Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-65)
MR CHRIS
LESLIE, MS
JANET GRAUBERG
AND MR
JAMES MORRIS
23 JUNE 2008
Q60 Chair: There are suggestions
that health should be brought under the strategic control of the
local elected councillors. On the other hand, there are alternative
models which suggest that you should simply have an elected basis
directly to manage the local health service. I would just use
that as an example. What are the pros and cons of those two sorts
of models?
Mr Leslie: I think it is quite
important to reassert the virtue of multifunctional local democracy,
the fact that if we are, for instance, going down the route of
comprehensive area assessment, with the place shaping mentality,
which was Sir Michael's phrase that he coined, that did see this
concept of locally accountable political leaders shaping all the
services in their area, then it is important that there is consistency
between them, that they are prioritised according to the local
area's needs, and that we do not just bleeding chunks of siloed
areas of public services separate with little walls around them,
because, as we know, and we can see this certainly at Whitehall
level, getting joined-up government is an exceptionally difficult
thing to achieve, so it is really important to have consistency
and strategic leadership at that local level. The box has been
opened on comprehensive area assessment, place shaping will be
the test against which authorities are judged in the new audit
regime, and yet the powers that they have in order to actually
achieve that are not fully fledged; they have not been allowed
to develop. I would like to see PCT (Primary Care Trust) commissioning
powers coming under local democratic control, and the police authority
much more under accountable control as well.
Q61 Dr Pugh: How do you respond to
the research that shows that if you ask the public who they would
like to be running their health service, councillors are always
at the bottom of the pile after doctors and clinicians and administrators
and maybe even government, because there is a view that these
are areas, local areas albeit, but which are so expert-driven
in a sense that an ordinary democratic chap who gets himself elected
by delivering Focus leaflets or whatever would not be qualified
to discharge a function like that?
Mr Leslie: It depends how you
ask the question, of course, but it is our money; it is taxpayers'
money at the end of the day that is commissioning these services
and therefore no taxation without representation, in my view.
Mr Morris: If I can speak on that
point that you made, in a sense it is a question about capacity,
because in principle I would agree that, for example, there is
an ongoing debate about the delivery of social care and the relationship
with local authorities, and that is a very current debate, but
you cannot delegate more power without having a secure capacity
for the delivery of the powers, and therefore I think that is
again something that needs to be considered in terms of the capacity
of councillors to make the appropriate decisions and how those
decisions are communicated.
Ms Grauberg: I would add that
it is also a question of accountability. It is a sign of progress
from a local government point of view that these debates are now
being held across all the political parties about health and police,
and actually people are having the debate. I would probably argue
that the precise nature of the accountable solution is less important
because every solution has pros and cons. The precise nature of
the accountable solution is less important than actually having
some solution that increases the accountability at a local level,
whether that is directly elected or nominated or whatever. To
me, the key issue is the fact that actually we are now having
this debate probably proves that Sir Michael Lyons' recommendations
about the place shaping role have actually taken root in some
form.
Q62 Anne Main: Can I ask you to comment
on the comment that Michael Lyons made here today that councils
have allowed themselves to be characterised as powerless, somehow
implying that they were not powerless if they could better use
the powers that they have. I did actually challenge him on the
fact that there are so many government directives that come down
to local councils attached to funding triggers that actually councillors
do feel powerless because they are having to deliver perhaps a
regional agenda that they do not understand. So there will be
a regional directive that says St Albans has to do something when
St Albans District Council, and Hertfordshire County Council indeed,
may have said it does not want to do something. It is that conflict
that people say to me makes almost the council look powerless,
and I would say is not characterised as powerless, but I would
invite your views on it.
Mr Morris: The fundamental issue
in this debate is about financial discretion at a local level,
and that local authority leaders and chief executives are too
focused on looking upwards rather than focusing on their communities,
looking downwards, and the financial mechanisms that are currently
in place do not encourage them to look outwards and downwards.
There have been some incremental changes made recently, but without
a comprehensive look at financial discretion, with grants being
made without ring-fencing, much more comprehensively, and even
looking at the whole area of local government finance once again,
taking into account the fact that it is politically difficult,
I think nothing else can really follow.
Q63 Chair: Can I just clarify, Mr
Morris, would you agree with Sir Michael that the key thing is
flexibility in the way the money can be spent, and that that is
more important than necessarily giving councillors new ways of
raising money themselves?
Mr Morris: I do not think I would
necessarily agree with him 100% on that. I think flexibility is
important but I think we should also be considering examples where
local authorities can raise capital in alternative ways. For example,
the debate about Barnet Council, who have been looking at raising
a Barnet Bond. I know that possibly in the current financial market
things like that may be a little bit difficult but that is certainly
something that we should be considering in the future, politically
in relation to local capital projects where there is essential
infrastructure that needs to be built in local communities which
is not fitting in with the current financial framework. We should
be looking seriously at alternative mechanisms for local authorities
to raise investment capital.
Mr Leslie: Could I follow up on
your question about powerlessness, but weave in the finance? I
would agree with James that actually, it is more than flexibility.
If only 15% of the total quantum comes from the locality, with
the size of grant dependency that there is out there, that balance
forces any rational chief executive and council leader to look
up towards Ministers and how they are designing their funding
formula rather than, if that grant were substituted for elements
of local income tax or elements of stamp duty, call it what you
will, that were a direct result of their actions as councils within
their community—that revenue of course currently goes all
the way to the Treasury and comes back down. I believe it should
come much more straight to the authorities as a substitute for
grant. Councils do, I think, get into the habit of feeling powerless,
partly because they are in this dependency cycle, although there
is also a certain amount of responsibility that local government
should take on its own shoulders, because in the annual financial
round it can be quite convenient for councils to blame ministers
and ministers blame councils, and it goes round and round and
has done for generations. I believe that part of the constitutional
reform programme you may want to look at should be how we can
encourage the local government family to take on more responsibility.
For instance, why should ministers be the ones who determine grant
distribution all the time? Why cannot the local government family
come to an agreement amongst themselves—difficult though
that may be—about how grants should be distributed? That
would be a sign of maturity in the constitution.
Q64 Anne Main: Can I just ask you
one thing, because one of the biggest issues in my constituency
is planning. This is a big example, and actually a lot of guidance
has been coming from government in terms of the number of parking
spaces you are allowed and so on and so forth: we are asked to
deliver this number of houses and almost told in which way we
deliver it, and that is where local authorities become very annoyed.
They say "We would like to refuse that but we cannot because
the Government says this that and the other."
Ms Grauberg: What you have put
your finger on is that it is too simple to say there is one relationship
between local government and central government. Actually, in
housing, in schools, and in planning there is one nature of the
relationship, whereas in other areas, for example, supporting
the voluntary community sector, business growth, economic development,
there is a completely different relationship, down to that the
housing revenue grants structure effectively determines the level
of rent increase that a particular council might be required to
implement because of the complicated nature of the interaction
of the rent grant. In any debate about the nature of the relationship
I think there is something that says what the relationship is
service by service. We talk about central government being siloed;
are there things that one can learn from the nature of the relationship
in one part of government to apply in another part of government
that says actually, you can let go and the world does not end?
Anne Main: You are saying a prosaic approach.
Q65 Dr Pugh: A few minutes ago we
were talking about the Health Service and accruing services to
robust, autonomous, strong local authorities that have a sense
of purpose and all that sort of thing. Chris Leslie very sensibly
said if it has a place shaping role, it is silly for them not
to have the levers on services like the Health Service, which
interacts with social services and the like. James Morris said
that the objection that we would not have the expertise could
be sorted out by capacity building, but there is another objection
hanging around, and that is to say that whereas a quango can be
relied upon to do the inevitable, local authorities are congenitally
populist and will dodge making tough decisions, particularly in
areas like health where decisions sometimes have to be made which
are not wholly approved of by everybody. How would you respond
to that?
Mr Morris: I think you are right
that the world is not perfect, but one of the underlying principles
which should drive reform has to be about democratic legitimacy.
Local government councillors are elected, and that has to be respected.
We may need to be rebuilding trust in local government but, in
the end, democratic legitimacy leads to democratic accountability,
and it seems to me that that needs to underpin and be really focused
on the course of reform.
Ms Grauberg: I would make a supporting
argument, which is that local councils deal with difficult choices
every day, and what they have is the opportunity to explain why
the options are being set out, what the pros and cons are, in
a way that resonates with their localities. When it comes to closing
a hospital or whatever, actually there is no resonance. The decision
is taken in Whitehall and there is no resonance, which forces
local politicians into a place where they have to oppose it, and
that debate has just disappeared. Something whereby those conversations,
played out through the press or whatever, have all of the sides
argued out in the same place might make those choices easier to
make rather than more difficult.
Mr Leslie: If we treat local government
as though it is somehow subservient and does not have power, as
it should have, then we will not attract people of the ability
to show the leadership necessary to get to those tough decisions.
Ultimately, how do you make a tough decision? You have to have
strong leadership. How do you get strong leaders? You have to
make that a task worth attracting the very best people into. I
still think that fundamentally one of the best ways of reinvigorating
strong local democracy is to see that shift in the balance of
power so that it really is fundamentally a worthwhile thing, and
possibly there are leadership issues in structural terms as well
that need to be considered. Seeing where the buck stops at local
government level is also still not quite as clear as I think it
could be.
Chair: Thank you all very much indeed.
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