Blair to Cameron: you’re not going to change anything with ‘just another committee’

The former Prime Minister did the Strand today, speaking at the Strand Group at King’s College, London

Tony Blair spoke at the third meeting of the Strand Group at King’s College, London, this morning on “How to Run a Government”, the title of the new book by Michael Barber, his former adviser.

I asked the former Prime Minister what he made of David Cameron’s new machinery for delivering targets, about which I wrote on Sunday. These consist of an Implementation Unit, which is very like the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit that Barber headed in 2001-05, and 10 new Cabinet committees called Implementation Taskforces.

“I don’t know about task forces for ministers, really,” said Blair. “It can work if it is not just another ministerial committee... But the guy at the top has to be driving it the whole time.”

Given that the taskforces are just more committees of ministers, I got the impression that Blair doesn’t think that Cameron is quite as personally committed as he ought to be to drive through change. A lot depends on the extent to which Oliver Letwin, an overstretched minister, is able to replicate Barber’s own role as an official.

Effective delivery needs the Prime Minister’s time, said Barber. “It doesn’t need a lot of time. It needs time that is routinely applied so that everybody knows the Prime Minister is on the case.”*

Barber’s book – which is brilliant by the way; it was previewed in The Independent on Sunday – opens with a claim that its author repeated today: “The effectiveness of government is one of the big moral issues of our time.”

His argument is that, whether you are in an “investment for reform” phase, as he was in Blair’s second term, or a “more for less” phase, as Cameron is in his second term, governments’ capacity to deliver is critical to making life better for citizens.

For those keen to gain Blair’s views on current political controversies, he said he supported devolution to Greater Manchester, including George Osborne’s plan to devolve £6bn of NHS spending, which Andy Burnham, the front runner for the Labour leadership, opposed. “It’s the right way to go, but it does depend on the capability of the leadership at a local level – which, in the case of Greater Manchester, is already there. ”

And he riskily quoted Genghis Khan, pronouncing him Chinghiz – “very interesting character” – as saying: “Conquering the world on horseback was easy; the hard part was when you had to dismount and govern.”

*A former senior civil servant offered an example in conversation afterwards. On the morning of 22 September 2001, before he set off to New York and Washington express his solidarity with the Americans after 9/11, Blair held a stocktake with Education Department officials about the progress of schools reforms.

Sebastian Payne also has a report of this morning’s event. A video of the whole thing is here. I hope to post a longer report of it in due course.