To London, where the Institute for Government’s 2025 conference is in full flow. This afternoon the think tank hosted a wide-ranging conversation with Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart. The Tory MP discussed everything from the role of the civil service to the glamorous life of an opposition politician. ‘In the Cabinet Office, I had 11,000 people helping me. Now I have four,’ he remarked drily. And when he turned to the issue of the Treasury machine, Burghart pulled no punches.
Discussing the centre of government the Tory politician was quick to warn attendees of the ‘overwhelming power of the Treasury in government’. Burghart described his own rather frustrating experience with the Exchequer, noting that it gave him ‘an insight into how a series of spending controls that had been brought in for perfectly good reasons had, over time, been cranked up to ridiculous proportions’. He went on:
When done badly this has a sort of stultifying effect on the formation of policy and its delivery across the departments.
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