Series 1

Following the forced exit of Cliff Lawton amid intense press pressure, Hugh Abbot was appointed as Minister for Social Affairs. His tenure began with a significant misstep when he misinterpreted the Prime Minister's position and announced the development of a benefit fraud detection unit, dubbed the 'Snooper Force', without Treasury consultation. This led to a crisis where Abbot and his advisors Oliver Reeder and Glenn Cullen had merely forty minutes to improvise a new policy for an imminent press briefing. The situation was further complicated when Malcolm Tucker, the Government's Director of Communications, forced Abbot to enhance his cultural knowledge through intensive study of popular media, only to discover that a focus group member influencing key policy decisions had appeared as an extra in one of these programmes. The period culminated in a serious scandal when the press uncovered that Abbot was maintaining an empty second property by listing it on the market while rejecting all offers, bringing him to the brink of resignation.