United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has ordered that his office at 10 Downing Street, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office must work more closely with major decisions signed off by all three Departments.
The Downing Street Policy Unit, Chaired by Munira Mirza (pictured), will be based at 70 Whitehall, the home of the Cabinet Office.
The door which currently connects 70 Whitehall to 10 Downing Street is being removed in a symbolic move that unites the two office complexes.
A senior Government source said that around 20 officials, thought to include Mr Johnson’s Senior Adviser, Dominic Cummings, would be based in the Whitehall building, alongside the existing Cabinet Office Public Servants.
Mr Cummings has long been critical of the Cabinet Office, which exists to co-ordinate the different Government Departments.
Allies of Mr Johnson said they were shocked to discover how many highly paid Public Servants worked there with ill-defined responsibilities.
Mr Cummings claims the Cabinet Office has often been used to limit the autonomy of individual Ministers and impose the will of senior Public Servants.
He has also been critical of the physical infrastructure available to Ministers, their aides and Public Servants in Westminster, pointing out that many Government buildings are centuries old.
“The whole approach reinforces the abject failure of the senior Civil Service to think about high performance project management,” Mr Cummings has said.
A recent paper from the Policy Exchange think-tank, which is close to the current Cabinet, proposed expanding the size of the Downing Street Policy Unit and transferring the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat, which oversees all domestic policy from the Cabinet Office, to the direct control of the Prime Minister.
Other changes to the underlying machinery of Government include the appointment of a new Cabinet Secretary to replace Sir Mark Sedwill, and a cut in the number of Public Servants employed in Government communications.
London, 14 August 2020
