David Williams is probably right when he suggests that the Private Members’ Bill giving councils more powers might not make the statute book, even with ministerial support from the Department for Communities & Local Government (‘Ministers back MP’s Bill to give councils more scrutiny powers’, January 15–21).
Whitehall’s reluctance to devolve is not simply civil servants and ministers defending their empires. Ministers will never abdicate responsibility for the constituency implications of public expenditure. Nor should they.
We might have solved this problem following the massive 1970 reorganisation of central government, when there was also a clear interest in the disengagement of central government from the everyday affairs of local government. But the challenge then, as now, was how to define central government’s ‘strategic’ issues as opposed to involvement in local delivery systems.
As a Whitehall adviser at the time, I managed to get a clear official brief from the permanent secretary of the then Department of Environment to conduct an internal review that would distinguish central strategic issues from service delivery. The review covered 15 major directorates and many more divisions, and it unlocked much creative enthusiasm at assistant secretary levels. But fierce senior Whitehall opposition to interdepartmental co-ordination meant nothing changed.
The obstacles remain to this day. The lack of any departmental and interdepartmental strategic funding keeps Whitehall obsessed with departmental autonomy; and the same inability to separate strategic matters from local delivery matters keeps ministers endlessly playing with the local bricks themselves.
