Examination of Witnesses (Questions 520-539)
COUNCILLOR DAVID
SHAKESPEARE, COUNCILLOR
RICHARD KEMP,
COUNCILLOR KEITH
ROSS AND
COUNCILLOR SHARON
TAYLOR
15 DECEMBER 2008
Q520 Mr Betts: Is it a remedy giving
you greater power over the other partners round the table or separating
these partners from the remit they have simply to defer to their
central organisation?
Councillor Taylor: I would absolutely
stress that what we are not looking for is more power. I have
the power I need to do the things that the council needs to do
as part of that partnership. What we want to do is develop a culture.
I speak about my area particularly but it applies to everybody
and everywhere is different; that is the point, so what I want
to do is to create what I need to do for the people I represent
and work in partnership with those other people but everybody
being equally enabled round that table to do what they need to
do to create that vision for the local area. It will be different
everywhere. The centrally imposed targets that we all face—we
all accept that there will always be central targets—are
one side of it. The other side of it is being enabled to do the
things locally that need doing and I think that is really important.
It is not about more powers for anybody. It is about having an
enabling culture that lets everybody work properly in partnership.
Q521 Mr Betts: How do you truly enable
people sitting round a table who have no democratic accountability?
Councillor Shakespeare: Can I
come in on the first question about being too close to Westminster?
Q522 Mr Betts: Firstly, how do you
enable people who have no democratic accountability? You can enable
the civil servants from the regional government office all you
like, but in the end they are civil servants.
Councillor Kemp: That comes back
to the central role of the council. We have a very clear mandate
for our areas because we put it to the electorate. We are the
only people who have that. With due respect, you have a mandate
but it is a different type of body. We are the only people who
bring together all the partners round the local strategic partnership.
Some of them talk to each other. They all talk to us. The way
to do this is for the Government to both let go of the apron strings
and train and support their officers to understand what they can
do to support the objectives set by the local council. Sometimes
it is not a question of more money; it is a question of better
use of the money that is already available to those bodies. Culture
is very important because there is a key distinction between power
and influence. Power would be a grab saying, "I used to be
chair of housing. Everything was a council house. Let us have
that power back from the Housing Associations." We are not
asking for that. We are asking for influence to make sure that
people follow the lead which we are uniquely able to provide.
Q523 Chair: If we turn to the police
for example, how are you suggesting you would have more ability
to influence them without any changes in the current structures?
Councillor Ross: With the health
service as well I believe—I think we all believe—that
a better way of doing it, as we are democratically enabled through
the ballot box, is that we can take that to the health service,
to the PCTs, to the Police Authority, as we do with the Police
Authority at the moment. There is a certain number of indirectly
elected members who are not democratically elected as members
of councils. We do not have that opportunity in PCTs any more,
where we used to in the health service, so it is perhaps redressing
the balance there, ensuring that we have the ballot box behind
us when we are making those decisions because at the moment there
is no democratic mandate.
Q524 Chair: The suggestion has been
made to us by earlier witnesses that councils should directly
commission health services.
Councillor Kemp: For certain types
of service, yes. Not for all of them though.
Q525 Chair: A similar model for the
police?
Councillor Kemp: Can I respond
with a question to you? You all have to consider this because
the Bill will be before Parliament. By and large, local government
is extremely satisfied with the relationship we have with the
police. If we were to choose an exemplar, we would say local government/police
relationships are sound. What about the Learning and Skills Council?
What about Connexions? What about the Environmental Agency? There
is a whole range of organisations which do not operate that way.
If every relationship were as sound as that between local government
and the police, we would be in a much stronger position. The question
has to go back to every MP who is going to vote on the Police
Bill. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Q526 Chair: The question was do you
think that it should be done by indirect elections, not simply
with the police but with the PCTs for example. The LSE powers
are going back to councils anyway. Do you want a whole series
of indirectly elected representation?
Councillor Ross: Yes.
Q527 Chair: Or do you want to see
direct commissioning by councils?
Councillor Ross: Even in the regional
development agencies there is a case there where power is being
taken away to some extent and given to the RDAs (Regional Development
Agencies) who have very little democratic responsibility.
Councillor Taylor: There is a
degree of accountability here as well. I think we have to have
an eye to accountability. We have probably the partnership relationship
that works best and I think it is true to say that, with the police,
the structures that most of us have put in place around neighbourhood
policing are working extremely well. We have good accountability
in most areas. We are building on that all the time and it is
not just at district or county level. It also works right down
at neighbourhood level with good accountability to the people
that the police and all the other members of the public sector
serve. We need to be building on those accountability structures.
Yes, there is the issue about indirect representation on bodies
that do the close scrutiny, but there is also the direct accountability
to members of the public that we have all made huge efforts to
build. I think that is very important. I think that will be diluted
by having another directly elected body. Who do people go to?
Do they go to their local councillor if they want the criminal
damage in their area sorted out or do they go to this directly
elected representative? It just dilutes the accountability process.
Q528 Anne Main: In light of recent
events in Haringey, do you think the public would support further
devolution of powers to local authorities? I would like you to
specifically bear in mind some of the press reports and press
and media calls for action that were being bandied around at the
time when you consider your answer.
Councillor Shakespeare: I can
understand a lot of the media frenzy that has gone on. I can understand
people being appalled by what has happened there. From a local
government point of view, I am also very much aware that the safeguarding
parts of local government are probably the worst centrally funded
parts of local government. They are desperately under funded so
I am feeling some sympathy with public servants trying to organise
services without the resources to do it. I think that lies at
the heart of the safeguarding problem.
Q529 Anne Main: Part of the criticism,
as has come to light again through media investigation on this
matter, is that there was a degree of satisfaction being expressed
by the local authority until a light was shone on it, shall we
say, in which case should it be that a local authority can have
even more powers coming back to itself if, when things go wrong,
the public say, "How on earth did this happen? Why was it
they were allowed to (a) get away with it and (b) what can be
done?"
Councillor Kemp: I think we would
all agree that nothing anyone in this room can do—
Q530 Chair: We do not want to get
into the specifics of the Haringey case. It is an example of the
general principle.
Councillor Kemp: I accept that.
No system that any of us put in place will ever work right every
time. The facts about child protection are that this is one of
the best countries in the world. Wherever we find councils doing
things badly or wrongly as an association, we are the first to
go into that council. There are questions that we need to raise
there about the role of inspectorates, about the way the partnership
works, about the role of some of our partners who also misdiagnose.
If you are then asking: is this a question of public perception,
I do not know whether people come into your advice centre with
these questions. No one has ever come into my advice centre in
35 years as a councillor saying, "Councillor, I am really
bothered about the structures." What they are bothered about
are the outputs and the outcomes. The constitution does not matter
to people. They want to see delivery. I think we can deliver.
We do deliver. The Treasury says we are the most efficient part
of the public sector and who are we, mere councillors, to disagree
with the Treasury?
Q531 Chair: I think you are slightly
missing the point, if I may say so. The issue is that in cases
such as the Baby P case, which I think all of us would agree is
a matter for that particular council to sort out, the reality
in our political culture is that immediately MPs and leaders stand
up in Parliament and demand that action is taken. Indeed, you
get the national press running a campaign for particular members
of staff to be got rid of and for the Prime Minister to do something.
We were told certainly when we were in Sweden and Denmark that
that would be unthinkable. That would not happen. The national
press would not do that. The Government would not be demanded
to do that. That is a function of our political culture. That
is what we are asking about. What do you, at the local government
end of it, think you can do to change that so that when that sort
of thing happens people look to the local council and say, "Why
have you allowed this to happen?"?
Councillor Taylor: The fact is
there is a degree of accountability. Where there is a catastrophic
failure—thank God there are not that many—people can
be voted out. Where you have organisations that are run by quangos
or non-elected bodies, there is no possibility for the public
to say, "I am sorry. That is just not good enough. Those
people are not capable or competent to run that service. They
have to go." We are the only part of the public sector locally
that has that degree of accountability. It is very important to
us.
Q532 Chair: It does not seem terribly
important to the public. That is the point. The example of the
Baby P case was that the public did not say, "Oh, great.
We can make sure that those people get voted out." They and
everybody else demanded that the Government did something.
Councillor Taylor: Can I come
back to your point about the LGA as well? One of the things the
LGA can do—and we are doing this all the time—is look
to our own improvement. That is a very important role for the
LGA. We work very hard all the time. Can I just give you an example
from the district perspective, because this is what has happened
in the last two years? We wanted to do some more work on how districts
work and how we work more in partnership with counties to deliver
better services to our people at district level. The LGA has got
all the people in districts together and got us working on a joint
agenda with the county councils' network, so we work together
on that, to drive that improvement agenda forward. We work with
IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) as well. We have been
very successful within the local government sector in working
for improvement together.
Q533 Anne Main: We have come back
to where it is working. Let us pose a different side to the same
argument. The whole point about allowing a local area to self-determine
and self-govern as much as possible is that they are going to
get it wrong sometimes. That is life. The public expect, when
it goes wrong at local level, that heads not only roll at a local
level but that some kind of government should have stepped in.
If an area has a lower level of local services because it might
be the choice of their council or they are rubbish and incompetent,
is that acceptable or should the Government somehow sit back and
say that whatever is done locally is self-determining and democracy
at a local level: "It is not up to us to step in and sort
it out"? At the moment the public thinks it is.
Councillor Kemp: You cannot have
it both ways, can you?
Q534 Anne Main: No, you cannot.
Councillor Kemp: We are a heavily
regulated sector. Some councils spend £8 million a year being
inspected, if you are a big council like Bradford. You lot ask
questions of ministers. You write things in the local paper. You
will take something up here before you will take it up, appropriately
in my view, with the council leader. We are talking about a centralised,
political culture for which we must all take some responsibility.
You can see that by going back to last year. Do you remember the
case of the chief executive of a hospital trust? People died because
of MRSA. There was exactly the same outcry, exactly the same effect
at the end of the day where the health board trust eventually
sacked the chief executive after due inquiry. We believe in that.
I defended the work of Haringey because they were having a proper
inquiry, they were going to do it, but that is different from
being the lynch mob which was suggested by at least one of the
local papers
Q535 Anne Main: Interestingly, in
the Haringey case the complaint eventually somehow got filtered
up to a government minister who sent it back for local determination
and investigation and then the problem came out eventually. It
had been looked at locally and I think that has been part of the
problem. People had tried to whistle blow at a local level, it
had escalated up higher, it had been sent back to the local level,
not been dealt with properly, so as a result the public are now
saying, "What on earth went wrong in the system?". It
is great when the system is robust and works well, but you have
to accept that some systems do not and some people will then say
to their MP or the minister they may write to, "Look at my
area, it's doing this badly. I'm worried about a child or a hospital
or an elderly person". What I am trying to say to you is
should Government always stay out of it?
Councillor Kemp: No, because the
Government is the public sector of the last resort and there is
a right for them to come in at some stage. Whether they do that
routinely, which is what they do, or whether they do it in
extremis is the case that you have to discuss. The fact is
there is far too much interference, but that does not mean to
say we are not all accountable before the court of public opinion,
and Parliament at some stage might want to extrapolate. Would
we abolish councils or decide to give them more or less influence
on the same grounds that we might decide to give PCTs more or
less influence because one PCT failed? Occasionally there will
be failures in the system, it is a question of the robustness
with which we deal with those failures that counts.
Councillor Ross: What we did do
at a very early stage was offer support to Haringey in this particular
instance and that support was accepted. We had officers from other
good councils going in there helping and supporting the whole
of that sector.
Chair: If we may move on to look
at issues related to further devolution.
Q536 John Cummings: Do you think
it is acceptable that some councils should have lower standards
of public service than others?
Councillor Shakespeare: The easy
answer to that one is no, of course.
Councillor Ross: We would all
agree on that one.
Q537 John Cummings: As a national
association, what influences can be brought to bear to ensure
that everyone reaches the required standard?
Councillor Ross: What we do is
help support and even train the sector. With the IDeA particularly,
we have put a lot of support mechanisms in for councils. At the
moment, my council is accepting that support from the IDeA through
the Regional improvement and efficiency partnership with funding
to have IDeA peer mentors and officer support to help us improve.
Q538 John Cummings: How will you
achieve peer pressure?
Councillor Ross: It is offered
by the IDeA and I would say all councils accept that offer of
support.
Councillor Taylor: It is also
very helpful because if you are struggling either in all areas
of your council work or in one area in particular, to have an
IDeA peer who has the same political values as you have come in
with all the good practice they have seen as they go around the
country doing their work is extraordinarily helpful. I think the
Peer Mentoring Scheme has worked extremely well in improving the
overall standard of public sector working throughout local government.
Again, it is another great strength of the LGA that we are able
to do that.
Q539 Chair: Can I turn Mr Cummings'
question around because I was really quite surprised by the answer.
Would it be acceptable for some councils to choose to have a higher
standard of service than some others?
Councillor Shakespeare: Yes, absolutely.
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