Select Committee reform as a guide to local government reform
Around the turn of the millennium the Blair government forced County Councils and the vast majority of City, Borough or District councils to largely abandon the traditional "committee system" under which most of a council's detailed decision making was carried out by proportionately balanced committees meeting largely in public, and individual councillors had almost zero formal authority, in favour of what were called "executive structures."
These involved either a directly-elected mayor or "leader and cabinet" taking on almost all the power which had previously been delegated to committees, with some individual councillors now having quite considerable formal authority and an executive which could now consist entirely of members of the ruling party instead of having to reflect the balance on the council.
(Committee decision-making was retained for some, largely regulatory decisions such as planning and licencing, where giving the power to an individual to grant, say, planning permission might have created a perceived or actual greater risk of corruption.)
This was, of course, essentially an attempt to impose the national Westminster model of democracy on local councils. with the additional option of directly-elected mayors.
To provide an additional level of democratic scrutiny and give both opposition councillors and majority party backbench councillors something useful to do, the same Local Government Act 2000 also required councils to set up at least one "Overview and Scrutiny" committee, these being apparently modelled on the House of Commons "Select committees" which had been founded by the late Norman St John-Stevas in 1979.
Their job was to scrutinise the Mayor or Leader and Cabinet in much the same way that Select Committees help parliament to scrutinise ministers and hold them to account.
Ironically in the years since the Local Government Act 2000, Select Committees themselves have been made significantly more powerful and effective through what are known as the "Wright Reforms" put forward by the Commons Reform Committee in 2009 when Doctor Tony Wright MP was chairman, many of which were implemented by the incoming Coalition government in 2010.
There is a very persuasive article on the LSE website by Andrew Coulson (a former Birmingham councillor and Associate of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, not the former editor and spin-doctor with whom he shares his name) which argues that similar reforms could help improve the effectiveness of Overview and Scrutiny committees in local government.
The article notes that The House of Commons’ Select Committee on Communities and Local Government reported in December 2017 on its distant cousins, overview and scrutiny committees in local government. The main recommendation of the select committee is that scrutiny committees should report to Full Councils, and have much stronger powers of access to information and evidence, and the ability to call individuals to account.
The committee also recommends strengthening the position of council scrutiny committees in relation to the executives, and that local authorities should be required to demonstrate that they have independent and effective operational arrangements for scrutiny. All councils would have a statutory Scrutiny Officer who would be required to report annually on the state of scrutiny in that council. The report also supports cross-party chairing, a key feature of the Parliamentary select committees.
I have served on three major authorities, one which had fully embraced the principle of cross party chairing, with that on Cumbria county council, which accepts it to some degree, and one where the then administration was as restrictive as they could get away with. It is certainly my impression that the effectiveness of Overview and Scrutiny was in direct proportion with the willingness of the council to accept cross-party working in general, and allowing a good mix of scrutiny chairs is certainly an important part of that.
I think there are some good recommendations in the Betts report and I hope it will be adopted.
You can read Andrew Coulson's article at the LSE site or at Democratic Audit UK: a link to the former follows.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/select-committees-can-enhance-overview-and-scrutiny-in-local-government/
These involved either a directly-elected mayor or "leader and cabinet" taking on almost all the power which had previously been delegated to committees, with some individual councillors now having quite considerable formal authority and an executive which could now consist entirely of members of the ruling party instead of having to reflect the balance on the council.
(Committee decision-making was retained for some, largely regulatory decisions such as planning and licencing, where giving the power to an individual to grant, say, planning permission might have created a perceived or actual greater risk of corruption.)
This was, of course, essentially an attempt to impose the national Westminster model of democracy on local councils. with the additional option of directly-elected mayors.
To provide an additional level of democratic scrutiny and give both opposition councillors and majority party backbench councillors something useful to do, the same Local Government Act 2000 also required councils to set up at least one "Overview and Scrutiny" committee, these being apparently modelled on the House of Commons "Select committees" which had been founded by the late Norman St John-Stevas in 1979.
Their job was to scrutinise the Mayor or Leader and Cabinet in much the same way that Select Committees help parliament to scrutinise ministers and hold them to account.
Ironically in the years since the Local Government Act 2000, Select Committees themselves have been made significantly more powerful and effective through what are known as the "Wright Reforms" put forward by the Commons Reform Committee in 2009 when Doctor Tony Wright MP was chairman, many of which were implemented by the incoming Coalition government in 2010.
There is a very persuasive article on the LSE website by Andrew Coulson (a former Birmingham councillor and Associate of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, not the former editor and spin-doctor with whom he shares his name) which argues that similar reforms could help improve the effectiveness of Overview and Scrutiny committees in local government.
The article notes that The House of Commons’ Select Committee on Communities and Local Government reported in December 2017 on its distant cousins, overview and scrutiny committees in local government. The main recommendation of the select committee is that scrutiny committees should report to Full Councils, and have much stronger powers of access to information and evidence, and the ability to call individuals to account.
The committee also recommends strengthening the position of council scrutiny committees in relation to the executives, and that local authorities should be required to demonstrate that they have independent and effective operational arrangements for scrutiny. All councils would have a statutory Scrutiny Officer who would be required to report annually on the state of scrutiny in that council. The report also supports cross-party chairing, a key feature of the Parliamentary select committees.
I have served on three major authorities, one which had fully embraced the principle of cross party chairing, with that on Cumbria county council, which accepts it to some degree, and one where the then administration was as restrictive as they could get away with. It is certainly my impression that the effectiveness of Overview and Scrutiny was in direct proportion with the willingness of the council to accept cross-party working in general, and allowing a good mix of scrutiny chairs is certainly an important part of that.
I think there are some good recommendations in the Betts report and I hope it will be adopted.
You can read Andrew Coulson's article at the LSE site or at Democratic Audit UK: a link to the former follows.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/select-committees-can-enhance-overview-and-scrutiny-in-local-government/
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