ResHUFFle: Could Jeremy Hunt Find The DCMS Is Scrapped By Cameron To Save Money?

ResHUFFle: Taxi For Hunt, And His Department?

As well as reshuffling his Cabinet in September it could be that David Cameron decides to close a few government departments, merging their functions with bigger ones. There's certainly been a lot of gossip about this at Westminster for several months, with the Department for Culture Media and Sport viewed as a prime candidate for the chop.

Others talk about abolishing the Department for Energy and Climate Change, hiving those functions back into DEFRA from whence it first came. Some believe that the Department for International Development, created by Tony Blair in the halcyon days of New Labour, could find itself absorbed back into the Foreign Office.

Getting rid of DfID as standalone entity would be tricky - the lobbying groups associated with overseas aid would cause an unholy row. Similarly any suggestion that energy and climate change are no longer worthy enough topics to have their own ministry would play into the hands of those who already think George Osborne is a climate change sceptic.

Yet some think the DCMS lacks the kind of powerful lobbying interests which would save other departments. "The creative industries would try to kick up a fuss, but they'd have nothing like the lobbying power that people connected to DFID have," says one former special adviser.

One reason that the DCMS is seen as ripe for the chop is that it isn't what's known as a "spending department" - its small budget is largely handed out to external quangos and agencies for them to spend, meaning the number of initiatives it can execute itself is limited.

There is also a view that Jeremy Hunt may have precipitated the demise of DCMS two years ago, by eagerly proposing a budget cut of 50%, right at the start of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Hunt was among the first ministers to send their departmental proposals to the Treasury, some saw it as an attempt to please the teacher, in return for getting on the "star chamber" of ministers who'd end up setting the budgets for more truculent departments.

The effect, says one former DCMS staffer, has been to allow the department to whither on the vine. "The Treasury would have laughed and said, marvellous," they tell me. But the effect was to reduce the staff in the DCMS to about 150 people, making it seem like a Whitehall backwater and discouraging young "fast-stream" civil service talent from going there, despite the Olympics.

"He showed his hand too early," says the former staffer. "I think he was still very much in the opposition mindset, where you say the department you're shadowing should be cut. But actually to be seen as a good Secretary of State and progress in government, you have to defend your department's budget. Not slash it so willingly."

As such it's not inconceivable that decisions made by Hunt two years ago could lead to the end of his own ministerial career. Some think he might be able to hang on but if the number of secretaries of state shrink it makes it much harder. Hunt's testimony to the Leveson inquiry over his role in the aborted BskyB takeover was highly damaging, many think he got away lightly amid well-founded accusations that he broke the ministerial code.

If the DCMS were scrapped many of its functions would be merged into Vince Cable's department at BIS. A few bits - like modernising libraries - would go to Education, with the Cabinet Office picking up anything which wasn't a good fit. Nobody seems quite clear where sport would end up, though. The government's very keen for one Olympic legacy to be a greater take-up of sporty things, but dividing all those functions into various departments (BIS and Health, maybe) risks overlap and confusion.

The savings themselves would be minimal - "just building costs and letterheads" is how it was put to me, and judging from the DCMS's own annual report you're talking savings in the millions, not the billions. You'd end up with a slightly smaller Cabinet, demonstrable commitment to smaller-looking government, and it would not co-incidentally resolve the problem of what to do with Jeremy Hunt.

The main worry is that BIS is too focused on other things - Vince Cable regularly touts his "industrial strategy" as part of Plan A+ to encourage some growth. The creative sector, despite being an area which the government admits has huge potential for growth - could be sidelined in Whitehall thanks to an obsession with heavy industry.

If it happened, when and how? "You'd have a lot of transitional stuff to do, which could take a year," says a former Labour special adviser, familiar with Tony Blair's love of reshaping Whitehall on a whim. "Although under Labour the announcement was made, ministers were appointed and then the departments changed around them, which was not particularly healthy," says the ex-Spad.

The one caveat in all of this is that it's not uncommon for gossip about departments being axed to end up being unfounded. For years and years - ever since devolution in fact - there's been speculation that the Wales, Scottish and Northern Ireland offices could be rolled together into one place. It's never happened, at least not so far.

Then there is a lesson of history - in the early years of New Labour the local government, transport and environment departments were merged into one gigantic super ministry headed by then deputy prime minister John Prescott. The result, it's widely agreed, was a disaster.

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