Evidence from the Institute for Government to the Liaison Committee’s inquiry on Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government

October 2023

Introduction 

Strategy can be understood as the government’s plan for using the resources it has available to achieve its objectives. The Institute for Government (IfG) has undertaken research on a range of topics that cover how government strategy is devised, co-ordinated, implemented and scrutinised.

The IfG welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to this inquiry. We have not addressed every question posed in the call for evidence, instead focussing on the areas where the Institute’s research offers the most valuable insight. The evidence is structured as follows:

Strategic thinking in government
 

• Equipping government for better strategic thinking – This section looks at the importance of effective structures and accountabilities to the government’s capability in three vital areas – the existence of a strong strategy function at the centre of government; the identification and mitigation of systemic risks; and the incorporation of long-term perspectives into policy advice.[1]
   
• Transparency around strategic documents – This section discusses the importance of external scrutiny in improving the government’s approach to strategic issues.

Scrutiny by Select Committees of strategic questions
 

• The structure of committees and impact on the scrutiny of strategic questions – This section outlines how the traditional departmental focuses of House of Commons Select Committees could impede the effective scrutiny of strategic questions, recent innovations that could mitigate this, and the different approach taken by House of Lords Committees.
   
• Facilitating better committee scrutiny of strategic thinking – This section discusses options for improving Select Committee scrutiny of strategic issues, including the option of creating a new dedicated committee for this purpose, as well as the risks and trade-offs that this would involve.

Strategic thinking in government 

Equipping government for better strategic thinking

All organisations, including governments, are unavoidably confronted with challenges of strategy and strategic thinking. This is true regardless of whether such challenges are recognised as strategic in nature and addressed accordingly, or whether they are handled well or poorly. In government, ‘strategy’ can be broadly understood as the government’s plans for using the resources available to deliver its objectives. Planning in this way requires the consideration of many different factors, and the capacity in government for doing so. Below, we discuss three important elements of this that the Institute’s research has shed particular light on – the existence of a strong strategy function at the centre of government, to drive the delivery of key priorities; the identification and mitigation of systemic risks; and the incorporation of long-term perspectives into policy advice.

Strengthening the first of these elements requires changes to structures and processes at the centre of government. The Institute has repeatedly argued that the UK’s weak centre of government impedes effective governance [i]. While the prime minister is uniquely situated, and with the required authority, to set cross-government strategic direction, successive prime ministers have been frustrated by their inability to do so, or to chase delivery of their priorities from No10. The causes of this are well rehearsed. There is no established or regularly practiced method by which prime ministers set whole-government strategy upon coming into office, and the centre of government has inadequate mechanisms to hold secretaries of state and departments to account for delivery. The prime minister has insufficient support to devise and set long-term strategy from No10. The Cabinet Office does not always successfully execute its important brokering and dispute resolution function. The Chancellor, and by extension the Treasury, exercises considerable influence over significant or new spending by departments. This can mean that the Treasury can frustrate the ambition of prime ministerial priorities, depending on the political relationship between the Chancellor and the prime minister.

The Cabinet Office, while serving an important brokering and dispute resolution function, can often be bypassed. The Institute has previously proposed several ways to improve this situation [ii]. For example, a published and detailed programme for government, explicitly agreed by cabinet, would create a means for the prime minister and cabinet secretary to hold ministers and permanent secretaries to account for delivering the government’s agenda. While such processes would not work without sufficient political will from a prime minister, they would create a means by which to exercise his or her authority if they chose.

The setups of No10 and the Cabinet Office are also essential for the prime minister to exercise this authority over the government’s strategic direction. These setups have, however, fluctuated significantly over time and have often been underpowered. Tony Blair’s long-term strategy unit was subsequently disbanded. Boris Johnson resurrected the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in 2021, at which point the Implementation Unit was disbanded and the Government Strategic Management Office was also established in the Cabinet Office.[iii] We have previously argued that, if they are to be effective, such units should avoid duplicating work done in other areas of government, and have a small number of clear, focused objectives.[iv] Several teams moved repeatedly between No10 and the wider Cabinet Office across the three different administrations of 2022.

Effective cross-government working is also essential for the delivery of the government’s strategic priorities – and we have argued that, as part of the programme for government above, the cabinet should agree to prioritise a small number of cross-cutting issues.[v] This is, however, an area in which Whitehall has historically struggled. For example, while it is becoming increasingly common for civil servants to collaborate across departments[2], it is still far from normal. Several components influence the effectiveness of cross-cutting working. One is the existence of central or interdepartmental coordination functions, such as ‘special units’. We have, for example, supported the wider, more effective use of cabinet committees – and particularly the application of strategy and operations committees, which combine ministers and officials and assisted Brexit and Covid-19 coordination – to other cross-cutting areas such as levelling up.[vi] Cross-cutting priorities should be reflected in departments’ budgets, internal planning and performance processes, and should be led by ministers and senior civil servants.

A system of risk identification and management is a second element of strategic thinking. This process is most clearly seen through the publication – since 2008 – of the National Risk Register, and it is welcome that the 2023 register is the first to be based directly on the classified National Security Risk Assessment.[vii] Yet this is a further area where the centre of government struggles. Last year, in our Managing Extreme Risks report, the Institute noted that departments are primarily responsible for ‘owning’ risks – with oversight from the Civil Contingencies Secretariat – and heard that the centre was too weak, trying to do too many things at once[viii]. While it is welcome that the Cabinet Office adopted our recommendation to separate long-term risk identification and management from crisis response, co-ordinating capacity at the centre could be strengthened further. This could help to address the difficulty of where to allocate limited resources to mitigate risks, bring clarity over the ownership of risks that cut across more than one department[3], and introduce a degree of assurance over departmental risk mitigation efforts. Among our recommendations to address this was the creation of a new cabinet committee to coordinate cross-government risk management.

A final consideration is the government’s capacity for factoring forward-looking, long-term considerations into decision-making. This role has previously been carried out by units in No10. As the Institute’s 2014 paper Centre Forward demonstrated, such central capacity for strategic thinking has waxed and waned under different prime ministers. Under Tony Blair, for example, both the Performance and Innovation Unit and Forward Strategy Unit were established and later merged into the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit (PMSU), which was abolished in 2010. These groups worked on “Strategic Challenges” and conducted “Strategic Audits”, working on a project basis and benefitting from both the personal interest of the prime minister and being removed from the day-to-day pressures of government – though there was some friction with government departments before a model of more joint working developed.[ix] There is currently no equivalent team at the centre of government.

Horizon scanning is a closely related issue, the capacity for which has also fluctuated significantly over time[x]. Gordon Brown created the national security-focused Horizon Scanning Unit and Horizon Scanning Forum when prime minister[xi], and horizon scanning in some form has long happened – and still does happen – in departments. The government published a review of cross-government horizon scanning – the Day review[xii] – in 2013, which recommended that the Cabinet Office should provide strategic coordination of horizon scanning activity, and the establishment of a Horizon Scanning Secretariat among other groups. While the secretariat was established, it was later merged with the pre-existing Horizon Scanning Centre in the Government Office for Science (GOS), to create the Horizon Scanning Programme team[xiii]. This was in turn replaced by the GOS’s Futures, Foresight and Emerging Technologies team, which now offers training and resources to civil servants in horizon scanning and related areas.[xiv] While there is a risk of continued churn in these teams, it is welcome that this capacity exists – and it is important that it has the opportunity to inform decision-making at the centre of government.

The history of strategy units and horizon scanning capability has shown that they are fragile, but it is important that such resource is protected. The Institute has previously argued that the civil service should have a clearly defined responsibility, achieved by placing it on a statutory footing[xv], to maintain the capability of the government in several defined areas, including standards of policy making and advice to ministers – a form of ‘stewardship’. This should include a responsibility to maintain the capacity to incorporate long-term perspectives into policy advice. Placing such a statutory responsibility onto the head of the civil service and permanent secretaries would be a powerful mechanism to protect the capacity of future governments to consider the long term. Senior civil servants would be obliged to raise concerns over government proposals which would damage such capacity, though the final decision would remain with elected ministers.

Such mechanisms – the incorporation of long-term perspectives into advice and a duty on civil servants to protect the capacity to do so – should effectively operate as a form of internal challenge in government. Similarly to how the Office for Budget Responsibility, Committee on Climate Change and Infrastructure and Projects Authority offer different forms of check or assurance on government plans, the effective incorporation of long-term perspectives into decision-making processes could be hugely valuable.

There are a number of governments whose approaches to these issues could offer valuable lessons for the UK. A study recently published by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) highlighted several, including[xvi]:

• Finland – Where the prime minister’s office coordinates government work on foresight, the outputs of which have real impact in government departments. The Finnish government also submits a “Report on the Future”[xvii] to parliament each parliamentary term.
• Singapore – Where a Centre for Strategic Futures sits within the Strategy Group in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The IDB study notes that other countries, such as Portugal and the Netherlands, have established independent bodies to assist the government in these areas. Estonia offers a further example – the “Estonia 2035” strategy outlines the government’s long-term strategic goals, based on extensive public engagement work.[xviii]

Transparency around strategic documents 

Transparency is an important component of government strategy. Openness to outside input can broaden the sources of insight which contribute to strategy, minimising the risk of departmental plans making avoidable mistakes. And the scrutiny of the government’s strategy by outside experts, and the public, can help to improve those plans over time both by incorporating outside expertise and by applying political pressure to the government’s plans. The best strategic processes design in transparency both in the development and eventual publication of strategy and the documents in which it is expressed.

Successive governments’ approaches to net zero have shown the benefits of transparency over strategy. The 2008 Climate Change Act created the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), part of the job of which is to scrutinise the government’s strategy for reaching its net zero targets by publishing independent analysis.[xix] Meanwhile for the government’s part, it has a statutory duty to respond to the CCC’s report, and these plans have been made publicly available in an overall strategy to compliment sector-specific plans and regular Carbon Budgets. The combination of publicly available strategy and independent scrutiny of that strategy has enabled productive oversight of the government’s plans. This approach remains within ministerial control, and so relies on the ongoing support of government, as the current institutional arrangements for scrutiny could be dismantled via legislation.

Other cases demonstrate the limitations of keeping strategic thinking private and unpublished. Institute for Government research on the government’s approach to managing extreme risks found that the process for assessing risks was too closed, with a limited role for external experts, and external scrutiny of government performance on risk management was limited.[xx] Greater transparency over risk assessment and preparedness would help, hence one of the Cabinet Office’s aims for the new 2023 national risk register being – rightly – to make it “more transparent than ever”.[xxi] 

Similarly, other recent IfG research found a stark contrast in the transparency of economic evidence used to inform ministers’ strategic thinking during the Covid-19 pandemic, compared with the transparency of scientific evidence. It found that “this lack of transparency hampered effective synthesis of evidence (and thus decision making) and may have undermined” the government’s ability to convince the public of the merits of its Covid-19 strategy, including public health restrictions.[xxii] This applied to both the external transparency of evidence and internal transparency within government.

More broadly, the government’s performance framework – through which delivery of its strategy is tracked and managed – is undermined by its lack of transparency. The last two years’ worth of Outcome Delivery Plans, the principal strategic planning document for each department[xxiii], have been blocked for publication by the centre of government. The last publicly available versions were published in July 2021.[xxiv] And these were heavily redacted compared to the internal, unpublished versions used by departments. Redaction is right in the small number of cases where publication of government strategy would endanger national security or market sensitivity. But these defences are not applicable to the vast majority of the government’s performance framework.

Transparency helps to make strategy better – it is not something to be avoided for political reasons and should only be limited where absolutely necessary. The government’s aim, by default, should be to publish every strategic document and the analysis and evidence that supports it; to publish its performance against those strategies regularly and – where possible – to ensure independent sources of scrutiny are tasked with analysing the strategy.

There are practical ways in which the government could (and, in some cases, is seeking to) improve transparency over strategic thinking. Departments’ Outcome Delivery Plans should be published after their agreement each year. Ideally, departments’ internal versions of these plans should be published with as little redaction as possible, to enhance the opportunities for meaningful outside input and scrutiny. Analysis and evidence used by the civil service in advising ministers making strategic decisions should be published more routinely and stored in an accessible way on Gov.uk.

Government evaluations, helpful in assessing the impact of strategy as it is delivered, should similarly be published as a matter of course. It is welcome that the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Jeremy Quin, has committed to making the new Evaluation Registry (being developed by the Evaluation Task Force) publicly available from March 2024.[xxv] Described as being “one of the biggest stores of information on social policy evaluations in the world”, this has the potential to be a significant step forward in transparency around government strategy.[xxvi]  

Scrutiny by Select Committees of strategic questions  

The structure of committees and impact on the scrutiny of strategic questions  

If government is to do more to set out its approach to strategic challenges, it is vital that parliament has the ability to scrutinise this and hold ministers to account for progress against their priorities. Committees must play a crucial role in this process—as there is limited time available in the Commons chamber and limited procedural mechanisms that would allow for detailed scrutiny of the government’s entire approach.

The structure of select committees in the House of Commons is designed to ensure that committees can conduct detailed scrutiny of the work of each government department and its associated bodies. This allows committees to undertake valuable, thorough work on each department’s resources and priorities, as well as into policy issues associated with the work of departments.

However, this structure also makes it harder for committees to examine the government’s overall strategic thinking: if there is a risk that the departmental and ‘siloed’ structure of government can make broader strategy difficult, then by mirroring government’s structure it is equally difficult for committees to scrutinise overall strategic thinking. Politically, the incentives for Commons committees also run counter to considering broader strategic questions. For MPs, conscious of the electoral cycle, there are strong incentives to inquire into specific issues rather than longer-term, often more abstract questions. In recent years, committees have also proven more inclined to undertake work into immediate or urgent issues—for example, the collapse of specific companies. These issues can be important—and politically, it can also be valuable for committees to be seen to be working on them. Although some Commons committees do have a more cross-cutting remit—such as the Environmental Audit Committee—these are generally still based around discrete sets of issues. These issues may cut across departmental boundaries, but they do not necessarily equate to broader sets of strategic issues.

The siloed nature of Commons committees also risks duplication of effort when it comes to scrutinising strategic issues. For example, Brexit was and is a major strategic issue facing the government, and research by the Institute in 2018 found that in the year following the 2017 Queen’s Speech, four-fifths of all Commons departmental and cross-cutting select committees undertook at least one Brexit-related inquiry.[xxvii] While this allowed committees to inquire in depth into Brexit as it affected the work of the departments that they scrutinised, it risked piecemeal scrutiny of a major strategic challenge, rather than a look at the government’s thinking in the round. The appointment of a staff member to coordinate Brexit work among committees was a positive innovation that helped to address this problem.

More generally, a welcome innovation in recent years has been greater joint working among Commons committees. In several instances committees have formally undertaken joint inquiries, such as the Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees’ ‘Covid: lessons learned’ inquiry.[xxviii] And the introduction of the ’guesting’ procedure for Commons committees, which the Liaison Committee stated in a 2019 report has been taken up ”enthusiastically”, has helped committees to draw on each other’s expertise and consider issues more holistically.[xxix]

The House of Lords’ committee structure, where committees examine themes rather than the work of specific departments, offers a more natural location for scrutiny of government’s strategic thinking. This experience of working thematically is perhaps why the Lords has been able to move quickly to appoint committees to examine a particular strategic issue: such as the Lords Covid-19 Committee, which was established in 2020 to consider “the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economic and social wellbeing of the United Kingdom.”[xxx] Similarly, the Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee was, between 2019 and 2022, able to explore a number of strategic questions posed by rapidly developing technologies.[xxxi] In both these instances, committees were set up to examine specific strategic issues, and were tasked with taking a long-term view.

However, the ability of committees in the Lords to do this, and to draw on their experience conducting thematic rather than departmental scrutiny, in part rests on the fact that detailed scrutiny of departments takes place in the Commons—and was designed to avoid duplicating what happens in the lower House. This gives Lords committees the time and freedom to look at broader questions. It is important that the Commons’ crucial role in undertaking detailed scrutiny into the work of each department—and in so doing developing deep knowledge and building relationships—is not lost or undermined.   

Facilitating better committee scrutiny of strategic thinking   

Improved scrutiny of government’s strategic thinking would be welcome. However, this breadth of scrutiny should complement, not take the place of in-depth scrutiny into the work of government and specific policy issues. This raises several questions about where responsibility for broader strategic scrutiny should lie—and the resources that might be required.

One option might be to give committees in the Lords responsibility for scrutinising government’s strategic thinking. Lords committee’s experience in working in a thematic way would stand them in good stead to undertake this work. The fact that Members of the Lords do not need to consider electoral timeframes could also help to encourage a longer-term approach to strategic questions than might be possible in the Commons (although the three-year time limit on membership of Lords Committees undermines committees’ institutional memory). It would complement that more detailed, department-specific work that takes place in Commons committees.

However, this approach is not fully satisfactory as it is also important that the Commons, as the elected chamber, is able to play a role in the scrutiny of government’s strategic thinking. While the Lords could take on primary responsibility for scrutinising government’s approach to strategic questions, it should not have sole responsibility for this.

A second option would be to update the ‘core tasks’ of Commons committees to encourage committees to examine the government’s strategic thinking as part of their work programmes. Currently, while ‘strategy’ is one core task, it is focused on examination of the strategy of a particular department rather than more broadly. This could be changed to encourage departments to continue to scrutinise a department’s strategy, but also more explicitly consider how this contributes to the government’s broader strategic thinking.

However, this approach would pose two risks. The first is that this scrutiny remains largely siloed, as it would still be departmental committees considering these strategic issues. The second is that it could detract from the crucial work that committees undertake on the departments they shadow. Committees have limited resources and time, and already must balance scrutiny of their departments and policy areas with more topical and immediate issues when they arise. Adding a further responsibility to committees—especially absent any additional resources—would require trade-offs to be made.

A third option is that a new Commons committee is established, with responsibility for conducting high-level scrutiny of the government’s broad strategic approach. Practically, this would require a change to the Standing Orders and therefore the backing of the government. Such an option would have the advantage of a committee resourced to focus solely on scrutiny of government’s strategic thinking, avoiding the kinds of trade-offs that would need to be made by existing committees if they were additionally tasked with this responsibility.

But creating a new committee for this purpose would also have some drawbacks that may hamper it from conducting effective scrutiny. It would risk perpetuating the existing problem of overlapping and competing inquiries with other committees, as existing committees may continue to address aspects of government’s strategic thinking within their work. A further issue would be the inherently cross-cutting nature of any new committee established with a specific focus on government strategy. Because it would not be responsible for shadowing any specific department, departments may feel less accountable to it. This could make it harder for a new committee to reliably get ministers to attend, as well as limit the impact that the committee’s work could have.

Alternatively, the Liaison Committee itself could take on this role, drawing on the expertise of its members and its ability to regularly question the prime minister. Currently, Liaison Committee evidence sessions with the prime minister are usually themed around sets of issues. Devoting some sessions specifically to the government’s strategic approach could be a productive way of combining the work done in departmental committees into a more holistic look at government. If there were particular strategic questions that the Committee was interested in, it could perhaps make use of the guesting procedure to bring in Members from relevant departmental committees, making further use of the knowledge and experience held across Commons committees.

However, Liaison Committee sessions with the prime minister don’t tend to encourage in-depth focus on a particular issue—there is little opportunity for follow-up to test and probe the answers given. This means that even if the Liaison Committee were to devote some of its time with the prime minister to examining the government’s strategic thinking, it is not clear this would yield the kind of detailed information needed to allow effective scrutiny.

One helpful role that the Liaison Committee could play is to draw on the information gathered from this inquiry to produce guidance for Commons committees on how to most effectively scrutinise government strategy. This could include the sharing of examples of best practice. By producing this guidance, the Committee could both encourage existing committees to incorporate this into their workplans, and offer them practical support and advice on how to do this.

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