Who's accountable for weak accountability?

It’s one of the surprising ironies of modern politics that the Treasury, which has spent centuries jealously hoarding control over an ever-expanding proportion of public spending, is now championing some forms of devolution. And while the Chancellor’s apparent conversion to strong city-level government comes suspiciously late in the electoral cycle the enthusiasm of Sharon White, second permanent secretary at the Treasury, certainly sounded convincing at an Institute for Government event on Tuesday. “We’re almost the most centralised developed country in the world,” she complained. “If you look at the data produced by the International Monetary Fund, and at work [undertaken] in the context of the Smith Commission last year, the UK jumps out in its degree of centralisation. And there’s good data [showing] that decentralisation tends to be associated with both stronger growth and better public services.”

Sharon White speaking at the Institute for Government event

Much has already been achieved, she emphasised, citing Scotland, academies and clinical commissioning groups. But she noted that the level of devolution varies widely between services, and acknowledged worries around accountability systems which limit “the degree to which – particularly in Parliament – we feel comfortable with it.” As the “pendulum swings” between centralisation and devolution, she suggested, “transparency tends to be an afterthought”. The result is accountability processes so convoluted that White, appearing before the Public Accounts Committee recently, was quizzed about particular elements of spending in individual academies: when people feel accountability systems are weak, she said, “small sums may be totemically important”. These questions went to the heart of the event, which considered how to ensure clarity, transparency and responsiveness in the accountability systems overseeing devolved spending. And if White acknowledged flaws in this patchy landscape, the other panellists went further. Jo Miller is the highly-respected chief executive of Doncaster council: sent in by the communities secretary to rescue the borough from financial and political meltdown, she’s spent the last four years bringing it back to health. But she’s also a mother with kids at an academy school, and remarked that these schools’ “ability to connect and account to local people is simply not good enough.” Ofsted’s judgements are too unreliable to fill the gap, she argued, and communications with parents are poor: “I got a school report a week ago, and I couldn’t understand it! My husband and I had an argument as to whether he was doing well or not so well. And that [report] was seen as good by Ofsted, but it was entirely irrelevant to me as a parent.’ The third panellist was Jessica Crowe, Executive Director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, and she pointed to woolly accountability around the government’s flagship Better Care Fund. At a recent Public Accounts Committee hearing, she recalled, chair Margaret Hodge was “extremely grumpy about the fact that she had to have seven or eight different officials in front of her to talk about the fund – all of whom were apparently vital to ensure that all her questions were answered.” The need for witnesses to arrive mob-handed does not, Crowe suggested, point to a simple and focused accountability system. There is, Crowe noted, a “widely held belief among think tanks and many people in central government” that direct election is the best way to ensure local accountability; but “this view is not widely held at a local level.” Voters have overwhelmingly rejected the offer of both regional assemblies and city mayors in recent years, and showed vast indifference to the elections for police and crime commissioners. “You need real leaders with real powers; if people feel their vote matters, they’ll use it,” commented Miller, adding with delicious candour: “This is not a comment on [Doncaster’s] PCC, but I think they’re a complete waste of space. I didn’t even want to vote for one, and I was the returning officer!” White, however, pointed out that having a single, powerful mayor to deal with at a local level can give the centre the confidence to devolve powers in the first place: “The Manchester deal especially was contingent on a mayor, so clearly one issue is whether there’s an individual with legitimacy who can bring together the players and speak to the public,” she said. And even Miller – who arrived at Doncaster to find an English Democrat mayor locked in endless battle with his factionalised, Labour-majority councillors – agreed that mayors can have a “really strong mandate for place”; as long, she added, as they are the “servant of the people and the first among equals in place, not the mayor of the town hall and the master of the people.” Crowe argued for local leaders to stop obstructing audit functions; more training and support for councillors; and the creation of a set of principles for new accountability structures. On the structural side, she suggested a range of solutions including a “place-based public accounts committee” covering the city-regional level; the alignment of public bodies’ geographical boundaries to permit unified accountability systems; and the creation of a national scrutiny body. “Civil servants that I’ve talked to privately say: ‘It’s maybe too soon to talk about resurrecting the Audit Commission, but at some point we might have to’,” she recalled. Miller, however, wasn’t convinced by organisational change, preferring to emphasise “leadership and collaboration and co-design, and choosing what works and replicating it.” “I don’t think the patchwork matters; it’s always been a patchwork and always will be,” she added, arguing that the important thing is getting the right people involved and encouraging positive collaboration. Waiting for the license to reform systems is a mug’s game, she suggested: “I think if we think in terms of behaviours rather than structural answers, we’ll get a lot further.” Crowe and Miller did, however, agree that ‘co-design’ – the use of genuine central-local partnerships to develop services – is essential to success. Local actors must be involved in the building of local services, Miller argued; after all, it’s not as if the centre always gets it right. “Look at the Work Programme: it’s a complete waste of money, and I could definitely spend it better,” she said. Sharon White, treated to a litany of well-argued criticisms of the centre’s approach to devolution and accountability, acknowledged the need for change. Financial pressures, she argued, are pushing central departments into taking a more collaborative, coherent approach to developing services and working with local partners: “You can see people beginning to work together a bit more collegiately; they’re beginning to see stronger incentives to avoid wasting money having endless separate conversations.” But as the Institute’s research on decentralisation shows such optimism has not always been justified in the past. White offered little hope that the Treasury would be substantially altering its approach; asked by the Institute for Government’s Director of Research Tom Gash whether the spending review process should be amended to bring local actors into the process, she argued that “although local voices aren’t physically at the table, a huge part of the dynamic of a negotiation is what impact is this going to have locally.” White may be a reforming Treasury official, but the benchmark for reformists in One Horseguards is pretty low. Did the panel think that women are better at collaborating, asked columnist Mary Dejevsky from the floor. “As a Treasury person, I didn’t mention collaboration,” said White, deadpan. “I think the Treasury probably trumps gender.”