The Prime Minister has created a new Cabinet role dedicated to explaining the responsibilities of existing Cabinet roles, following widespread confusion among MPs, civil servants, and at least three people who hold ministerial positions themselves.
The newly appointed Minister for Ministerial Clarification, Rebecca Thornton, will be tasked with producing comprehensible descriptions of what each of the government’s 117 ministers actually does during working hours. Her department will also maintain a database explaining the difference between a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and a Parliamentary Secretary, though officials have conceded this may require oracle-like powers of divination.
Ms Thornton, who until yesterday served as Deputy Minister for Regional Stakeholder Engagement Coordination, admitted she had spent most of the past eight months trying to work out whether her previous role overlapped with the Minister for Local Growth, the Minister for Community Cohesion, or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Office for Place-Based Outcomes.
“It turns out it was all three, plus a bit of what the Minister of State for Levelling Up Delivery was supposed to be doing,” Thornton told reporters outside Portcullis House. “Though he thought he was covering regional transport policy, which is actually split between two people in the Department for Transport and someone in the Treasury whose business cards just say ‘Frank, trains’.”
The new department will employ approximately 140 staff, including a Deputy Minister for Ministerial Clarification who will focus specifically on explaining what the Minister for Ministerial Clarification does. There will also be a Parliamentary Under-Secretary responsible for clarifying the role of the Deputy Minister, though the Treasury has requested this position be left vacant for six months while they work out where the funding is coming from.
Civil servant Martin Howarth, who has worked in Whitehall for 23 years, welcomed the appointment. “Just last week I received identical emails from four different ministers asking me to prepare a brief on rural broadband policy,” he said. “When I pointed out that none of them actually had broadband in their portfolio, they all claimed someone at a breakfast meeting had mentioned they might.”
The Prime Minister defended the new role as essential for governmental efficiency, arguing that ministers were currently spending an average of seven hours per week in meetings to establish which ministers should attend which meetings. He acknowledged that some critics might view this as adding another layer of bureaucracy to solve a problem created by bureaucracy, but noted that addressing such criticism would fall under the remit of the Minister for Governmental Efficiency Optics, a position created last Thursday.
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch described the announcement as typical of a government that responds to every challenge by expanding the size of the state. She then introduced her own shadow ministerial team, which now includes a Shadow Minister for Holding the Government to Account on Unnecessary Ministerial Positions.
The Minister for Ministerial Clarification will begin work on Monday, assuming she can locate her office. Early reports suggest it may be in the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, or possibly a converted storage room in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology that three other ministers are already using on alternate Tuesdays.