A report by The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has welcomed the publication of the draft Cabinet Manual, but called for further referencing and a clearer explanation to ensure there is no misunderstanding about the document's constitutional purpose.

A draft Cabinet Manual was published for consultation in December. An earlier report by the Political and Constitutional Reform (PCR) committee raised concerns over the manual’s constitutional implications. But the PASC report, published last week, says that “no objective analysis can construe this document to be the start of a written constitution”.

Chair Bernard Jenkin told CSW it is simply “recording precedent, current practice, current statutory frameworks; it doesn’t break any new ground”.
“To avoid any possible misinterpretation we recommend that its name should be changed,” Jenkin told CSW, adding that “it should be properly referenced: every statement should have a reference to it which explains the authority on which the statement rests, because it’s not itself a new authority.” The PASC report says that the manual should be called the ‘Cabinet Office Handbook’.

In a private hearing, PASC was told that the manual is designed as a guide for civil servants and ministers and – its report says – to “educate the public and reach common positions on contested ideas”. The report suggests that the manual “may have overreached itself and risks failing to meet any of these three aims effectively”, and that a revised version should “be focused on becoming a comprehensive and authoritative reference work for civil servants to advise their ministers”, with educative and polemical elements “an incidental consideration”.

The report also says that a revised manual should note when it is referring to practices introduced by an incumbent administration, so that it does not “level out the status and value of established conventions as distinct from new practices and endow them with equal status”.

PASC is about to begin an enquiry which will consider what skills civil servants will need in order to develop and support the Big Society. Speaking at a conference organised by the think-tank Reform last week, Jenkin said: “there are very few, exceptional examples” of civil servants who can act as agents of change within communities, “but these are the skills that we now need”.

Jenkin is currently writing to every permanent secretary asking how “they consider the Big Society affects their department, or not; what kind of changes they think they need to make in their departments; and how those changes are being made”, he said. He told CSW this will also inform the committee’s ongoing report into good governance and civil service reform.

At the conference, Jenkin said it will be important for civil service leaders to effect corporate and cultural change to support the Big Society: “The danger is that Whitehall regards this Big Society thing as yet another minor political cloud that is drifting overhead; if everybody keeps their heads down it will disappear and life can carry on as usual,” he said.

Written by Suzannah Brecknell