Introduction

The development of policy to advise Ministers is regarded by the civil service as its main responsibility, with an assumption that this is derived primarily from the application of the Westminster Model (WM) (Richards and Smith 2016; Cooper 2020). Specific government policy that is drawn from party election manifestos provides the starting point for these discussions prior to general elections through access talks (Norris et al 2024). During the course of a government's period in office, requirements for new policies to be formulated relate to events such as the global financial crisis in 2008 (Pautz 2017) and the COVID-19 pandemic. As discussed in Chapter 3, there is rarely, if ever, any consideration of the role and shaping influence on policy of the UK's international obligations as set out in treaties such as those with the EU, WTO and UN. At the point of Brexit, the Financial Times estimated that the UK had engaged in 750 treaties and 168 countries were involved (quoted in Larik 2020: 447). These treaty obligations transcend Parliamentary terms and were the main determinant of domestic policy when the UK was part of the EU. The absence of discussion of these significant shapers of policy can be noted in UK public discourse (Morphet 2013) and is described as a wide gulf of incomprehension, illustrated in the EU/UK Balance of Competences Review undertaken prior to the Brexit referendum (Emerson et al 2014). This was also exemplified by the lack of expectation of changes in the Machinery of Government (MoG) after Brexit (Dudley and Gamble 2023).