27 July 2007
The green paper on governance could end up looking more like a whitewash, unless Parliament's powers of scrutiny are strengthened, argues Colin Talbot
If the government's green paper on The governance of Britain is 'constitutional Christmas', as some have claimed, it is unclear whether Gordon Brown is playing Scrooge before or after the ghosts got at him.
It certainly looks like an attempt to lay the many ghosts of Christmas Past – the decision to go to war, cash for honours, the powers for special advisers, public appointments etc – to rest through a constitutional revamp. But, like all Brown announcements, this one will probably leave some of the constitutional Christmas partygoers with a feeling of unease, as it gradually dawns on them what happened the day before.
There are indeed many good and welcome things in the green paper. But there is also a whole pack of dogs that didn't bark, not to mention some that did rather quietly. For example, on voting and House of Lords reform, the green paper says nothing new and makes no firm commitments. Indeed, in short order, Justice Secretary Jack Straw was announcing that nothing much would happen on Lords reform in this Parliament (ie, before a general election).
But to start by being fair to the new government, has anyone noticed that we suddenly have green papers again? Many of us thought they were defunct, but the government says – on both the constitutional reforms and other matters – that it is open to debate before decisions are made. That is very welcome, if it turns out to be true.
There is a lot in the proposals about strengthening Parliament and its ability to hold the executive to account. Changes to the use of Crown prerogative powers, many of which are to be passed to Parliament or put on a statutory basis, are massively overdue.
Some changes are almost comical – for example, the prime minister's right to appoint bishops in the Church of England has always been a farce and getting rid of it is of little real import, except symbolically. The real issue is the establishment of the Church of England in the UK constitution, something the green paper avoids, even though there is a large body of opinion in favour of ending the anachronism altogether.
Other decisions over war and peace are clearly substantial but Parliament has always been able, if it stirs itself over a major issue, to override the executive. There have been plenty of examples of a ruling party's majority disappearing over a major issue when the government has gone too far even for its own supporters. Holding the executive to account over the big issues is not the problem, it is in the day-to-day exercise of routine power that the British Parliament is so weak in comparison with many other western democracies.
Let's take a simple example – budgets. In most western countries, the executive presents a budget to the legislature that is then pored over and voted on in at least some detail. Specific allocations and taxes might be thrown out or amended. In Britain, and solely by convention, Parliament has effectively given up the right to really scrutinise expenditure and taxation plans and instead just annually signs the cheques, as the Hansard Society pointed out in a report last year and the Treasury select committee has repeatedly suggested.
Such rights do not have to be enacted as in the US's dual-power relationship between Congress and presidency, which can lead to deadlock. But it also does not have to take the form of Parliament simply signing off the plans that the government presents to it either. There are many ways in which Parliament could be involved more actively, especially given the opportunity afforded by the annual cycle, which now involves a Pre-Budget report in the autumn and a full Budget in the spring, and of course the two- to three-year cycle of Spending Reviews.
On this, all the green paper offers is an opportunity to debate the plans and objectives of major government departments on the floor of the house. It is unclear whether this will be post-hoc, just reviewing past decisions, or timed so that Parliament can have some input into decisions before they happen.
When the Commons public administration select committee proposed, a couple of years ago, a debate in the house on Public Service Agreements before they were agreed, they got short shrift from the government, which argued that Parliament was there only for post-hoc scrutiny. Maybe the Brown government has changed this line, but if so it has not yet said so clearly.
The only real concession to Parliament's role in the expenditure process is to take up a proposal from the Treasury select committee to make consistent the way in which expenditure plans are reported. Currently there are three, inconsistent, systems – budget plans, estimates submitted to Parliament and finally resource accounts. It is almost impossible to match figures in these three sets of documents and understand any changes.
Whatever Parliament's role in these processes, there is a much bigger issue – does it have the capacity to carry out effective scrutiny? Our parliamentary select committees have very scarce resources.
Recently the House of Commons Scrutiny Unit has been established to help bolster this capacity and the National Audit Office has slowly expanded its role into supporting select committees other than the Public Accounts Committee. The recent case of the foreign affairs select committee asking the NAO to carry out a value-for-money audit of the British Council is a sign of this changing relationship.
But by international standards, the British Parliament has very weak capacity to analyse government plans and performance. The green paper says nothing about addressing this capacity issue, which would strengthen parliamentary scrutiny.
The green paper proposes that the government will at last put the civil service on a statutory basis. This commitment is included in the proposed Constitutional Reform Bill, which is part of the legislative programme announced by Brown. The suspicious might note, however, that the detail on the Bill merely says it 'could' include the civil service.
If the proposal is to simply enact in legislation what is currently established in various codes of conduct, we will see very little change. There are three crucial issues in civil service reform: accountability of the civil service to Parliament; scrutiny of senior appointments; and scrutiny of machinery of government changes. None of these is addressed in the green paper.
One of the headlines that greeted the green paper was that we are going to get US-style pre-appointment hearings for senior public servants. And, indeed, the Treasury Committee almost immediately announced the first such hearing – it has already interviewed and pronounced on Sir Michael Scholar, the proposed chair of the new Statistics Board.
Again there is more than a little spin here. In the US, Congress scrutinises and approves all senior appointments. Here, Parliament does not approve appointments and still will not do so under these proposals – except in the case of the chair of the Statistics Board.
In a very few cases, such as the civil service commissioner, the commissioner for public appointments and some inspectors and ombudsmen, Parliament will have a stronger say. In most others it will have a limited role, and even then be restricted to 'public bodies at arm's length from ministers'.
In other words, the most important appointments in the Whitehall village, the proposed mandarins, will avoid parliamentary scrutiny.
As reported recently in these pages, the incoming Brown government totally ignored the recent PASC report on machinery-of-government changes and the role of Parliament and seems set to continue doing so, as there is no mention in the green paper of them.
So what can we conclude from all this? Certainly, in terms of strengthening Parliament's ability to scrutinise and challenge the executive in the day-to-day running of the government, these proposals overall do little to change existing relationships. Nor are they likely to make the civil service component of the executive very much more accountable. There are some promises and hints of future possibilities, but little is offered concretely.
Indeed, it would be a modern parable of Scrooge-sized proportions if Gordon Brown PM were to start behaving very differently from the Chancellor Brown who spent ten years manipulating the Whitehall machinery to accumulate ever-greater powers in the Treasury. He had ample opportunity with his spending reviews and Public Service Agreements to really engage Parliament and failed to do so. Still, we can always live in hope.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at the Simon Institute, Manchester Business School
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