Do we have too many Ministers?
Posted by Daithí on June 18, 2007 , 3 Comments
Some numbers, to add to today’s stories.
Ireland: 166 members of the lower house of parliament: 15 Cabinet members, 20 ‘juniors’, for 4m people
Canada: 608 members, cabinet of 32, plus 22 juniors, for 33m
UK: 646: 23, 90, 60m (inevitably, there are lots of layers within the 90 sub-Cabinet people).
Aus: 150: 18, 28, 20m
India: 552: 31, 47, 1.1bn
Ontario: 103: 27, 33, 12m (basically every member of the governing party is a minister or parliamentary secretary for something!)
Scotland: 129: 18, 5m
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3 Responses to “Do we have too many Ministers?”
said on June 18th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Many hands make light work!
said on June 19th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Direct proportionality can’t be used of course. You have to calculate that we need 15 people who are of cabinet level qualifications, 15 who can be the lead opposition person, who need the same level of skill (=30). Then I think most people will accept the need for 15 junior ministers, so you need another 15 opposition equivalents (=60). Now, add in the need for people capable of being committee chairs, 8, plus opposition capability to take that role, 8 (=76).
Now, double that because you’ll be very lucky if you can get one in two politicians who are capable of doing any of those jobs, and you get 152. Plus Chairman & Deputy Chair is 154.
Not too far from what we have now.
Basically, I would propose a formula:
((m+j+c)*2)+2=MP
Where m is the number of ministers, j is the number of junior ministers, c is the number of committee chairs and MP is the number of MPs required
The variables are not population or size of the country, they are the number of Ministers required to adequately run a country. Regardless of country size, you only need one Finance Minister (although in a really big country you might need two juniors to him/her).
said on June 21st, 2007 at 10:09 pm
[...] of Justice, Equality and Law Reform). At present, legislation provides for [only / as many as - choose as appropriate] 17 Ministers of State, but yesterday’s announcement brings that number up to 20, which means [...]
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