Examination of Witnesses (Questions 264-280)
MR ANDY
SAWFORD, COUNCILLOR
MERRICK COCKELL
AND MS
ANNA TURLEY
17 NOVEMBER 2008
Q264 Chair: Can I open the second session
on the balance of power between central and local government?
All three of your organisations are very strongly in favour of
further devolution. Obviously, the more devolution there is that
will inevitably lead to greater variation in delivery at a local
level. I am not talking about quality of delivery here, which
obviously varies from organisation to organisation, but an intention
to deliver a different standard of service in different places,
the so-called postcode lottery. Do you think it is acceptable
that some councils will choose to deliver lower standards of public
service than others? I do not mind who starts.
Mr Sawford: We
look at the postcode lottery debate with the language of local
diversity—meeting different local needs and meeting different
individuals' needs. We would support central government, or parliamentarians
for that matter, in wanting to set minimum national outcome targets
for public services. When we think about areas like healthcare
and policing and education, they are going to form a lot of the
dialogue around election times and be key in the manifestos of
the political parties. So we would expect you to still want to
assert a strong role, but we would also say that at a local level
community needs vary greatly and for some time the performance
framework in which councils operate—the financial framework
in which councils operate, and the legal framework in which they
operate—limit their ability to meet particular local needs.
Specifically, just to finish from opener, we would say that, given
some of the challenges coming up, like demographic change, given
that we all know we are going to have to deliver services in very
different ways and probably get more bang for our buck. In terms
of the services that people receive, that is going to involve
a dialogue with individuals about which services they want to
access from a package of local services about how best they want
their contribution to be put to work for them and their needs,
and unless central government shifts the political accountability
for what central government fears out of the postcode lottery
to a local level and says: "You make the tough decisions
at a local level. If you want a hospital to be maintained in your
area, even though nationally we might judge it not to be particularly
efficient, if you make those decisions, you will also be aware
that there are some consequences of that". It may mean less
investment in other areas of public service. It may mean different
types of investment in other health services in a community, but
communities should absolutely have the right to have those debates
and to make those decisions.
Q265 Chair: Councillor Cockell, your
organisation has argued indeed that political risk would be transferred
from the national to the local level. In the light of the current
furore about Haringey, and we do not want to go into the details,
obviously, do you think that is a realistic assertion, that risk
would be transferred from a national to a local level and that
if there were a catastrophe in some council somewhere people would
not be demanding that the Government does something?
Councillor Cockell: I do not suppose
it would stop people demanding that somebody does something, but
as for whether it is Government or whether it is that local authority
that had responsibility for either the direct provision or the
enabling or supervision of local services, I do not know. Currently
the system is to demand that the minister or the Prime Minister
makes a statement and something must be done. Quite clearly, what
we are talking about is the whole picture, as you say, not just
one particular tragic incident, so I still believe that national
government should pass down the risk and responsibility more to
local areas.
Sir Paul Beresford: I have been
in both local government and central government, and when you
sit as a minister you sit there looking at a sea of local government.
I have used this phrase before. You have got the good, the bad
and the ugly, and we have had an ugly mentioned just now. They
are not alone. There are plenty of them, just as there are plenty
of good ones. Government has a National Health Service and it
has its national policies, et cetera. It has to have some
hold. How does it divide the whole but release it in other areas
so that you can go ahead, because realistically at the end of
the day, unless you like the one that was just referred to, it
is Government that catches the backlash because they set the policy?
Q266 Chair: Ms Turley, do you want
to come in?
Ms Turley: Thank you. I completely
agree with Andy that we would love to see central government maintain
some sense of a strategic overview and a sense of minimum standards,
but in today's society there is so much diversity in terms of
demography, ethnicity, the amount people move around in their
local area, that it is simply not possible for us to maintain
public services, the way they are structured at the moment, to
be able to provide the level of standards that people need in
a personalised and tailored way. At the moment we already have
a postcode lottery in so many areas. You only have to look at
the life expectancy from one borough to another or even from street
to street to see that at the moment it is simply not working,
and so by allowing local authorities much more ability to tailor
and focus their resources and their powers to provide services
in a way people need they would be much more likely to have a
substantially better outcome than through a top-down restrictive
framework.
Councillor Cockell: Could I just
deal with Sir Paul's question about the good, the bad and the
ugly? I think there are fewer ugly local authorities than there
were, and one could quote the CPA (Comprehensive Performance Assessment),
certainly in London where there are no failing authorities, but,
more interestingly, from the survey work done on local residents'
perceptions in London, and I can only speak for London, it is
bucking a national trend so there is better perception of local
authorities in London. However, I do think that the Government
is absolutely more than entitled, has a responsibility to set
appropriate minimum standards, whether that is in the care of
vulnerable children or in health or whatever it may be, that are
right and proper and local authorities should at the minimum deliver
to those standards, but above that they should have the flexibility
to decide that some areas (indeed, our services are all different
and we are doing that generally anyhow) are of greater importance
to their local people than other areas and to focus spending priorities
in those.
Q267 Sir Paul Beresford: What should
they do with a failing authority?
Councillor Cockell: I think what
increasingly we are doing in local government and that is to sort
it out ourselves.
Sir Paul Beresford: This is the
second time Haringey in a very short space of years have had this
calamity.
Q268 Chair: It is fair to say they
are a three-star social services authority as well, so generally
speaking they are judged good.
Councillor Cockell: I am trying
not to draw conclusions on something we are only beginning to
know more about. You could take another London authority, Waltham
Forest, which I think was the fastest mover from zero to four-star,
which was recently declared. Waltham Forest did it partly—and
here I am as a Conservative quoting a Labour-run administration—with
local commitment but they also did it with all the other London
boroughs through something called Capital Ambition, which is the
regional improvement and efficiency grouping that we run within
London, and so all the boroughs cross-party helped Waltham Forest
to raise their standards. We did not look to somebody else to
wave a stick over Waltham Forest to tell them to do it. We knew
in London they had to get their act together because it was harming
all of us if they were performing badly, so I say we have the
capability and the record of doing that.
Chair: That is a very good example.
Can we concentrate on policing and health?
Q269 Mr Betts: I have got two issues
here which are very important to the public. I suppose there could
be an argument that the Department of Health has been reorganising
its PCTs (Primary Care Trusts), probably trying to get them into
better shape. The Home Office has got a Green Paper out looking
at how we might get direct elections to police authorities, presumably
making them more accountable. With all the other problems that
local government has at present, all the issues it has got to
deal with, is there really a case for extending local government's
remit into police and health?
Mr Sawford: We have worked with
organisations carrying out research with the public. We ourselves
regularly poll councillors' opinions and you might say they have
a vested interest but I think they have a perfectly legitimate
right to have a say on this. Both the public and councillors feel
that there should be stronger accountability at a local level
around policing and healthcare. Policing comes out as the number
one issue that people want a say over in their community, and
one where there is least opportunity for them to do it. You will
know this from your own experience in your own communities. The
consciousness of what the Police Authority is, what it does, who
its members are, is variable across the country and in many areas
it is fairly low. I think London is slightly different. I think
many people would see because of the mayoral system being different,
but in many parts of the country, certainly where I live, that
sense that you can really influence decision-making in policing
just is not there and that is something that all the political
parties nationally accept and have all got different proposals
on, and it is something that Sir Ronnie Flanagan has mentioned
in his report, and it is something that the Government now are
looking at. Where we differ from the Government is in the proposals
they have brought forward, and I know that is not the concern
today of this Committee, but in looking at proposals around policing
and proposals around the future of health services, and obviously
there is a debate about the NHS constitution and other areas,
we are doing some interesting work (or at least I hope the outcome
will be interesting) around local environmental stewardship. We
have set four tests and these are tests for the Policing Minister
to take up even though we come to different conclusions; which
is that we should make our services more democratic, more local,
more joined-up and more efficient, and it is the joined-up element
that we would emphasise particularly as you as parliamentarians
make any comments around policing. I know you are seeing the Police
Minister today, and as you look at the forthcoming Bill, which
is that separate and individual policy-specific mandate around
policing—and we are seeing it in national parks and to a
certain extent in a very specific context in healthcare around
foundation trusts—are fragmenting local democracy and in
our view will have the potential to do so rather than join up
services and build on from what has been a very welcome development
of local partnership working and local area agreements.
Q270 Mr Betts: The talk is about
the public not understanding arrangements but by the very nature
of them, given the size of many police authorities, it is not
going to be one individual council that has a remit to oversee
or direct or influence or even determine what happens within the
police's work. Is it not always going to be slightly convoluted
and is not the idea therefore to have direct elections, something
the public could very easily understand because it is pretty simple?
Councillor Cockell: I was keen
to intervene there because the proposal that is included in our
submission to you relates to a whole variety of areas, not necessarily
currently within the local authority area of remit of responsibilities.
Policing is a very good example where, certainly in London, there
is very good connection at a local level between the police authority
and borough policing. We think the way ahead is for commissioning
to be carried out along with the budget for level one policing,
particularly neighbourhood policing, in other words to be joined
to the budget that local authorities spend, which is often quite
substantial these days, pool those together and then for the local
authority to commission the borough commander to deliver level
one policing in our area. That brings in the requirements of the
Home Office, so, rather like the dedicated schools grant, it would
come with strings attached, literally, to the money, so there
would be national priorities there. There would no doubt be priorities
coming from the police authority, but added to those would be
local priorities and, that said, that set of priorities would
be commissioned by the local authority for the borough commander
to carry out. It means you do not have to totally reorganise the
current structure. In fact, you do not have to reorganise it at
all; it exists, but the local voice, the local needs of that community,
have a real chance of being heard and then followed rather than,
as we know, the nigh on impossibility of local views being taken
into account in direct policing operations.
Q271 Mr Betts: Would the same apply
to health?
Councillor Cockell: The same would
apply to health. Certainly the London Councils' model is that
it would apply to PCTs, that we would be the commissioners for
local health services in our area, or indeed that we would from
our own choice agree to form groupings to do it. It may not be
necessary or ideal to have 33 of everything in the case of London.
There may be very good reasons, again without changing the structure
of local government, to ally together with neighbours or others
to achieve certain things better.
Mr Sawford: We developed a similar
model. I will not go into the detail except to say that commissioning
is the key and how you use local commissioning, what an opportunity
that presents. It is the key to innovating, to getting people
involved.
Q272 Chair: Are you saying that commissioning
is more important necessarily than electing people to some new
body or whatever?
Mr Sawford: I think in the end
what you will be judged by and what councils will be judged by
are the services that people receive. Whilst particularly for
the Local Government Information Unit our whole mission is to
make local democracy work, we think local democracy is important
of itself, we also recognise that unless the proposals we bring
forward really make a difference to people's lives and improve
services people will not see our work to be of great value. We
join up a stronger element of local democracy, and there is informal
democracy through commissioning, how you involve people in the
design and delivery of their services, but also formal democracy,
and finance is the lever in our model, as in the London Councils
model. It is the lever whereby you put more of the power to the
elbow of councillors and in the end you get accountability back
to the ballot box. Commissioning is where the opportunity is and
where the excitement is.
Q273 Anne Main: In which case would
you be arguing then for scrapping national targets, say, for delivery
of policing?
Mr Sawford: No.
Q274 Anne Main: That is simple and
great, it is a no. In which case, if you are not arguing for scrapping
of targets, how would you react to the fact that the police would
like to see in some areas the merging of authorities because they
believe they have a deficit in the requirement to, say, deliver
on counter-terrorism? How do you react to that? If a local authority
says it needs that, as my authority said it would like to have
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire together because Bedfordshire had
the terrorism expertise and Hertfordshire did not have that expertise,
how would you react to that? How local are you going to try and
make this?
Ms Turley: This comes back to
my first point about how just how complex the issues are that
both central and local government are having to deal with, and
that is why in terms of devolution we really need to think about
the appropriate level for all the kinds of services we deliver
and the way we do that. What we are starting to see and I am really
encouraged by are things like the multi-area agreement process,
which is where we have central and local government sitting down
as partners and working through the way they deliver services,
the shared outcomes that they want to achieve. I think a similar
sort of approach on policing would be quite helpful in that central
government, of course, has to maintain oversight on serious organised
crime, terrorism, financial crime, all kinds of things like that,
but we are seeing really good steps in terms of local policing,
neighbourhood policing and so on. It is really important that
local people—and we heard it through the Casey Review—feel
very strongly that they want to have a say in their policing.
My view is that that is not necessarily by the creation of a new
elected representative on an authority which most people, as Andy
says, have very little awareness of and which perhaps not only
duplicates some of the role of the local authority but may start
to fragment policing from the wider place-shaping agenda.
Q275 Anne Main: In which case, since
you said no to scrapping of targets, the other thing my police
argue, and I know this is a common argument, is that they are
driven to act in a certain way, which may not be what the local
community wants, because of Government targets. You cannot have
it both ways. You just said, "We would like to deliver what
local people want on the ground", but what local people want
on the ground is not a Government target. How are you going to
resolve that tension?
Ms Turley: That is where central
government needs to have a much better conversation and listen
much more closely to what local people need and ensure that the
resources it supplies are not solely focused on what they want
to achieve but that they allow police the flexibility to maintain
not only their links with central government and with the overarching
targets but also with the local people.
Q276 Anne Main: You say "overarching
targets". Given that there has been a plethora of additional
targets, are you saying fewer targets but not to scrap all the
targets?
Ms Turley: I think we need a fundamental
look at what the purpose of the targets is. There is absolutely
no point in having meaningless top-down targets. They have to
be ones that fit in, that the police can deliver on and where
central government can say, "This is why we want this",
and have a proper conversation with the police force and with
the local authorities to say why this is a priority, why this
is important, and then there may need to be a conversation where
local authorities will say, "Actually, I am really sorry
but that contradicts what we are doing locally". There have
been some quite strong discussions during the LAA process where
the Home Office and other departments were very keen to emphasise
particular targets on local areas and they were resisted, and
I think it was quite a constructive and ground-breaking conversation
between central and local where they negotiated for that.
Q277 Anne Main: Are you suggesting
then that every time the Government wants to come up with a target
it is going to have to negotiate that target with the local area?
No. I can see some shaking heads. What are you suggesting because
I am a little bit confused as to how you would like to scrap the
targets that are not appropriate for each local area but still
have overarching targets? Who is going to agree them? Can I invite
somebody else to give their view?
Councillor Cockell: We spend a
lot of our time negotiating targets with Government and through
the latest LAA quite effectively. Government accepted there were
far too many targets. We reduced the key ones down to 30 and within
those that still left a good amount of flexibility locally, so
I think we are equipped to do it, and I would have thought, certainly
at the level of policing I am talking about, level one neighbourhood
policing, the targets would be fairly obvious. I think what we
want to get away from are fast-moving targets. If Fleet Street
suddenly decides that bicycle thefts are truly very important
and should take priority over something else and we do not have
problems of bicycle thefts locally then a new national target
should not take preference over an agreed set of local targets.
I quoted the Dedicated Schools Grant and on that we are given
the minimum spending per pupil, we are given the minimum spending
per pupil per school, areas of deprivation, so we are given the
context and then you can also have your own local priorities to
add to that. I think it is a model that is workable in these instances,
not just applied to policing. If we are looking at the operation
of local government we cannot just have a different mechanism
for each area we are looking at beyond the current local authority
responsibilities.
Q278 Chair: One of the areas where
there were troubles, so to speak, between councils and Whitehall
in negotiating of the LAA was extremism. Extremism is clearly
important at a national level. It may be that council A has got
lots of extremists in it but they go out and do their extremism
in council B. That is not an area which could be up for negotiation
with council A, is it? If they have got them they should be doing
something.
Mr Sawford: That is specific language
of its time. We would always expect to see some national targets
around cohesion and around how people live their lives alongside
each other in communities. The important thing in terms of what
we would hope to get out of engaging with this Committee is that
we cannot deal with all those tensions around the relationship
between national and local government as sitting targets, but
what we would like to do is put some firmer foundations in place,
a better framework for that dialogue, and one of the elements
of that framework would be a stronger—I was going to say
"more mature" but that is a bit pejorative—more
helpful relationship between central and local government, including
a statutory footing for that relationship. As you know, at the
moment we have a Central-Local Concordat, and I know it is something
you have looked at, but frankly it is a very weak basis for that
dialogue. It has sign-up only from CLG (Communities and Local
Government) and the LGA (Local Government Association), not from
wider central government, not from wider local government, so
the whole basis on which we are having this debate at the moment
is very shallow. We are not saying "local good, central not
so good". I fully accept that over time you might want the
opportunity to vary what kinds of targets you set and the policy
areas in which the focus will vary. If you have an incoming government
of a different political persuasion no doubt they will be elected
on some areas that bring a whole new focus into Government and
they might well want to push that with some new targets, so it
is always going to be fluid but we just have to get a different
basis for that dialogue, one in which local government's role
and contribution is recognised.
Q279 Jim Dobbin: I am interested
in this wish for local government to have some involvement or
some accountability for areas like policing and health. The issue
I am raising is capacity, quite honestly, because you would be
taking on responsibility and would be accountable for the largest
employer in the country at the present time with massive budgets.
If I can just describe my own constituency, I have got one primary
care trust which serves two constituencies; I have got four district
general hospitals which are part of the second largest acute trust
in the country, none of them in my constituency, all of them in
different boroughs. I am just illustrating a whole system that
would need to be addressed with great care if you are going to
go down that route. I am not saying it is impossible. What I am
saying is that it is a gigantic step to take.
Councillor Cockell: If I may respond,
our belief is that locally elected people should be responsible
to their communities for locally delivered services and you can
apply that to any service. What we are not saying, and I think
we would be unwise if we did say it, is that we should be providing
those services. Local authorities have moved in most respects,
and there are some pioneers here, from believing we have to do
everything to being accountable, being representative and commissioning.
We are back to commissioning again, and that is, I think, the
role we have in future because how else can our residents, our
population, hold medical services to account, the police to account,
in a sensible, properly moderated way, or any of the other public
services that do not currently fall into the ambit of local authorities?
We believe that that is at the very core of changing people's
perception of the agreement they have with Government at national
and local levels.
Q280 Jim Dobbin: I am not disagreeing
with you, but why do you get involved in huge areas like that
which are delivering services? There has got to be a finger pointing
somewhere at times when those services fail, and therefore you
cannot divorce yourselves from some accountability or some responsibility.
Mr Sawford: But is it not the
reality that the finger points at politicians anyway? It certainly
points at national politicians; you all know that from your own
postbags, and it points at local politicians, and local politicians
get frustrated, particularly in healthcare and in policing, because
they have a limited ability to influence them. When you look at
some of the best of councils around the country, and there are
many high-performing councils now around the country, they are
already taking on a huge role in influencing health and policing.
We know that when you join up delivery of local services, when
you integrate commissioning, when you bring professionals together
from traditionally different disciplines, you can get big improvements
in services and real innovation. I do not think we are talking
about changing all the labels on the vans and where will pay cheques
come from. What we are talking about is increasing the political
connectedness and the link back to the ballot box through the
commissioning process rather than a wholesale moving people around
offices. I think local government is probably getting better,
getting out of the psychosis of always thinking about structures.
It goes back to the policing debate about level two crime. After
what was a wasted opportunity, to have a big national debate a
few years ago around terrorism and serious and organised crime,
police authorities have got on themselves with creating their
own structures with varying degrees of success around the country
and collaborating not just within regions but across borders and
finding all sorts of different arrangements. We certainly would
not want to get too bogged down with structures which are admittedly
complex, going back to Mr Betts' point about local government's
complex structures; it always is a problem when you try to move
forward, but, say, commissioning local strategic partnerships
and building on these, and there are many joined-up bridges to
healthcare like common directors of public health.
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