The Short Answer
A line manager is the person an employee reports to at work. A line manager does two jobs. The first is directing the work: what the employee does, what comes first, and who signs off decisions. The second is looking after the employee: whether the workload is manageable, how the employee is coping, and where to go when something is wrong.
In UK government, the first job has a clear answer at every level, all the way up to the Prime Minister. The second job has an answer for ordinary staff and then largely disappears. Nobody is clearly given the task of looking after senior officials or ministers as people. For the Prime Minister there is one partial exception, a weekly private meeting with the monarch. The same gap shows in everyday matters such as booking leave, claiming expenses, illness and family life, which are covered below.
Going Up the Chain
A civil servant
A civil servant is employed to carry out the work of government, such as paying benefits or issuing passports.
Who directs the work: their line manager.
Who looks after them: the same line manager, with the department’s human resources team and occupational health service (which supports staff health at work).
A Permanent Secretary
The Permanent Secretary is the most senior civil servant in a department and runs it day to day.
Who directs the work: the Secretary of State, the elected minister in charge of the department. For how the Permanent Secretary performs, and for the appointment itself, the line runs to the Cabinet Secretary, the most senior civil servant in the country, with the Prime Minister approving each appointment. On spending, the Permanent Secretary also answers personally to Parliament.
Who looks after them: no published role covers asking how the Permanent Secretary is coping.
A Secretary of State
A Secretary of State is the minister in charge of a department, such as health or education.
Who directs the work: the Prime Minister, who chooses them and can remove them. They also answer to Parliament in public, through questions from MPs, debates and committees of MPs.
Who looks after them: no one in particular. Day-to-day help comes from a small private office of civil servants who manage the minister’s diary and papers. Fellow MPs and party whips (the MPs who keep party members organised and voting together) support them politically. None of these roles includes checking how the minister is coping.
The Prime Minister
Who directs the work: no one directs the Prime Minister’s day-to-day work. The Prime Minister sets the direction of the government.
Who looks after them: no one formally. Most of what exists are checks on whether the Prime Minister keeps the job: a majority of MPs in the House of Commons, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s own party, and a committee of MPs that questions the Prime Minister in public a few times a year. These look at political support and conduct, not at the person. The one exception is the weekly private meeting with the monarch, described below.
Everyday Tests: Leave and Expenses
Two ordinary tasks show how the chain works in practice: booking time off and claiming back costs.
A civil servant books leave through the line manager, who approves it, and claims expenses the same way. The sign-off is routine.
A Permanent Secretary is covered by no published process for how leave is booked or approved. For expenses, government departments publish the expenses, gifts and hospitality of their most senior officials, so the check is partly public.
A Secretary of State is covered by no published process for who signs off leave. The minister’s private office organises the diary and travel. Ministers’ travel, gifts, hospitality and meetings are published, so again the check is public. The costs of the ministerial job itself are met by the department. Costs that come from being an MP, such as running a constituency office, go through the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body that sets and checks MPs’ expenses.
The Prime Minister has no published process for approving a holiday. The costs of the job are met through the Cabinet Office, and costs as an MP go through IPSA, as for any minister. Downing Street’s long-standing line is that the Prime Minister is always in charge, wherever they are. In 2014, David Cameron, a former Prime Minister, said he always kept a phone within reach and could return at once if needed, and he cut several holidays short when crises arose.
When the Prime Minister Is Ill
Illness is the harder test, because no manager exists to take over. It happened in April 2020, when Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, was moved to intensive care on 6 April with Covid-19. He asked Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, who held the senior Cabinet post of First Secretary of State, to run the government “where necessary”. Raab chaired the daily Covid-19 meeting of senior ministers and advisers. Decisions remained with the Cabinet as a whole, and Raab said the government’s focus would be on carrying out the Prime Minister’s direction. Johnson left hospital on 12 April.
There was no written rule setting out who takes over, and the arrangement was made at the time. A Prime Minister who is ill has the work covered, but nothing in the system works like a manager’s sick-leave process.
Family Life and Time Off
Everyday life raises the same question. Who agrees that a minister or Prime Minister can attend a family funeral, a wedding, or a visit to relatives or friends?
No published rule sets out a right to time off for these, or a route for asking for it. In practice they appear to be fitted around the diary, which is organised by the private office for a minister and by Downing Street staff for the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister also has a police protection team, so a private visit involves arrangements that most employees never need. The structure leaves it to the individual.
The Weekly Audience with the Monarch
One part of the system comes closer to the second job than anything else. Each week the Prime Minister has a private meeting with the monarch, called an audience. Nobody else is present, and no record of it is published. The Royal Household describes the audiences as entirely private, covering government matters.
Officially, this is a function of the state. In 1867 the writer Walter Bagehot, whose book on the constitution is still widely quoted, said the monarch has three rights: to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. The monarch stays politically neutral, and advises and warns when necessary.
Prime Ministers have also described it in more personal terms. Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, said the Queen “was a great support, because she is the one person you can talk to”. Edward Heath, Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974, said he could “confide in Her Majesty absolutely”. The Queen herself was reported as saying that Prime Ministers “unburden themselves” and that she could be impartial.
So the audience works as a state function and, for some Prime Ministers, as a check-in as well. It has clear limits as a replacement for a line manager. The monarch has no authority over the Prime Minister’s workload and no part in sick leave or time off. It covers only the Prime Minister, not ministers or officials. And how much support it offers depends on the personal relationship between two people, which changes with each Prime Minister and each monarch.
Why a Company Is Not Quite the Same
In a company, the top team answers to a board of directors who represent the owners. The state has no owners and no board in that form. The nearest equivalent is Parliament, because the public elects its MPs. The National Audit Office checks the accounts, like an outside auditor. The Public Accounts Committee questions officials about spending. Other committees of MPs examine how departments are run.
All of that checks the work and the money. It does not check on the people doing it, or deal with leave, illness and family life.
Back to the Question
Who does the line manager’s second job for senior officials, ministers and the Prime Minister? For officials and ministers, in practice mostly nobody. For the Prime Minister, the weekly audience with the monarch comes closest, though it was designed for state business and not for support. Senior people appear to be expected to find support for themselves, and the structure is built around keeping them accountable for what they do, not around looking after them.
Whether that matters is open to argument. Some would say people take on these roles knowing how they work, and have their own sources of support. Others would say any large organisation is better for knowing who is looking out for the people running it. The same question applies in any organisation, from a team of five to a state.
Topics: #InOtherWords #LineManagement #CivilService #UKGovernment #Leadership #Accountability #Wellbeing
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