By Lucy Philips
2 September 2010
The Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst is speaking to Public Finance in the immediate aftermath of Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles’ decision to abolish the Audit Commission. The move, precipitating one of the most high-profile public sector casualties to date, sent shock waves through local government. It also came on the back of swathes of other cuts to the sector, including the scrapping of Comprehensive Area Assessments, regional development agencies and Government Offices for the Regions.
Ironically, Neill hopes that his hastiness to get on with the job ‘doesn’t show too much’. But this sense of urgency chimes with that of the Tory-Liberal Democrat partnership as a whole, given the scale of its activity since it came to power in May. Neill emphasises that spending decisions are not being made ‘happily’ and that it is important to give everyone a fair hearing, but the £156bn public deficit must be tackled, and quickly.
When it comes to the Audit Commission, Neill maintains that the quango should have anticipated its own downfall because of government moves away from centralisation and red tape. But few in the sector had thought it would go altogether. The commission itself was caught on the hoof, claiming that the government had given it no indication of its intentions – more evidence of how quickly Pickles, in particular, is prepared to move on cuts.
Neill stands firmly behind his boss – who declared the commission both profligate and ‘a creature of the Whitehall state’ – and stresses the benefits of abolition. Beyond the £50m a year of claimed savings to the taxpayer, the face of local government audit will be transformed, he says. Councils will be able to choose from private sector providers and citizens will be able to monitor all local authority spending over £500. He also has high hopes that the commission’s demise will see the first ‘mutualisation’, or takeover by employees, within a big public sector organisation.
Another reason for abolishing the commission, Neill says, is because it has moved away from its original concept, when it was set up in 1983 by Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine. Now it had become much more the instrument of the previous government’s ‘highly sensitive, micromanaging view of public services’, a view the coalition doesn’t share.
‘We think you can trust councils and their residents to police things much more. The whole of the local government sector is much more mature than it was in the 1980s,’ he says, revealing himself as a local government veteran – including 16 years as a councillor for the London Borough of Havering and eight as a member of the Greater London Authority.
Neill says Pickles is equally determined to move quickly on preparations for the October Comprehensive Spending Review, and the DCLG’s plans are already ‘very well worked through’. But he refuses to be drawn on whether local government cuts are likely to be nearer 25% or 40%, asserting only that ‘central administration has to bear a heavier element’ and further ring-fencing will be removed from council grants.
‘While it would be foolish to pretend there are not going to have to be reductions in total spend, we can give local authorities a lot more flexibility and remove some of the bureaucratic burdens that can take money away from the front line. The CAA was a good example of that,’ says Neill.
Other parts of Neill’s background make him well placed to deal with the challenges to come. This is particularly important given the two-party alliance and his wide ministerial remit, not only in local government and planning but in fire & resilience, the Thames Gateway and the Olympics. The former barrister became an MP in 2006 following a by-election triggered by the death of Eric Forth, and was soon appointed shadow minister for London and then for local government.
He has also been leader of the London Fire & Civil Defence Authority and of the Conservative Group at the London Assembly and is currently deputy chair of the Conservative Party. His wife was also a Conservative councillor in Southend.
Neill believes his experience and contacts will improve relations between the department and councils, describing their short association so far as a positive one. ‘I have friends in the local government world, both at an officer and member level, and everyone is still talking to me so it can’t be too bad. I think we have got a good and businesslike relationship because people recognise this is a department that means business, that is getting on with the job, but is genuinely pursuing the localist agenda.
‘We are going in the direction that the local government world has been asking government to go,’ he says.
Brian Coleman, London Assembly Conservative member for Barnet & Camden, has worked with Neill and says he is highly regarded in local government circles – ‘because he has been there, done it and got his hands dirty’. He points out that Neill has had more recent coalface experience than Pickles, who has not been in local government since 1992.
‘A lot has changed since then,’ he says, adding: ‘Bob is clever, shrewd and knows how to get things done without a huge public fuss. He is a safe pair of hands when it comes to local government and does not make rash decisions.’
Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, describes Neill as ‘a genial, twinkle-in-the-eye kind of politician’.
But he warns that ‘the nasty and brutal business of coping with the slash-and-burn policy within the public sector’ is likely to run against his character. ‘Eric Pickles relishes the cut and thrust of quangocide but I think with Bob Neill it’s not his natural forte… There will be lots of bad news to put across for some time to come and I can see Bob Neill’s amiable manner will be helpful to government in trying to sell some of these things,’ he says.
According to Neill, relations between the coalition partners are upbeat in the DCLG too – despite his gaffe earlier in the summer that risked putting him at odds with the LibDem push for ‘progressive austerity’. Neill caused uproar in the Commons when he suggested that the poorest people would ultimately bear the brunt of spending cuts. Later, however, he claimed his comments had been taken out of context and that this outcome would occur only if there were delays in tackling the deficit.
Neill says the DCLG has adopted a ‘collegiate’ tone, with both sides working ‘very constructively and very positively’. Fellow parliamentary under secretary and LibDem MP Andrew Stunell is a long-standing associate too.
But Labour hasn’t been so quick to cast aside Neill’s assertions about spending cuts. A spokeswoman for the party told PF that Neill had revealed the ‘truth about this government’s priorities’, an issue that has recently been reignited by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Councillor Sharon Taylor, deputy leader of the Local Government Association’s Labour Group, rubs salt in the wound by saying she has been ‘surprised by how gaffe-prone’ Neill has been. She adds that he was gaining a reputation for ‘ill-advised snap decisions’, urging him to ‘engage more proactively’ with local government leaders.
And there’s a Tory colleague too that Neill won’t be winning any brownie points from just yet. Although a loyal Londoner, Neill has hung back from joining Mayor Boris Johnson’s much-hyped bicycle hire scheme in the capital.
But he does have a reason. ‘I fear I need to get a lot fitter before I can get on to the new “Boris Bikes”,’ he says, pledging to make himself ‘bike fit’ by the end of the parliamentary recess.
Bob Neill is speaking at the CIPFA Facing the Cuts summit in London on September 8
2 September 2010
Is local government minister Bob Neill friend or foe? In an interview with Lucy Phillips, this amiable veteran of the sector robustly defends town hall cuts but pledges to improve relations with councils and give them more freedom
Local government minister Bob Neill is impatient. Like many of those newly appointed to government he finds it ‘frustrating we have to work through the political processes of governance’, and blames the speed of spending cuts and reform on ‘the mess we have inherited’.The Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst is speaking to Public Finance in the immediate aftermath of Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles’ decision to abolish the Audit Commission. The move, precipitating one of the most high-profile public sector casualties to date, sent shock waves through local government. It also came on the back of swathes of other cuts to the sector, including the scrapping of Comprehensive Area Assessments, regional development agencies and Government Offices for the Regions.
Ironically, Neill hopes that his hastiness to get on with the job ‘doesn’t show too much’. But this sense of urgency chimes with that of the Tory-Liberal Democrat partnership as a whole, given the scale of its activity since it came to power in May. Neill emphasises that spending decisions are not being made ‘happily’ and that it is important to give everyone a fair hearing, but the £156bn public deficit must be tackled, and quickly.
When it comes to the Audit Commission, Neill maintains that the quango should have anticipated its own downfall because of government moves away from centralisation and red tape. But few in the sector had thought it would go altogether. The commission itself was caught on the hoof, claiming that the government had given it no indication of its intentions – more evidence of how quickly Pickles, in particular, is prepared to move on cuts.
Neill stands firmly behind his boss – who declared the commission both profligate and ‘a creature of the Whitehall state’ – and stresses the benefits of abolition. Beyond the £50m a year of claimed savings to the taxpayer, the face of local government audit will be transformed, he says. Councils will be able to choose from private sector providers and citizens will be able to monitor all local authority spending over £500. He also has high hopes that the commission’s demise will see the first ‘mutualisation’, or takeover by employees, within a big public sector organisation.
Another reason for abolishing the commission, Neill says, is because it has moved away from its original concept, when it was set up in 1983 by Conservative environment secretary Michael Heseltine. Now it had become much more the instrument of the previous government’s ‘highly sensitive, micromanaging view of public services’, a view the coalition doesn’t share.
‘We think you can trust councils and their residents to police things much more. The whole of the local government sector is much more mature than it was in the 1980s,’ he says, revealing himself as a local government veteran – including 16 years as a councillor for the London Borough of Havering and eight as a member of the Greater London Authority.
Neill says Pickles is equally determined to move quickly on preparations for the October Comprehensive Spending Review, and the DCLG’s plans are already ‘very well worked through’. But he refuses to be drawn on whether local government cuts are likely to be nearer 25% or 40%, asserting only that ‘central administration has to bear a heavier element’ and further ring-fencing will be removed from council grants.
‘While it would be foolish to pretend there are not going to have to be reductions in total spend, we can give local authorities a lot more flexibility and remove some of the bureaucratic burdens that can take money away from the front line. The CAA was a good example of that,’ says Neill.
Other parts of Neill’s background make him well placed to deal with the challenges to come. This is particularly important given the two-party alliance and his wide ministerial remit, not only in local government and planning but in fire & resilience, the Thames Gateway and the Olympics. The former barrister became an MP in 2006 following a by-election triggered by the death of Eric Forth, and was soon appointed shadow minister for London and then for local government.
He has also been leader of the London Fire & Civil Defence Authority and of the Conservative Group at the London Assembly and is currently deputy chair of the Conservative Party. His wife was also a Conservative councillor in Southend.
Neill believes his experience and contacts will improve relations between the department and councils, describing their short association so far as a positive one. ‘I have friends in the local government world, both at an officer and member level, and everyone is still talking to me so it can’t be too bad. I think we have got a good and businesslike relationship because people recognise this is a department that means business, that is getting on with the job, but is genuinely pursuing the localist agenda.
‘We are going in the direction that the local government world has been asking government to go,’ he says.
Brian Coleman, London Assembly Conservative member for Barnet & Camden, has worked with Neill and says he is highly regarded in local government circles – ‘because he has been there, done it and got his hands dirty’. He points out that Neill has had more recent coalface experience than Pickles, who has not been in local government since 1992.
‘A lot has changed since then,’ he says, adding: ‘Bob is clever, shrewd and knows how to get things done without a huge public fuss. He is a safe pair of hands when it comes to local government and does not make rash decisions.’
Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, describes Neill as ‘a genial, twinkle-in-the-eye kind of politician’.
But he warns that ‘the nasty and brutal business of coping with the slash-and-burn policy within the public sector’ is likely to run against his character. ‘Eric Pickles relishes the cut and thrust of quangocide but I think with Bob Neill it’s not his natural forte… There will be lots of bad news to put across for some time to come and I can see Bob Neill’s amiable manner will be helpful to government in trying to sell some of these things,’ he says.
According to Neill, relations between the coalition partners are upbeat in the DCLG too – despite his gaffe earlier in the summer that risked putting him at odds with the LibDem push for ‘progressive austerity’. Neill caused uproar in the Commons when he suggested that the poorest people would ultimately bear the brunt of spending cuts. Later, however, he claimed his comments had been taken out of context and that this outcome would occur only if there were delays in tackling the deficit.
Neill says the DCLG has adopted a ‘collegiate’ tone, with both sides working ‘very constructively and very positively’. Fellow parliamentary under secretary and LibDem MP Andrew Stunell is a long-standing associate too.
But Labour hasn’t been so quick to cast aside Neill’s assertions about spending cuts. A spokeswoman for the party told PF that Neill had revealed the ‘truth about this government’s priorities’, an issue that has recently been reignited by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Councillor Sharon Taylor, deputy leader of the Local Government Association’s Labour Group, rubs salt in the wound by saying she has been ‘surprised by how gaffe-prone’ Neill has been. She adds that he was gaining a reputation for ‘ill-advised snap decisions’, urging him to ‘engage more proactively’ with local government leaders.
And there’s a Tory colleague too that Neill won’t be winning any brownie points from just yet. Although a loyal Londoner, Neill has hung back from joining Mayor Boris Johnson’s much-hyped bicycle hire scheme in the capital.
But he does have a reason. ‘I fear I need to get a lot fitter before I can get on to the new “Boris Bikes”,’ he says, pledging to make himself ‘bike fit’ by the end of the parliamentary recess.
Bob Neill is speaking at the CIPFA Facing the Cuts summit in London on September 8
