Take, first, the vast new National Economic Council (NEC). It contains 12 Cabinet ministers, two ministers-who-attend-Cabinet and three other ministers. But it is also supported by a “senior officials working group”, including the permanent secretaries of all the ministers, which is a lot of them, a secretariat of senior staff from the Cabinet Office and Treasury, “regional ministers” (eight more), and 17 “business ambassadors” (these separate from the 18 members of the Business Council who advise the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on “business issues”; there was an international one too for a while but let's keep this local). Blimey. In less-restrained times we could go the whole hog and call this a “government”.
Except that we have had a new one of those this week as well, bigger and better, yeah. The number of ministers-half-in-the-Cabinet (the full Cabinet is restricted to 23) is getting higher as the country collapses: after last week's reshuffle the total number of full and part-time Cabinet ministers rose from 28 to 33. To think that Margaret Thatcher used to manage with a paltry 20 or so. The official list of Her Majesty's Government is now so complicated that it comes with a series of footnotes: “* unpaid”; “** attends Cabinet”; “*** attends Cabinet when ministerial responsibilities are on the agenda”, etc.
Do big meetings ever achieve anything? Or are they just a means of deferring decisions and spreading blame?
Compare and contrast Mr Salmond's heavily slimmed-down cabinet of himself, 5 cabinet secretaries and Bruce Crawford as business manager.
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