{"id":9671,"date":"2012-10-14T12:44:55","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T11:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9671"},"modified":"2012-10-14T21:57:46","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T20:57:46","slug":"the-role-of-the-special-adviser-in-the-british-political-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9671","title":{"rendered":"The role of the Special Adviser in the British political system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the political world, they are know as Spads &#8211; short for Special Advisers. They are political appointments by Secretaries of State in Britain&#8217;s government.<\/p>\n<p>In the Wilson\/Callaghan Governments, I was a Special Adviser in two Departments: the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office. In the Blair\/Brown Governments, my son Richard Darlington was a Spad in two other Departments, Education &amp; Skills and International Development, and my daughter-in-law Emily Thomas, was a Spad in still two other Departments, Business, Innovation &amp; Skills and Treasury.<\/p>\n<p>So, there&#8217;s a family connection and I believe that Richard and I are the first father and son to have held this unusual but fascinating role &#8211; indeed this fact was picked up by the author of an interesting book on the role of Special Advisers which I have a reviewed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/currentaffairs.html#People\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A new report by the House of Commons Public Administration Committee has led\u00a0to Sky News doing an item on Spads today in which Richard has a couple of sound bites. You can view it <a href=\"http:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/997426\/ministers-warned-over-employing-spads\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the political world, they are know as Spads &#8211; short for Special Advisers. They are political appointments by Secretaries of State in Britain&#8217;s government. In the Wilson\/Callaghan Governments, I was a Special Adviser in two Departments: the Northern Ireland Office and the Home Office. In the Blair\/Brown Governments, my son Richard Darlington was a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9671"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9682,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9671\/revisions\/9682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}