Would the UK benefit from a US-style cabinet vetting process?

This week, Theresa May reshuffled her top team. Or tried to. Much has already been written on the political theatrics—and how it all went wrong. But there’s something else worth discussing: the lack of transparency in cabinet selection in the UK. The vetting process for the US cabinet is much more extensive, and highly visible. While politics across the Atlantic is currently fraught, it is interesting to examine the process in the US system.

In the United States, cabinet members are selected and nominated by the president, and then confirmed by the Senate. The US cabinet is an institution established by custom, rather than by law, and its primary function is to act as an advisory board to the president. Yet cabinet members are still subjected to extensive vetting.

Before even being nominated, candidates must clear preliminary and confidential background checks by the White House, FBI, and Office of Government ethics. Once nominated, candidates are questioned in public hearings, on the record, about their qualifications, temperament, and policy preferences. Importantly, this process also attempts to uncover significant conflicts of interest that could unduly influence the president’s advisors, and serves as a part of the system of checks and balances inherent in a presidential regime.

Importantly, the senate has the power of veto on cabinet appointments. However, the extensive vetting process often means that controversial nominees withdraw or are withdrawn from consideration, before the senate has to vote. While the president can dismiss cabinet members at will, any replacements must be confirmed by the same process, and historically this has rarely happened.

In the UK, cabinet ministers are appointed exclusively by the prime minister. Here, the cabinet is a much more important and influential part of parliamentary government. It meets weekly, and exercises control over policy. It also must operate as a unified actor, for a government can only remain in office as long as it retains the confidence of the House of Commons. Further, the prime minister has more freedom to use ministerial selection as a way to appease factions within their party or coalition, manage party discipline, and ensure representation of diverse interests.

Constitutionally, there are few constraints on ministerial appointment. The number of ministers can vary, as can their responsibilities, and cabinets can of course be “reshuffled” frequently. While there are conventions to ministerial selection, such as that members are typically appointed from within parliament, there is no formal process for appointment that compares with the system in the US.

Could the UK benefit from US style vetting? At first glance, this seems appealing. Public hearings, and the information uncovered within them, could help increase voter awareness about the qualifications, experience, and preferences of cabinet members. This information is on the record, and can be used by the public to hold politicians to account. A multi-stage vetting process also helps deal with potential public or partisan backlash against nominees; withdrawing is less politically costly than selecting a cabinet minister who then resigns, as has happened several times recently.

The mere presence of public vetting procedures could also deter prime ministers from making unsuitable or unpopular appointments in the first place. Though the US case also demonstrates there’s no guarantee that adding formal procedures would improve the quality of candidates or even prevent specific politicians from being appointed. In the US, historically, the senate has confirmed most cabinet nominations, and its power to veto appointments is moot when the majority of the senate is of the president’s party—Trump’s cabinet faced intense scrutiny and was opposed by the Democrats, and yet still his nominees were largely appointed (though a number withdrew from the process).

However appealing, the US style of vetting simply can’t work in a parliamentary democracy. The UK political system relies on the prime minister’s ability to maintain a unified government, that prioritises collective cabinet responsibility. An external veto would be a destabilising addition to cabinet selection in a parliamentary regime, which is precisely why parliaments around the world omit this procedure.

But more generally, there may be lessons to be learned from the American system, and the idea of more scrutiny in public appointments in the UK is not new—it can be effectively used at lower levels.

The House of Commons currently holds pre-appointment hearings for senior public appointments, a policy instituted by Gordon Brown’s government in 2007. Currently around 50 senior posts are subject to this proceudure; for example, the Chair of the Office for Students, Chair of the BBC Trust, the Chair of the Food Standards Agency, and HM Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service.

The relevant select committee conducts the hearings, and then issues non-binding positive or negative recommendations. A study conducted by the UCL Constitution Unit recently analysed every pre-appointment hearing in the UK since 2010. The report found that select committees do in fact play an important role in appointments, in that negative reports do have an impact in determining whether nominated individuals are given the job. Further, there was no evidence to suggest that pre-appointment scrutiny either deters qualified candidates or unduly politicises the process.

While perhaps not as politically charged as the US style of vetting cabinet members, this shows there is scope for more for public and parliamentary scrutiny in British politics.