Rishi Sunak has given permission for Labour shadow ministers to start talks with civil servants about how they would run a government should they win the election later this year – a routine but nonetheless symbolic process before a possible handover of power.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “In line with the longstanding process set out in the cabinet manual, the prime minister has authorised access talks between the official opposition and civil service.”
The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, would “oversee and arrange these discussions”, the statement added.
A Labour source confirmed that the party had received the letter confirming what are formally known as access talks on Thursday evening, and would reply “in due course”.
The discussions are a necessary step so that an opposition party can step immediately into government if they win an election. The talks must be authorised by the prime minister.
For a period in the 2000s, the prime minister would do this in advance at the start of parliament, meaning they could begin whenever needed. But under David Cameron that practice ended, and, under Sunak, Downing Street has faced repeated questions in recent weeks about when he would grant permission before an election that could happen as early as spring, although autumn is now seen as more likely.
An Institute for Government study of the practice showed that in elections since 1992, access talks began anywhere from 16 months before the election to a matter of weeks. In 2017, they were authorised on the day Theresa May called the election, leaving just 51 days for Labour to speak to officials.
There is, similarly, no formal guidance on how often the meeting should take place. The IfG briefing cites the experience of Ed Balls, who said that in 1997, as a special adviser to the shadow chancellor, Gordon Brown, he met the chief civil servant in the Treasury “maybe once or twice a week, for two or three hours at a time” in the run-up to the election.
