Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
PROFESSOR GEORGE
JONES OBE AND
PROFESSOR JOHN
STEWART
8 DECEMBER 2008
Q400 Mr Olner: Local authorities
would have acted differently as regards health delivery than primary
care trusts.
Professor Jones: Primary care
trusts to me are quangos. They are not democratically elected
bodies which is why we support a major role for local government
in the Health Service. There are various steps that one can take
to achieve this; ideally the local elected authority—the
local government—should be the commissioning body for health.
Sir Simon Milton, when he was at the LGA (Local Government Association),
suggested other means for strengthening the power of the elected
council over health, appointing certain key people and perhaps
being the funnel or the channel through which grants have to pass
before they go into the health system or the PCT. Ideally I would
like to see local authorities, as I think Sir Paul once argued,
being the commissioning entity for health.
Q401 Sir Paul Beresford: Without
saying where I stand on this, would a minister not say that having
listened to you they have the opposite example in child abuse
and child protection recently with some pretty appalling cases
where the Government has had to step in because local government
has shown those failings.
Professor Stewart: And the health
authority has shown its failings.
Q402 Sir Paul Beresford: Predominantly
it starts with the social services.
Professor Stewart: Predominantly
it starts with the doctors inspecting the child. There are failures
in every public body. Just to go back to the postcode lottery,
I regard the words "postcode lottery" as very misleading.
It is not a lottery, it is a postcode choice; it is a choice made
by people as to the standard of service, the difference being
the choices made in the case of local government services where
people are responsible to local people and in the Health Services
it is made by people unaccountable to local people.
Q403 Chair: We have rehearsed in
earlier sessions the issue of the relationship between the Health
Service and local accountability and it is clearly something we
will have in our report.
Professor Stewart: It does connect
with the postcode lottery.
Chair: Indeed it does.
Q404 John Cummings: I address my
question to the two witnesses, Professor Jones and Professor Stewart.
In all your vast experience in the matter under discussion, what
do you believe have been the key positive developments and the
retrograde steps in the relationship between central government
and local authorities over the last decade?
Professor Jones: The most positive
step I think is included in the Local Government Act 2000 which
gave local authorities the power of well-being to promote the
economic, social, environmental well-being of their areas. It
gave them a duty to prepare a strategic community plan—it
is now a sustainable community plan—and this to me was a
ray of hope. Here was a chance for local authorities to exercise
leadership without, I thought, a set of narrow, niggling constraints.
I still think that potentially that is important. Local authorities
are, in many areas, starting to use those powers with imagination
and ingenuity and I think that was the one positive step that
I would attribute to central government in enhancing the power
and discretion of local government.
Professor Stewart: I can come
in on the negative side. The negative side seems to me to be the
general approach of Government, excessive legislation. The Bill
that has just been presented to Parliament has been quoted where
the Government is proposing to legislate on petitions submitted
to local authorities. Why it requires legislation is not clear.
Nobody knows; there has been no real research done on how local
authorities deal with petitions. If the Government wish to emphasise
the petition thing, then they could use all sorts of statements
by ministers, but to legislate and lay down a complex bureaucratic
procedure seems to be unnecessary. Secondly, where there is legislation,
excessive prescription; I often say the committee system of local
government lasted for a hundred years or more on the basis of
one clause in an Act and one regulation. Now we have 190 pages
of guidance; we have 15 regulations, five directives and a very
detailed Act. The net effect is to cut back the scope for innovation
and experiment, different authorities adopting different approaches
within an executive model. It is that practice of excessive legislation
and excessive prescription. The third thing is the growth of targets
and their effects on the working role of the local authorities
have been counter productive leading to gaming by some bodies,
distorting practice in order to meet the standards required; it
can distort priorities because the best way to meet a priority
is to neglect other activities and services. It has become a sort
of tick-box approach. If you meet the target you are all right;
if you do not, you have failed. It is a very narrow form of performance
management. Most of the literature on performance management suggests
that your target and your performance relationship is the basis
for discussion and analysis. In fact it may be that what is wrong
is that you have met the target.
Q405 John Cummings: Do you think
civil servants in a department could do with perhaps spending
a year in local government?
Professor Jones: Increasingly
I have come to the conclusion that the fault for much of the centralisation
that John has described lies with the Civil Service. I do not
think I am going to blame ministers as much as civil servants
because it is civil servants who are involved in drawing up this
legislation; it is civil servants who put in all the details and
the over-prescription. I can understand their attitude. They are
conscientious, they want to work hard and do what they think their
minister wants and they of course feel that they are superior
to local government officials; they think they are more competent
but in fact I doubt that because the local government officials
are there on the ground close to where the problems are happening,
close to the people. I would much prefer to trust the local government
officials than remote control by bureaucrats in Whitehall.
Sir Paul Beresford: Ministers
can say no.
Chair: Can we bring back John because
he was mid-question.
Q406 John Cummings: I would like
Professor Stewart to make a contribution as well.
Professor Stewart: I was going
to answer your question on whether I was in favour of civil servants
gaining experience in local government. The answer to that is
yes. I would not necessarily want to lay it down as a law or as
a regulation but I believe that anybody who has any dealings with
local government should have some experience of working in it.
Those people who have, have told me it was one of the most revealing
experiences of their working life, first of all to be impressed
by much of what they found and secondly to be surprised at the
sheer range of things that a senior local government officer would
have to deal with as opposed to somebody in an equivalent position
(apart from the permanent secretary and the very highest officials)
who has a much more limited remit.
Professor Jones: I hope you will
not be led up the garden path of a unified public service. Some
of the people giving evidence to you may put this. I fear that
that would lead to a set of officials dominated by central government.
I believe there is great value in each local authority having
its own staff, loyal to it and not to some entity called the unified
public service.
Q407 John Cummings: Do you believe
that we need radical or incremental change in the relationship
between central and local government?
Professor Stewart: Radical change.
We have had incremental change; radical change is needed. If we
believe that the balance is distorted and out of kilter then it
is not going to be helped by minor changes; it needs fundamental
changes in the relationship which also would involve changes in
the internal way of working in central government itself.
Q408 Sir Paul Beresford: To take
you back to your answer on retrograde steps you listed examples
which I agree with, do you think that those negative steps and
effects on local government have been partly or to a large degree
responsible for the increase in the council tax over that period?
Professor Stewart: I am sorry?
Responsible for what?
Q409 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you think
that negative and retrograde bureaucratic control has been at
least in part responsible for the increase in council tax over
the last decade? The cost in other words.
Professor Stewart: I think that
a lot of the things that I spoke about have had a harmful effect
on local authorities, first of all by curbing innovation and secondly
they have taken up the time of senior officers and senior councillors.
I reckoned, purely impressionistically, that about 50 per cent
of the time of senior officers is spent dealing with the plans
required by Government, dealing with forms and reports, dealing
with inspections and so on and so forth. That naturally takes
their attention away from the running of the services. I do not
know whether 50 per cent is right, but nobody does know. Central
government itself should know the impact of its actions. The LGA
has not done any work to actually find out how much time it actually
takes. Whether or not that has led to an increase in the council
tax due to an increase in expenditure or, in some cases, has led
to worse services being provided, I am not certain. However, if
you talk about the relationship between service and the cost;
naturally with all it impacts upon the situation, it has had a
harmful effect upon that.
Professor Jones: Sir Paul has
raised a very important question.
Chair: Professor Jones, we are
very time-constrained not least because we have a vote coming
up at the end of the session after this one and therefore I am
very conscious that we need to move on to some other questions
that members want to ask, otherwise the next lot of witnesses
will get squeezed down. I know that is unsatisfactory but can
I ask the pair of you not to necessarily each answer and to try
to keep your answers short and to the point. If you think you
have not been able to say everything, send something in in writing
afterwards.
Q410 Andrew George: Do you think
that the dynamics of political and media discourse in the UK at
the moment would ever create the favourable conditions for a meaningful
decentralisation?
Professor Jones: That is very
difficult. We are a small country. The media are a national media;
they are plugged in much more to national events and national
politics. You only have to look at the way the media, particularly
broadcasting, treat local elections. Who are the people they have
on their programmes? National politicians; ministers, shadow cabinet
people commenting on the significance of these local elections.
We do have a very highly nationalised media. We also have MPs
who, despite their experiences in local government, once they
get to Westminster seem to switch their perspective and seem to
be supportive of central government.
Q411 Andrew George: To give you an
example, say we get an extreme child welfare issue which hits
the national press. It is arguably a local authority issue but
inevitably ministers are then asked to appear to be decisive and
relevant on those occasions and therefore call for certain actions
to be taken. It is that kind of discourse that I am talking about,
the need for ministerial intervention on issues which appear to
be at least decisions and services delivered at local authority
level.
Professor Jones: Ideally ministers
should say, "This is not my responsibility; this is the responsibility
of the local authority" and stand up to that.
Q412 Andrew George: They will not
say that.
Professor Jones: If our recommendations
had been accepted and the choice for local government responsibility
had been made, then ministers would be much more easily able to
say "It is not my responsibility, go to that authority or
that authority, they are to blame". It gets back to Sir Paul's
question about who is responsible for council tax. I know you
have asked other people giving evidence. What is wrong with our
present system in the relationship between central and local government
is that it is impossible to answer the question "Who is responsible
for council tax increases?" because each side blames the
other and they make a plausible case because the financial arrangements
are so devised that responsibility is shuttled from one to the
other. Each blames the other. We are saying—and Lyons did
and Layfield did—that there must be a choice and you must
have a financial system that supports that choice so you will
be able to say who was responsible.
Q413 Andrew George: May I ask Professor
Stewart do we presently have a local government structure or are
they merely agents of central government?
Professor Stewart: We have a local
government structure but to a degree they become agents of central
government but not entirely. Local authorities still have the
substantial discretion, if they care to use it; they have the
new duties, the new powers. One of the things that actually happened
is that the impact of what has been happening in the extent of
guidance, in the extent of prescription, in the setting of targets
and so on and so forth, the confidence of many local authorities
has been destroyed. This is a point made strongly by Michael Lyons
and an important part of his analysis. One of the mistakes at
the moment is that local authorities are so in the habit of getting
detailed guidance that they now—some of them at least—automatically
ask for guidance. If you ask civil servants why they give so much
guidance they will say that local authorities ask for it. One
of the results of that is the impact of all the Government action.
There have been some statistics just recently that showed that
a local authority had been asked to reply in September and October
to 30 different pieces of consultation. Clearly that is going
to absorb the time of the senior officers. In a sense we begin
to establish a habit of looking up centrally rather than looking
down locally.
Q414 Andrew George: You still both
say that local government is better at effective service delivery
than is central government. Can you give examples or evidence
to prove that that is clearly the case?
Professor Stewart: The evidence
would lie in the comparison between the capacity studies of government
departments—which are not even done by an independent body
but by civil servant bodies themselves—and the results of
inspections of local authorities. The results of the inspections
of local authorities suggest that the standard of service provided
and the organisation is good. I have criticisms of the inspectorate;
I have criticisms of the belief in their infallibility. There
is a doctrine of not papal infallibility but inspector infallibility.
I think I would rather see inspectors as partners in shared learning.
Andrew George: Do you think the
local people feel the same way? Are they champions of a more local
democracy or do they not really follow the distinction between
a PCT and a local authority?
Q415 Chair: Professor Stewart, can
I just piggyback on this? When you are comparing capacity studies
of government departments and local councils, for the most part
government departments do not deliver any service at all so you
are comparing apples and pears. What about if you compare local
authorities with PCTs where they are indirect service delivery?
Professor Stewart: I would say
that when you are comparing you are comparing the efficiency of
management and the efficiency of management is there whether or
not you are running a service or whether or not you are managing
the situation, so I believe the comparison is valid. I have not
actually studied the figures comparing PCT inspections with local
authorities; it might be worth the Committee looking at it.
Q416 Mr Betts: Last week three members
of the Committee went to Denmark and Sweden to look at how they
operate in terms of their local and central relationships. All
the politicians we met could not get their heads round the Baby
P approach in this country; they could not understand how national
politicians who, even second hand could not be aware of what was
going on in a particular local authority's children's department,
wanted to take ultimate responsibility for those actions and the
need to put it right. They have a very different relationship
there which is embodied in the constitution. I just wondered what
your thoughts were about trying to get a more formal constitutional
position for local government, bearing in mind Scotland and Wales
now have devolutionary positions which are agreed by this Parliament
but there is no way that this Parliament would seek to fundamentally
change those now without the agreement of the Scottish and Welsh
people presumably through a referendum. There is a different constitutional
position to be taken and I just wondered whether there is anything
we can do in terms of local government that would embody local
government in a more formal constitutional arrangement.
Professor Jones: We recommended
that the Concordat be beefed up. I look on the Concordat as very
much a first step in devising a constitutional settlement that
would encompass the relationship between central and local government.
Michael Lyons called for this settlement and I think explained
to you how diluted was the Concordat compared to what he had in
mind. We envisage a statute—not a written constitution but
a statute—that lays out important aspects about the relationship
between central and local government. For instance, local government's
role is to be responsible for the government of its area and the
development and well-being of that area. The local authority should
be primarily responsible to its own local voters and not to central
government departments. There are a certain number of features
that could be put into a statute and the value of having a statute
is that it would not be altered except by an explicit Act that
was debated and considered by Parliament. Too much of the relationship
between central and local government is determined in the inner
recesses of Whitehall without much public or MPs' knowledge. We
are calling for a constitutional settlement embodied in a statute.
Q417 Mr Betts: One piece of law is
very much like another and if Government comes along and legislates
on something to do with housing or education that is in conflict
with that previous statute about the relationship between central
and local government, well Parliament passes it and that is it.
You do not have to pass anything special, do you, to alter it
in practice?
Professor Jones: I think we have
reached the view on having a statute that that is certainly better
than the present Concordat about which both local and central
government seem to have totally forgotten. It is not ever prayed
in aid; it has been forgotten. You could not forget if there were
a statutory provision. We have reached that position also because
we are sceptical about the time it would take to write a constitution,
to have a full scale codified constitution that is entrenched
which is what these other countries have. We are not going to
get that here.
Q418 Mr Betts: Would this statute
then be something that all future legislation involving local
government would have to be tested against, a bit like the human
rights test on legislation which is weak but at least it is there.
Professor Jones: We also envisage,
as you know, that the central/local relationship should be monitored
by some sort of independent body either an independent commission
or a joint committee of the two Houses. There should be a body
monitoring what is going on and if there was an incompatibility
between that basic statute and some more recent bill they would
be there making a statement as well as giving to Parliament and
the public an annual review of the state of central/local relations.
Q419 Mr Betts: Going back to something
you said before, Sweden clearly has a more devolved local government
where there seems to be a general consensus across all the political
parties that that is what it should be, but central government
does lay down minimum standards and people seem quite relaxed
about that as though it is reasonable to have certain minimum
standards across the country which local authorities can then
go beyond. You seem to be against minimum standards almost per
se. They said that central government thought that mental
health services were not up to scratch in some areas so they laid
down some minimum standards but they gave local authorities the
money to meet them and everyone felt quite comfortable about that
sort of arrangement. Is that something you still would not want
to see?
Professor Jones: Personally I
do not think we want to see minimum standards. We have already
suggested our scepticism about the minimum standards approach.
You cannot really at the centre devise a minimum standard for
every aspect of every service and again there are difficulties
of enforcing it. We do not believe that the centre can really
guarantee a minimum unified standard. We have already quoted the
Health Service as showing the worst, most vivid examples of the
postcode lottery. However, on your first aspect, to achieve our
constitutional settlement requires cross-party agreement on these
rules of the game. It is absolutely essential that this issue
does not become a battle between the parties. I would hope that
this select committee, as a cross party committee, would, as it
were, start the campaign to get cross party agreement on the need
to rebalance the relationship between central and local government.
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