David Gauke: Reshuffles aren’t always bad, but if things had been going well there wouldn’t have been one

David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.

Last Friday morning, most of the Cabinet were out of London preparing for a day of constituency engagements.  The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, for example, was off to a Haribo factory in Pontefract.

By this point of the week, the resignation of Angela Rayner was not unexpected.

Over the previous two days, the issue relating to the stamp duty paid on her Hove flat had moved from “she paid what was due under the law” to “she had mistakenly underpaid tax on the basis of incorrect professional advice” and it was starting to emerge that the reality was that she had underpaid tax having failed to obtain professional advice.  (Incidentally, getting the tax law wrong might be unfortunate and not obtaining advice very careless, but claiming to have obtained advice when you have not done so raises more serious questions about Rayner’s honesty than any other aspect of this affair.)

Most Ministers would have assumed that Rayner’s resignation would be followed by a very minor reshuffle.  A new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government would be appointed which in turn might require another couple of changes lower down the political ladder.  Nothing much for most of the Cabinet to concern themselves about.

It did not turn out that way. By the end of the day, twelve Cabinet positions had changed in a far-reaching reshuffle.

It is, of course, disconcerting to find your job changing with next to no notice.

In January 2018, I was being interviewed by Emma Barnett on her BBC Radio 5Live show.  A reshuffle on that day was long expected but having held the role of Secretary of State for Work & Pensions for just seven months I assumed that I would be unaffected.  Emma asked a series of questions about how it felt to be a Cabinet minister on reshuffle day and whether I was apprehensive and so on.  I did not want to sound complacent about staying in place, but in reality I was very relaxed about the process.  As we approached the end of a wide-ranging interview, however, she interrupted to announce that it was being reported that Justine Greening had been offered the position of Work & Pensions Secretary.

I just about managed to prevent myself from exclaiming “but that’s my job” and was very relieved to escape from the studio and return to my department to find out what was going on.

A few hours later, I was Secretary of State for Justice.

The sudden and unexpected changes of responsibility may be unsettling for ministers, but is it damaging? Is it an impediment to good government?

There are certainly advantages for a minister building up technical expertise as a consequence of longevity in office.  A Minister also gets to know the experts and other stakeholders in the field, enabling them to build up independent sources of advice.  The expectation of a long tenure in office often encourages a more strategic approach to the role.  If you think you are going to be moved on after a few months, the temptation is to focus on quick wins not long term solutions.

I was the tax minister for six years after 2010, having shadowed the position for three years before that, and – given the technical nature of the brief – it certainly became easier to perform the role as it went on.  I also served with Steve Webb as pensions minister and David Freud as welfare reform minister who had records of real achievement because of serving for a long period.

Perhaps the best example of a ministerial specialist was Nick Gibb, whose knowledge and expertise on educational matters helped deliver substantial and beneficial reform.

There are, however, counter-arguments.

The policy specialist as minister clearly has a role to play, but our system is not dependent upon this.  A minister is in place to bring political judgement to the department.  This means understanding the thinking of the electorate, the media, other members of the Government, and Parliament.  This is not to dismiss the importance of understanding the technical detail but, particularly at the Secretary of State level, wider political understanding is probably more important.

In any event, at the higher levels of Government, it should not be too much to ask that Ministers are capable of bringing themselves up to speed quickly and – even in unfamiliar areas – are able to ask good questions.  In other words, most of the time ministers need to be good generalists not specialists.

There is also the risk that the longer one stays in one role, the more one becomes captured by the departmental view, or the view of its stakeholders.  It is the Minister’s responsibility to challenge a department, asking why things are done the way they are, whether it is delivering on the Government’s wider objectives.  Too long in one position may mean that a Minister becomes less effective in performing that role.

There are also occasions when the demands on a Secretary of State will vary.

At one point, a department may need a disruptor, capable of initiating radical policy change by setting out a new vision.  A Secretary of State capable of doing that may not be well-suited to the task of implementation when reforming zeal might be an impediment to the painstaking task of ensuring that big ideas are working on the ground.  Sometimes a department needs boldness, sometimes caution.  Sometimes one wants a department to attract attention, on other occasion to fly under the radar.  Personnel changes might be necessary.

Let us return to last week’s reshuffle.  Assuming that such significant changes were necessary, it does not reflect well on the Government that the Prime Minister considered that he needed to make as many changes as he did.  This would not have happened had all been going well.

But, accepting this point, there is a logic to what Keir Starmer has done, particularly in two policy areas.

The first is immigration.

Cooper is clever and has been operating in this field for a long time.  But she has also never lost her reputation for struggling to make decisions quickly.  Shabana Mahmood is more likely to set the agenda, take controversial decisions and move at pace.

Having seen how she works at close quarters (she commissioned me to undertake a review of sentencing policy), I know that she is a formidable operator and can see exactly why Starmer wants her as his Home Secretary. (By the way, there is plenty of online criticism of her on the grounds that a Muslim of Pakistani heritage is bound to be soft on immigration.  Not only is this criticism often straightforwardly racist, I suspect that it will soon be shown to be embarrassingly wrong.)

The other area is welfare reform, with Pat McFadden becoming Work & Pensions Secretary and Jonny Reynolds becoming Chief Whip, which has been widely interpreted as suggesting that the Government is going to have another go at controlling the rising welfare bill.  If so, this is welcome news, even if the real problem here was not their predecessors (Liz Kendall and Alan Campbell) but the irresponsibility of Labour MPs.

Better matching personnel with political objectives makes sense.

Good ministers will quickly adapt to new briefs so largescale changes – while not ideal – will not be disastrous.  But that such wide scale changes were considered necessary is an implicit admission of failure.

The Prime Minister should not be looking to repeat such an exercise any time soon.