The debacle over the introduction of Universal Credit highlights widely acknowledged concerns about accountability between ministers and civil servants
The trickiest issue at the top of Whitehall is the balance of accountability and responsibility between secretaries of state and their permanent secretaries. That tension has been highlighted by the row over the Public Accounts Committee’s recent damning report on the problems introducing Universal Credit. The report stopped short of naming Robert Devereux, the permanent secretary at Work and Pensions, but allies of Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State, have briefed the press, and the committee, against him. The resulting mess has seriously damaged morale and left open questions of accountability.
No one disputes that civil servants have made serious mistakes. The PAC said management of Universal Credit had been extraordinarily poor and the accounting officer (namely Devereux) and his team should have been ‘more alert to identifying and acting on early warning signs that things were going wrong’. But officials are not solely to blame. Universal Credit is the personal mission of Duncan Smith – and he has been determined to press ahead.
The trouble is that current accountability mechanisms are no longer sufficient to deal with such situations. Senior ministers are no longer willing just to stand up in parliament, explain why a problem has occurred and what is being done to remedy it. They want to make civil servants more responsible for failures of performance while also having a greater say in their appointment.
On the other hand, the traditional accountability of permanent secretaries/accounting officers to the PAC for the spending of public money is no longer enough when it is hard to distinguish the respective influence of politicians and officials. The PAC mainly questions senior officials, and not ministers, on specific projects, so it is the latter who are in the line of fire in face of this increasingly combative committee. This reinforces an artificial division of accountability.
The Institute for Government has been considering these issues over the past 15 months, ahead of a final report before Christmas. Our central argument is that there can never be a firm and watertight distinction between the roles and responsibilities of secretaries of state and permanent secretaries unless you go down the route of formally shared accountability or the contractual relationship between a minister and department. This is the case in New Zealand where the state services commissioner acts as a constitutional buffer between politicians and officials.
Other means of distancing and differentiating, such as the increased use of ministerial directions (when a permanent secretary has doubts over the financial viability of a project), are seldom used – none has been sought since 2010 – since they would expose divisions within a department and weaken relationships at the top.
The way forward lies in greater clarity, alongside a greater ministerial say in permanent secretary appointments and bringing in more expert advisers. More formal statements could be made about respective roles and responsibilities, as was tried out in the Home Office in 2006-07. Performance management needs to be strengthened, not least by the provision of better quality information, but also by making permanent secretary objectives more explicit and realistic – and publishing them before more than two-thirds of the financial year has passed.
The current position is unsatisfactory for all concerned – for ministers who feel frustrated with senior officials in whom they have lost confidence and for civil servants who face criticism, often by name, in the press with no right of redress. Beware naïve and unworkable solutions. But reform is possible and mutual understanding and respect would go a long way.
Peter Riddell is director of the Institute for Government. Accountability at the Top by Akash Paun will be published shortly by the IfG
This opinion piece was first published in the December edition of Public Finance Magazine
