This was created in 1916 to provide support for the Cabinet system - around 2,050 civil servants work in the department
- It’s role is to support the PM and ensure effective running of the government and therefore it is effectively the corporate headquarters and secretariat or central government, taking lead in certain policy areas and providing administrative support such as circulating key papers and taking minutes of meetings
- It also coordinates work between departments, and the head of the civil service also attends cabinet meetings in his role as cabinet secretary
- Individual PM’s often tweak the priorities and roles of the Cabinet Office to reflect current issues
How can individual prime ministers use the Cabinet Office to their advantage?
- During the coronavirus pandemic, the Cabinet Office set up the Rapid Response Unit to deal with misinformation about the virus by working with social media platforms such as Facebook to block ‘false narratives’
Powers of the PM - Cabinet committees
Powers that the prime minister has to arrange cabinet committees:
- Most decisions formally made by the full cabinet have effectively been decided in advance by cabinet committees. PMs are at liberty to order and structure these at whim. They are partly designed to reduce the burden on the full cabinet by allowing smaller groups of ministers to take decisions in specific policy areas.
Significance and effectiveness of cabinet committees:
- Largely down to individual ministers and the PM
- Committees are often created to reflect current concerns
- May set up ones to deal with Brexit and Johnson to do with climate change
- The existence of cabinet committees does not guarantee their significance
- Blair created a large number but one former cabinet secretary said that “Blair’s style of government didn’t fit easily with the cabinet committee system”
- Cabinet committees took on additional importance under the coalition government
- Oliver Letwin said they helped “ensure that the government as a whole would abide by and enforce those rules that underpinned the coalition and ensured the Coalition Agreement was upheld”
- A degree of inconsistency prevailed under theresa May
- She initially slimmed down the no. of committees to just 5 main committees and 10 sub-committees
- By March 2017 she chaired every committee she attended, indicating the extent of her control
- 2017 election result undermined her power and was reflected by some delegation to David Lidington (he chaired more committees than the PM in 2018)
- Cabinet committees are a classic example of a resource that different PMs can choose to deploy, rearrange, or largely ignore as they see fit. They are, however, widely seen as important to the smooth operation of the cabinet, if only as a way of delegating some of the decision making away from full cabinet meetings.
Examples of cabinet committees
In early 2021, the main 11 cabinet committees were;
- EU Exit Strategy
- EU Exit Operations
- Economic Operations Committee
- Parliamentary Business and Legislation
- National Security Council
- Climate Change
- Covid-19 Strategy
- Domestic and Economic Strategy
- Crime and Justice Task Force
- Union Policy Implementation
- National Space Council
The government can also create other types of ministerial committee;
- June 2015 → Cameron introduced implementation task forces
- They were designed to ‘monitor and drive delivery of the government’s most important cross-cutting priorities’
- Johnson discontinued these in July 2019
- March 2020 → Johnson created ‘implementation committees’ in response to the pandemic
- The 4 committees focussed on healthcare, the general public sector, economic and business, and international response
Dispensing honours - powers of the PM in relation to cabinet
What prerogative powers does the prime minister have to dispense honours?
- PMs can award life peerages to former MPs or party supporters
- This is often used as a means of altering the balance of the HofL for party advantage
- An independent Appointments Commission makes recommendations for non-party political peerages and vets nominations for ‘propriety’
- This is defined as’ (i) the individual should be in good standing in the community in general and with the public regulatory authorities in particular and (ii) the past conduct of the nominee would not reasonably be regarded as bringing the HofL into disrepute
Why can the practice of awarding honours be difficult for prime ministers?
- Despite these checks, Cameron’s resignation honours in August 2016 sparked the Independent headline “David Cameron’s honours list would embarrass a mediaeval court”
- The article stated that he rewarded no fewer than 46 of his former aides, advisors and ministers with honours
- Several generous donors to tory funds were also rewarded
The practice of awarding honours, not least life peerages, is a somewhat tricky one for PMs to navigate. It is certainly a way to reward the loyal and generous but used unwisely can lead to accusations of cronyism and ‘cash for honours’
Dispensing honours examples
Examples of prime ministers who have used this to their advantage
- Blair and Brown made 173 Labour peers but only allowed 66 Tory nominations to go though
- Cameron and May appointed 136 Tory life peers but only 59 Labour
Cameron:
- Former chancellor George Osborne = rarely awarded Companion of Honour
- Former chief of staff Ed Llewellyn = peerage
- Andrew Cook, former tory treasurer who gave more than £1mil to the party = knighthood for political service
Johnson:
- Awarded a peerage in 2020 to his own brother, former minister Jo Johnson, who was heavily criticised in some quarters
Powers of the PM - Authority over Cabinet
Powers that the prime minister has over the cabinet
- The PM decides the agenda and formally chairs the meeting, whilst also deciding when and where they meet (despite them normally meeting in the Cabinet Room of No. 10).
- Cabinet is the formal decision-making body in the UK government with it being termed by the Cabinet Manual as ‘the ultimate arbiter of all government policy’.
- All members of the cabinet must support cabinet decisions, known as collective responsibility. In the event this does not occur, the minister is required to resign from government.
- However, cabinet agreement is not automatic- it is dependent on personalities, wider political context and the issues.
- When journalists refer to ‘full and frank discussions’ within the cabinet they often mean a strong exchange of views or even blazing rows.
- Wise PMs use cabinet party as a sounding board and to ratify decisions to the media on the condition that their identity is not revealed, which has been a problem for recent PMs.
Authority over Cabinet examples
Examples of disagreements within the cabinet
- Tony Blair was never able to persuade his chancellor, Gordon Brown, to support the Uk adopting the euro currency.
- May’s carefully constructed ‘Chequers deal’ over Brexit quickly unravelled
- When Johnson became PM, he issued a new edition of the Ministerial Code, which stated clearly that ‘there must be…no leaking’.
Powers of the PM - Party leadership
What resources does the prime minister enjoy as party leader?
- This usually guarantees that their policies and legislation get through parliament, given the governing party’s overall majority.
- In addition, the leader is elected by their MPs and party members, which confers a strong degree of legitimacy to their authority.
- The party is aware that divided parties constantly criticising their own leader rarely win elections.
- Party loyalty is conditional- not absolute.
Examples of prime minister who faced challenges as party leader
- Most notably Thatcher, several recent PMs have been forced out by their own MPs.
- IN 1995, John Major decided to call a leadership contest, (‘back me or sack me’), in an effort to neutralise the growing critics on the backbenches, mainly from the Eurosceptic wing of the party. Although he won the subsequent leadership race, over a quarter of his MPs backed his opponent John Redwood.
