Tangle after re-shuffle • •
Ministers have been at pains to insist that Lord Carrington's new Ministry for Energy is not just the old Ministry of Fuel and Power writ large, lit it is for all that. As such, its creation is to be vielcomed, not only because it is a department POssessing logical responsibilities, but also because its coming into existence involves the d,estruction of Mr Peter Walker's empire at the Pepartment of Trade and Industry. It must, 'indeed, be clear now that it makes no sense to teave Mr Walker and Sir Geoffrey Howe together in the Cabinet with what remains of the DTI, so the sooner Sir Geoffrey's Departnuent of Consumer Affairs is hived off the better.
This is all, no doubt, extremely disappointing Or Mr Walker, at one time one of the most 1313werful ministers in the Cabinet. But, in truth, "c has distinguished himself in neither of his tnaJor industries, and his qualities of judgement and political intelligence have been rightly niuch questioned in recent months. Again and again he has shown that his youth leaves him insufficiently politically mature, and his inability leaves him insufficiently dominant to control fifteen Deputy Secretaries, ninety Under Secretaries and more than 200 Assistant Secretaries.
However, it is only fair to add that Mr Walker has been unlucky, first in being promoted too high too early, so that he had little time to learn; and secondly in receiving that promotion at a time when the intellectual fashion to which Mr Heath subscribed believed that the problems of modern government were best resolved by the creation of mammoth departments. This fashion has now received a severe blow, partly because the principle which underlay it has yet to be proved; partly because the grouping of functions adopted are now seen...to have been incorrect.
The fear that must now be entertained is that the changes just now made in a moment of crisis may not be proven to be the tight ones. It is possible, for example, that it would be wiser to pat Mr Peyton's Transport Industries in with Energy, or with a resuscitated Board of Trade. It may well be that Sir Keith Joseph's unique managerial capacities, superior to those of any member of the Government, should now be employed in sorting out the Energy-DTI-Environment tangle. And there are other problems. However, under great pressure Mr Heath has made broadly sensible decisions. It remains necessary for him, as soon as a moment of calm is available, carefully to rethink the whole business of the organisation of the machinery of government, which has always been one of his passions.
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