Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004
PROFESSOR ROBERT
HAZELL AND
MR MARK
SANDFORD
Q20 Mr Clelland: Is it not the case
that this is where the stakeholders would come in, in helping
to man the committees so that the committees do not consist entirely
just of elected members but also of all of the other stakeholders,
but at the end of the day it will be the assembly itself which
makes decisions based on recommendations from the committees?
The actual assembly, although it has a core of 25 or 35 members,
will actually be a much bigger body.
Professor Hazell: Forgive me.
I overlooked that and that is a very important point.
Q21 Christine Russell: Could I ask
you for your views on the electoral system that is proposed. I
know that we have a commitment in some parts of the country to
the Additional Member System. Do you envisage that that could
cause any problems, having some members elected by traditional
constituency seats but others from regional lists?
Professor Hazell: Can I suggest
that you might like to put that question also to Professor Tony
Travers who I believe is the next witness today, because I do
not have so much experience of how the Additional Member System
has operated in the Greater London Assembly. Something we should
stress very clearly is that the GLA is far and away the most relevant
model for regional assemblies in England. It is a slim line, strategic
body and its numbers are small. It is quite clearly in almost
every clause in the Bill the model which the Government had in
mind in drafting their proposals for regional assemblies. Coming
to your question and the difficulties experienced in relation
to AMS, there is no doubt there has been tension between the two
classes of member in Scotland and in Wales which is mainly, I
have to say, because of strong resentment by the Labour Party,
which is overwhelmingly predominant in constituency members, against
the list members who predominantly are representatives of the
opposition parties. I do not know, and this is why I am suggesting
you ask Tony Travers, whether there is any similar kind of resentment
or even perception of two classes of member in the GLA.
Q22 Mr Betts: Are you aware of anybody
who is arguing, apart from ministers, for this system?
Professor Hazell: For the Additional
Member System?
Q23 Mr Betts: Yes.
Professor Hazell: I am aware of
lots of people who are arguing that regional assemblies should
be elected by proportional representation. A first-past-the-post
system tends to exaggerate the number of seats won by the largest
single party and often to give it a working majority when it has
not won a majority of the vote. Therefore, if you were to advocate
first-past-the-post for the post for regional assemblies in England
you would, in effect, be advocating that in some of the regions
of England these would risk becoming one party states, and that
is my understanding as to why PR has been proposed. I do not know
whether you are floating alternatives to AMS like the Single Transferable
Vote.
Q24 Mr Betts: I was merely asking
whether you were aware of anybody who supported this system apart
from ministers.
Professor Hazell: It is a perfectly
respectable voting system.
Q25 Mr Betts: That was not quite
the question I asked.
Professor Hazell: It is used in
countries like Germany and New Zealand. It is only in Scotland
and Wales that there has been this very sharp resentment, which,
as I say, is confined to the Labour Party, against the additional
members, the list members.
Q26 Mr Clelland: The Government is
proposing to impose through this Bill the same kind of governmental
system that it imposed on local government some time ago, that
is the small Cabinet-type of government and in the regional assemblies
that would mean a range of between three and seven members. Is
that something you see happening? How is that going to work in
terms of regional assemblies? That is a very small number of people
to be carrying the responsibility. Would it not be better if the
Bill were to enable regional assemblies and even local government
after a certain amount of time and experience to develop a system
and style of Government which is most suited to the particular
region concerned?
Professor Hazell: There is nothing
wrong in having a Cabinet. Indeed, for local government now they
are required to have a Cabinet system of some kind, to have an
executive clearly separate from the wider assembly. I think the
real question is whether the size proposed in the Bill and, in
particular, the minimum size is adequate. I was very surprised
to see the figure of three as a minimum. I would want the system
to be about six.
Mr Sandford: Because of the full-time/part-time
issue, the Cabinet is expected to be full-time under these proposals,
I would be very surprised if any governing body appointed less
than the maximum number of members since they are the only ones
who are going to be full-time. That is going to be quite an important
form of political patronage for whoever gets in power. I am quite
a fan of the Cabinet system both in local government and in this
particular case because I think that in small strategic bodies
like these which are not going to have much to do it is going
to be of benefit to have the decision-making apparatus concentrated
in a small number of reasonably visible individuals who will be
held to account by the rest of the assembly members. I would echo
what Robert said, there is nothing wrong with having a Cabinet.
The issue about the Cabinet for me is what its relationship would
be with the functional bodies and the Regional Development Agency
in particular which, as I understand things, is going to be expected
to take on over half of the funding allocated to the assembly.
To me there is a possibility there of temptation for the Cabinet
to interfere politically with the decision-making of the RDAs.
It is going to be such a large part of what it is expected to
do, but one will have to wait and see how things turn out.
Q27 Mr O'Brien: When we were discussing
the constitution and the numbers my colleague referred to the
fact that there would be other stakeholders that may be co-opted
or involved with the committee work and some of those will be
special advisers, people with local knowledge of certain issues.
What role should special advisers play in the elected regional
assemblies?
Professor Hazell: There is a role
specifically assigned in the Bill to people, who I think the Bill
calls political assistants, who would be assigned to party groups
in the assembly. The Bill specifies that an assembly cannot have
more than three political assistants, one for each of the three
largest political groups. Is that what you were after or were
you asking more about those experts who might be co-opted?
Q28 Mr O'Brien: I am talking about
clause 158 which gives the Secretary of State powers to appoint
special advisers to the assemblies and establish consultation
groups with special sectors. What role do you think they could
play?
Professor Hazell: Forgive me.
I am not prepared for that question and so rather than just bluff
I had better duck.
Chairman: That is alright.
Q29 Mr Sanders: How has the National
Assembly for Wales dealt with the distinction of employees serving
the executive and employees serving the assembly?
Professor Hazell: The assembly
was created as a body corporate and there was no distinction between
the executive branch and the assembly. In the first years of the
National Assembly for Wales it has created a much clearer distinction
and the separation has come largely from the assembly side and
been led by the presiding officer. There was created first an
office of the presiding officer which then began to give directions
to the staff of the assembly, the clerks to the committees and
after a bit established its own budget. Within the constraints
of the Government of Wales Act there is now as clear a separation
of powers between the legislature and the executive as one can
achieve within something which is constitutionally and legally
still a single body corporate. The one recommendation of the Richard
Commission about which I think there is no dissent in Wales is
that any future amendment to the settlement in Wales should be
clearly established in law.
Mr Sandford: Certainly from very
early in the life of the Welsh Assembly, if not from the very
beginning, there has been quite a sharp physical separation between
the two sides. When the Welsh Assembly started out a lot of the
people clerking the assembly committees for instance had previously
worked with and been colleagues of the people who were staffing
the government departments in Wales. So it was not uncommon for
committee clerks to ring up their opposite number in government
departments and ask for details of fact or advice. As I understand
it that has become progressively less common as the assembly has
grown up.
Q30 Mr Sanders: I would like to turn
to the scrutiny system and ask you to give us your view of the
proposed provisions for scrutiny committees and sub-committees
in the draft Bill?
Mr Sandford: This is the one part
of the Bill which we thought was extremely odd and there are several
reasons for that. What the Bill proposes is that a single Review
and Monitoring Committee will be set up which will consist of
all of the members of the assembly minus the executive. The Review
and Monitoring Committee will then be empowered to set up sub-committees
which presumably will undertake the bread and butter work of the
scrutiny of either the functional bodies or of the Cabinet members
themselves. What is odd is that the sub-committees of the Review
and Monitoring Committee will mirror the proportionality of the
Review and Monitoring Committee rather than the assembly as a
whole and that goes against practice in every other tier of Government.
As you know, here the proportionality of your own Committee mirrors
that of Parliament. It does not take members of the Government
off and then mirror the proportionality of those who remain. On
the face of it, certainly for those of you who have had any experience
of the scrutiny role in local government, this sounds attractive
because it means a scrutiny role, which does not necessarily have
an executive majority voting down anything remotely controversial
that the scrutiny committees and the review and monitoring sub-committees
want to do, but we are not convinced in practice that that will
work. The research that we have done on local government scrutiny
committees suggests that where you have a small minority for the
governing party scrutiny gets to its most party political, that
is when there is the greatest degree of tension between the governing
party and a substantial opposition. Under these proposals it is
likely that any small majority on the assembly would actually
vanish in the Review and Monitoring Committee, so you would have
the executive faced with review and monitoring sub-committees
which had a different proportionality in effect and a majority
of non-government party members. We think that the likely outcome
of this is a party politicisation of the scrutiny process, a temptation
to use scrutiny committees for oppositional purposes. Based on
the work that we have done on scrutiny over the past two years,
it seems to us that that is the least effective way of running
a scrutiny system. We are somewhat confused as to why this proposal
has appeared on the face of the Bill when there is no real way
of knowing how well it would work in practice. From an academic
point of view it is an interesting idea which is worth trying
at some point, but enforcing it on the face of this Bill seems
to us to have been done for no visibly good reason.
Q31 Mr Sanders: Is it possible that
it is to try and curb the growing advocacy role of scrutiny in
local government, where scrutiny committees are looking at things
well beyond the functions of the council and acting as advocates
for communities and that in a sense this way would curb that within
a regional assembly, I think possibly wrongly, by trying to force
them inwards to look at the functions at a regional level?
Professor Hazell: If I could interject
and support your implicit query when you said "possibly wrongly".
If the regional assembly, which, as you know, has very limited
formal powers, is to be, as Mark said at the beginning, the voice
of the region, then a very important way in which it can be a
regional voice is by conducting enquiries which go outside its
formal functions and I very much hope that regional assemblies
will do that.
Q32 Chairman: I want to take you
on to the question of the area sub-committees. Are they going
to have to reflect the composition of the regional assembly as
a whole or are they going to have to reflect the composition of
the area that they are going to cover?
Mr Sandford: I am afraid I do
not know. I would have to check and send you a note.
Q33 Chairman: What has happened in
Wales with the area sub-committees? Have they worked well or not?
Professor Hazell: They are seen
as talking shops because they have little power. They have proved
quite useful, given the geographical divisions in Wales, in getting
members of the assembly out and about, particularly to the further
flung parts of Wales where they regularly hold meetings outside
Cardiff, but people close to the assembly say that they have not
yet found a satisfactory role.
Q34 Chairman: On this whole question
of scrutiny, do you think it is a good idea for the Bill to spell
it out or would it be better simply to have a general requirement
for them to set up a system of scrutiny and then for each of them
to be able to choose how they do it?
Mr Sandford: I would agree with
you that it would be easier and better for there to be a general
requirement. It seems to me that there is no advantage in specifying
in great detail how the scrutiny system should work. The system
that they have specified is actually used by some local authorities.
The entire non-executive membership of certain local authorities
become the giant scrutiny committees, sometimes there are 50 members
and it has commissioned work from sub-committees, but that is
a choice that local authorities have made. Other local authorities
have chosen to set up systems which look far more like that used
in the House of Commons or in the Welsh Assembly, subject committees
in effect handling different parts of the council's business.
I do not think it is possible to say that one system works better
than the other. There is no clear definition of exactly how the
scrutiny should work. Under those circumstances I think flexibility
is the key.
Q35 Chairman: Is there not a problem?
The House of Commons had a scrutiny system inflicted on it because
people went to the United States and thought their system worked
well, and there obviously are problems in the House of Commons
with scrutiny. Local Government got it inflicted on them because
it was alleged parliamentary scrutiny worked well. Is it not time
people actually looked a little bit more carefully at the purpose
of the scrutiny and how effective it can be?
Mr Sandford: In some ways I feel
that the Bill and the policy statements indicate that the Government
is beginning to reach towards that way of thinking. I was particularly
interested in the fact that the word scrutiny is not mentioned
anywhere in the Bill or in the policy statements. The words review
and monitoring have apparently come back into fashion after three
or four years of everybody talking about scrutiny. I think a related
point is the number of appointment rights which the Bill confers
on regional assemblies, which is a far greater number of appointment
rights than were originally indicated in the White Paper. One
of the things that seems to me to indicate is that the Government
has not quite decided yet whether the purpose of backbenchers
in these assemblies is to scrutinise or to form a kind of reserve
pool for appointments to various public bodies within the regions,
and those are two quite distinct roles, both of which may or may
not be valid in their own way, both of which appear to be being
considered by the Government as valid roles for the backbenchers
of the assemblies.
Q36 Chairman: One of the key roles
as far as parliamentary scrutiny is concerned is that you can
usually get a lot of evidence sent in from civil society outside.
Do you think these regional assemblies are going to be able to
draw on that same fund of people being willing to put in evidence
and allowing themselves to be cross-examined?
Mr Sandford: I am almost certain
they will. People in civil society have essentially everything
to gain and nothing to lose by taking part in the democratic processes
of an elected assembly. If there seemed a chance, however faint,
that an assembly inquiry could lead to encouragement of a better
policy at central government level, of a more clear direction
of lobbying towards the centre, then it is in their interests
to make sure that that is done well. It is not in their interests
to stand aside of it.
Q37 Mr Clelland: Is not what is being
proposed here different to the parliamentary system of scrutiny?
With the involvement of stakeholders that we referred to earlier
the actual people who would normally be putting in evidence to
a committee like this will actually be taking part in the sub-committees
and committees of the assembly and, therefore, it is quite a different
role. The witnesses that we have to our committee here will actually
be taking part in committees and sub-committees. So it will be
a different kind of scrutiny role, will it not, than we have here?
Mr Sandford: Up to a point, yes.
I would be surprised if sub-committees appointed so many co-optees
that they did not have anybody left to give evidence. It sounds
as though I am being picky.
Q38 Mr Clelland: I mean sectors like
the voluntary sector. They would be involved, would they not?
Mr Sandford: Yes.
Q39 Mr Clelland: So in that sense
they would not have to submit evidence, they would actually be
there taking part.
Professor Hazell: They will be
on both sides of the table as it were and because some of them
will be on your side of the table they will be very well placed
to encourage and beat the bushes hard in relation to any specific
inquiry and to get the best set of witnesses on this side of the
table.
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