At the Institute for Government, a UK think tank that examines how the government can be more effective, we are making our Ministers Database public. The database holds information about all UK government ministers since 1979, including who served as a minister, in which positions, and when they held the role.
The IfG started collecting this data to understand government reshuffles better and quantify the disruption to UK governance caused by moving ministers. However, we think there are other uses for the database, such as assessing how turnover impacts specific policy areas. We hope that making this data publicly available will allow a range of researchers to benefit from using this authoritative source of information in their work.
What does the database include?
The database compiles various sources—including the UK government and parliament websites, reference works and contemporary news reports—to include information about every ministerial appointment since Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979. While these sources are useful, the database allows users to download this information in a spreadsheet format, making it easier to analyse government ministers and their time in each role.
The database also offers timeline charts that visually represent ministerial roles over time or provide an overview of an individual minister’s career history—something that may be useful context when reading the IfG’s Ministers Reflect interviews with former ministers.
For example, this is the political career of the former PM Rishi Sunak.
How can the database be used by different researchers?
The database can be useful to researchers in several different ways.
1. Understanding political instability.
The database quantifies the instability in the UK’s government in recent years, allowing users to easily compare the number of changes among Theresa May’s ministers in 2018 and 2019 during Brexit negotiations or instantly pull together a list of the 29 ministers who resigned to trigger the collapse of Boris Johnson’s government in 2022.
Beyond individual rebellions, our database shows that secretaries of state generally spend less time in post than they used to: their average tenure has been one year and three months since the EU referendum, compared to a pre-2016 average of two years and four months.
2. Policy-specific analysis.
Researchers with a particular policy focus can also benefit from the database. For instance, those who want to know who has been housing minister in the UK can easily see the churn in post-holders and when they did the job—and can then understand the different approaches ministers take over time. Government ministers can have a huge impact, and the database can show who was responsible for what policy area at different points in time.
3. Long-term governance trends.
More broadly, the database could be useful for researchers interested in the role of government ministers and how they can be effective at their jobs. It shows who was a minister in the UK government at different points in time, and the ministerial experience of cabinet members. This could provide important lessons for other countries to understand how changes in governing parties are handled in the UK or the routes members of parliament take on the journey to a seat at the cabinet table.
Global applications
We also hope the database could be a model for think tanks and researchers around the world who may be interested in creating a similar resource about ministerial appointments in their own government.
These efforts would enable comparisons between countries and regions and the possibility of identifying patterns in effective government leadership over time and in different sectors. With the right funding and collaboration, this work could help inform our understanding of governments and improve transparency of decision-making.
This is not an exhaustive list of ways in which the database could be used, and there are further potential opportunities for linking it with other sources of information, such as Wikidata. You can get in touch with us at [email protected] if you’d like to know more or have any comments—or to let us know if you decide to use the database in your work.