As the chaotic approach to dealing with the fall-out of Covid wreaks havoc, it got me thinking about our very unique governmental structures in Northern Ireland. We remain the only country in the world to use the d’hondt formula to select its executive. Add to this mandatory coalition, the Executive’s “silo mentality”, the parallel consent mechanism and abuse of tools such as the Petition of Concern, then it is hardly surprising that our Executive has singularly failed to win the hearts and minds of almost anybody in the country over the past nine months.
I have been particularly struck by the lack of direction and cohesion in the Department of Education. We had the examination results debacle and failed algorithms in the summer, before finally settling on teacher produced grades; then we have had an abject failure to plan for the 2020/21 academic year – whilst completely ignoring advice from examination bodies, school leaders and teachers on the ‘front-line’. It resulted last week in a decision by the Minister to cut AS-level and A2-level (16-19 year olds) examination content by 60%… when most schools have already completed circa 40-50% of their examinable content!
The abysmally poor leadership provided by politician after politician in the Department of Education in Northern Ireland since devolution of powers in December 1999 has me thinking that we need a sea-change in how we view our Executive and the roles of our politicians in it. I do not think that politicians should have ministerial portfolios at all. The Dept of Education should be headed by a senior educationalist and the Dept of Health by an experienced leader in medical practice, for example.
How might this work? For this I am looking to the US method of Cabinet selection. President-Elect, Joe Biden, is currently in the process of lining up his Cabinet picks… and this is very different to the process in the UK.
In the United States of America, Cabinet officers are nominated by the President, but must be confirmed by U.S. Senators. The President may select candidates from any walk of life — business, education, law, the military… or politicians. The strict separation of powers in the USA and the Ineligibility Clause of the U.S. Constitution, however, means that anyone appointed to the US Cabinet cannot sit in the legislature. Perhaps we need to be bold in NI & break from the current structures, in which we try vaingloriously to ‘doff our cap’ to the Westminster-model of politics whilst simultaneously trying to satisfy the ‘procedure-hungry’ institutional infrastructure that our divided society requires.
Perhaps in Northern Ireland we need to appoint our Ministers from a similar pool to that of a US President? Perhaps we do need to appoint a distinguished business figure to look after our Department for the Economy, a distinguished educationalist to look after the Department of Education and a distinguished medical expert to look after the Dept for Health, for example?
We would, of course, still need a small elected executive of politicians (without portfolio) reflecting the will of the electorate and the composition of our divided society. This could be a five or six member elected executive (perhaps even smaller)? The finer details would need worked through. In any event, the political executive would have a strategic role over devising the Programme for Government and managing the budget and they could also nominate the specialist ministers/heads of government departments (from business, or education or medical practice etc) – but crucially, no individual political party would be ‘attached’ to a departmental portfolio itself, thus preventing a ‘silo’ mentality and also helping to encourage a more long-term and joined-up approach to governance.
IN the process, the scrutiny role and powers of our legislative Assembly should and could be elevated. It could play the role of approving the executive nominees. Each nominee could be put through a rigorous US-style committee hearing before going to the full assembly for a plenary vote. Hopeful nominees should expect to require something like a two-thirds or three-quarters majority for ratification… In the US the requirement is only a simple majority, but a ‘super-majority’ should help ensure the completely non-partisan, non-political nature of the appointment.
Of course, there would need to be mechanisms to call any head of department to answer to committees or to plenary sessions for accountability purposes. There should also be a mechanism for removal if necessary – which does not currently exist among our politically appointed Ministers.
Taking departmental portfolios and key decision-making out of the hands of politicians and into the hands of experienced practitioners should improve decision making. IN the modern era this is actually becoming more crucial. Political parties tend to push young and dynamic politicians into positions of power, many of whom, whilst capable, have never held down a job in any industry or profession, have very little life experience and are ‘career politicians’ whose only work experience is working on an MLA’s, MP’s or a Minister’s staff since they left university.
Removing individual ministerial portfolios from the attachment to political parties will not only allow us to shift from a silo mentality, but it will free up the elected executive ministers to look at bigger, strategic and long term issues – legacy, post-Covid recovery, dealing with Brexit, under-funding in our crumbling health service or the crisis with our water infrastructure and much more.
Having an “expert” Head of Department take decisions (and be answerable to the power-sharing Assembly) will allow non-political and tough decisions to be taken, whilst providing ‘political cover’ for our politicians to express faux-outrage about a decision. Our politicians can protest whilst being “rendered politically powerless” to over-turn the offending decision, without some sort of ‘super-majority’ support. This is much how health service reform in the early 2000s, welfare reform in 2014/2015, same-sex Marriage and abortion laws in 2019, were passed through Westminster. Our Executive had abdicated its responsibility in each of these instances. The pretence from some parties that they ‘opposed’ the changes via their dog-whistle politics did not stop the changes.
Of course my musings above would not lead to utopia nor would it even lead, necessarily, to great decision-making. However, we are not looking for utopia… we are merely looking for an improvement on the current stasis, political mismanagement and short-term political point scoring that dogs our politics at every turn…
MultifacetedLens 