The men and women who live in the dark

The Paul Richards column

Special advisers are the most reported about, and least understood, part of the Whitehall machine. This week, these men and women who, in Clare Short’s vivid phrase, ‘live in the dark’ had yet more light shone upon them. Jenny Jackson, the special adviser to Andrew Lansley at the department of health, has been put on the bench. She has been told that she can no longer brief lobby journalists. She is the latest in a long line of special advisers who have become more newsworthy than their bosses. It won’t end well.

I should declare an interest, of course. Jenny Jackson sits in the same office I sat in at Richmond House on Whitehall. She may have the same desk for all I know. As a Labour special adviser during some major health service reforms, my job was to attempt to communicate difficult policies against a chorus of booing from the health professionals’ bodies.

Cameron has sent trusted adviser Sean Worth from Number 10 to oversee the communications around Lansley’s reforms. In the period after 2005, Tony Blair took a similarly close interest in what Patricia Hewitt was up to. As DH special advisers, myself and Liz Kendall (now one of the Leicester MPs) were often summoned across the road to Number 10 to receive ‘helpful advice’ from Blair’s political office. At the time, Labour’s reforms were being denounced from left and right, causing a ministerial resignation, a secretary of state to be barracked at the RCN conference, and endless backbenchers’ dark threats. The Blairite reforms introduced in this period led directly to the lowest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction since 1948, making Patricia Hewitt one of the most effective health secretaries ever, but that’s another story.

As one of a hundred or more former Labour special advisers, I am in no doubt that the role is vital to good governance. The civil service code clearly sets out that special advisers reinforce the impartiality of civil servants, by ensuring no civil servant can be pressed into performing political tasks by overbearing ministers. Special advisers allow civil servants to be civil servants. They’ve been around a long time. Powerful politicians have always relied on advisers, but Harold Wilson in the 1960s formalised their role within the constitution. They are funded by the state, through your taxes (as are the opposition front bench researchers), rather than by the political parties. A generation of front-rank politicians have served as special advisers. Both the prime minister, and the leader of the opposition have been treasury special advisers. A quick look at the list of the PLP suggests that about 15 current Labour MPs are former special advisers, including Jack Straw, Hilary Benn, Michael Dugher, John Woodcock, Emma Reynolds, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and the newest Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth. This excludes those who have worked as MPs’ assistants or as Labour Party staff.

Cameron came into office promising to reduce the number of special advisers. In opposition, he decried the take-over of Whitehall by spin doctors (despite having been one). As the prospect of forming a government become more real, his vituperation towards special advisers seemed to disappear. The Coalition Agreement contains a classic piece of obfuscation: ‘we will place a limit on the number of special advisers’, which comes straight from the Yes, Minister phrasebook. In June last year, the new government appointed 66 special advisers. By March 2011, the number had increased to 74, an increase of 17%. This includes extra advisers for both Cameron and Clegg, as well as for Hague, Fox and Warsi.

What the Tories have discovered is what every government learns – ministers need special advisers. Indeed, an incoming Labour government should appoint dozens more, including for ministers of state and junior ministers, and not just secretaries of state. It is absurd that most ministers of state have no political support at all. Visiting Americans and others find it laughable that senior members of a n administration get so little help with the essential business of government. It is a hangover from the days when ministers were self-funding, from private incomes or professional fees, and sits uneasily in an age of democracy.

Andrew Lansley will become increasingly frustrated at the shackling of Jenny Jackson. By neutering his political mouthpiece, Cameron has reduced Lansley’s prestige and power within Whitehall. Journalists will get their stories elsewhere, including the Lib Dem special advisers who are spinning like tops against the health service reforms. If Lansley resigns over the sinking of his flagship, the pivotal moment will be when Cameron ordered his special adviser to turn off her mobile.