4/4 Separately, David Kogan's £1,450 donation to Nandy's leadership campaign was just below the £1,500 parliamentary disclosure threshold, as was the £1,450 donation from "David Kogan Ltd". Hard to write a rule to combine such closely connected donations for disclosure, but it's not a good look...

3/4 It is rare for the Commissioner to look at a single appointment process in this detail, and his findings in this case also raise questions about how DCMS approaches public appointments more generally. There may be lessons to learn for both its processes and how problems arising are handled.

2/4 Why was an application accepted after the deadline? Why was the campaign kept open, rather than re-run, when first unsuccessful? Why was a previously withdrawn candidate reinstated and then fast-tracked? Why was the Commissioner not consulted on these matters at the time?

7/ The “democratic lock” over the Sentencing Council is an example of how ministerial micro-management can accrue over time. It is also an example of where strong leadership consists not in taking direct control, but in refusing it. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/davi...

6/ But ministers have neither the capacity nor the expertise to decide every detail, so their leadership must sometimes consist in setting clear direction for others and then defending their independence (while of course holding them to account for their performance.)

4/ It is easy to see why this argument can be unfashionable. Ministers want to achieve change and are held personally accountable for their briefs, both of which prompt a desire for direct control. And the public wants to see swift reform and grip.

3/ The general point is that a well-functioning state can require ministers to defend a body’s independence – within bounds – even when they do not agree with every decision it makes.

2/ You do not have to agree with the specific Sentencing Council guideline that triggered this “democratic lock” to agree with me (although I think David Lammy might, given his work on justice system outcomes for ethnic minority groups in the 2017 Lammy Review www.gov.uk/government/p...).

9/ So much more thought is needed about the appropriate relationships between ministers, public servants and the public. The current guidance doesn’t work at a practical level and runs counter to the accountability and transparency now expected of civil servants and public agencies.

8/ As I argued when the guidance first came to light, it is essential for public leaders to be able to exercise judgment without constant ministerial clearance – otherwise there is just too much grit in the system to make complex technical functions work: bsky.app/profile/drma....

7/ The limits set should not equate to the most comfortable position for the government: it should err on the side of delegating judgement and facilitating public debate, not over-caution. Micro-management is usually a mistake that achieves apparent control at the cost of reduced effectiveness.

6/ The question for government, then, is where along Grube’s spectrum public leaders should be allowed - or even encouraged - to operate, noting that this will remain a matter of judgement for them to exercise case by case and may differ according to the circumstances.

5/ Public leaders increasingly need to be “publicly proactive” to perform their functions well. As Grube puts it (p. 197), “If more accountability, transparency and creativity are being demanded of public servants, they must be allowed the room in which to embrace those new styles of engagement.”

4/ This diagram from Dennis C Grube’s 2019 book, Megaphone Bureaucracy, which highlights the same trend internationally, helps to frame the necessary debate about what the knock-on impact on public leaders’ public profiles should be: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

3/ That may have been the case decades ago. But senior civil servants and public body leaders are now, in practice, much more in the spotlight. @timdurrant.bsky.social observed erosion of ministerial accountability in the pandemic, for example: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comm....

2/ The response, quoted in the Times, implies – wrongly – that ministers happily take public accountability for everything officials do:

6/ So not only are Hannah and Alex right about the importance of civil service voices to a healthy public discussion - of both government effectiveness and the details of policy - but this guidance would also work contrary to public body and regulator effectiveness. Let's hope for a re-think.

5/ More, we also found that public body leaders who develop their organisations' public voice in normal times can have greater credibility in a crisis - not only with the public but even with government ministers themselves: www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

4/ Our research on public bodies in the pandemic found that in a crisis, particularly, an effective communications response must rely on those closest to the relevant subjects to rapidly communicate messages and handle stakeholders within their spheres of expertise and delegated authority.