Danny Kruger, the former Conservative MP who defected to Reform last year, has referred to the Labour proposal to give more power to the Cabinet Secretary as a constitutional coup. It is certainly an attempt to change the structure of the system, and move away from Cabinet government.
In recent years it has become clear that the UK government does not function well. Decision making is sclerotic and the powers that are supposedly in the hands of ministers seem to have ossified.
There are various factors that have contributed to this, and some of them date back decades. The first major change was entry into the European Union and the concept of higher, directly effective, international law.
Until 1973, under the UK’s dualist system, international obligations could not trump domestic legislation. In this country, the Crown, via ministers, used the prerogative power to agree to international treaties, creating obligations on the government, but not on individuals. Ministers were bound to uphold these obligations in international forums, but they were ineffective unless brought into domestic law by or under an Act of Parliament. A minister could not change domestic law by an international agreement.
This changed in 1973, although its consequences were not clear until some years later. European law automatically overrode domestic law, and this changed the relationship between ministers and officials. A minister could now be told that a desired action was impermissible because it was against European law. Moreover, that law could not be changed by Parliament.
This moved power from the elected minister to the official, and it was inevitable that some officials would use this power at the margin to stop things that were not actually clearly against EU law, but were in a grey area. The cautious minister who was told it would be embarrassing to be in the courts could easily be persuaded not to follow a controversial policy.
This was an inadvertent consequence of EU membership, but the loss of power made politicians want to give away even more of their remaining authority. Thus the idea developed that more decisions ought to be given to ‘independent’ experts rather than left in the hands of grubby politicians. Quangos sprouted up to take decisions away from the elected, who would set policy but would not decide on detailed implementation. Many politicians liked this because they hoped to avoid the blame if anything went wrong.
