One of the most urgent matters on the desk of new Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn is the redevelopment of the west-Belfast sports stadium, Casement Park.
The Prime Minister is reported to have told the football governing body, UEFA, that he wanted to have Casement Park rebuilt in time to host five football matches at the Euro 2028 men’s football tournament. Euro 2028 will be jointly hosted by the football associations of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
Casement Park is owned by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and has been lying derelict since 2013, with delays caused by legal challenges and repeated collapses of the Executive at Stormont. Planning permission was granted in 2021, and the NI Executive initially agreed to pledge some money back in 2011, but as things stand, there is a large shortfall in the necessary funding.
Secretary of State Hilary Benn has since publicly said the Labour Government is swiftly assessing the options for this project and is committed to ensuring the Euro 2028 tournament benefits “the whole of the United Kingdom.”
It is a controversial project for several reasons.
Chiefly, it has been delayed for many years, and the projected cost continues to increase – originally estimated to be £77.5 million a decade ago – and ever more so since it will have to meet higher stadium standards if it is to be one of 10 venues to host matches at Euro 2028.
Although the previous Conservative Government came close to settling a funding package to pay for the redevelopment, the snap general election prevented this getting over the line in time.
There have been reports in The Times about the role Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, is playing in these discussions. These reports include a claim that Sue Gray, a former civil servant both in Whitehall and at Stormont, angered ministers by “personally dominating” and “subverting” Cabinet during the negotiations over Casement.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has said that the £320 million current cost is “an indefensible use of public money” when there are pressing issues with public services in Northern Ireland. They have also questioned whether Gray’s involvement represents a “personal project” and whether this breaches the Nolan principles of public life.
While there is a history to the existing agreements and resulting disputes about this project (checkered by several collapses of the devolved government at Stormont), the purpose of this article is to examine some of the governmental and constitutional implications of the Casement Park upgrade.
Role of unelected civil servants and advisers
Concerns about Machiavellian mandarins and Downing Street courtiers wielding too much influence and power are nothing new.
The Whitehall model means ministers are responsible to Parliament for everything that happens in their departments, while career civil servants are politically neutral and are responsible to ministers. The 2010 Ministerial Code also makes clear that ministers are, in the end, responsible for the work and conduct of their special advisers.
Special advisers are both political appointees and temporary civil servants, giving political advice and assistance to ministers that permanent civil servants cannot. They are also bound by the standards of integrity and honesty required of all civil servants as set out in the Civil Service Code.
The last Labour Government greatly enhanced the powers of special advisers. Upon entering office, Tony Blair passed an Order in Council so that his Press Secretary Alistair Campbell and Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell had the authority to instruct and effectively override civil servants.
This prompted criticism that the independence of the civil service was being undermined. Later in 2005, a similar procedure essentially changed the role of all special advisers from advising ministers to assisting them.
Blair also wanted to give Powell the additional title of principal private secretary, a post that had only ever been held by non-political, career civil servants and that involves sensitive functions like negotiations with Buckingham Palace during times of crisis.
Incidentally in Northern Ireland matters, as the éminence grise of Blair’s inner circle, Powell was also entrusted by the Prime Minister with conducting unofficial negotiations on his behalf with the leaders of Sinn Fein to try to get them to progress the peace process, bringing to an end the IRA’s violent campaign of terror.
However senior and influential they are, a Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff is not an elected figure, though. They are not accountable to Parliament and the wider public in the same way as their political principals. The perception that Sue Gray is swaying the decision to secure extra public funding for Casement Park calls into question how appropriate it is for unelected advisers to command influence over taxpayer-funded major infrastructure projects.
Ambiguity over the Chief of Staff role and Number 10 structure
Max Stafford at the Mile End Institute has argued that the role of Chief of Staff is under-researched and barely understood, despite how critical the post is to the performance of Prime Ministers.
Dominic Cummings described some of the limitations of this role in his COVID-19 inquiry written evidence, saying all their “authority is indirect and is exercised in the form of request or suggestions and implicitly rests on the degree of influence the ‘Chief of Staff’ is thought to have with the PM.”
Despite the lack of clarity on their constitutional role or official job description, the potential influence and power of a Chief of Staff are vast. Lord Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s Chief of Staff, set out for the Institute for Government what he saw as the seven key aspects of the role:
- Being the prime minister’s most senior political adviser
- Managing other political advisers
- Working closely with the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary
- Working with the wider team of private secretaries to try to get the government machine to do what the Prime Minister wants
- The gatekeeper role: sitting outside the Prime Minister’s office and controlling who gets in and who doesn’t
- Seeing what the Prime Minister sees, and accompanying them to meetings
- Brokering deals with other ministers
Clearly, every Prime Minister will make differing demands of their chiefs of staff, but in essence, the role is about political management. Jennifer Lees-Marshment (University of Dundee) defines political management as “about getting things done”: how to hire, manage, lead, organise, and motivate; how political managers use resources (rules, procedures, budgets, people, etc.) to deliver key priorities, design and implement strategies, and facilitate the work and objectives of their political principal.
Lord Barwell’s seventh key aspect, and particularly the fourth, are perhaps the most applicable in the case of Sue Gray’s involvement with Casement Park. These may also be the predominant approaches Gray takes to supporting Keir Starmer in Downing Street. Appointed and sacked frontbenchers have already relayed to the media that they received phone calls delivering this news of promotion or demotion, not from the Prime Minister, but from Sue Gray.
In addition to the ambiguity about the Chief of Staff role, the structures of Number 10 itself don’t reflect the centre’s actual role or the degree of autonomy with which it operates. The existing accountability mechanisms for Secretaries of State and Permanent Secretaries also don’t neatly reflect this, either in the case of Number 10 or of the Chief of Staff. This is partly because Number 10 is formally a business unit within the Cabinet Office but is often considered to have a distinct function outside of the Cabinet Office.
While a Chief of Staff is likely to wield a large amount of political influence, the Casement Park example reveals that the role can also be influential in terms of executive functions like decision-making and giving the kind of policy direction we would normally expect from a Secretary of State. It seems we are moving away from the conventional ‘political management’ role the Chief of Staff has previously occupied. In Keir Starmer’s Number 10 operation, Sue Gray’s remit appears to complement the ministerial role Pat McFadden is playing as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CDL). In the recent past, Oliver Dowden and Steve Barclay have demonstrated that the CDL can act in an innovative way as a bridge between the administrative and political elements of government.
There are social and economic costs and benefits of an upgraded Casement Park. The project also still enjoys wide (in-principle) cross-party support in Northern Ireland. However, the process for decision-making on the funding for major infrastructure projects like this (with the cancelled Phase Two HS2 also in recent memory) merits even further scrutiny. There may also be ramifications for NI devolution, relations with the Republic of Ireland (a partner and funder in the project) and indeed for the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement (should it become clear there is no longer cross-community consent for it). In all cases, it seems the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff is likely to have significant influence on the direction of government policy.
Stephen Lynch.
Stephen Lynch is a writer focused on political and economic issues. His work has been published in the Times, Daily Telegraph, and Independent. He stood as a candidate for the Conservative and Unionist Party in the 2024 general election, and writes in a personal capacity.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.