Being a Minister
The transcript of Episode 1 of 'Y Pumed Llawr - The Fifth Floor
Mark Drakeford's first Cabinet, December 2018
So you’ve just arrived on the 5th floor. This is the part of Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay where Ministers in the Welsh Government are based. This is the place where your ability to turn ideas into actions is seriously tested.
My name is Lee Waters, and for 5 years I was a Minister in the Welsh Government with an office here on the 5th floor. In this podcast I’ll be reactivating my pass to the top of the building to try and bring to life politics and government in Wales.
In this first burst of episodes I’m going to look at the pressures that confront you when you work in the heart of the Welsh Government. I’ve spoken with former Ministers, Special political Advisers and civil servants to try and paint a picture of the challenges faced by those who work on the Fifth floor. I’ll be drawing on a series of longform interviews that I’ve done with these insiders for students of Cardiff University’s Masters Degree in Welsh politics. I’ve published the full transcripts of these conversations, and in these podcasts many of the voices you’ll hear are speaking on the record for the very first time.
I’ve asked some of my fellow former Ministers what they think are the main pressures we’ve all faced in trying to get things done in Government. We settled on six themes and I’m going to start this series of podcasts with a focus on each of these to try and throw some light onto what goes on on the Fifth Floor:
The sheer breadth of Ministerial responsibilities and ; the bandwidth of the civil service to get things done quickly; the relationship with local government - the real delivery arm of Welsh Government; the quality of scrutiny Ministers face, or indeed the absence of it; relationships within our own parties, and with other parties, which shape the choices Ministers make; and the dysfunctional sausage machine that is the government’s legislative programme.
This is the list that vexed us all - And posed major challenges to our ambitions for office.
[Kirsty Williams]
I think I had been slightly naive before coming into government about the pressures of the job, the scale of the task, and just managing the portfolio, along with the other responsibilities that you continue to have as an MS.
I think I was wildly ambitious about what I thought I could achieve, and I took too long to realise that I did not have the capacity, the department didn't have the capacity to do everything that I wanted to achieve, but on a personal basis, it felt like every day you were making potentially career ending decisions. And that pressure was intense.
I had led a political party, obviously in opposition, but I led a political party when you know the wider party was in a coalition government. So those were tough years. I thought that was a tough job to do, but I never felt the pressure in the same way as I did as a Minister.
When you were the leader of an opposition party Tuesdays were important: I used to do a press conference in the morning, and I used to do FMQs [First Minister’s Questions] in the afternoon. And as long as you were better than the other two opposition leaders, and some of the time you managed to land a few blows on the FM, you had been regarded as doing a good job. But as a Minister, every day, there were decisions put in front of you that you felt ‘if I make the wrong choice, this is the end of my career’.
[Lee Waters]
And how do you cope with that on a human level?
KW
[Laughter] Gosh. I think what was really important to me was trying, even in the most difficult of times, to have a little bit of joy in it, to try and remind myself that it was a privilege that I had spent all my political career wanting to make a difference.
The support of a really good private office I think is really important for a Minister, knowing that bit is taken care of; great specialist advice from your special advisor, and very often the camaraderie, actually, of the people that you work with. It’s not to say that you get on, particularly, with everybody you work with but you know, there is a shared sense of camaraderie with that group of people. And I think a combination of that kind of keeps your head above water, but it was the most intense period of my life and it's quite difficult to explain to people who've not done it, what it's like to be in that environment, and five years was enough for me.
Kirsty Williams wasn’t alone in feeling the strain. I had two periods of burnout as a Minister, with lengthy stretches off-sick for a combination of reasons. The stress of being Health Minister left its mark on Lesley Griffiths. She can tell you exactly how long she was in the job: 22 months, three weeks and four days
[Lesley Griffiths]
It was horrible. It really was a miserable time. As I say, somebody's got to do it. But it was miserable, you know, you got death threats. I remember having a mug sent to me with a death threat on.
And I always felt you mentioned Westminster health minister there just wouldn't get that level of scrutiny that we got here, because you look out the window, our stakeholders are there.
We're a very small country, and you were held responsible for things. I remember, unfortunately, a baby dying in a certain hospital in Wales, and somebody wrote to me and said, ‘that's your fault’. As a mother you take that really, really personally.
I lost a stone and a half in 18 months. Yeah, it's great diet. I say that to everybody
LW
From stress?
LG
Yes, and the fact that you have no life. So, you ask my family, they say I was miserable, and I never did anything apart from I had two weeks holiday the two years I was doing it.
Sundays were literally signing letters that I had from other elected representatives. Now, some health ministers let other people do that, I feel very passionately if my name is at the bottom of that letter, I need to sign off. So you would have to read the letter that was sent to you. You'd have to read the advice, and then you'd have to read the letter that you were sending back. So I could have 80 letters on a Sunday, and I knew if I didn't do them on a Sunday, I wouldn't get time to do them the rest of the week.
And the thing about health as well was you'd go on a visit, say to a hospital for an hour, you'd come out, and your private secretary would say ‘you need to clear six press releases…Oh, and this has happened’.
I remember I went into local government straight after health, and going on a visit and coming out, and there was just nothing. And I remember thinking, ‘wow, this is completely different’.
I personally couldn't have done it for much longer, and that was the kind of agreement I had with the First Minister, that I didn't really want to do it for a huge amount of time. I mean, you know, some health ministers have done it for a lot longer than I did, but I personally found it really, really, really tough.
Mick Antoniw was Counsel General under three First Ministers, and told me the job ‘takes over almost the entirety of your life’.
[Mick Antoniw]
“My experience is basically having to get up at six to be in the Senedd by 6:30 or seven, being home by eight or nine, reading further papers, and then a cycle that continues basically at least six out of seven days a week.
Essentially, barely a day would go by when you were not having to engage Everything was planned around the reading of papers. That is, if you want to do the job properly, of course, the other option is that you don't do the due job properly. You rubber stamp a lot more decision making or recommendations, etc, without fully drilling down into what those decisions are, I spent a lot of time actually doing my own research and background work in terms of understanding what was happening on legislation to ensure that when Advice came in, at least had some individual, specific knowledge about things that were things that were happening. But the point is not so much the issue of that personal experience, but of course, the impact it has, and I think it's unsustainable.
You can do it for a number of years, but eventually it does grind you down. It does affect your physical health, it does affect your mental health, and is not the way government should operate or the way in which parliaments should operate. So Senedd reform is one mechanism for that, but the issue of properly resourcing government is probably also another one.
None of the people I’ve spoken to are complaining that being a Minister is a big job and a lot of work. That’s a given.
The issue is whether the size of the roles in Wales, the sheer range of responsibilities that Welsh Ministers have to cover, and the level of support that is available, set the office-holders up to succeed?
Can you be an effective Minister when you have such a broad range of responsibilities?
Can you spot the issues that most need attention when you are overwhelmed by so much information coming at you?
Are you able to challenge the advice and worldview presented to you when there is so much pressure on your time?
Any Minister will privately admit that it is earlier to agree to the recommendation presented to you then it is to unpick the advice, to ask for further meetings to discuss, to summon alternative views or test the evidence.
That’s what the most effective Ministers do anyway. But it takes energy and stamina. And that takes its toll.
Kirsty Williams again
[KW]
And of course, the other thing that you've got to manage is your constituency, balancing your ministerial work with not wanting to to let your constituents down, not wanting your constituents to feel that you'd abandon them because you were the ‘big I am’ now, so therefore you didn't go to the things that you used to go to.
LW
And you were pretty ‘hands on’ with the constituency stuff?
KW
Yeah, yeah, very much. So trying to balance that. It was working seven days a week, because you would do your ministerial stuff, and then you'd spend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, catching up and doing everything that you needed to do in the constituency.
Of course being a Government Minister is a huge privilege. People who go into politics usually have a long list of things they’d like to change, but as a backbencher all you can really do is make speeches about your ideas.
When you are a Minister you are given that rare opportunity to turn ideas into actions.
And all eyes are on you. As soon as you arrive on the Fifth floor - the small support team in your private office, and all the senior civil servants in your department are looking to you for a signal of the direction you want to lead.
The pressure is on.
Sam Hadley thought he knew what he was letting himself in for when he because a Special Adviser. But he was wrong:
[Sam Hadley]
“I think nothing can quite sort of prepare you for the sort of sheer relentlessness of the stuff that's coming at you, pretty much from the moment you start. From the beginning of the day, till the end of the day when you choose to stop really, just in terms of sheer information flow, and also the kind of the regularity and the kind of volume of big stuff that's coming your way. So you know, you really are seeing for the first time what it is that Ministers and their advisors and senior officials are dealing with, and I don't think there's anything that can really prepare you for that”
But that’s the gig - the world over. It’s tough at the top.
But are the pressures especially acute in the Welsh Government? Kirsty Williams thinks so because we are trying to do so much, with so little
[KW]
I think first of all, your portfolio’s are huge, absolutely huge. We just don't have an institution that is big enough to be able to have..and you know there are constraints out there on the number of Ministers are allowed to have and the size of the government. So you're carrying an awful, an awful lot.
Let's take transport as one example. The Department for Transport in Westminster has five Ministers. One that focuses just on rail. Another that concentrates on buses, taxis and sustainable modes of transport. A Minister that leads only on roads and safety. And another that looks after aviation and shipping. And on top of that a Secretary of State that leads the department.
We have one transport Minister to cover all those responsibilities - and they invariably have other ones too. And with a tiny fraction of the civil servants that their opposite numbers in Whitehall have to cover the same ground
And yes, Wales is smaller but the issues are the same issues - just as complex and detailed.
John Howells is a 40-year veteran of the civil service in Wales. And until earlier this year was a member of the Senior Civil Service as Director of Climate Change, Energy and Planning in the Welsh Government.
[John Howells]
But it's worth just reminding people that in a number of areas, including some that I was involved in, the imbalance between the scale of resource being brought to bear on difficult topics in Whitehall, compared to the resource available in Wales, there's just no comparison.
So to give you one example: energy policy. Energy is largely a non devolved area, but if you work for a government like I did that was very committed to tackling climate change, turns out energy policy is one of the areas you want to become be influencing or be aware of. And so somehow my tiny team had to be aware of the energy policies being pursued by literally hundreds of very, very senior civil servants.
[LW]
When you say tiny team, how many people are you talking about?
[JH]
10 - plus or minus five.
_____________
Wales is small, and so is our Government and our Parliament. But our needs aren’t small, and neither are our aspirations. And that adds to the pressure
Kirsty Williams again
[KW]
I think one of the great things about Welsh devolution is the proximity of government to the rest of the legislature, so everybody's got access to you. You know, it's equally a curse and a blessing that Wales is such a small nation, because when I was the minister I could get every head teacher of the secondary school in one room, you know, so you got the opportunity to talk directly to your stakeholders and the people that you're working with.
But equally, you're massively exposed. There's no getting away from it. And it felt like you were ‘in it’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You're also part of the government, so you've got your portfolio, but actually you're also a spokesperson for that government. So you've got to do your fair share - you know, of the media rounds that might not you know specifically be on your area of responsibility out there, answering questions on behalf of the government generally. So yes, it was intense.
I think that proximity, the size of the institution, and the fact that you're a small group of people delivering all of those services makes it a particularly unique Welsh context.
………………..
The Senedd is small, and so by definition is the Welsh Government.
That creates not just the obvious constraints in capacity, but also in capability.
Every organisation has its A team and its B team. And its C team. And every Parliament, and Government, is the same.
So when you have just 60 people to choose from you inevitably have limited choices. There is a limited number of effective backbenchers in every party that would make formidable committee chairs. The choice of who to appoint as opposition spokespeople to keep Ministers on their toes is limited. And so is the number of people any First Minister has to draw on when appointing a Government.
In fact one of the strongest arguments for increasing the number of Senedd Members is also the one that is made the least - increasing the size of the talent pool.
The expansion of the Welsh Parliament after the next election in 2026 from 60 members to 96 is inevitably not popular. But it will produce a greater range to choose from.
And to make the most of that political parties need to have a willingness to talent-spot potential future Ministers when they are selecting their candidates.
For now a party in government usually has just 30 members to draw on, and from them a First Minister has to pick a team of 14 Ministers.
It is fair to say that the load is not evenly distributed.
The pressure is on.
Sam Hadley thought he knew what he was letting himself in for when he because a Special Adviser. But he was wrong:
[Sam Hadley]
“I think nothing can quite sort of prepare you for the sort of sheer relentlessness of the stuff that's coming at you, pretty much from the moment you start. From the beginning of the day, till the end of the day when you choose to stop really, just in terms of sheer information flow, and also the kind of the regularity and the kind of volume of big stuff that's coming your way. So you know, you really are seeing for the first time what it is that Ministers and their advisors and senior officials are dealing with, and I don't think there's anything that can really prepare you for that”
But that’s the gig - the world over. It’s tough at the top.
But are the pressures especially acute in the Welsh Government? Kirsty Williams thinks so because we are trying to do so much, with so little
[KW]
I think first of all, your portfolio’s are huge, absolutely huge. We just don't have an institution that is big enough to be able to have..and you know there are constraints out there on the number of Ministers are allowed to have and the size of the government. So you're carrying an awful, an awful lot.
Let's take transport as one example. The Department for Transport in Westminster has five Ministers. One that focuses just on rail. Another that concentrates on buses, taxis and sustainable modes of transport. A Minister that leads only on roads and safety. And another that looks after aviation and shipping. And on top of that a Secretary of State that leads the department.
We have one transport Minister to cover all those responsibilities - and they invariably have other ones too. And with a tiny fraction of the civil servants that their opposite numbers in Whitehall have to cover the same ground
And yes, Wales is smaller but the issues are the same issues - just as complex and detailed.
John Howells is a 40-year veteran of the civil service in Wales. And until earlier this year was a member of the Senior Civil Service as Director of Climate Change, Energy and Planning in the Welsh Government.
[John Howells]
But it's worth just reminding people that in a number of areas, including some that I was involved in, the imbalance between the scale of resource being brought to bear on difficult topics in Whitehall, compared to the resource available in Wales, there's just no comparison.
So to give you one example: energy policy. Energy is largely a non devolved area, but if you work for a government like I did that was very committed to tackling climate change, turns out energy policy is one of the areas you want to become be influencing or be aware of. And so somehow my tiny team had to be aware of the energy policies being pursued by literally hundreds of very, very senior civil servants.
[LW]
When you say tiny team, how many people are you talking about?
[JH]
10 - plus or minus five.
_____________
Wales is small, and so is our Government and our Parliament. But our needs aren’t small, and neither are our aspirations. And that adds to the pressure
Kirsty Williams again
[KW]
I think one of the great things about Welsh devolution is the proximity of government to the rest of the legislature, so everybody's got access to you. You know, it's equally a curse and a blessing that Wales is such a small nation, because when I was the minister I could get every head teacher of the secondary school in one room, you know, so you got the opportunity to talk directly to your stakeholders and the people that you're working with.
But equally, you're massively exposed. There's no getting away from it. And it felt like you were ‘in it’ 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
You're also part of the government, so you've got your portfolio, but actually you're also a spokesperson for that government. So you've got to do your fair share - you know, of the media rounds that might not you know specifically be on your area of responsibility out there, answering questions on behalf of the government generally. So yes, it was intense.
I think that proximity, the size of the institution, and the fact that you're a small group of people delivering all of those services makes it a particularly unique Welsh context.
………………..
The Senedd is small, and so by definition is the Welsh Government.
That creates not just the obvious constraints in capacity, but also in capability.
Every organisation has its A team and its B team. And its C team. And every Parliament, and Government, is the same.
So when you have just 60 people to choose from you inevitably have limited choices. There is a limited number of effective backbenchers in every party that would make formidable committee chairs. The choice of who to appoint as opposition spokespeople to keep Ministers on their toes is limited. And so is the number of people any First Minister has to draw on when appointing a Government.
In fact one of the strongest arguments for increasing the number of Senedd Members is also the one that is made the least - increasing the size of the talent pool.
The expansion of the Welsh Parliament after the next election in 2026 from 60 members to 96 is inevitably not popular. But it will produce a greater range to choose from.
And to make the most of that political parties need to have a willingness to talent-spot potential future Ministers when they are selecting their candidates.
For now a party in government usually has just 30 members to draw on, and from them a First Minister has to pick a team of 14 Ministers.
It is fair to say that the load is not evenly distributed.
So when you settle into your office on the 5th floor, and start to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of your colleagues, you need to think not just about the leadership of your own portfolio, but your role in the wider Government.
Every week you will attend Cabinet. Some of your colleagues will simply read out the briefs their own departments have prepared for them. But you may want to play a wider role in influencing the direction of the government as a whole. That means more work - reading all the papers before Cabinet and giving some thought as to how you can most effectively make a contribution.
That of course takes time.
And time is a constant pressure.
This is Tom Woodward. He served as a Special Adviser for more than 8 years, working closely with two Ministers for Education
[Tom Woodward]
It is incredibly fast moving. What is a problem, and this won't probably surprise people, is the short termism of working in a Parliament.
You've got a Friday, which is probably your Minister's constituency day, so that's one day of the week gone. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they're going to be dragged into the chamber to do all sorts of things. So that's difficult to focus and to actually ‘govern’, to use quotation marks.
You're not leaving a lot of time for the big thinking and to be able to act, and focus on good implementation, because, lo and behold, you've got a meeting. You want to talk about this big issue that absolutely needs to be sorted out, but then you've got to be dragged in the chamber because there's a topical question on I don’t know what.
I'm not arguing against that, because that's how democracy works. But it means that actually, the amount of time I think people would think that their ministers are getting to actually, again, quotation marks, ‘govern’, is really not a significant amount of time.
Once they've done their oral questions, they've done a topical question, they probably have to meet stakeholders or do a visit because that's what they need to do. There's just not enough hours in the day to just get your head into it.
That's the challenge, and management of yourself, of your diary and of your team, which, which is a huge challenge, which I think's not necessarily observed or noted really”
[Sam Hadley]
So on a sort of average day, or certainly a week, you might have a major funding call to make on a big project. We've had several of those over the last couple of years where we're delivering really major transformations on the Core Valley Lines [South Wales Metro Project] and big rail, and indeed bus and road projects across Wales. So it's that kind of thing, and then it's anything from that to things that might seem quite small if you looked at them kind of rationally, but actually have really big political implications. So there might be a particular local government leader who will be very upset by a decision that you're having to make, or a backbencher for that matter, or something that kind of has an added political resonance.
That’s Sam Hadley again. He worked closely with me when I was transport Minister as a special adviser, or Spad.
These are political appointees, technically they are ‘temporary’ Civil Servants. But they are empowered to act in a party political way that officials can’t.
They get the same access to information and the key people as Ministers do. In fact, the best ones act as Mini-Ministers, not acting on their own authority but lengthening the reach of the politicians they shadow.
Spads play a critical role as an interface between the Ministers and the civil service machine - chivvying, interpreting, anticipating, progress-chasing, double-checking, liaising.
There just aren't enough adjectives to cover what they do:
[Dan Butler]
“My shorthand summary of what being a special advisor is, I mean it's slightly glib, but you spend half your time telling people what the minister thinks, and then half your time telling the minister what other people think. And I would put the resolving cabinet tensions very firmly in that model really; a lot of it is just helping people understand their views”
Dan Butler was another spad I worked with, in fact he spanned several Ministers - and as a family friend who had worked for Mark Drakeford on and off for 20 years, was very well placed to help figure things out.
The Welsh system of special advisers is unusual. In Westminster spads are appointed by a cabinet minister and work directly to them. They are often quoted in the media as ‘sources close to’ a Minister who wants to get a message out. But when that Minister is no more, the spads are also out on their ear.
In the Welsh system spads are appointed by the First Minister. They are assigned to work alongside a Cabinet Minister, but they form a unit around the FM. If a Cabinet Minister leaves or moves the spad often stays put.
It is a curiously Welsh approach to collectivism, and can create a productive ambiguity:
Sam Hadley again
[SH]
Yeah. This can be quite a sort of interesting relationship, or dynamic. for the Minister that you're there to serve, because if you're like me you're used to serving ‘one master’, for want of a better word, and your loyalties immediately kind of go to them, but actually you, and this is an important part of the job, you've got to kind of maintain that cross-government view as much as you can and and also provide a source of information to the First Minister who is the person, who is your employer.
Every week you will attend Cabinet. Some of your colleagues will simply read out the briefs their own departments have prepared for them. But you may want to play a wider role in influencing the direction of the government as a whole. That means more work - reading all the papers before Cabinet and giving some thought as to how you can most effectively make a contribution.
That of course takes time.
And time is a constant pressure.
This is Tom Woodward. He served as a Special Adviser for more than 8 years, working closely with two Ministers for Education
[Tom Woodward]
It is incredibly fast moving. What is a problem, and this won't probably surprise people, is the short termism of working in a Parliament.
You've got a Friday, which is probably your Minister's constituency day, so that's one day of the week gone. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, they're going to be dragged into the chamber to do all sorts of things. So that's difficult to focus and to actually ‘govern’, to use quotation marks.
You're not leaving a lot of time for the big thinking and to be able to act, and focus on good implementation, because, lo and behold, you've got a meeting. You want to talk about this big issue that absolutely needs to be sorted out, but then you've got to be dragged in the chamber because there's a topical question on I don’t know what.
I'm not arguing against that, because that's how democracy works. But it means that actually, the amount of time I think people would think that their ministers are getting to actually, again, quotation marks, ‘govern’, is really not a significant amount of time.
Once they've done their oral questions, they've done a topical question, they probably have to meet stakeholders or do a visit because that's what they need to do. There's just not enough hours in the day to just get your head into it.
That's the challenge, and management of yourself, of your diary and of your team, which, which is a huge challenge, which I think's not necessarily observed or noted really”
[Sam Hadley]
So on a sort of average day, or certainly a week, you might have a major funding call to make on a big project. We've had several of those over the last couple of years where we're delivering really major transformations on the Core Valley Lines [South Wales Metro Project] and big rail, and indeed bus and road projects across Wales. So it's that kind of thing, and then it's anything from that to things that might seem quite small if you looked at them kind of rationally, but actually have really big political implications. So there might be a particular local government leader who will be very upset by a decision that you're having to make, or a backbencher for that matter, or something that kind of has an added political resonance.
That’s Sam Hadley again. He worked closely with me when I was transport Minister as a special adviser, or Spad.
These are political appointees, technically they are ‘temporary’ Civil Servants. But they are empowered to act in a party political way that officials can’t.
They get the same access to information and the key people as Ministers do. In fact, the best ones act as Mini-Ministers, not acting on their own authority but lengthening the reach of the politicians they shadow.
Spads play a critical role as an interface between the Ministers and the civil service machine - chivvying, interpreting, anticipating, progress-chasing, double-checking, liaising.
There just aren't enough adjectives to cover what they do:
[Dan Butler]
“My shorthand summary of what being a special advisor is, I mean it's slightly glib, but you spend half your time telling people what the minister thinks, and then half your time telling the minister what other people think. And I would put the resolving cabinet tensions very firmly in that model really; a lot of it is just helping people understand their views”
Dan Butler was another spad I worked with, in fact he spanned several Ministers - and as a family friend who had worked for Mark Drakeford on and off for 20 years, was very well placed to help figure things out.
The Welsh system of special advisers is unusual. In Westminster spads are appointed by a cabinet minister and work directly to them. They are often quoted in the media as ‘sources close to’ a Minister who wants to get a message out. But when that Minister is no more, the spads are also out on their ear.
In the Welsh system spads are appointed by the First Minister. They are assigned to work alongside a Cabinet Minister, but they form a unit around the FM. If a Cabinet Minister leaves or moves the spad often stays put.
It is a curiously Welsh approach to collectivism, and can create a productive ambiguity:
Sam Hadley again
[SH]
Yeah. This can be quite a sort of interesting relationship, or dynamic. for the Minister that you're there to serve, because if you're like me you're used to serving ‘one master’, for want of a better word, and your loyalties immediately kind of go to them, but actually you, and this is an important part of the job, you've got to kind of maintain that cross-government view as much as you can and and also provide a source of information to the First Minister who is the person, who is your employer.
So, I think that could be quite tricky to navigate, and I think people do that in different ways. I think probably I aired on the side of ‘I'm working day to day with you’, as the Transport Minister, and you know, that's where my primary focus is, and that's where my kind of loyalty lies, in a way. But at the same time, there's a wider loyalty. But I think actually the individual cabinet Ministers are wrestling with that same thing to a certain extent. So it's kind of, it sort of mirrors that, in a way, and I think different special advisors approach that differently.
Dan Butler was a Special Advisor for the whole of Mark Drakeford’s time as First Minister, And more than that he was his regular squash partner - where he saw his wiliness and tactical savvy up close.
He had a direct line to the First Minister but worked with two Cabinet Ministers Lesley Griffiths in Rural Affairs and Climate Minister Julie James
[Dan Butler]
I mean, day to day, you work alongside your minister. At the end of the day the person you walk to the edge of the cliff with is your minister day to day. I would see the First Minister on the weekend, and we'd, you know, chat about things, but in terms of the working relationship, you see him for a few minutes every couple of weeks for a very specific meeting where essentially he says, ‘I need something done about this’. And you say, ‘great’, and go off and do it. Whereas you know your minister you arrive with every day, you go to all the meetings, you share the pain, you have all the all the experiences of the day to day. So even though I feel like I worked with Mark, because that's how I got involved, I definitely feel like the people that I spent all my time with and got to know the best in work were the ministers and, you know, some of the officials. I mean, that's the thing, some of the time you're working on a cause or an issue, aren't you, so you're working with whoever is on your side, essentially, and sometimes people who are not on your side.
Tom Woodward started as the spin doctor for the Liberal Democrats in Wales . He came into Government with Kirsty Williams as part of her one-person coalition. But remarkably he was kept on after she stood down and continued as a special adviser in the Labour government.
Like all good advisers he didn’t draw attention to himself, was good at what he did, and made himself indispensable.
[TW]
It's obviously so different to London where a special advisor job generally is probably going to be short term. There's a huge amount of them, like ridiculous numbers. And one day your minister is sacked or something, you've then got to go. Obviously, in the Welsh Government it’s completely different; there's a really small amount of spads comparatively, and they all work for the First Minister. So there's quite a lot of stability there, and that stability is actually generally been continued by each First Minister. I worked for three. It hadn't crossed my mind actually to continue once Kirsty left, but they were happy for that to continue.
I guess there's a fine line because you do work for the First Minister, but you become very close, or most do, with their ministers, and you are aligned, really, to them. I never lost sight, particularly after Kirsty left - , because I considered I worked for Kirsty not for Carwyn - but once it wasn't a Lib Dem minister, then I was always conscious it was the first minister who employed me and wanted me to do the job. So, yeah, it's difficult, but generally in the Special Advisor meetings, or anything really, you are representing your minister and their views.
It’s hard to know what a spad is, but I've generally considered one of the main roles of a spad is to communicate and to help implement what your minister wants, and be the voice to the civil service of what they want.
[LW]
Were there many times where you found a conflict between that because I know Mark Drakeford would have meetings, bilateral meetings himself with spads, excluding the ministers, from time to time…
TW
Yes
LW
…which ministers didn't like very much.
TW
No
LW
So were there times when you were put in a difficult position?
TW
Dan Butler was a Special Advisor for the whole of Mark Drakeford’s time as First Minister, And more than that he was his regular squash partner - where he saw his wiliness and tactical savvy up close.
He had a direct line to the First Minister but worked with two Cabinet Ministers Lesley Griffiths in Rural Affairs and Climate Minister Julie James
[Dan Butler]
I mean, day to day, you work alongside your minister. At the end of the day the person you walk to the edge of the cliff with is your minister day to day. I would see the First Minister on the weekend, and we'd, you know, chat about things, but in terms of the working relationship, you see him for a few minutes every couple of weeks for a very specific meeting where essentially he says, ‘I need something done about this’. And you say, ‘great’, and go off and do it. Whereas you know your minister you arrive with every day, you go to all the meetings, you share the pain, you have all the all the experiences of the day to day. So even though I feel like I worked with Mark, because that's how I got involved, I definitely feel like the people that I spent all my time with and got to know the best in work were the ministers and, you know, some of the officials. I mean, that's the thing, some of the time you're working on a cause or an issue, aren't you, so you're working with whoever is on your side, essentially, and sometimes people who are not on your side.
Tom Woodward started as the spin doctor for the Liberal Democrats in Wales . He came into Government with Kirsty Williams as part of her one-person coalition. But remarkably he was kept on after she stood down and continued as a special adviser in the Labour government.
Like all good advisers he didn’t draw attention to himself, was good at what he did, and made himself indispensable.
[TW]
It's obviously so different to London where a special advisor job generally is probably going to be short term. There's a huge amount of them, like ridiculous numbers. And one day your minister is sacked or something, you've then got to go. Obviously, in the Welsh Government it’s completely different; there's a really small amount of spads comparatively, and they all work for the First Minister. So there's quite a lot of stability there, and that stability is actually generally been continued by each First Minister. I worked for three. It hadn't crossed my mind actually to continue once Kirsty left, but they were happy for that to continue.
I guess there's a fine line because you do work for the First Minister, but you become very close, or most do, with their ministers, and you are aligned, really, to them. I never lost sight, particularly after Kirsty left - , because I considered I worked for Kirsty not for Carwyn - but once it wasn't a Lib Dem minister, then I was always conscious it was the first minister who employed me and wanted me to do the job. So, yeah, it's difficult, but generally in the Special Advisor meetings, or anything really, you are representing your minister and their views.
It’s hard to know what a spad is, but I've generally considered one of the main roles of a spad is to communicate and to help implement what your minister wants, and be the voice to the civil service of what they want.
[LW]
Were there many times where you found a conflict between that because I know Mark Drakeford would have meetings, bilateral meetings himself with spads, excluding the ministers, from time to time…
TW
Yes
LW
…which ministers didn't like very much.
TW
No
LW
So were there times when you were put in a difficult position?
TW
No, no, I don't think so. Not really. I would generally be on the same page as Jeremy. The obvious examples are budgets and things, where he and I would be arguing for more priority for education, obviously, and Jane [Runckles, Chief Spad], or the First Minister, would be taking more of a corporate approach, and that's to be expected. No, I didn't find it a problem.
When Mark Drakeford would speak to special advisers, from my point of view, that really was not a case of skipping out other ministers. It was generally, ‘can I have some information on this, which, because I've, I've been thinking about it, and it's coming up in FMQs a lot’, it would generally be that kind of thing. It was very rarely: ‘I want to have a discussion with you about what we do with X, Y and Z, and the minister not being involved. Although I can see why ministers are thinking: ‘Why? What are they talking about?’
A good special adviser, and a partnership with them, is critical if you want to be an effective Minister.
Obviously politics is not straightforward. Sometimes it is a team game, often it is not.
It is more like a strategic alliance. And a highly tactical one at that.
The best Ministers are collaborators. But canny ones that recognise that interests can often diverge.
Effective Ministers know when it’s time for power-politics - for pushing to get your own way. And time for tactical alliances, and sometimes tactical retreats.
Harry Truman’s mantra still holds: ‘it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit’.
It’s complicated. And that’s what makes it so fascinating.
And in this game of four dimensional chess the person who can see the whole board is the person who has the final say: the Prif Weinidog.
The First Minister, just like the Prime Minister, is the final arbiter.
But they too are guided by the law that politics is the art of the possible, and as we saw when Mark Drakeford stood down from the top job, the position relies on the support of others.
Here’s what Dan Butler observed:
[DB]
Well, I mean, managing intra-cabinet dynamics is a really important part of the role, and I think it's a common public misperception that people think that if you have a First Minister, they have a cabinet, and they pack it with their allies. Whereas what actually happens is from a party management point of view you need to have some level of representation. So you need to have some levels of intellectual tension, political tension, in the cabinet, because it helps you make better decisions and keep people on side. But obviously, as a special adviser, then you're caught in the middle of that.
So it's difficult in that sense, but equally, it's easier doing that than it is managing tensions that are going on outside. And I mean, that's that's the point, isn't it? That's why you have that sort of arrangement.
When Mark Drakeford would speak to special advisers, from my point of view, that really was not a case of skipping out other ministers. It was generally, ‘can I have some information on this, which, because I've, I've been thinking about it, and it's coming up in FMQs a lot’, it would generally be that kind of thing. It was very rarely: ‘I want to have a discussion with you about what we do with X, Y and Z, and the minister not being involved. Although I can see why ministers are thinking: ‘Why? What are they talking about?’
A good special adviser, and a partnership with them, is critical if you want to be an effective Minister.
Obviously politics is not straightforward. Sometimes it is a team game, often it is not.
It is more like a strategic alliance. And a highly tactical one at that.
The best Ministers are collaborators. But canny ones that recognise that interests can often diverge.
Effective Ministers know when it’s time for power-politics - for pushing to get your own way. And time for tactical alliances, and sometimes tactical retreats.
Harry Truman’s mantra still holds: ‘it is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit’.
It’s complicated. And that’s what makes it so fascinating.
And in this game of four dimensional chess the person who can see the whole board is the person who has the final say: the Prif Weinidog.
The First Minister, just like the Prime Minister, is the final arbiter.
But they too are guided by the law that politics is the art of the possible, and as we saw when Mark Drakeford stood down from the top job, the position relies on the support of others.
Here’s what Dan Butler observed:
[DB]
Well, I mean, managing intra-cabinet dynamics is a really important part of the role, and I think it's a common public misperception that people think that if you have a First Minister, they have a cabinet, and they pack it with their allies. Whereas what actually happens is from a party management point of view you need to have some level of representation. So you need to have some levels of intellectual tension, political tension, in the cabinet, because it helps you make better decisions and keep people on side. But obviously, as a special adviser, then you're caught in the middle of that.
So it's difficult in that sense, but equally, it's easier doing that than it is managing tensions that are going on outside. And I mean, that's that's the point, isn't it? That's why you have that sort of arrangement.
A lot of the work of special advisers is nipping problems in the bud - a row in Cabinet is generally considered a sign that the system hasn’t worked.
Behind the scenes a lot of work is done by the special adviser team to reconcile differences within Government
[DB]
Well obviously prevention is better than cure, for sure. So being able to preempt the things that will get get your ministers worked up is obviously the best way of is of dealing with things - either by making sure that before something happens those who are involved in whatever decision are fully cognizant of how your ministers likely to respond, and therefore might think about how they go about it, or, otherwise developing ways of handling it with your minister, whether that's, you know, if it's something that they might want to do something about and that is going to be helpful to the government, then you might try and help them with that.
If it's not something that's going to be helpful to them and the government, but they're going to do it anyway, then it might be a matter of damage control and trying to help explain to some of the other people who might be annoyed about it, why somebody might look at it from a different perspective.
Politics and government are not that different from any large organisation in many ways - except that everything is that much more vivid.
The picture that emerges from all this first hand testimony is what a complex environment Government is. The politics is multi-dimensional and contested, as is the delivery landscape.
The capacity is limited, and the capability is patchy.
When Ministers get out of the elevator onto the fifth floor for the first time some have been waiting for this moment, and this portfolio, and have a clear direction they’ve long thought about.
Others are caught on the hop, and really don’t know where to start. And there’s precious little time and space to think. The pace of things coming at you, and the sheer volume of work, is relentless.
The civil service is set to auto-pilot and it takes a determined Minister to wrestle control of the console, and chart their own course. But once the officials feel they have a Minister who knows their own mind they are quick to fall-in and do their best to deliver.
Tom Woodward was at Kirsty Williams’s side for 5 years as Education Minister, and stayed on as Special Adviser during Jeremy Miles’ three years in the job - and then continued as an adviser to Vaughan Gething.
I asked him how much difference he thinks individual ministers can make?
[TW]
I actually think quite a lot, personally. Or they can do. You know, it takes a certain type of Minister to actually leave a bit of a personal imprint on their department, but it's definitely possible. You know, some are more like that than others I guess.
LW
And that's just down to different personalities, different priorities, different intellects, I guess?. What's the ingredient you think of being an effective Minister?
TW
There's one thing I would say that I've thought about quite a lot, and I'm not talking about the ministers I worked for necessarily, but just generally now. Some ministers, or even politicians, forget that they're basically leaders.
Obviously, public facing, they're the leaders, but actually they have their own department, and you will set the objectives of what you would you want that department to be focused on; but actually the way that you conduct yourself can have a big impact on people wanting to, you know, run through walls for you, or think, ‘oh, sod it’.
As in any job you will ever do leadership is really important actually, and that's sometimes potentially forgotten at the very top. And it's just, ‘I want this and this should happen’. Fine, but actually, if you want people to do a great job, you have to do all the leadership qualities that you've you know, that we're all familiar with.
I think that's quite an important, and sometimes forgotten, thing about government and ministers and getting things done. And then obviously more ministers have more views, just generally. Some ministers come in and have a really strong view of what they want to achieve and how more than others. I mean, again, that's stating the obvious. Others are possibly more happy for it to be a little bit more managerial.
Every Minister and every advisor I’ve spoken to talks about the pressure of working on the 5th floor, but also the privilege
Sara Faye came from running a pupil referral unit in Swansea to working as an advisor for Julie James, mostly on housing and local government matters. She spent five years as a spad. I asked her for her reflections on her time in Government:
[SF]
I think somebody said this to me when I first started that it's a huge privilege, and I kind of didn't understand what that meant. And I think that I do now.
I think that it is a huge privilege. I think that you've got an awful lot of information at your fingertips. So that's kind of seductive, isn't it, where you kind of you can learn an awful lot in a very small, short space of time, and you also have an awful lot of influence.
You're there in conversations where not everybody gets to be, or be so influential in how policy can be shaped. So privilege is what I would say it is, but it's very hard. I had a young family, still have a young family, and I found that particularly difficult. And I, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that lots of people don't have young families who do this job, because I think it is a job that doesn't have any boundaries at all.
So I can't say that I worked five days a week, or, you know, I was always working, and that is interesting, but not really sustainable. And I don't know whether that is about our numbers, whether there's just too few, or whether it's just like the jelly that it just fills up the space. I don't know.
I enjoyed it. It was, it was exciting and interesting and all of those things. But it also, you know, is unpleasant at times to work under that amount of pressure I would say.
Here's Lesley Griffiths again:
[LG]
Well obviously prevention is better than cure, for sure. So being able to preempt the things that will get get your ministers worked up is obviously the best way of is of dealing with things - either by making sure that before something happens those who are involved in whatever decision are fully cognizant of how your ministers likely to respond, and therefore might think about how they go about it, or, otherwise developing ways of handling it with your minister, whether that's, you know, if it's something that they might want to do something about and that is going to be helpful to the government, then you might try and help them with that.
If it's not something that's going to be helpful to them and the government, but they're going to do it anyway, then it might be a matter of damage control and trying to help explain to some of the other people who might be annoyed about it, why somebody might look at it from a different perspective.
Politics and government are not that different from any large organisation in many ways - except that everything is that much more vivid.
The picture that emerges from all this first hand testimony is what a complex environment Government is. The politics is multi-dimensional and contested, as is the delivery landscape.
The capacity is limited, and the capability is patchy.
When Ministers get out of the elevator onto the fifth floor for the first time some have been waiting for this moment, and this portfolio, and have a clear direction they’ve long thought about.
Others are caught on the hop, and really don’t know where to start. And there’s precious little time and space to think. The pace of things coming at you, and the sheer volume of work, is relentless.
The civil service is set to auto-pilot and it takes a determined Minister to wrestle control of the console, and chart their own course. But once the officials feel they have a Minister who knows their own mind they are quick to fall-in and do their best to deliver.
Tom Woodward was at Kirsty Williams’s side for 5 years as Education Minister, and stayed on as Special Adviser during Jeremy Miles’ three years in the job - and then continued as an adviser to Vaughan Gething.
I asked him how much difference he thinks individual ministers can make?
[TW]
I actually think quite a lot, personally. Or they can do. You know, it takes a certain type of Minister to actually leave a bit of a personal imprint on their department, but it's definitely possible. You know, some are more like that than others I guess.
LW
And that's just down to different personalities, different priorities, different intellects, I guess?. What's the ingredient you think of being an effective Minister?
TW
There's one thing I would say that I've thought about quite a lot, and I'm not talking about the ministers I worked for necessarily, but just generally now. Some ministers, or even politicians, forget that they're basically leaders.
Obviously, public facing, they're the leaders, but actually they have their own department, and you will set the objectives of what you would you want that department to be focused on; but actually the way that you conduct yourself can have a big impact on people wanting to, you know, run through walls for you, or think, ‘oh, sod it’.
As in any job you will ever do leadership is really important actually, and that's sometimes potentially forgotten at the very top. And it's just, ‘I want this and this should happen’. Fine, but actually, if you want people to do a great job, you have to do all the leadership qualities that you've you know, that we're all familiar with.
I think that's quite an important, and sometimes forgotten, thing about government and ministers and getting things done. And then obviously more ministers have more views, just generally. Some ministers come in and have a really strong view of what they want to achieve and how more than others. I mean, again, that's stating the obvious. Others are possibly more happy for it to be a little bit more managerial.
Every Minister and every advisor I’ve spoken to talks about the pressure of working on the 5th floor, but also the privilege
Sara Faye came from running a pupil referral unit in Swansea to working as an advisor for Julie James, mostly on housing and local government matters. She spent five years as a spad. I asked her for her reflections on her time in Government:
[SF]
I think somebody said this to me when I first started that it's a huge privilege, and I kind of didn't understand what that meant. And I think that I do now.
I think that it is a huge privilege. I think that you've got an awful lot of information at your fingertips. So that's kind of seductive, isn't it, where you kind of you can learn an awful lot in a very small, short space of time, and you also have an awful lot of influence.
You're there in conversations where not everybody gets to be, or be so influential in how policy can be shaped. So privilege is what I would say it is, but it's very hard. I had a young family, still have a young family, and I found that particularly difficult. And I, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that lots of people don't have young families who do this job, because I think it is a job that doesn't have any boundaries at all.
So I can't say that I worked five days a week, or, you know, I was always working, and that is interesting, but not really sustainable. And I don't know whether that is about our numbers, whether there's just too few, or whether it's just like the jelly that it just fills up the space. I don't know.
I enjoyed it. It was, it was exciting and interesting and all of those things. But it also, you know, is unpleasant at times to work under that amount of pressure I would say.
Here's Lesley Griffiths again:
[LG]
I think having now been out of government for coming up for four months, and you do reflect, don't you. When you're on that treadmill, you just keep going on that treadmill, and you just keep going, and you keep going, and you get to a recess, and hopefully in that recess you'll have at least a few days off, or a week off, or if it's the summer, you get two weeks off, and that recharges you. And then you just get back on that treadmill and you do it again.
Mark Drakeford as First Minister left you in post. So that long-term making of decisions was really good, because you couldn't think ‘Oh, well, I probably won't be around to see the outcome of this’.
I'm gonna see the outcome of this. I want to see the outcome of this. I want to see how this will impact on the sector. You know, I would loved to take the sustainable farming scheme through, and I really thought I would in the period of time, but, you know, it's still ongoing now.
So I think that constant trend, ‘politicians are lazy’. We get that all the time, don't we? I don't think people recognize this is the hardest job I've ever done.
Sara Faye came from running a pupil referral unit in Swansea to working as an advisor for Julie James, mostly on housing and local government matters. She spent five years as a spad. I asked her for her reflections on her time in Government:
[SF]
I think somebody said this to me when I first started that it's a huge privilege, and I kind of didn't understand what that meant. And I think that I do now.
I think that it is a huge privilege. I think that you've got an awful lot of information at your fingertips. So that's kind of seductive, isn't it, where you kind of you can learn an awful lot in a very small, short space of time, and you also have an awful lot of influence.
You're there in conversations where not everybody gets to be, or be so influential in how policy can be shaped. So privilege is what I would say it is, but it's very hard. I had a young family, still have a young family, and I found that particularly difficult. And I, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that lots of people don't have young families who do this job, because I think it is a job that doesn't have any boundaries at all.
So I can't say that I worked five days a week, or, you know, I was always working, and that is interesting, but not really sustainable. And I don't know whether that is about our numbers, whether there's just too few, or whether it's just like the jelly that it just fills up the space. I don't know.
Mark Drakeford as First Minister left you in post. So that long-term making of decisions was really good, because you couldn't think ‘Oh, well, I probably won't be around to see the outcome of this’.
I'm gonna see the outcome of this. I want to see the outcome of this. I want to see how this will impact on the sector. You know, I would loved to take the sustainable farming scheme through, and I really thought I would in the period of time, but, you know, it's still ongoing now.
So I think that constant trend, ‘politicians are lazy’. We get that all the time, don't we? I don't think people recognize this is the hardest job I've ever done.
Sara Faye came from running a pupil referral unit in Swansea to working as an advisor for Julie James, mostly on housing and local government matters. She spent five years as a spad. I asked her for her reflections on her time in Government:
[SF]
I think somebody said this to me when I first started that it's a huge privilege, and I kind of didn't understand what that meant. And I think that I do now.
I think that it is a huge privilege. I think that you've got an awful lot of information at your fingertips. So that's kind of seductive, isn't it, where you kind of you can learn an awful lot in a very small, short space of time, and you also have an awful lot of influence.
You're there in conversations where not everybody gets to be, or be so influential in how policy can be shaped. So privilege is what I would say it is, but it's very hard. I had a young family, still have a young family, and I found that particularly difficult. And I, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that lots of people don't have young families who do this job, because I think it is a job that doesn't have any boundaries at all.
So I can't say that I worked five days a week, or, you know, I was always working, and that is interesting, but not really sustainable. And I don't know whether that is about our numbers, whether there's just too few, or whether it's just like the jelly that it just fills up the space. I don't know.
I enjoyed it. It was, it was exciting and interesting and all of those things. But it also, you know, is unpleasant at times to work under that amount of pressure I would say.
____________-
The sheer breadth of Ministerial responsibilities and workloads is the first of pressures you face on the Fifth Floor of Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay.
In discussion with former colleagues I’ve identified five other themes that incoming Ministers need to deal with if they want to be effective in Government.
In the next episode of the Fifth Floor I’ll be looking at another challenge - the bandwidth of the civil service to get things done quickly.
____________-
The sheer breadth of Ministerial responsibilities and workloads is the first of pressures you face on the Fifth Floor of Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay.
In discussion with former colleagues I’ve identified five other themes that incoming Ministers need to deal with if they want to be effective in Government.
In the next episode of the Fifth Floor I’ll be looking at another challenge - the bandwidth of the civil service to get things done quickly.
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