Revamped No.10 to 'live and breathe' coalition

The revamped Downing Street operation is designed to remind ministers that they are in a coalition, the No.10 chief civil servant has said.

Jeremy Heywood said that the new Policy Unit will ensure "Number 10 and the deputy prime minister are better informed at an earlier stage of the policy development and delivery performance of individual departments".

In an interview with Whitehall newspaper Civil Service World, he said the team would "make sure that departments understand the perspectives of both sides of the coalition".

He said: "That’s something that can sometimes be done better from the centre, where we live and breathe that every day, than in departments, where quite often they'll have a more narrow departmental perspective rather than thinking coalition-wide".

While Heywood denied the move was a response to the forestry farce, Cameron and Clegg clearly feel greater control needs to be exerted over departments to make sure policies are properly "coalitionised" - to borrow a dreadful phrase from Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell.

There is a rather good run down of the reshaped Downing Street operation over at ConHome.

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