Upstairs, Downstairs

Abstract

Unlike its predecessor in 1970, the Thatcher administration did not come to office with a blueprint for major reform of the central machinery of government in its knapsack. Prior to 1970 Mr Heath had, in Opposition, masterminded a complex and detailed study of the machinery of government, involving among other things a number of information-gathering visits to Washington to see what we could learn from American ideas. On taking office, he and his ministerial team had set to work with a will; and over the ensuing three years Whitehall had been subjected to perhaps its heaviest upheaval since the war. The entire system of local government had been redrawn by Peter Walker; and that of the National Health Service by Sir Keith Joseph. The Central Policy Review Staff, or ‘Think Tank’, had been set up to provide the Cabinet with an independent, non-departmental watchdog of its strategy. Brand new ‘super-departments’, of Environment and of Trade and Industry had been created (plus another for Energy in the wake of the first ‘oil shock’ in 1973). Some functions — procurement for the Ministry of Defence, property management for government in general — had been ‘hived off’ into special agencies. Sophisticated new control techniques — ‘PPBS’ (programme, planning, budgeting systems) and ‘PAR’ (programme analysis and review) — had been introduced to cross-check on what Whitehall was up to.