Back in May 2009, David Cameron pledged an end to policies “dreamt up on the sofa at No 10 Downing Street”, promising to limit the number of politically appointed special advisers and to end the “control freakery” that marked the Blair/Brown years.
Famous last words? Cameron has now appointed nine new policy advisers to help him keep a tighter grip on cabinet ministers as he abandons his hands-off approach to government.
The new team will be made up of six civil servants and three experts from the private sector. They will keep an eye on government departments in an attempt to head off disasters such as the proposed privatisation of Britain’s forests before they hit the headlines.
It’s a marked change of tack for the Prime Minister, who has proudly described himself as the “chairman” of the coalition and who, in the first nine months of governing, took a remarkably uninvolved approach.
However, aides now admit that ministers may have been given too much leeway to draw up and announce policies without No 10 knowing the full details. A series of embarrassing U-turns – on forests, free books for children and school sports budgets – compounded this.
Last month, Andrew Grice quoted an ally of Cameron’s saying:
We need to stop things being announced before they have been road-tested. We need to spot the problems before proposals are in the public domain, not afterwards.
This new unit of policy advisers will aim to do just that. Technically, it will not breach Cameron’s self-imposed limit on the number of special advisers, as they will be employed as civil servants (a loophole that has caught Cameron out before).
It completes a radical overhaul of the machinery of Downing Street. The BBC executive Craig Oliver has now taken over from Andy Coulson as director of communications. And Andrew Cooper, the Populus pollster, has started in the newly created role of strategy director, in which he will be responsible for giving the government’s policies greater coherence.
The Times (£) reports the following appointments to the team:
- Tim Luke: the former Lehman Brothers analyst is one of the three external appointments, and will cover enterprise, trade and technology.
- The other two (as yet unnamed) will cover health, energy and the environment.
- Paul Kirby: this former partner with the accountancy firm KPMG will be head of policy development. One of his main tasks will be ensuring that the government delivers on its commitments on public-service reform.
- Kris Murrin: having worked for the Downing Street delivery unit under Tony Blair, and then on Tory business plans in opposition, she will be head of policy implementation.
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