SYSTEMS / STRUCTURES
Published
Governmentby Appointment
Britain already has ministers, departments and a permanent Civil Service. So why does it need another layer of champions, envoys, advisers and reviewers?
Most people look for jobs. At the top of the British state, sometimes the job appears to look for you.
It started, for me, with Sir Charlie Mayfield.
Former chairman of John Lewis. Businessman. Boardroom figure.
And, according to the newspaper shorthand, Britain’s “work czar.”
Except that isn’t actually his government title.
In November 2024, the government asked Mayfield to lead the Keep Britain Working Review — an independent, non-statutory review examining what employers and government could do about ill-health and disability pushing people out of work.
That sounds considerably less dramatic than work czar.
But what happened next is more interesting than the title.
A businessman was asked to lead a government review.
The review acquired an advisory board.
The review produced recommendations.
The recommendations became a programme.
The programme acquired a Leadership Board.
Mayfield was then appointed to co-chair its next phase alongside three Secretaries of State.
And the programme is now helping to develop what government describes as a new Workplace Health System, including work towards a Workplace Health Intelligence Unit.
One review became a structure.
And somewhere along the way, a newspaper can reduce all that institutional machinery to two wonderfully British words:
It sounds almost executive.
As though somewhere between Parliament and Whitehall Britain has discovered another person responsible for making Britain work.
But Britain already has a government.
We have a Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
We have the Department for Work and Pensions.
We have a Department for Business and Trade.
We have a Department of Health and Social Care.
We have Jobcentre Plus.
We have the NHS.
We have occupational-health specialists.
We have MPs.
We have parliamentary committees.
And we have a permanent Civil Service whose entire purpose is supposed to include providing ministers with expertise and implementing government policy.
So why, whenever Britain encounters another difficult problem, does another person so often appear?
There is another route into government
It even has an official name.
Direct Ministerial Appointments.
These are people ministers can appoint directly to perform particular roles within government.
They can provide specialist expertise.
Conduct reviews.
Advise ministers.
Represent government.
Champion an issue publicly.
And they occupy a peculiar constitutional space.
They are not civil servants.
They are public office holders rather than departmental employees.
They are public office holders, not civil servants. Government guidance says there is no contract of service or intention to create an employment relationship.
The same guidance says executive authority cannot be delegated to a Direct Ministerial Appointee, although their advice may inform executive decision-making. Read the appointment guidance.
That distinction matters. It does not mean every executive decision is made personally by a minister: civil servants can exercise delegated authority. It means the appointee does not receive that authority simply by holding a Direct Ministerial Appointment.
In Keep Britain Working, the published terms describe Mayfield setting strategic direction in partnership with ministers. The programme’s Leadership Board is separately described as holding decision-making authority for implementing its recommendations. See the co-chair terms of reference.
Yet departments can provide them with Civil Service support, a sponsoring senior official, secretariat functions and access to additional expertise.
Government already employs permanent officials to advise ministers. But government has also created a mechanism allowing ministers to select somebody outside that system to provide expertise beyond and complementary to the expertise already available inside it.
That person can then be supported by the very machinery they have been brought in to supplement.
It may be entirely sensible.
But it creates an obvious question.
Why wasn’t the expertise already there?
How do you get one of these jobs?
This is where it gets more interesting.
Most people understand how employment is supposed to work.
There is a vacancy.
It gets advertised.
People apply.
Their experience is assessed.
Candidates are interviewed.
Someone gets the job.
That isn’t necessarily how this works.
The government’s own guidance acknowledges that direct ministerial appointments generally do not follow open competition.
Why?
Because ministers may already have a:
“very narrow, particular candidate pool”
in mind.
Sometimes even an individual.
There are rules around this.
The decision still has to be rational, fair and non-discriminatory.
And government guidance explicitly says direct appointments should not be used to circumvent more rigorous and transparent recruitment procedures where those procedures should properly apply.
Good.
But I’m interested in something that happens before all of that.
How do you become the individual the minister already has in mind?
There has always been another jobs market
I remember seeing it years ago in newspapers.
You’d turn through the appointments pages and encounter another Britain.
Huge salaries.
Job descriptions written in a language completely removed from the employment market most people knew.
Technically, you could read the advertisement.
Technically, perhaps you could apply.
But you never really thought:
I’ll have that job.
It felt like another world.
Because Britain doesn’t really have one labour market.
It has several.
Different worlds of work
There is the labour market millions of people recognise.
Construction.
Warehouses.
Factories.
Care homes.
Kitchens.
Retail.
Cleaning.
Driving.
Maintenance.
Administration.
Boards.
Commissions.
Public appointments.
Non-executive directorships.
Government reviews.
Advisory panels.
Taskforces.
Envoy positions.
Champions.
In one world, people collect qualifications.
They do apprenticeships.
They prove competence.
They send CVs.
They work shifts.
They worry about sickness records.
They wonder whether they’ll still have a job next month.
In another world, people can spend entire careers circulating through institutions.
Chief executive → Board member → Chair → Government review → Adviser → Regulator → Another board → Another commission → Another government appointment.
These aren’t necessarily people without qualifications.
Quite the opposite.
Many are extraordinarily qualified.
The question is: qualified according to whom?
Where are the ordinary people?
There’s another phrase British politics loves.
Ordinary people.
Politicians want more ordinary people involved in politics.
They want Parliament to look more like the country.
They want people from different backgrounds.
Different professions.
Different communities.
People with lived experience.
People who understand what life is actually like outside Westminster.
Parliament itself talks about becoming more accessible to people from “all walks of life.”
Fine.
So where are they here?
Where are those people when government starts deciding who possesses the experience necessary to review work?
That’s what makes this so strange.
We constantly hear that government needs more lived experience.
But when government wants an expert, it so often seems to look upwards through Britain’s institutions rather than outwards through Britain’s population.
A chief executive becomes an obvious expert on work.
A chairman becomes an obvious expert on business.
A banker becomes an obvious expert on finance.
A diplomat becomes an obvious expert on international affairs.
A senior academic becomes an obvious expert on policy.
And individually, those choices can make perfect sense.
But collectively they raise a different question.
If Britain genuinely wants ordinary people involved in governing Britain, where is the route that turns ordinary experience into institutional authority?
Because telling people they should enter politics isn’t the same thing as giving their experience the same status once they get there.
And perhaps that is the distinction that matters.
Britain is very good at talking about bringing ordinary people into the room.
It seems rather less certain about letting ordinary people become the experts in the room.
When does experience become expertise?
Someone can spend thirty years in construction.
They understand employment.
Subcontracting.
Safety.
Sickness.
Injury.
Precarious work.
What happens when a project ends.
What happens when somebody doesn’t get paid because they didn’t work that day.
Someone can spend thirty years in care.
Someone can spend twenty years running a small business.
Employing people.
Making payroll.
Training apprentices.
Dealing with regulation.
Losing customers.
Surviving recessions.
That is experience.
But it doesn’t necessarily result in government telephoning them and saying:
We need your expertise.
At another level somebody becomes a senior executive.
Then a chief executive.
Then a chairman.
Then sits on boards.
Then chairs a review.
Then advises government.
And eventually their experience acquires another name.
EXPERTISE.
Britain doesn’t lack experienced people.
It has millions of them.
What Britain has is a hierarchy determining whose experience acquires institutional authority.
The appointable people
The more I looked at current government appointments, the more this became apparent.
Take just a handful of people appearing among Cabinet Office direct appointments.
Lord Janvrin
Royal Navy → Diplomatic Service → Royal Household → Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II → Royal Foundation → National Portrait Gallery → HSBC Private Bank → British Library → House of Lords → government committee.
Baroness Valerie Amos
Public-sector work → House of Lords → Cabinet minister → Leader of the House of Lords → United Nations → British High Commissioner → SOAS → Oxford → institutional boards → government appointments.
Baroness Minouche Shafik
World Bank → IMF → Permanent Secretary → Bank of England → London School of Economics → Columbia University → House of Lords → Prime Minister’s Chief Economic Adviser.
Sir Michael Barber
Teacher → government adviser → Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit → McKinsey → Pearson → Office for Students → government adviser again → House of Lords.
Look at those careers and something becomes obvious.
This isn’t necessarily the old boys’ network in the simplistic sense.
They didn’t all attend the same school.
They didn’t all come from the same backgrounds.
They don’t all belong to the same political party.
Some came to Britain as immigrants.
Some went through state education.
Some began in ordinary professions.
The connection comes later.
They became institutional people.
Government.
The Civil Service.
The diplomatic service.
The City.
Large corporations.
Major consultancies.
Universities.
Regulators.
National charities.
Public bodies.
Once someone enters that ecosystem, they become visible to the other institutions within it.
Government knows them.
Business knows them.
Boards know them.
Universities know them.
Regulators know them.
The media knows them.
And when another commission, review or advisory position appears, their name already makes sense.
They have become what might be called:
APPOINTABLE.
The revolving institution
Look at the movement.
GOVERNMENT → CONSULTANCY → CORPORATION → REGULATOR → GOVERNMENT → PEERAGE
CORPORATION → CORPORATION → REGULATOR → GOVERNMENT REVIEW → GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
CIVIL SERVICE → INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTION → UNIVERSITY → PUBLIC BODY → GOVERNMENT ADVISER
None of that proves corruption.
It doesn’t prove favouritism.
It doesn’t mean those people aren’t extremely capable.
But it does describe a labour market completely different from the one most people experience.
Those aren’t the same systems.
The class question
And somewhere underneath all of this sits class.
Not the cartoon version.
Not:
Everyone went to Eton.
They didn’t.
Not:
Everyone inherited money.
They didn’t.
And certainly not:
Someone who went to Oxford can’t possibly know anything.
That would be nonsense.
The interesting question is how Britain’s elite institutions reproduce institutional authority.
Who gets invited onto the next committee?
Who gets asked to chair the next review?
Who becomes a peer?
Who becomes an envoy?
Who becomes a champion?
Who becomes somebody a minister already has in mind?
And who never enters that ecosystem at all?
That is a much bigger investigation.
Because it eventually takes us into quangos.
Regulators.
Public appointments.
The OBR.
Consultancies.
Think tanks.
Corporate boards.
Universities.
And the wider machinery surrounding the British state.
We’ll get there.
For now, I’m interested in the people government simply chooses.
And some of them are paid very well
There isn’t one standard salary for this world.
In fact, the range is extraordinary.
Some appointments are completely unpaid.
The government’s Special Representative for Nature has been advertised at around £125,000 a year.
Its Special Representative for Climate at around £120,000.
A Western Balkans Special Envoy at around £86,000 for three days a week.
One chair of an electric-vehicle charging review has been advertised at £1,200 a day, for around thirty days annually.
A Scale-Up Adviser at £1,000 a day.
Another adviser at £500 a day.
Others receive considerably less.
Others receive nothing.
So this isn’t one giant taxpayer-funded gravy train.
That description would be too easy.
And it would miss something more interesting.
Annual salaries and day rates are not directly comparable. The point is the absence of a single remuneration model: appointments range from voluntary positions to substantial annual salaries and four-figure day rates.
Free doesn’t mean cost-free
Charlie Mayfield’s current Keep Britain Working appointment is unpaid.
One day a week.
No fee.
So if the question is:
How much are taxpayers paying Charlie Mayfield to do this?
The answer is effectively:
NOTHING.
But that isn’t the same question as:
What does Keep Britain Working cost?
Mayfield’s programme is jointly sponsored by three government departments.
Those departments provide initial resources.
There is Civil Service involvement.
There is a Leadership Board.
There is an External Advisory Group.
There are hundreds of participating employers and organisations.
Reasonable expenses can be paid.
And the programme is developing further institutional capacity, including the proposed Workplace Health Intelligence Unit.
An unpaid chairman can sit on top of a structure that consumes substantial public resources.
That doesn’t mean those resources are being wasted.
They may produce enormous benefits.
But the cost of a government appointment isn’t necessarily the amount written on the appointee’s payslip.
Sometimes there isn’t a payslip.
What resources surround the appointment, and what does the public receive in return?
Who is accountable for all this?
Even establishing exactly how many direct ministerial appointees Britain has hasn’t always been straightforward.
Until recently, departments published these appointments individually.
A central government portal for Direct Ministerial Appointments only arrived in December 2025.
Departments were subsequently instructed to add existing appointments.
Parliamentarians have continued asking departments for basic information about who has been appointed, how much they’re paid and when their appointments end.
incumbent Direct Ministerial Appointees reported as of 30 January 2026.
Twenty-one.
One department.
And Direct Ministerial Appointments are only one part of the picture.
Those are different constitutional creatures and shouldn’t simply be thrown into one bucket.
But taken together, they raise an uncomfortable question.
How much government exists around the government?
If you need an expert for everything, what are ministers for?
Expert advice is necessary.
Obviously.
No minister can understand everything their department touches.
Government would be considerably worse if ministers stopped listening to scientists, economists, engineers, doctors, businesses, workers and specialists.
That’s not the argument.
The argument is about structure and accountability.
We elect MPs.
A government emerges from Parliament.
The Prime Minister appoints ministers.
Ministers run departments.
Departments contain permanent officials whose careers are supposed to develop institutional knowledge.
Parliament scrutinises ministers.
That is roughly the chain the public understands.
But increasingly, around that chain, there appears to be another one.
At what point does expertise become another layer of government?
Back to Charlie
Which brings me back to Sir Charlie Mayfield.
He started with an independent review.
Today, Keep Britain Working has a Leadership Board.
Mayfield co-chairs its Vanguard phase alongside three Secretaries of State.
There is an External Advisory Group.
Government departments provide resources.
Hundreds of employers and organisations are involved.
And the programme is helping to develop a proposed Workplace Health System.
Maybe it will work.
Maybe fewer people will fall out of employment.
Maybe employers will become better at dealing with sickness.
Maybe it will save the taxpayer billions.
If it does, it deserves credit.
But look at what Britain constructed to get there.
Perhaps that’s simply what solving a complicated national problem requires.
But we should at least notice how complicated the machinery of governing Britain has become.
THE QUESTION UNDERNEATH ALL OF IT
Who gets the call?
That is ultimately what interests me.
Not whether Charlie Mayfield is a good man.
Not whether one adviser receives £1,000 a day.
Not whether another champion works for free.
Those are details.
The bigger question is how Britain decides who Britain listens to.
Most people look for vacancies.
They apply.
They collect qualifications.
They prove experience.
They sit interviews.
They hope somebody takes a chance on them.
At another level of British life, government may already have a narrow group of people in mind.
Sometimes perhaps one person.
And once somebody becomes part of that institutional ecosystem, their name can continue travelling through it.
The question isn’t whether those people possess expertise.
Many clearly do.
The question is why Britain seems so good at recognising expertise once somebody has already entered the institutions Britain recognises as expert.
And what happens to everybody else’s experience?
For most people, employment means finding a job.
At the top of the British state, sometimes the job appears to find you.