ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the central machinery that has long existed to support policy-making by the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers: the Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister’s Office, the latter including a shifting cast of incidental advisers. It then examines three innovations of recent decades: the Central Policy Review Staff, the Strategy Unit, and the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, the last of which continues in existence. The chapter focuses only on the functions of policy advice and analysis, which is why some advisers to the Prime Minister – for example, press secretaries – get relatively brief treatment. The Central Policy Review Staff also gave constant economic advice during the 1970s and participated in the public expenditure survey, co-writing with the Treasury the economic survey preceding the annual cycle, and later sending further comments to Cabinet as it felt necessary. It is, of course, difficult to attribute the effectiveness of the advice when the Policy Unit is one voice amongst many.
