John McTernan: The uproar over child benefit suggests Cameron should return to Cabinet government

ONE of David Cameron's proudest boasts is that he has abolished Tony Blair's style of "sofa government". Instead, Cameron claims to have reinstated Cabinet government with full discussion of key decisions. The thing is, it hasn't felt like that this week.

The decision to bring in a tax increase of at least 1,000 a year for higher-rate taxpayers whose spouses receive child benefit was a big surprise to most of the cabinet. Home Secretary Theresa May, was unfortunate enough to be asked the killer question – where were you when you heard that middle-class benefits were assassinated. She struggled womanfully, but the clear answer was "not round the Cabinet table".

Being caught out in spin is minor sin for a Prime Minister. Seasoned Whitehall observers know that Cabinet meetings are a forum for selling in a policy agreed by key members rather than a symposium facilitated by a modern-day Plato. But there are two interesting twists with the coalition.

First, a central question for civil servants about any policy question is: "does the DPM (Deputy Prime Minister) agree?" The Cabinet committee structure is designed to ensure this. Nick Clegg chairs the HA (the home affairs committee) so he can give sign-off on domestic policy.

This is good as far as it goes and it binds the two parties' leadership together. But it is inward-facing, and does nothing to prepare for the shock of new policies encountering either party members (Tories and Lib Dems) or the public.

This is exacerbated by the second coalition structural problem. The cuts are inevitably a Treasury-dominated process – it holds the cards because it holds the information. Forget all the briefing about the collegiate process, the involvement of other Cabinet ministers in the "Star Chamber", this is brutal one-to-one battle between the Chancellor and the relevant spending minister.

What's the problem with this? Well just take a look at Monday; this should have been welfare day, with Iain Duncan Smith's speech announcing a populist cap on benefits paid to a single household. It was blown away by George Osborne's announcement on child benefit.

This was definitely squared with Clegg – his advisers were punching out the lines in Westminster – but it had not been stress-tested for public consumption. No-one had sufficiently thought through the response of the Tory Party or the right-wing press. Osborne had agreed a deal with the spending minister (in this case, himself, as HMRC pays child benefit) and not gamed the politics sufficiently.

Looking back at this week, one Labour MP tweeted that it was good of the Tories to let the work-experience kids run the press operation at their conference. But at a deeper level perhaps it showed that Cameron's first instinct was right – robust discussion round the Cabinet table makes for better decision-making. Maybe he should try it out. This is just the start of the conflict over cuts.