Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Tuesday 20th October 2026
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(began 19 hours, 37 minutes ago)
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10:01
Simon Hoare
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Simon Hoare
And very pleased the right hon. Member of Parliament has kindly agreed to join us under no compulsion whatsoever, voluntarily. But having served as the Prime Minister's Chief Secretary and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, we thought it useful to hear your fresh sort of thoughts, reflections and and suggestions on your time in in in the Cabinet Office, the sort of the good, the bad and the ugly, as it were. But it would be remiss of me, Mr. Jones, not to put on the record in public. This committee's thanks to you for how you engaged with the Committee when you were a Minister for the time that you spent with us, etc., and indeed for what you did within the Department.
And sometimes politics isn't terribly good at saying thank you. So on behalf of the committee, thank you. I want I want to take us back to the sort of heady days. Before before the gilt came off the gingerbread of mission government. Great fanfare. You remember Pat McFadden, your your predecessor issues that you then sort of inherited. And I think there wasn't a day that went past without us hearing at least four times from ministers about mission led government, how it was going to shake everything up, how the silos were going to be broken, and the way of doing government recast.
When did mission government get its sort of death certificate? Because nobody talks about it anymore. And it doesn't seem to be the underpinning mindset of let's change things around and make things better.
And sometimes politics isn't terribly good at saying thank you. So on behalf of the committee, thank you. I want I want to take us back to the sort of heady days. Before before the gilt came off the gingerbread of mission government. Great fanfare. You remember Pat McFadden, your your predecessor issues that you then sort of inherited. And I think there wasn't a day that went past without us hearing at least four times from ministers about mission led government, how it was going to shake everything up, how the silos were going to be broken, and the way of doing government recast.
When did mission government get its sort of death certificate? Because nobody talks about it anymore. And it doesn't seem to be the underpinning mindset of let's change things around and make things better.
10:03
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
For the missions for the incoming Labour government were a set of political priorities that came through the manifesto process in opposition coming into government, which were then attempted to be translated into changing the way government worked in order to focus on delivering those outcomes. So it's essentially an exercise of prioritisation and trying to get the system to tackle some big challenges that maybe it hadn't done for for a long time. And certainly in the first year or so, when I was at the Treasury, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, we were trying to embed mission structures into government.
So we had these mission boards which bought departments together. In the spending review that I led, I asked mission boards to submit their own spending bids alongside the departments so we could see how we could pull budgets to come together in practice. It didn't work for a number of reasons. Firstly, the money we assigned to missions ended up going to departments anyway because mission boards, we were told, couldn't be constitutionally accountable to Parliament in the same way that departments are. And once the departments got the money, the departments decided how to spend the money. And so collaboration wasn't as easy as it maybe should have been if it had gone to the mission board.
And cross-departmental working is just is just very hard. And actually, I think constitutional norms and a tendency to protect the way the system works eventually stopped it from being effective, in my view. Now with Andy Burnham's team, I think Andy Burnham has a different set of priorities and has clearly set those out and has decided that the missions, which will still be delivered under the bonnet by the government, you know, NHS waiting lists coming down or police officers in our community, the clean energy mission, you know, going for economic growth at the top of the league table, these things will continue.
But I think the political focus has changed with a new a new administration.
So we had these mission boards which bought departments together. In the spending review that I led, I asked mission boards to submit their own spending bids alongside the departments so we could see how we could pull budgets to come together in practice. It didn't work for a number of reasons. Firstly, the money we assigned to missions ended up going to departments anyway because mission boards, we were told, couldn't be constitutionally accountable to Parliament in the same way that departments are. And once the departments got the money, the departments decided how to spend the money. And so collaboration wasn't as easy as it maybe should have been if it had gone to the mission board.
And cross-departmental working is just is just very hard. And actually, I think constitutional norms and a tendency to protect the way the system works eventually stopped it from being effective, in my view. Now with Andy Burnham's team, I think Andy Burnham has a different set of priorities and has clearly set those out and has decided that the missions, which will still be delivered under the bonnet by the government, you know, NHS waiting lists coming down or police officers in our community, the clean energy mission, you know, going for economic growth at the top of the league table, these things will continue.
But I think the political focus has changed with a new a new administration.
10:05
Simon Hoare
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Simon Hoare
Let's just pause there for a moment, because I think there was a growing. Sense that the sort of the Orthodox high priests of the Treasury suddenly saw mission boards as being effectively a challenge to their total authority, because no longer would Treasury be able to play one department off against the other, because there was a cross-departmental approach to policy delivery. What you seem to be saying now is it was just a accountability bit. Did any minister at that time say, yeah, but we want to try and do something new here. So let's create a way for mission boards to have that line of democratic accountability through Parliament.
Or was it just a shrug of the shoulder, you know, a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and somebody going, oh, okay. Well, it was a it was a good idea, but it's fallen at the first fence.
Or was it just a shrug of the shoulder, you know, a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and somebody going, oh, okay. Well, it was a it was a good idea, but it's fallen at the first fence.
10:06
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
My sense of it . And other ministers and former ministers might think differently, but my sense of it, it was a classic example of the system saying, well, you can't do that because of constitutional norms. And therefore the mission boards continued as I think they were technically cabinet subcommittees in their status, which do have decision making power. But the money still sat with the departments and their normal structure. And as we all know, if you don't have money in the spending review to do something, you're probably not going to get around to doing it.
10:06
Simon Hoare
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Simon Hoare
I mean, that's an understandable answer, but I'm sure you understand that it's also a disappointing one, because here was a fresh faced government coming in 14 years in opposition. Master of all they surveyed in terms of parliamentary majority at that time, a belief that Keir Starmer would be prime minister for at least two terms was the working presumption. Does that just speak to a surprising lack of small, small R or radicalism within the early days of that government, which slightly speaks to the wider assessment of Keir Starmer? I'm not asking anybody to sort of speak ill of the metaphorical dead, but as a sort of rather unambitious, non-creative technocrat who just tried to make the status quo work rather than try to create anything new.
10:08
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
I wouldn't personally pin it on Keir Starmer or, quite frankly, any minister. I think my two observations are one, I spent a lot of my time when I was in the Cabinet Office, trying to get the system to focus less on process and more on delivery of outcomes, because there's a lot of process meeting slide decks, you know, groups, you know, you just think, what is actually changing in the real world as a consequence of all of this activity. And so I had to do a lot of work in terms of the incentive and accountability structure for senior civil servants, but also absolute clarity on what they were being measured against in terms of real world change.
And so I think what happened initially in response to mission boards was a lot of process. A lot of people worked very hard, but there were mission boards, there was lots of data, there was lots of slide decks. There were lots of people talking, but it didn't actually deal with the fundamental constitutional barriers to radical change of the state. And I think that's my second point, which is that the civil service is reluctant to change. And ministers who have, I don't know, an average lifespan of maybe two years or so can only achieve so much in that time period.
And so I think that the incentives and accountability structures for the senior civil service to make sure that they're delivering the political priorities, that the government of the day is an area where we've got to do much, much more work, because I started some of that in government, but I know that there's much more to be done.
And so I think what happened initially in response to mission boards was a lot of process. A lot of people worked very hard, but there were mission boards, there was lots of data, there was lots of slide decks. There were lots of people talking, but it didn't actually deal with the fundamental constitutional barriers to radical change of the state. And I think that's my second point, which is that the civil service is reluctant to change. And ministers who have, I don't know, an average lifespan of maybe two years or so can only achieve so much in that time period.
And so I think that the incentives and accountability structures for the senior civil service to make sure that they're delivering the political priorities, that the government of the day is an area where we've got to do much, much more work, because I started some of that in government, but I know that there's much more to be done.