PART 5: SUMMARY OF GENERAL
EVIDENCE ON THE PUBLIC SERVICE AND THE COMMITTEE'S CONCLUSIONS
AND RECOMMENDATIONS (continued)
ACCOUNTABILITY
Changes in Accountability
299. Ministers have
always delegated some of their responsibilities to their officials;
the officials would answer to the Minister, and the Minister would
answer to Parliament. The introduction of agencies has changed
fundamentally the way in which certain responsibilities (in particular,
responsibility for the operational management of the agency) are
delegated to officials. Each agency has a framework document which
sets out very clearly the precise terms of the delegation. Indeed
some of the provisions read like terms which are contractual.
The Chief Executive of an agency is required to sign up to that
document, and to undertake to meet the objectives set out in it
within the resources which are available to him. Once he has done
that, it is his responsibility to fulfil the terms of the framework
agreement or to explain why he didn't.
300. Accountability
to Parliament is, of course, only one aspect of accountability.
Some witnesses drew attention to accountability to the public.
Mr Michael Bichard, for example, (Q 1106) spoke about the impact
of agencies in this regard. "Agencies now have very clear
targets which are published, they are not just published in business
plans, in many cases they are published in local offices around
the country, so for the first time, I think, people, customers,
clients, whatever you want to call them, can hold the agency to
account. You can hold the agency to account and, as a Permanent
Secretary, I can too. They have business plans which set out clearly
their objectives in the coming year and beyond. They produce annual
reports. The chief executives and their senior managers are very
much more visible than I think Civil Servants traditionally have
been and I think visibility is an important part of accountability.
It is very difficult to hold someone accountable if you cannot
recognise them or find them. Management responsibility has been
sharpened. ...the chief executives are on fixed term contracts
and whether or not those contracts are renewed will depend upon
their performance."
301. Thus the introduction
of agencies appears to have had an impact both on accountability
to Parliament and on accountability to the public. This impact
caused the Committee to consider various more specific questions
in relation to accountability. Among them were:
is there now a consistent approach
to accountability throughout the different institutions of the
public service?
what does accountability cost?
is it possible-or, indeed, desirable-to
distinguish between policy and operations so as to hold Ministers
accountable for policy and chief executives accountable for operations
within agencies?
to what extent is it possible within
our constitutional framework to require officials to be accountable
for actions carried out on behalf of Ministers?
The evidence which the Committee received
on these questions, together with the Committee's own views, are
set out in the following paragraphs.
Consistency of
Approach: the Accountability Paradox
302. In the Newchurch
Lecture Sir Robin Butler described what he called "the accountability
paradox". He spoke of the diverse range of mechanisms for
accountability which exist for activities which remain the responsibility
of the State, and went on to describe a "category of functions
which starts by being within the control of Parliament but which
then, with Parliament's acquiescence, is divorced from too close
parliamentary scrutiny by being devolved to a body at arm's length
from Government. I am referring to the famous quango, or non-departmental
body. These are cases where there are responsibilities which Government
chooses to hive off to others with the acquiescence of Parliament
for a variety of reasons, not least in order to protect an activity
from the influence of politics." He said that quangos often
exercise very considerable power and there is very little right
of appeal against their decisions. "They have been given
discretion by Parliament and by Ministers so that Parliament cannot
hold Ministers directly accountable for the way in which they
exercise that discretion, and we seem to find that acceptable."
303. Sir Robin went
on: "By contrast, when Ministers retain a function for themselves,
far more controls are in place. Not only is the exercise of Ministerial
responsibility subject to day-to-day scrutiny by Parliament and
to the ultimate sanction of the ballot box, such controls are
reinforced by appeal tribunals and ombudsmen, in addition of course
to the possibility of judicial review. It is no wonder that Ministers
often want to devolve their functions to others, whether non-Governmental
bodies within the public sector like quangos, or private sector
bodies, which are less vulnerable to the panoply of scrutiny to
which they themselves are subject." He said "Sometimes,
a motive for taking a function out of Government may precisely
be to free it from the layers of accountability, oversight and
appeal to which they are dependent if they remain subject to the
democratic process".
304. Sir Robin concluded
that this was the great paradox. "The panoply of Parliament,
elections and public accountability, are put in place to give
citizens control over those functions performed on their general
behalf by the people whom they elect. Yet, judging by the extent
to which we put layer after layer of further safeguards on the
exercise of such functions by our democratic representatives,
far greater than the controls we put over the exercise of functions
by others, whether quangos or in the private sector, it might
be concluded that it is this structure of democratic control in
which we have the least confidence of all. Perhaps that huge overhead
of accountability and redress which we impose on Government is
another of the factors which underlies the trend towards privatisation
in recent years."
305. The Committee notes
Sir Robin's points with interest. The fact that some quangos are
not held publicly to account is well documented; but the idea
that Ministers are held too strictly to account, and that there
is in some way a cost in terms of accountability, is perhaps less
thoroughly explored. The Committee consider the idea further.
The Cost of Accountability
306. Mr Michael Heseltine
MP referred to "overheads" in relation to accountability.
Giving evidence in the earlier part of our enquiry on the privatisation
of the Recruitment and Assessment Services (RAS Report, QQ 409
and 410), he said "there is an inherent defect in the constraints
that the public sector impose upon this sort of service [RAS]
and a whole range of others. Manpower restraints, capital restraints,
the whole ethos of public sector life, the overheads that all
of us impose upon activities of this sort in terms of the name
and the notion of public accountability. It does not actually
deliver a great deal of public accountability in the vast majority
of cases but that is the rational explanation that people say
leads to the keeping of all forms of minutiae of records and slow
decision making and all of these things. I personally think that
is an unnecessary constraint upon potentially wealth creating
operations."
307. Mr Heseltine's
view is to be contrasted with an observation made by Sir Robin
Butler in oral evidence to the House of Commons Public Service
Committee: "I think that the tradition of accountability,
of recording, in the British Civil Service goes very deep, as,
indeed, the Scott experience shows. When Sir Richard Scott looked
for the story, in all these areas, it was there, and there was
a full audit trail, and I think that is a very valuable asset
of the British Government that we want to maintain." (Ministerial
Accountability and Responsibility, HC 313-III, session 1995-96,
p 143.)
The Committee's
Conclusions
308. Sir Robin's
wish to retain the present tradition of accountability must be
read together with his view that the trend towards privatisation
in recent years is in part due to the restraints which accountability
imposes. There are some activities which can generally best be
left to a body not subject to daily political control. That body
should be allowed to get on with its tasks. But it is not justified
to transfer a function to a quango or to the private sector solely
or principally so that Ministers can avoid being accountable.
309. The Committee
notes that, in the majority of cases, the transfer of functions
has been done with the acquiescence of Parliament, and indeed
in most cases legislation has been required to effect the transfer.
In the case of the Recruitment and Assessment Services, however,
the offer for sale of RAS to the private sector was made using
the Government's prerogative powers and the decision to do so
was simply announced by means of a written answer to a Parliamentary
Question in the House of Commons. In our First Report on RAS,
we drew attention (paragraph 87) to the strong criticisms made
of the Government's handling of the matter. Lord Beloff (Special
Report, p 221) wrote that recent developments and discussion have
called into question the classical theory of the Constitution,
citing the most recent development as "the decision to privatise
the Recruitment and Assessment Services despite the objections
raised by the Committee. And this decision was taken as the Committee
will recall despite a strongly negative vote in the House of Lords
and strong criticism in the House of Commons." This observation
brings us back to the concern raised earlier in this report (see
paragraph 153) that changes were made with little public debate
and without cross-party consensus.
310. The Committee
is aware of the danger of imposing so heavy a burden of accountability
on Ministers as to encourage them to transfer functions to other
bodies. However, the Committee does not consider that that danger
warrants a reduction in levels of accountability in the public
service. Public bodies such as executive agencies should be able
and required to demonstrate to Parliament and the courts that
their business is discharged in a rational, fair and reasonable
way and that full account can be given of the way in which public
money is spent. The inspiration, risk-taking, impulse and flair
which can so often be the key to success (or failure) in private
business cannot be applied in the same way by public servants
dealing with public resources. Many of these considerations apply
as much to NDPBs and private companies involved in the delivery
of public services as they do to the core Civil Service and to
executive agencies. The Committee therefore rejects the idea that
it would be beneficial to reduce the meticulous record-keeping
which is an essential feature of the public service at present,
and recommends instead that the Office of Public Service carry
out a review of accountability arrangements in relation to NDPBs
and private companies involved in public service delivery.
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