Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
MR BOB
NEILL AND
MR RICHARD
DERECKI
27 MARCH 2006
Q300 Mr Betts: Thank you very much for
coming this afternoon to our inquiry. Just to give apologies from
Phyllis Starkey MP, the Chair, who is away in her constituency
on important business this afternoon, but you are welcome anyway
and could you identify yourselves, please, for the sake of our
records?
Mr Neill: I am Bob Neill. I am
a Member of the London Assembly and I am Deputy Chairman of the
Commission on London Governance.
Mr Derecki: I am Richard Derecki.
I am the Director of Studies for the Commission on London Governance.
Q301 Alison Seabeck: In your recent review,
you argued very forcibly for a review of governance across London,
and not just the GLA and the Mayor: why?
Mr Neill: That has not been done
for the better part of 50 years. The Herbert Commission was the
last attempt at a holistic view of the local government structures
of London; Marshall afterwards was purely, I think, part of the
picture. You might argue that Herbert itself did not go that far,
because it was looking only at what we might regard as the traditional
local government planning to ensure local government competences,
when actually London has become so complex, in those 50-odd years
which have gone by, that it is time for a completely holistic
look at it. There is a danger that we are having little bits of
reviews here, little bits of reviews there, a review of what is
happening in the Health Service arrangements, a review of what
is happening with the Mayor's powers and competences; we think
we need to have a look at the whole piece.
Q302 Alison Seabeck: It is a very
complex area and probably you will not be able to answer this,
but what changes would you advocate; have you got in your minds
already certain changes that you would like to see to the governance
of London, across the piece?
Mr Neill: I think the thing that
came through most strongly to us, and Richard, who ploughed through
all the detailed evidence, can help us with the detail, was that
there is a lot of confusion amongst Londoners themselves as to
who is responsible for what and how the governance arrangements
actually work. That is why I say it is not just what we think
of as traditional local government, confusion about who is responsible
for delivering the Health Service in its various sectors, where
you sit with policing, crime and disorder, other emergency services,
it is pulling that together and giving it a greater sense of accountability.
Quite often, people come to us and say "We don't know who
to go to," and tell us, "We've got a problem with the
buses," on the one hand, and "I have got an issue with
social services," on the other, or "We've got a problem
with hospital admission," and so on.
Q303 Alison Seabeck: Reorganisation
of local government is something which is always costly, never
easy; have you done any assessment of how much that is going to
cost London taxpayers to undertake?
Mr Neill: If you have a look at
our report in detail, we set out some of the costs of previous
reorganisation, which is actually why we do not suggest going
down the route that I know the Mayor would like, with a major
upheaval of all the boroughs, precisely because we think that
would be too costly. We would prefer to build on what there is
at the moment. It is not actually creating massive new structures
but, as an example, you could devolve a number of the funding
streams, which currently are administered by GOL, sometimes to
the Mayor, in some cases directly to the boroughs and the CDRP
money sensibly could go to the boroughs and European funding,
such as we will have in the future, other things, sensibly could
go direct to the Mayor. On the borough front, we argue that perhaps
if boroughs are doing well and are well-performing authorities
there is clearly already lots of argument for greater synergies
between borough social services departments and the PCTs; that
could be built upon and I can see an argument, in due course,
for the boroughs taking on some of the commissioning work of PCTs.
Those are elected and accountable bodies which ought to have that
role.
Mr Derecki: I think very much
the proposals from the Commission were not about creating new
structures, they were very much about enhancing what is already
there and finding where there is capacity to push that ability
to deliver services.
Q304 John Cummings: You have partly
answered the question in relation to who holds the purse strings
for London, but what are the implications of this financial control
for governance in London?
Mr Neill: As far as possible,
we would seek to make it for London council taxpayers cost-neutral;
that is why we are very anxious not to get into big empires, and
so on. I think the real difficulty that we have, and I know Sir
Michael Lyons is going to look at it, is this disconnect between
who provides the funding, on the one hand, and the people who
are responsible for delivering the services and accountability
to the actual ordinary user, on the other. That is the bit that
we are trying to draw down into. Clearly, if you take London,
for example, if you want to have significant improvements in London's
transport infrastructure, the current base for raising revenue
for that, of either fares or domestic council tax, being the only
two tools you have got which you can change within London, probably
is too narrow to achieve that. That is why we think in terms of
returning the Business Rate, for example.
Q305 John Cummings: Do you think
there is sufficient accountability for public expenditure in London?
Mr Neill: We do not think there
is.
Q306 John Cummings: How do you think
it should be strengthened?
Mr Neill: For a start, if we were
to take GOL out of the ordinary rank of London Region Offices,
because you can well argue, and I was interested in the debate
you were having about what happened in the North East, that is
not an issue in London. In a sense, there was a referendum, there
was a settled structure of devolved city regional government here;
let us strengthen that so you do not have to have GOL administering
a lot of these things. Even though I do not agree with the Mayor,
it is much better he has that power and is accountable for it,
in broad measure, and, similarly at the local level, let us beef
up the role of the boroughs. I would like to see far more scope
for making sure that Local Area Agreements, the Strategic Partnerships
are more accountable through the elected Members who serve on
it.
Q307 John Cummings: In your evidence,
in paragraph 3.11, you talk about a "clutter of institutions."
What impact does this have upon policy development and service
delivery; is it deliverable?
Mr Derecki: I think it does pull
down to the problems of lack of transparency and the perceived
accountability gap between local customers, consumers, local citizens.
Q308 John Cummings: Would you say
it is a perceived accountability gap, or is it actual?
Mr Derecki: I think it is an actual
one. They perceive that there is an accountability gap because
they do not understand whom they should approach, nor to do with
issues that arise, problems that come up, they do not know how
to access information about the delivery of a particular service,
they do not know who is actually funding that service and they
do not understand the rights and responsibilities they have as
receivers of those public services.
Q309 John Cummings: Do you think
this is specific to London? I believe you are talking about the
general public here, but surely this is the same right throughout
the land, when it comes to trying to understand local authority
expenditure?
Mr Derecki: I think it is. I think
you have just heard a compelling argument previously about the
100 quangos which are operating in the North East. I do not think
it is particular to London, but I think it is something that we
picked up on in our work when we went out and collected our evidence
base; it was a message that came over loud and clear and we are
trying to respond to that.
Q310 Martin Horwood: Is not this
partly because it is a relatively new structure and one of the
reasons everybody across the entire country is confused about
who does what in local government and regional government is because
we keep on changing it every 10 years? Planning powers go up and
down like yo-yos, and surely in London I would have thought actually
that with a high profile Mayor taking very specific positions
on particular policies to do with, for instance, transport, I
would guess that people in London actually are clearer about the
division of responsibilities than in other parts of the country.
Is not that your perception?
Mr Neill: Funnily enough, not
as much as you would think. I understand your point, but, for
example, a lot of the detail of it people do not pick up on. Most
people think that the Mayor has direct control of the police,
but of course he does not, there is a police authority in-between.
A lot of people are confused as to whether he has responsibility
for some of the overground trains, as opposed to the tube. It
is not just at the strategic level, where you have got a comparatively
new structure, I agree, but also it is noticed particularly, I
think, at the borough level. I use again, quite deliberately,
the example of the Health Service because it came up quite a lot.
There, you have got a disconnect between public health issues,
on the one hand, the more basic primary care issues and the linkages
in there with social services. Clearly, we are seeing already,
and rightly, I think, more close working between local authority
social services and the PCTs. There is logic in saying "Well,
how do you actually make that more accountable for people?"
Q311 Mr Betts: Looking at the current
model for governance in London, do you think that is a unique
example of how things can be done in this country, or do you think
it could be replicated in other large cities?
Mr Neill: I think I would be cautious
about saying it can be replicated elsewhere, simply because London
is unique, in terms of its size and complexity and the political
situation, and in fact there is a settled measure of devolved
government, which is still a matter of contention elsewhere. I
think also the nature of cities varies enormously, as you will
know, Mr Betts, from your experience with Sheffield. London, in
a sense, can be treated as a one-off; it is the largest city in
Western Europe and it has got, at least broadly, acceptably-defined
boundaries, in terms of the built-up bit within the M25 being
something which is recognisable.
Q312 Mr Betts: You may or may not
be aware of the document which the IPPR have just launched, where
they are almost saying that other large cities in the country
could have a very similar system of an elected mayor with certain
economic-related functions?
Mr Neill: I am not saying rule
that out, and clearly there are powerful arguments for that. The
only caveat I would make is, in terms of the actual, specific
suggestions as to what bit of responsibility and competence goes
where, we have done it deliberately from the point of view of
this being a package drawn up by Londoners for Londoners. Listening
to your previous witnesses, the issue, for example, of the rural
areas and the hinterland in a city, which obviously does not apply
in the same way as far as we are concerned; equally, our argument
is that you can justify the London package regardless of whether
you go down the city regions or city mayors route elsewhere in
the country or not.
Q313 Mr Betts: In terms of the arrangements
in London, and you were talking before about having a look not
merely at what powers might be devolved to the Mayor but also
what might be devolved to the boroughs, will there be any sense
in which, some of the powers that the Mayor has, there might be
some way in which the boroughs could actually hold the Mayor accountable
rather than the GLA?
Mr Neill: That is the interesting
thing; at one stage there was talk about there being possibly
a Senate of London, and I think perhaps we went off the idea because
we thought that yet another deliberative body was not going to
add very much. What I would like to see is a culture building
up politically in London which involves closer, more collaborative
work between the Mayor and the boroughs. We came from a broad
hierarchy, if you like, that you could see strategic issues, London-wide
issues being dealt with essentially by the Mayor, with some of
the things, like the Learning and Skills Council, like indeed
the public health policy, being brought within the Mayor's envelope,
accountable to the Assembly, so there is democratic accountability
there. Then at the borough level things like borough policing
strategy and targets; there, the borough police commanders being
much more accountable to the local authority, to the borough,
it is the same way that PCTs are being more accountable, at that
day-to-day delivery level. It is finding the appropriate level
and getting the accountability there.
Q314 Sir Paul Beresford: Just to
follow on from Clive Betts, it is a bit of a turkeys and Christmas
question, but perhaps the best way, would you not think, actually
of tightening the relationship between the Mayor and the boroughs
would be if we did not have a GLA as it is structured now but
it was the leader of the representatives from each of the 32 boroughs,
rather than a GLA elected Mayor?
Mr Neill: It is interesting; as
you know, our Party favoured that, in fact, at one time, as it
happens. When I talk to the borough leaders now, of all parties,
they themselves have rather gone off that idea, simply in terms
of the practicality, the time commitment for actually doing scrutiny
over about a £9 billion budget, which is the gross revenue
expenditure, in broad terms, of the GLA group. If you were to
expect people to be running boroughs and keeping a handle on the
Mayor over things like transport, policing, economic development,
I think, with the best will in the world, that would prove very
difficult. What I would like and what we do advocate is enhanced
consultation, statutory consultation rights for the boroughs being
built into the system, so that the Mayor has to consult them at
an earlier stage than he does at the moment on points of development,
taking more specifically into account their views on budgets,
and so on.
Q315 Sir Paul Beresford: Let us be
realistic. The Mayor consults.
Mr Neill: He does his own thing,
you might say.
Q316 Sir Paul Beresford: He has consulted
about expanding the Congestion Charge; everybody said "No"
and he has gone ahead?
Mr Neill: That is the other bit,
Sir Paul, of our document. That says that if you have increased
power for the Mayor you must also increase the power of the Assembly
to hold him to account. Therefore, what we suggest is that, in
the same way as the Assembly amend the Mayor's budget by a qualified
majority, the logic is to give it the same power to amend the
Mayor's strategies, so the Transport Strategy, including the Congestion
Charge, therefore would be subject then to amendment by the Assembly.
It gives the Assembly something of a legislative role and it makes
the Mayor deal with the people represented on the Assembly.
Q317 Martin Horwood: I wanted just
to come back to you on the health dimension, because that seems
an example of where, although you are arguing for more democratic
accountability and I think you said, in general, for more simplicity
so that people understand who has what responsibility, in practice
what you are suggesting is something much more complicated. At
the moment you have the Primary Care Trust functions, of which
a core part is public health, and I speak to you with a little
bit of knowledge here because my wife is a Director of Public
Health, and you are suggesting splitting that into at least three
different places, as far as I can gather. You are saying the public
health function goes up to the Mayor, or to the Assembly, presumably
the PCTs still exist in some form, and there is also accountability
then to the boroughs. Surely that is going to be a much more complicated
system in which it is much more difficult to co-ordinate things?
Mr Neill: No, I do not think it
need be, because when one looks at what we are going to have in
London, it seems accepted now, pretty much, that there will be
a single strategic health authority for London, which we support
because we think that makes sense, therefore there will be a public
health function being dealt with at the pan-London level. The
Mayor, under the Act, has one of the cross-cutting responsibilities
of the GLA, responsibility for improving the health of Londoners,
so there has got to be a read-across there. I can remember a time,
when I was in local government, when we had the public health
function at a local level within the boroughs, and I should think
it would work reasonably well.
Q318 Martin Horwood: You still have
them, the public health function, which is roughly the same thing,
(considering your responsibility, is it not ?)?
Mr Neill: Yes. I do not see it
creating any greater split. What I am saying is that where there
has to be a London public health strategy, where that has been
drawn up on a pan-London basis, logically that should be dove-tailed
in with the Mayor and his policies. Where things are being delivered
at a borough level there is a strong argument for increasing the
linkage between the borough and the PCT. As I say, a number of
the boroughs have said, "The way we're working, we're starting
to work so closely with our PCTs now," that there might come
a point at which a borough which was performing well, recognised
by the Audit Commission, actually might want to take over the
commissioning role of the PCT.
Q319 John Cummings: Would you tell
the Committee then what are the obstacles to effective representation
of London's interests to central government?
Mr Neill: I think it comes back
to the issue that we flagged up on GOL, because GOL has this,
like all the Government Offices but it is more acute in London
than anywhere else for that, it has set up a mutually contradictory
premise. On the one hand, it is supposed to be London's voice
in Government, on the other hand it is the Government's agent
in London, and I do not think that works very well necessarily.
I think it would be much better if GOL were slimmed down to just
a support unit for the Minister, and the bulk of the rest of it
was transferred to the Mayor, accountable to the Assembly, some
of it we have already heard went directly to the boroughs, and
I think that would make it easier for London's politicians to
talk to national politicians with a fairly direct route, without
things getting lost in GOL, I think. With the best will in the
world, I think even ministers, GOL have said, looking back on
it, you can be a bit of a post-box, and the trouble is with post-boxes
they create delay and things just get shifted around.
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