3. The drive to professionalise policy making 24
1999: The Centre for Management and Policy Studies CMPS
In a separate development, by 1998 there was a view that the changes to the Civil Service College were needed.
38
Responding to a report by Richard Bayly, a decision was made to create a Centre for Management and Policy Studies. The CMPS’s remit was wider than just policy, which
represented one of four directorates within the organisation. Including the ‘policy’ element was intended to encourage more rigorous, high quality research to improve civil service knowledge
management, rather than responding to the government of the day. According to the view of its director, Ron Amman, the CMPS did not exist to formulate policy itself, but to facilitate it being
made well.
39
2002: The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit PMSU
By 2002, policy functions at the centre of government had become congested and contested. The PIU existed uneasily with the Prime Minister’s Forward Strategy Unit FSU, a smaller
organisation that overlapped more directly with departmental policy areas.
40
In response, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit was created by combining the PIU, the FSU, and the Policy
Directorate of the CMPS, which had been struggling to make an impact.
41
The Strategy Unit sat alongside the Number 10 Policy Directorate, a small team that shadowed departmental work in
core policy areas, and which had a larger role than its preceding Number 10 Policy Units.
42
PMSU had two important effects on policy making. First, its work overlapped with departments’ policy responsibilities much more so than PIU. PMSU “generally favoured close working
arrangements” with the Departments most affected and “often PMSU teams would physically locate in the Department most likely to be responsible for acting on the conclusions”.
43
Second, the presence of PMSU led to a series of strategy units being established within departments. By 2008, most Whitehall departments had done so, with the intention that this
would bring “an empirically rigorous, long-term and politically attuned approach to policy making”.
The centre of government thus had a significant policy making resource, which was being deployed in areas
where previously departments had considerable autonomy.
44
38
Catherine Haddon, Centre for Management and Policy Studies, Institute for Government, forthcoming in 2011.
Thus, a new centre for policy making had been established within existing departmental structures.
39
Ibid.
40
Halpern, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, 2010, pp.268-271.
41
Paul Fawcett and Oonagh Gay, The Centre of Government – No. 10, the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, House of Commons Library Research Paper 0592, 2005, p.60; Ronald Amann, ‘The Circumlocution Office: A
Snapshot of Civil Service Reform´, Political Quarterly, vol. 77:3, 2006, pp. 334-359.
42
As discussed in BBC News, ‘More Power for Downing Street’, 22 June 2001, available at: http:news.bbc.co.uk1hiuk_politics1402492.stm. The Policy Directorate was renamed the Policy Unit in
2007, and its membership at that time can be found at: http:www.prospectmagazine.co.uk2007089718- newsandcuriosities. For an account of the function of preceding policy units, see John M. Lee, George W. Jones
and June Burnham, At the Centre of Whitehall: Advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Macmillan, 1998, Chapter 7.
43
Halpern, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, 2010, pp.268-272.
44
Ibid, p274.
3. The drive to professionalise policy making 25
2003: The ROAMEF policy cycle
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