Local Authority Overview and Scrutiny Committees

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

No longer.

[Bob Blackman]

The hon. Lady has stepped down.

I came up through the committee system. When I was elected leader of the council, the Deputy Prime Minister at the time offered me the opportunity to pilot the cabinet structure. I said, “I think I have enough on my plate without piloting this cabinet structure, thank you very much, Mr Heseltine.”

The advantages of the committee system have to be remembered. All councillors served on committees and committees were held in public—there was great interest in what they debated. There was a political benefit as well, in that officers produced reports and until the time they voted on a report, whether a councillor was in the political group in charge or in opposition, they could oppose and amend the report and put in new recommendations of a political nature, which divorced the officers from the political side of the decision making, but it also enabled the ruling group to row back from something that was possibly not in the public interest of their area. That was one of the advantages.

The big disadvantage was that the process was very slow and often cumbersome and uncertain. That is why almost every council in the country moved to the cabinet structure as quickly as they could. Its disadvantage is that decisions are made in private; they are not transparent to the public. Although cabinet or executive meetings are held in public, the most important decisions are taken in private before those meetings take place. Up and down the country, very few members of the public bother to attend cabinet or executive meetings, and the press—and councillors, in general—have given up interest. That is a really serious drawback.

Overview and scrutiny is a vital part of our democratic process. I will come to some of the recommendations that I am disappointed the Government did not accept in a minute. I take the view that overview and scrutiny are two separate things. Overview is the development of policy. The ruling group on a council should take ownership of it and really drive it as a means of developing policy for the whole council. Scrutiny is about examining decisions that have been made or are about to be made, and ensuring that they are fit for purpose, that they are the right decisions and that they are justified.

I served for 24 years on Brent London Borough Council, which is very confrontational, and we reached a constitutional settlement whereby the chair of scrutiny had to be from the opposition and elected by full council, exactly as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said. We were the pioneers. The two major parties agreed that that was the right way to go. At every council meeting, the chair of the scrutiny committee reported directly to the council with a written report on their scrutiny work, and there were questions to the chair of the scrutiny committee at full council. At times it was embarrassing for the ruling group, but there was proper scrutiny of the decision-making process.

I also served for four years as chair of the forward plan select committee, which sounds pretty horrendous. We brought together colleagues from across the council to scrutinise the expected work of the executive to ensure that they were delivering on their plan and that the responsible councillors knew what they were talking about. It was similar to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee: whenever anyone visits our Select Committee, it is very hard for them to determine which political party its members are from, because we all want to improve the Government’s work and we are not party political. It is a model of good practice.

If scrutiny is not properly resourced, it tends to be an inconvenience. Senior officers say, “It would be a lot better if we could just get on with the job, rather than having to account to councillors.” The chief executives and chief officers of certain local authorities downplay scrutiny because they find it inconvenient; it gets in the way of getting the job done. I have less sympathy for that view, because the reality is that good scrutiny improves decision making, improves services and ensures transparency in the public eye.

I hope that when the Government issue their guidance on public scrutiny they will look at such measures. I am a localist—I believe it is absolutely right that local authorities make their own decisions about their processes —but it is good practice that the chair of scrutiny be elected by full council, and ideally that they be a member of the opposition. It is then up to them how to play it, but I suspect that if the opposition play it sensibly—if they call the executive to account, as opposed to playing party political games—the scrutiny will be very effective. That is a key item.

I also have concerns about private and confidential information that is not disclosed to councillors. I take the view that all information should be available to councillors on reasonable request, unless the legal officers certify that it should not be made available. The presumption should be that all information is available to councillors, not selectively. If there is a contractual or other reason to keep it secret during the decision-making process, that is reasonable, but once the decision has been made all information should be made available so that it can be properly scrutinised. I worry that serious errors—not underhand dealings—are often made by local authorities. There are concerns about how contracts are let and about decision making, and there are conflicts of interest among both councillors and council officers. That needs to be exposed in the glare of publicity, and the best way of doing that is through the scrutiny process. I hope that the Government will look at that in the guidance that will be issued, because it needs to be firmed up considerably. Because some local authorities do not take scrutiny seriously enough, we should publish the amount of money and resource available. It must be scrutinised, and the executive and senior officers must be held to account. That would enable us to see a proper comparison.

There is an opportunity here for a great renaissance in local government scrutiny. The executive or the cabinet makes decisions on behalf of the local authority. There is now a whole series of academy trusts—schools that are outside the control of the local education authority—so why should the local authority not scrutinise their work? I know that Ofsted does that, but why should the local authority not look at what matters for local people? As the hon. Gentleman said, why should the local authority not scrutinise the police in certain cases? In my experience, health authorities fight tooth and nail to prevent information being provided to scrutiny committees. Even though they are required to provide information, they put every blockage they can in place. Then there is the fire service. I could go through every public service that affects a local area. Why should local authority scrutiny not be used to examine the services that are provided to the public?

We could go even further and be even more radical. We could look at the central Government resources that are applied to a local area. Perhaps they could be scrutinised by the local authority—I suspect that there may be some resistance to that idea from the Government. This is an opportunity to expand the role of local authorities and local councillors, who do a brilliant job of reporting issues that concern their constituents. We could empower them even more. By empowering them, we would give them an opportunity to shape the place they live and work in. That would put oxygen into the life of local authorities, and would encourage not only the press but local people to participate in their local authority’s work. At the moment, I am afraid the mood is, “Well, they just get on with it. We vote once every four years, or once every year, to elect local councillors, and unfortunately that doesn’t do the job.”

The Minister is new to his role, and was not responsible for writing the Government response to our noble report, so perhaps he can reconsider some of our recommendations in the light of this debate. That would show that he is not only reading and absorbing our reports, but listening to what we have to say.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. After I came to this House, I joined the Communities and Local Government Committee, as it then was, last September. I was a local councillor, so taking part in the Committee’s inquiry into overview and scrutiny in local government was an easy passage into the Committee’s work. I felt confident in contributing to the inquiry. I have stood down as a councillor in Gateshead Council, which was a great regret to me. I think councillors have a huge role to play in representing their communities, but we cannot be everywhere.

Almost one year since my election, I am pleased to speak in this debate on the Committee’s report. It gives me a great chance to thank the many witnesses and the contributors to the report, and to acknowledge the huge contribution made by local councillors, especially back-bench ones whose job is to scrutinise the work of council executives and to take part in overview and scrutiny.

The report highlights a number of issues, which have been discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I want to talk about three things in particular: resources, information and training for councillors. There were a great many other recommendations, but I shall touch on those three.

First, in order to have effective scrutiny, which can contribute greatly to the running and effectiveness of an authority, it is important to have adequate resources in order to support members of the council in their work, as we have in Select Committees. To get to the nitty-gritty of council business, someone needs a lot of time, concentration and knowledge. Like my colleagues, therefore, I was disappointed when the Government did not agree to survey what resources are going into overview and scrutiny. It is important for authorities to be clear about the need for overview and scrutiny committees to be resourced so that they can work effectively. By not conducting that survey, I am afraid that—as colleagues have said—we are letting those who may not be so enthusiastic lie low. I very much hope that the Minister will look again at the need to gather information about resources available to the committees.

Secondly, apart from officer time, a really important resource is information. One of the issues raised during our inquiry was the ability of committee members to access information about the council or about services provided by third parties and external organisations. Too often, committees are told that such information is covered by commercial confidentiality, so they are not able to look effectively at whether a contract is being performed as it should be and whether it is providing value for money. It is a positive move for the Government to say that local authorities should look at that positively, but we need to be much firmer about saying that those who scrutinise either council services provided by external parties or even internal services have the right to the full information necessary. We need greater transparency and better availability of information, so that it does not have to be dragged from authorities or external bodies, but is available to committees when they need it, when considering important reports.

Thirdly, I will touch on training. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East mentioned the letter we had from the Centre for Public Scrutiny, which talks about some of the work it is doing to strengthen scrutiny. It is important that elected members are very clear about how they go about scrutiny work, that they have the tools at their disposal to make the most of the information they have, and that they can do an effective job of scrutinising the work of the local authority, whether looking into particular services or at regular key performance indicators. It is important that people have the training and knowledge to know what they are doing, basically, and too often that is avoided.

I welcome the fact that the Government have accepted that idea that overview and scrutiny committees should report to full council. It is important that the role of overview and scrutiny and its significance are recognised and that there is space for the committees to report to full council, so that all council members are aware of what is happening and the important issues they are facing.

That is as much as I wanted to say. I certainly commend the report, and I hope that the Government will think again about some of the areas that we have pointed out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I agree that transparency is important, and I am glad that my hon. Friend supports the transparency agenda, which the Government continue to lead. Transparency is of course the best disinfectant and the best way for accountability to work in practice. There is a practical difficulty with trying to aggregate lots of small expenditures, which is why there is a £500 threshold in the transparency code. I agree that £50 here, £25 there and another £100 there may add up to a greater figure, but identifying all the individual components may be tricky. However, I agree that transparency is important.

The hon. Member for Blaydon mentioned training. In its report, the Select Committee suggests that the training offered to members and officers does not always meet their needs, and that the Department needs to better manage the funding it provides to the sector. Having looked into the training offer, I remain broadly happy with it. It already includes a specific two-day course for new or aspiring scrutiny chairs, and I am comfortable that, for now, it meets the needs of the sector.

I note that the Local Government Association wrote to the Select Committee to provide further details of the overwhelmingly positive feedback it has received about its training programme. The Committee will be aware that our new memorandum of understanding with the LGA sets out our expectation that it will remain responsive to feedback and ensure that the training it offers remains relevant and effective. However, I agree that training is important, and I hope that the response the Committee gets from the LGA reassures it that what is in place is at least a good foundation.

[Liz Twist]

I thank the Minister for those comments. Will he ensure that all authorities not only know that the training offer is there, but encourage their officers and members to take it up? We heard that not all authorities do that, so it would be really helpful if the Government, through the LGA, stressed that point.

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Lady is right. I note that in its oral evidence, the LGA recognised the need to get into councils that might not be doing scrutiny as well as they should. I think it will have taken that message away as a result of coming before the Select Committee and engaging on this topic, and I will pass that message on, too, to ensure that it was heard loud and clear.