Conclusions and recommendations
1. There is a risk that the independence of
the inspectorates is undermined by the current arrangements for
appointing Chief Inspectors and setting their budgets.
Chief Inspectors were clear that the independence of how they
conducted inspections was not in doubt. However, decisions on
the appointment of Chief Inspectors, the length of their tenure,
and the size of their budgets, are taken by the relevant secretaries
of state responsible for the sectors under inspection, rather
than by bodies independent of that responsibility, such as the
Cabinet Office or Parliament. Current arrangements potentially
pose a significant threat to inspectorate independence. For example,
although Chief Inspectors considered that the departments had
made sufficient resources available to provide effective inspection,
departments could potentially use their control over inspectorate
budgets as a lever to influence Chief Inspectors. Similarly, the
requirement to re-apply for their posts towards the end of their
tenure created a clear conflict of interest for Chief Inspectors,
while a short tenure could allow Ministers not to re-appoint a
Chief Inspector they did not like.
Recommendation: The Cabinet Office should
conduct a full review of the appointment, budget allocation and
reporting arrangements for Chief Inspectors. It should address
specifically whether inspectorates' independence would be best
served by independent appointment and sponsorship arrangements,
and a measure of direct reporting to Parliament such as annual
reports taken by the appropriate select committees.
2. Changes made by the Home Office to the
publication arrangements for reports by the Chief Inspector of
Borders and Immigration undermine his independence and have delayed
publication of his reports. The Chief
Inspector of Borders and Immigration is in a unique position amongst
home affairs and justice inspectorates of directly inspecting
his own sponsoring department, the Home Office. The independence
of the inspectorate relies on the actions of the Chief Inspector,
principally through preparation of well-evidenced and thorough
reports. But this independence is undermined by current arrangements
whereby the Home Secretary now decides when to publish his reports.
Since the inspectorate was established in 2008, the Chief Inspector
decided when to publish his own reports, but this changed from
January 2014 to the Home Secretary in the light of legal advice
sought by the Home Office on how to interpret the UK Borders Act
2007. Contrary legal advice suggests that the Home Office's interpretation
is neither the obvious nor the only interpretation. Since the
Home Secretary took control of publishing the Chief Inspector's
reports, significant delays-up to 163 days—have resulted,
which can blunt impact. The Home Office has now made a commitment
to publishing his reports within eight weeks of receipt, and we
will hold them to account for that, but this is still a longer
timeframe than the four weeks which it previously took for reports
to be published.
Recommendation: The Home Office should bring
reporting practice for the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration
into line with the arrangements for other inspectorates. In the
meantime, the Home Office needs to stick to the eight week publication
timescale it has agreed for the Chief Inspector's reports.
3. The Ministry of Justice mishandled an entirely
foreseeable conflict of interest in its appointment of HM Chief
Inspector of Probation. The former HM
Chief Inspector of Probation took up post in February 2014 and
resigned in February 2015. A conflict of interest was apparent
during his recruitment because his wife held the position of Deputy
Managing Director at Sodexo Justice Services. Sodexo bid for,
and subsequently won 6 out of 21, probation contracts from the
Ministry of Justice. Leading up to this, the Ministry's handling
of the potential conflict of interest was not sufficiently transparent.
The design of the new probation system had been established well
before the Chief Inspector's appointment and it was always foreseeable
that Sodexo was likely to win some of the contracts for the new
probation system. Once Sodexo was awarded contracts, the arrangements
the Ministry had made to handle the conflict of interest were
unsustainable, with the result that the Chief Inspector resigned.
We were shocked that the Ministry stood by its view that nothing
went wrong in its handling of the conflict of interest, despite
it failing to keep Parliament adequately informed as the conflict
developed. The Ministry did, however, accept that changes to ensure
that Parliament was notified earlier of potential conflicts of
interests would be helpful. We should make clear that our criticism
is directed at the Ministry, not at the former Chief Inspector
himself. The Ministry has assured us that he was completely transparent
with it from the start of the recruitment process.
Recommendation: The Ministry of Justice
should write to us setting out what guidance it applied, and how
it has changed its procedures in the light of lessons from this
situation, in order to be fully transparent in future with Parliament
about potential conflicts of interest in cases like these.
4. Neither the Home Office nor the Ministry
of Justice have adequate mechanisms to hold inspectors to account
for their impact. The departments have
set out no formal requirements for inspectorates to demonstrate
their impact, nor have they carried out their own assessments.
They claimed that it is too difficult to measure and evaluate
the impact of inspections. Yet, at the same time the departments
told us that practical and significant improvements had been made
that they could attribute directly to the inspectorates' work.
The Chief Inspectors themselves were able to tell us about some
of the key system weaknesses they had uncovered, and some of the
important improvements introduced as a result of their inspections.
We therefore find it difficult to understand the departments'
resistance to measuring the impact and, in turn, value for money
of the inspectorates
Recommendation: The Home Office and the
Ministry of Justice should set out how they will measure and hold
the inspectorates to account for their performance and impact.
5. There is no consistency in the way in which
inspectorates review implementation of recommendations and amplify
learning from inspection findings. The
Chief Inspectors accepted that they needed to do more to follow-up
and make sure their recommendations were implemented by inspected
bodies. They also accepted that they needed to do more to exploit
their findings, by identifying and disseminating common lessons
and good practice. For example, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
was keen to exploit his findings on prisons such as Oakwood and
Thamesmead, so that other new prisons could get up to speed more
quickly and avoid the same problems. More impetus would be given
to the implementation of inspectors' recommendations if departments'
audit and risk committees were more involved in monitoring implementation
and invited inspectors to report progress to them.
Recommendation: Inspectorates, with departments,
need to build a more consistent approach to learning from inspection
findings, including identifying what works best, and improving
how recommendations are implemented and followed-up.
6. Inspectorates are not yet working together
effectively to tackle serious and complex issues of common interest
across departments. Issues such as sex
crime, rape, reoffending and trafficking for sexual exploitation
are relevant to all five inspectorates and the sectors they inspect.
We recognise the importance of a coherent approach to independent
scrutiny, and the challenges of working across large numbers of
bodies with different roles in, for example, prevention or punishment.
But we were not convinced that the inspectorates were yet working
together effectively when dealing with issues of common interest.
Both the Ministry of Justice and Home Office considered that the
work of the Criminal Justice Joint Inspection Group had been valuable
and had led to genuine change, for example, in tackling the sexual
exploitation of children. However the impact of the joint inspection
group was not immediately clear to us. HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary,
as the newly appointed lead for the Criminal Justice Joint Chief
Inspectors Group, accepted inspectorates needed to do more to
learn from each other, share good practice and joint training,
and minimise the burden on inspected bodies by improving communication
between inspectorates over the timing of their inspection visits.
Recommendation: The Criminal Justice Joint
Inspectors Group should set out how it will develop its identification
of multi-agency issues that require scrutiny, and how it will
demonstrate the impact of inspectorates working together more
effectively.
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