Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

====Administering the department====
The Permanent Under-Secretary at the Environment Department, Sir John Garlick, described Heseltine's arrival as a change from "a very conservative Labour Secretary of State, [[Peter Shore]], to a very radical Conservative Secretary of State". On his first day Heseltine took him out to lunch at the Connaught and drew up a list of what he wanted to accomplish in office (the list appears in Heseltine's book ''Where There's A Will'', and was returned to him at the end of his time at the Environment). Only a quarter of Heseltine's agenda consisted of manifesto commitments and other political goals; the rest of it consisted of administrative and organisational changes. [[Peter Hennessy]] observed that Heseltine was more interested in the nuts and bolts of Whitehall reform than any minister since [[David Lloyd George]]. Heseltine was quite ruthless about moving civil servants with whom he was dissatisfied, but nonetheless staff thought he had mellowed somewhat since the early 1970s, and was more relaxed and fun to work with. His permanent secretaries Sir John Garlick and Sir George Moseley thought highly of him. He preferred to reach decisions through informal discussion rather than wading through paperwork. He instituted [[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]]'s custom of morning "prayer" meetings (ministers and PPSs with no civil servants present), now common in Whitehall but an innovation at the time.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 201–4.</ref>

The department had a budget of £14 billion a year and employed 52,000 people. The Conservatives were pledged to cut 100,000 off the 730,000 strong civil service. On the advice of his junior minister [[Irwin Bellow, Baron Bellwin|Lord Bellwin]], a former leader of Leeds City Council, Heseltine ordered that nobody was to be hired without his personal approval.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 204–5.</ref>

Heseltine instituted an internal audit system called "MINIS" ("management information system for ministers"), ironically, in Crick's view, as Heseltine's own company Haymarket had often been chaotically organised. Peter Hennessy likened it to "a [[Domesday Book]]". Heseltine personally interrogated the heads of department (many of whom felt he was interfering in internal civil service matters). The lengthy reports, showing organisation charts of each of the 66 directorates, expenditure, staff costs and forward plans, were made publicly available. Staff numbers were cut more deeply than in any other Whitehall department; one in twelve had gone within a year and nearly 30%, 15,000, by 1983; local government finance, under Terry Heiser, was the only department to receive extra resources. Thatcher was impressed by MINIS, and in February 1983 Heseltine was invited to give a presentation about them to other senior ministers and civil servants, in the hope that they might be adopted by other departments. There was little interest, but similar concepts were later adopted by [[Derek Rayner]]'s Financial Management Initiative across Whitehall.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 205–9.</ref>