Memorandum submitted by Dr Matthew Flinders,
University of Sheffield (RPA Sub 03)
1. The Committee's inquiry into the Rural
Payments Agency provides a welcome and timely case-study into
a central challenge of modern governance—the control and
accountability of delegated public bodies by central departments.
2. The centrifugal pressure of wave upon
wave of public management reforms since the 1980s has seen the
establishment of a highly fragmented and complex bureaucratic
system within the United Kingdom. As a result, the delivery and
regulation of most public services have been delegated beyond
direct day-to-day ministerial control (see Diagram 1).
3. There is now an extensive literature
on the problems associated with large-scale delegation and this
body of work has been reviewed in an article accompanying this
submission. [1]There
are, however, three key issues that I would invite the Committee
to consider in the course of its inquiry. These are the control
and accountability frameworks, informal levers of control and
blame shifting.
4. The main challenge of agencification
for the centre is retaining the minister as an "intelligent
customer". Put another way, how can the minister and their
officials know that they information they are receiving from the
agency is a fair and true reflection of the current situation?
Some departments employ fairly large agency shadowing bureaucracies
to provide their minister with an independent flow of information
that can be used to assess that received from the agency. However,
the financial costs of agency-shadowing bureaucracies can off-set
the economic benefits of agencification while also distracting
the focus of senior staff within the agency from their core tasks.
5. The Committee might, therefore, focus
on the agency-departmental link, the role of the sponsoring team
or Fraser Figure and the mechanisms in place within the department
to maintain the Secretary of State as an "intelligent customer"
vis-a"-vis the agency.
6. Case study research from other incidents
involving executive agencies (Prison Service Agency, Benefits
Agency, etc) clarifies the role and importance of informal control
mechanisms by departments over non-departmental bodies that are
supposed to enjoy a high-degree of operational independence. This
informal control by ministers and senior officials can often frustrate
senior officials within agencies and, once again, prevent them
from focusing on their core tasks. In light of this the Committee
might consider collecting information on the frequency of meetings
and telephone calls between the agency chief executive and ministers/officials
during 2005 and 2006. This might help clarify lines of accountability
and responsibility and prevent blame-shifting between key actors.
7. The convention of individual ministerial
responsibility to Parliament was designed to ensure parliamentary
scrutiny of a far smaller and simpler state system than the one
that exists today. [2]The
creation of agencies and other forms of hybrid or "para-statal"
bodies (not to mention public-private partnerships) has blurred
the lines of accountability that used to be (in theory at least)
fairly clear. In this context blame-shifting—the tactics
employed by both politicians and bureaucrats in order to avoid
or deflect personal responsibility for errors or omissions within
their respective spheres—can become highly problematic.
[3]
8. The issue of blame shifting is obviously
highly pertinent in relation to the Rural Payments Agency in light
of the departure of Mr Johnston Mc Neill as its Chief Executive.
Although serving agency chief executives are bound by the Rules
on Civil Servants Appearing before Select Committees (the Osmotherly
Rules) officials who have retired or for one reason or another
have left the civil service are no longer subject to such limitations
when appearing before select committees.
Diagram 1 The Russian Doll Model: Delegated
Governance in Britain 2006
April 2006
1 Flinders, M (2004) "Distributed Public Governance
in Britain", Public Administration, 82 (4), 883-909. Back
2
Flinders, M (2004) "Icebergs and MPs: Delegated Governance
and Parliament", Parliamentary Affairs, 57 (4), 767-784. Back
3
Hood, C (2002) "The Risk Game and the Blame Game",
Government and Opposition, 37, 1, 15-37. Back
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