Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Appointment

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will make a statement on his appointment as Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister and associated machinery of government changes.

Michael Ellis—you’re welcome.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Before I begin, I am glad to have this opportunity to offer my congratulations to Her Majesty the Queen on reaching the 70th anniversary of her accession. She is a hero to me and millions of others, and I know that the House will join me in wishing her many more years.

In a statement to this House last week, the Prime Minister pledged to make changes in the way Downing Street and the Cabinet Office are managed, so that we can get on with the job that this Government were elected to do, and that is what the Prime Minister is in the course of doing. As the Prime Minister has said, we need to continue our recovery from the pandemic. We need to help hundreds of thousands more people into work. We need to deliver on our ambitious agenda to level up the entire country, improving people’s opportunities regardless of where they are from.

The changes that the Prime Minister made to his senior team over the weekend will bring renewed discipline and focus to his programme of priorities and deliver them faster for the people of the United Kingdom. In his statement to the House last week, the Prime Minister accepted in full the general findings of the Cabinet Office’s second permanent secretary, Sue Gray, in her investigation into alleged gatherings on Government premises during covid restrictions. The Prime Minister offered a sincere apology and also accepted Sue Gray’s recommendation that

“we must learn from these events and act now.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2022; Vol. 708, c. 23.]

In response, as the House will be aware, the Prime Minister has asked my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to provide political leadership within No. 10 as his chief of staff. As the Government have set out, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be in charge of further integrating the new Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office to make operations at the heart of Government more efficient and effective, and ensuring that the Government agenda is better aligned with the Cabinet and Back Benchers. He will be working very closely with the Cabinet Secretary on the new structure. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will also work directly with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that levelling up is a priority for all Departments and is delivered at a rapid pace that brings about tangible improvements in the day-to-day lives of the people of this country.

Order. I am not sure whether the Minister is aware that this is a UQ not a statement. Only three minutes is allowed for the Minister; you are now on four, so I am sure that you are coming to the end.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—I was just on my last sentence. I was saying that the Government set out that there would continue to be further appointments over the coming days, with a particular focus on improving engagement and liaison with Parliament. Full ministerial responsibilities will be announced in due course.

I echo the Minister’s comments regarding the Queen.

It is always nice to be at the Dispatch Box against the Minister but, quite honestly, where is the chief of staff? The Minister mentions what the Prime Minister said. He also said that this change gives “an enhanced role” for Parliament, yet the chief of staff’s very first act is to refuse to even turn up here to explain his own job. But maybe the Paymaster General can tell us: is it a ministerial job, a public appointment, a party role—it is not a special adviser—or is it something that does not even exist yet? Apparently, the chief of staff will not get a salary; perhaps he should join a trade union. Will he appoint or manage advisers or officials? How will he relate to the permanent secretary? Who will appoint staff, as the Minister mentioned, to the new office of the Prime Minister? When will the office be set up, and on what budget, or has the Chancellor given him a blank cheque? Is the post to have a separate Department from the Cabinet Office or are they to merge? How will he answer to us: will he face me here as the chief of staff or as the Minister for No. 10? Is he still in charge of dealing with the channel crossings, tackling the pandemic, protecting the Union, veterans policy and every other priority of the Cabinet Office? This Government are in chaos and the country is paying the price.

It is always a pleasure to appear shadowing, if I may put it that way, the right hon. Lady, but she will know that the chief of staff role was created by Tony Blair in response to Labour figures such as Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell, who had, of course, huge powers in the Blair years to direct civil servants and who were unelected. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is answerable to this House and will present a full range of responsibilities to this House in due course.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that nobody is better qualified to be both chief of staff and Chancellor of the Duchy and Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office than my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), given that he already has the widest possible experience of interdepartmental responsibility, for the Treasury, for health, for financial services and for Brexit, and has the comprehensive knowledge and capacity both to understand and to have the necessary authority and stature to carry out the new functions allocated to him?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as usual. One could hardly have a more qualified person to be chief of staff than my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), a former Secretary of State answerable to this House, and now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an elected person answerable to this House as well as the electorate.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) is not in his place because I wanted to congratulate and welcome the country’s new senior civil servant to his post. I do not quite know how someone who already has two full-time jobs is going to salvage Downing Street’s reputation when the Prime Minister has often claimed that they all broke lockdown rules and regularly get tanked up in Downing Street because of the immense workload and the pressure of the job. However, there is something far more serious here: paragraph 3.12 of the Erskine May “Public service disqualification” section says:

“All persons employed either whole- or part-time in the Civil Service are disqualified; and it is immaterial whether they are serving in an established capacity”.

It is clear as day that the right hon. Gentleman is the new chief of staff at Downing Street and he is also a serving Member of this House; he cannot be both, and according to Erskine May he has disqualified himself from that role. So, when will the Government be moving the writ for the by-election?

I had no idea that the hon. Gentleman presented himself as an expert in Erskine May, but I have to say, with respect, that I do not think many others would. The reality is that my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) is not a civil servant; he remains a servant of this House—a servant of the people of this country—democratically elected and highly accountable.

On the whole, Governments do not do things well, so will my right hon. and learned Friend persuade the new chief of staff to concentrate the Government’s efforts on doing fewer things a bit better?

As the House will recognise, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has a long history of ministerial service in this House, which he has performed par excellence. I have no doubt, and nor do my colleagues, that he will continue to perform his functions with excellence, whether they be in 10 Downing Street or elsewhere.

But being chief of staff to any Prime Minister is more than a full-time job—and to this Prime Minister, with everything we know about him, it is an impossible one. Just look at the collateral damage of those who have fallen by the wayside having come within close proximity of him. How will the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire do all those jobs and serve his constituents?

In the same way, if I may suggest, that the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster can also be the shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, shadow Secretary of State for the future of work, shadow First Secretary of State, deputy Leader of the Opposition, deputy leader of the Labour party and Member of Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne—highly accomplished appointments.

The appointees announced over the weekend are significant figures, but in any office restructuring, and particularly one such as 10 Downing Street, disruption is inevitable. What reassurance can my right hon. and learned Friend provide that that is taken into account and that the sole focus will be on delivering for the Government?