Closed cabinets

Tweet One aspect of cabinet government which people often seem not to understand is how little discussion and disagreement actually happens in meetings of the cabinet. The reason, of course, is that most of the real discussion and disagreement happens before anything actually gets to cabinet, by which time it is, to all intents and purposes, a "done deal". So, openly publishing minutes of cabinet meetings doesn't necessarily actually tell us very much.

Given that the normal situation in the UK has been for cabinets to be composed of members of a single party, such a system has a number of advantages – not the least being that the governing party has its disagreements in private rather than in public. I find myself wondering, however, whether the same system really suits a coalition model of government.

Certainly, it enables the government to appear united on all policy decisions, but it also means that negotiations – often tough negotiations – between parties with different values and policies are happening in secret, in a way which is not visible to members of either party outside the inner group within the government. It also means that the little "quid pro quo's" which happen on a daily basis are invisible to most, and that party members - and the public at large – see only those occasions when one party has had to yield substantial ground.

I can hardly deny that Plaid has had a few difficulties recently about one major concession made by our ministers – I was trying to explain the situation once again yesterday on Radio Cymru. It's a concession about which many members are unhappy. Nor can we ignore the fact that when a coalition is made between two parties of unequal size, the smaller is likely to end up making more, and probably bigger, concessions than the other.

I do feel somehow, though, that we're not seeing the whole picture, and that adherence to a traditional and secretive form of cabinet government is part of the problem.