A general election and a possible change of government is a moment of uncertainty for the civil service. Officials will be thinking about how to welcome and brief any new ministers that arrive after 4 July and, with the campaign underway, we are already seeing – and will see many more – policy ideas set out. So civil servants will be considering how these might be implemented, and what they can do to bring new ministers up to speed on their department and their responsibilities.
Putting together the fabled "day one briefing pack" is an important process for the department, but it may not actually reach its intended audience at all. Former ministers, including Alan Johnson, a member of the last Labour cabinet, told the Institute for Government’s Ministers Reflect project how the pack does not always survive the whirlwind of the first few days: “You start reading it and suddenly the job’s on top of you.”
Other ministers have found that the format of the information they receive will affect how useful they find it, with Ed Vaizey (now Lord Vaizey), Conservative culture minister during the coalition, telling us: “I should have got a three-page document that says, ‘This is the Arts Council, this is what it does, these are its issues’”, but that he actually got “terrible slides and flow charts and stuff that I guess the civil service thought was quite funky and modern, but didn’t really illuminate anything.” Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat energy secretary in the coalition, had a different preference, telling us: “It might have been sensible to have literally a PowerPoint presentation at the beginning saying, you know, ‘what does the department do’.”
“The format of the information is important. Ed Vaizey recalled receiving ‘terrible slides and flow charts’ from civil servants that didn’t illuminate anything about his new brief”
This all points to a need to be flexible and ready to adapt to what ministers actually want. In our Preparing for Power podcast, former permanent secretary Sir David Bell told us how ahead of the 2010 election, he got the Department for Education to prepare one-page briefs on every issue they could think of, so that officials could reach for a relevant answer depending on what ministers asked them.
But how can officials know what to focus on in their briefs? While departments will have certain issues that they think are important for new ministers to deal with in the first few days, those new ministers will have plenty of things they want to kickstart immediately as well (particularly if the polls are accurate and 4 July results in a change of government). Knowing what the parties are saying in your policy area is key, as is reading the manifestos when they are published. However, it is also important to know that manifestos in particular are unlikely to present a full picture of ministers’ ambitions. As Tracey Crouch, Conservative minister for sports and gambling, explained: “I’d already been given a massive brief about the policy areas and the priorities within those policy areas, according to the civil service, but I had some of my own bits.”
When ministers do arrive (or return), their private office teams play an essential role in managing the flow of information. While every official may think their issue is the most important thing for a minister to be thinking about, the private office can take a look across the whole portfolio and work out how to schedule advice, introductory meetings and so on, responding to the minister’s preferences and priorities while also making sure the most important decisions get made first.
So, while the parties are busy campaigning for votes, officials in departments will be busy getting ready for the ministers who will arrive in early July. Preparation is essential but so is the ability to adapt – you don’t know what a minister’s first question will be or how they would like it answered, so it is important to be flexible and ready to respond. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Tim Durrant is a programme director at the Institute for Government
This article first appeared in the summer issue of Civil Service World. Read the digital magazine in full