Councils must lose main budget powers

1 Mar 07
Ministers would set the education and community care budgets of every council in Scotland and take responsibility for managing these services under a radical plan drawn up by a leading civil servant.

02 March 2007

Ministers would set the education and community care budgets of every council in Scotland and take responsibility for managing these services under a radical plan drawn up by a leading civil servant.

Professor Jim Gallagher, who is on secondment from the Scottish Executive to Glasgow University, believes the time has come for an overhaul of public services that combines centralisation and decentralisation.

While councils would no longer be responsible for budgets and decision-making on education and community care services – two of the biggest local government spending areas – they would be given autonomy over the funding and management of all other services.

They would also be given increased scrutiny powers over public services, including those that had been centralised.

Gallagher, latterly head of the Scottish Executive justice department, a former head of the Scottish Office finance group and adviser on constitutional and local government issues in the Prime Minister's Policy Unit, is presently professor of government at Glasgow University.

Along with co-authors Professor Kenneth Gibb and Carl Mills, Gallagher has set out his plans in a paper published this week by the David Hume Institute, an independent think-tank.

The document re-examines the history of local government finance and the relationship between central and local government over the past 30 years, and looks at options for the future.

The authors' preferred option is to give ministers the power to set budgets for education and community care. In return, they would 'let go' of control of spending on other services. 'Both would need to be done at the same time if this is not simply to be centralisation,' the paper states.

It suggests setting up appointed boards to allow local management of education and transferring community care responsibilities to the NHS. In parallel with these changes, councillors would be given a greater role to scrutinise the management of education and community care services, including an oversight role over NHS performance.

The authors state: 'The advantages of this approach are possible improvement in accountability, scrutiny and so, ultimately, performance and integration.'

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