Volume 15: Government and Public Administration
3. Policy-making and legislation
Developing policy

3.3 Ministers worked closely with senior officials in their Departments, using them both as a source of up-to-date information and advice and as a sounding board for ideas. Mr Keith Meldrum (Chief Veterinary Officer) told the Inquiry that:

You are always on your toes because Ministers were likely to raise very constructive and demanding questions. ¹

3.4 All policy decisions by Ministers were preceded by:

. . . a build-up of available information, discussion amongst officials either orally or through correspondence, perhaps preliminary discussion with Ministers, [written] submissions to Ministers with argument and options, discussion with Ministers, further discussion between Ministers, decisions and an action timetable. ²

3.5 Before going to the Minister, a submission would usually have been developed by officials at several levels and been subject to consultation with appropriate colleagues. There might be a formal meeting with the Minister to consider it; if so, the main points made and the conclusions reached would be recorded by the Minister's Private Secretary, and the record distributed to those who had received copies of the submission. Mr Kenneth Clarke (Secretary of State for Health) told the Inquiry that any policy papers submitted to Ministers were 'the mere background to an extremely thorough process of policy-making . . . decision-making is the result of a long and tortuous process'. ³

3.6 During these discussions, officials were expected to offer 'honest and impartial advice, without fear or favour'. ⁴ Lord Freeman described his experience as a new Minister in the Department of Health:

. . . what struck me was how frank they were, how cautious they were, how expert they were, and, dealing with a layman like me, the patience they took to explain the implications of policy, health policy in general. They always assumed that one would do one's homework. But they never assumed that one would necessarily understand the technical and scientific nature of a particular problem. ⁵

3.7 Notwithstanding this, Mr Alistair Cruickshank of MAFF's Animal Health Group told the Inquiry that the advice given by officials to Ministers would often be affected to some degree by their understanding of the Minister's current thinking. He commented in relation to the proposal for a voluntary ruminant feed ban in 1988 that officials ended up:

. . . proposing rather less than we might have done if we had thought the Minister shared our perception of the seriousness of the situation.

He went on to say in parenthesis:

It is entirely normal for officials to shade their advice to Ministers in this way: there is no point whatsoever in putting forward advice which has very little chance of being accepted. ⁶

3.8 Mr Robert Lowson (MAFF, Animal Health) described how there was free debate, but once the Minister had taken a decision the course was then firmly set for action:

It was open to me to offer advice to senior officials and Ministers which ran counter to the line which they were inclined to adopt . . . But once a firm decision had been taken at Ministerial level with the concurrence of the Other Government Department involved, as it was in the case of the introduction of the Specified Offals Ban, it would have been very unusual to have advised Ministers to think again unless there was a factor which they had clearly not been able to take into account. ⁷

3.9 Other witnesses agreed. Dr Thomas Little, Director of the Central Veterinary Laboratory (CVL), made the general point:

As in any organisation, once the decision is made, once the final plan is clear, then it is your obligation to try to implement that as carefully and as quickly as you can. ⁸

Mr Capstick, in the context of a particular aspect of the BSE story, said:

Once Ministers had made a decision, and where this decision was based on the advice of scientific advisers, it was the responsibility of officials in the Food Safety Directorate to carry out this decision. ⁹