Departments should be run by a Board chaired by the senior departmental minister and attended by the other ministers but on which at least half of the directors will be appointed by a panel of designated charitable and professional bodies and other stakeholders relevant to producer and consumer interests in that sector.
The basis for our system of Government administration was set out in the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report but this did not consider the interaction of civil servants with ministers. It has to be recognised that both civil servants, as professional managers and increasingly with specific expertise, and ministers, as representatives of the democratic will of the people, each have their role to play. The key issue is however the brutal interface between the two groups with their hugely different backgrounds and agendas. This has become a major dysfunction in the operation of the Government machine as ministers have increasingly shorter and faster moving careers and have become more involved with defending themselves and their own political party rather than with progressing sound governance.
The leadership of departments needs to be sensitive to political considerations but must also provide steady management and continuity if the people in the organisations are to give of their best. Unfortunately the current combination of political interference in departments combined with senior civil service staff of a very different background and outlook means that UK Government outcomes are often internationally uncompetitive and sometimes stark in their failures. John Reid MP, a former Home Secretary, who himself had eight ministerial jobs in ten years, stated:
'Our system is not fit for purpose. It is inadequate in terms of its scope.'
A critical difference between the current structure of a Government department and the way in which all other organisations are run is that the Secretary of State in a department is still both chairman and chief executive. The idea that one person should fulfil both of these roles has been squeezed out of all other aspects of UK governance.
Away from Westminster and Whitehall, the principles of governance have developed greatly since the 1850s. The dichotomy between civil servants and ministers is one which also occurs in other fields and mechanisms have therefore been developed to deal with this. In a charity the chief executive and his or her staff will normally be professionals who are very competent managers and who have substantial experience in the area which the charity addresses, just like civil servants. The way in which a charity chief executive is held to account is through having a board of charity trustees. This ensures an independent review of the chief executive's proposals and actions.
Charities are set up, like Government departments, for the public benefit and the well rehearsed charity model of governance is therefore one which is appropriate for Government departments. The Board of a Government department should act like the trustees of a charity to ensure that the executive management is acting ethically, effectively, efficiently and economically in line with the agreed strategies and priorities, normally the laws which have been laid down by Parliament.
In order to bridge the gap between ministers and civil servants it is therefore proposed that fully responsible departmental Boards be established. They will consist of the ministers in the department plus a majority of independent Board members, normally six, each with overlapping three year renewable terms (initially staggered). The Boards will be chaired by the Secretary of State who will represent the Department externally. The other ministers in the department will as appropriate represent the Board's views both in Parliament and elsewhere within their own sphere of responsibility. The Permanent Secretary (the senior civil servant) will be appointed by a panel made up of the Secretary of State and all of the independent directors and will normally attend the Board as the chief executive together with any of his or her staff who are relevant to the particular discussion.
The departmental Boards, with their independent directors, will be responsible for administering all of the existing legal framework. The priority for new primary legislation will be controlled, as now, by the network of Cabinet Committees reporting into the Cabinet itself. There will therefore be a clear distinction between the administration of current laws and the proposal of new ones. The main check on those proposed laws will be the independent Select Committees and other MPs in the House of Commons.
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