Writing on Con Home - why we don't need fewer councillors

Something of a rant but with the serious point that elected people, especially councillors, are the way we hold the unelected people to account:

But far from us needing fewer politicians, we need more. Rather than taking the decision-making further away from ordinary residents with unitary councils, regional mayors, and combined authorities, we should, as Conservatives, be wanting to get more decisions made right down in the communities where those ordinary residents live, by people they know and can speak with. Right now, our system of local democracy doesn’t function well, and the lack of real accountability is a big reason for this.

Whole piece on the always excellent Conservative Home.

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"Hello I'm Unaccountable" - welcome to the guidance state

This happens in the UK too - administrative agencies and government departments from planning through the police to the NHS use 'guidance' to create rules without reference to democratic accountability:

Federal agencies issue memoranda, notices, letters, bulletins, circulars, directives, and blog posts (among other things) to evade the rulemaking process established by Congress in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Agencies euphemistically refer to these documents as "guidance." Guidance has been responsible for revoking permits to conduct business, barring Americans from working in their chosen occupations, prohibiting taxpayers from taking deductions, levying post-conviction penalties for crimes, and seizing property, without statutory or constitutional authority and without due process. Think of guidance as an off-the-books way for the government to ignore commonly held understandings of fairness. It's a shameless, unconstitutional scheme designed to skirt judicial review, avoid public scrutiny, and evade accountability.

Almost all planning processes rely on guidance with (often tenuous) links to the National Planning Policy Framework. ASBOs and PSPOs are framed in such a way as to make almost any action subject to arbitrary police intervention. My favourite in recent times was the police officer defending 'playing music' in a car as antisocial behaviour. I asked whether perhaps the choice of music might influence the decisions of officers to which he replied that "we would act according to guidance". Which could mean that playing The Grand March from Aida is OK but blasting out drill music isn't, we don't know because we (in this instance a Regulatory and Appeals Committee) don't have the guidance because it isn't yet written.

Among the most egregious examples of 'guidance' are in the field of human resources management and, in particular, what might be termed 'equalities'. Much of the growing denial of female spaces isn't based on regulation but rather on guidance vaguely linked to the Equalities Act and vigorously policed by campaign groups. Similarly we see gender- or race-based selection (of dubious legality) widely applied along with the active closing down of critical voices and challenges to this 'guidance'. Furthermore 'guidance' forms the basis for appeals, accusations and, too often, references to tribunal processes. And once the tribunal has decided to back the guidance (or more commonly the organisation caves in and settles) it takes on the de facto authority of a law despite never having been anywhere near the scrutiny to which laws are supposed to be subject.

The proliferation of executive agencies, public sector 'corporations' and assorted quasi-governmental partnerships has resulted in the collapse of accountability. And, with the lack of any challenge to administrative orthodoxies, the result is a system open to corruption, external pressure and a focus on 'lowest common denominator', super-safe management. The systems of scrutiny - local and national - are dominated by anything other than effective, focused scrutiny. These systems combine grandstanding politicians, policy-making by anecdote, sob stories and appeals to authority rather than a measured and analytical examination of the services supposedly being 'delivered' to the public.

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Accountability (public sector newspeak version) is complexity.

Scrutiny

“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.” Franz Kafka, The Castle

Accountability in public services matters and probably matter more than accountability in traded private services. As consumers we do not get much choice in who provides our refuse collection service, our health care, our social services and much else besides - short of migration, that is.

I don't know about you but I've a suspicion that accountability is talked about more and made more complicated than it needs to be, and because of this the extent to which public services - and servants - are accountable is compromised. You only need look at the contortions engaged in by NHS grandees in avoiding personal accountability for services under their direction, to know there's a problem. And just so you know, the same goes for local councils, for the MoD and for services such as prisons and courts.

Part of this lies in the perversion of accountability as a concept. Here's a paragraph from an interview with academic, Toby Lowe, who specialises in public sector management. I present it in two halves so you can appreciate the point I'm making:

True accountability is not about counting but asking people to give an account of their actions as part of a dialogue in which they explain the decisions they have taken in the specific context they are working in.

This is a pretty good description of accountability and something that happens too infrequently and, when it does, very badly. You only need sit in a typical local council scrutiny committee or watch MPs parade their prejudgements at a select committee to appreciate the problem with our process of holding public servants to account for "...the decisions they have taken in the specific context they are working in."

Lowe chooses, however, to complicate the simplicity of "what did you do, give us the basis for that decision, how did you plan to assess whether your decision was right, what was the review process" - straightforward scrutiny - by producing an elaborate and extended further qualification of accountability:

It’s also not just about the traditional hierarchical relationship. There are multiple accountable relationships. Your peers could ask you to account for your decisions, as could a member of the public who is receiving the service – or an ombudsman or professional body. The main thing is that real accountability involves a conversation.

For sure we're broadly accountable in all these ways (to a greater or lesser extent) but the essence of public sector accountability is that services are accountable, through their representatives, to the public. It's not that, in an purely administrative context, there aren't other relationships involving accountability but that if you don't understand how accountability in the relationship with a colleague is less important than accountability to the public you serve then you've missed - and I suspect Toby Lowe has - the whole point of public accountability.

The problem here is that accountability becomes just a management tool - Lowe talks about 'learning' and 'autonomy' but at no point recognises the central requirement that the service is, first and foremost, accountable to the public. The process becomes personal or management development rather than accountability:

The learning element in particular requires a radical rethink. How within an organisation do you create safe spaces for learning and reflection, where people can talk openly about errors and uncertainty with their peers?

Probably a good thing but we need a further step - if we are to base service delivery on greater autonomy (again probably a good thing) then those delivering the service have to "give account of their decisions" in a place and a manner that allows those to whom they are accountable to make a judgement as to the effectiveness, the ethics and the efficiency of those decisions. Simply saying "it's complicated" strikes me as a cop out and merely provides a screen behind which those who should be accountable are able to hide.

We have a variety of problems with public accountability, from the distance between the theoretical decision-makers and the actual service through to the use of appointed boards to oversee provision without providing adequate space for any real scrutiny of the service's ethics, behaviour, decisions, and effectiveness. This is made worse by the conflation between 'accountability' within the decision-making process (to colleagues, managers and so forth) and real accountability to the public. This not only provides cover for politicians but also allows senior management to bury their responsibility and accountability in a confusing and complicated set of management processes.

Accountability is not complicated. In the private sector, if I don't like the service I get from one supermarket, I can complain and get satisfaction or exercise consumer sovereignty - make the supermarket accountable - by taking my shopping elsewhere. We don't get this option with public services and this is doubly true for vulnerable groups like the ill, the disabled and the homeless. And right now the effectiveness or otherwise of these services - their accountability - is either lost to the point of non-existence in Kafkaesque bureaucracy or else is under the direction of badly chaired, poorly briefed and overly partisan political scrutiny processes. Changing this, not creating "safe spaces for learning and reflection", is what we need but that would require political leaderships and senior managers to accept real accountability and the responsibilities that go with it.

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Why the EU isn't working for ordinary people (Italian version)...

Tim Parks writes about Italy and the problems with its tanking economy and grumpy electorate - and, in doing so, he bashes the EU nail firmly on the head:

There are two logical ways out of this impasse and the irresponsibility and frustration it breeds. One is a move to a genuine political and fiscal union of Europe; the other is a return to increased national autonomy outside the Euro. Present animosities make the first solution unthinkable. There is no appetite for it. Yet the economic power of the markets to punish any move to leave the Euro makes the second solution suicidal; as Greece has shown.

What we can expect, then, is more and more empty rhetoric and clownish behaviour at a national level; more and more people voting in a spirit of defiance, while tacitly accepting that their vote means nothing. It is a system in which you vote for someone because of what they say they would like to do, not what they can actually do. In short, if you don’t rule your country you can’t expect a viable ruling class.

I keep banging on about how the reason for leaving the EU is to allow us - in most areas of life - to govern ourselves, to give us the chance to do the opposite to how Tim Parks describes Italy and elect people because of what they are going to do not for their chasing of rhetorical unicorns.

Earlier today I took part in a brexit debate at Bradford College - my opening remarks were:

I voted to leave because the EU is distant, unaccountable and fundamentally undemocratic. For all the trappings of democracy – flags, anthems, parliaments, five presidents and periodic elections – there’s no way for us – “we the people” as it were – to change who rules us. For me, if we were simply a member of a trade pact, the sort of thing we joined in 1973 (before I could vote), then I’d be arguing to remain a member. But we’re not a member of “just a trade pact” – the EU wants to have a say in how much tax we pay, in consumer choice, in what is taught in schools, and in the organisation of transport, health and welfare. This is not simply a trade pact.

There are down sides to leaving probably including a short-term economic hit but the big gain is that we can begin the long job of restoring trust in government, in saying to those millions who, for probably the first time in their lives, cast a meaningful vote that we hear them and will give them back the some of the control over government that elites in Westminster and Brussels took away.

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Was the Brexit vote a call for more accountable, less distant - even local - government?

Sociologist Geert Hofstede, as part of his work looking at the different dimensions of culture, created the idea of 'power distance' - “the extent to which the less powerful members of organisations accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.” Because people feel - physically or psychologically - a long way from where the decisions about their lives are made they become less engaged and involved. This may well explain why, in most developed world democracies, voter turnout rises as social class rises - and this difference has been growing:

In the 1987 general election, for example, the turnout rate for the poorest income group was 4% lower than for the wealthiest. By 2010 the gap had grown to a staggering 23 points.

While 'I can't be bothered' or 'I don't understand politics' might be the sort of explanation we get when we canvass non-voters from lower social classes, it is likely that people in these classes no longer feel that their voting makes much difference to what the government does once it's ensconced in nice warm offices down in London. More importantly, other than that periodic opportunity to vote, people feel unable to influence government in its process of decision-making on things that affect them.

If we look at the levels of government, from the parish council up to the EU and other international bodies, it seems more likely that people (and in particular people from lower social classes) are able to influence the decisions of their parish council far more than they are the decisions of the European Union's Commission and Parliament. Those people can and do organise to go to the parish council, a body filled with people much more like them than higher tier levels of government, and argue for a particular course of action. And, more importantly, see that course of action enacted.

The problem in England is that fewer and fewer decisions affecting people (and especially working class people) are made in places close enough to those people for their voice to be worth expressing. So people don't bother. Worse still, since the national decision is necessarily broad brush, the minutiae of how that decision is implemented in a given place are discussed by bureaucrats without reference to the voters these minutiae impact.

Since democracy is as much about how accountable decision-makers feel as it is about how many people vote, the systems we have at national and supra-national levels act to exclude people. Decisions are made about what's taught in schools, about how money for health care is distributed, about where houses should be built - a myriad of things that affect us directly - without the public having the means to contribute or, more importantly, for the decision-makers to feel in any way accountable to that public.

The answer is, of course, making politics more local, not just in homage to Tip O'Neill's maxim that 'all politics is local', but because local decision-making is more accessible and therefore more accountable. This probably makes it better decision-making and it certainly means the politicians can't hide behind layers of Kafka-esque bureaucracy when confronted with their dafter decisions. As Tim Worstall put it (in explaining one reason why Denmark works so well as a culture):

Instead they have what I call the Bjorn's Beer Effect. You're in a society of 10,000 people. You know the guy who raises the local tax money and allocates that local tax money. You also know where he has a beer on a Friday night. More importantly Bjorn knows that everyone knows he collects and spends the money: and also where he has a beer on a Friday. That money is going to be rather better spent than if it travels off possibly 3,000 miles into some faceless bureaucracy.

So, if you're looking for ways to improve English government perhaps, instead of moving decisions ever further up the tiers of government, we should do the opposite and move decisions down to the most local level possible. The EU called this 'subsidiarity', spoke at great length about it, then proceeded to ignore it in favour of ever more 'harmonisation' (bureaucrat speak for what the Daily Mail calls the "postcode lottery"). If you're looking for reasons why those disengaged lower social class voters turned out to vote in the Brexit referendum, the fact they felt - perhaps for the first time - that they were actually involved in making an important decision might be a big reason. And, although the stated reasons for voting to leave are many and varied, the fact that the EU is distant, complicated and (in the terms we've discussed) essentially unaccountable sits at the heart of people's choice. "Taking back control" isn't about sovereignty or the UK parliament, it should be a call for us to get decisions about peoples' lives right back down to where those people have a fighting chance of influencing what's decided.


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Tax offices, roast potatoes and the accountability of experts

Anyone who was even half-awake will have spotted the roast potato story. You know, the one where the UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) advised us that we'll catch cancer from crispy roast spuds, well done toast, thin crust pizza and trendy thrice-cooked chips.

"The Government has been accused of “massively overreacting” by telling people not to eat crispy roast potatoes or browned toast despite there being no scientific proof of a link to cancer.

Experts said the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) new campaign, which warns people against cooking starchy foods at high temperatures for long periods, risks undermining support for “real” public health priorities like tackling obesity."

The thing here is that it's "the government" providing this advice, the government that's run by those people we elect. Or so we're told. Especially during court hearings about who's the boss, parliament or government. Now I've trawled through dozens of news reports looking for a comment on this story by a minister of the government that has made this announcement. An announcement that is so misleading and lacking in evidential support that it undermines the credibility of the FSA, the organisation set up by the government to make sure our food is safe. Nor (although I may have missed it) has anything been said by Heather Hancock who chairs the FSA "Board".

What's clear here is that no-one is looking the FSA's experts in the eye and saying something like: "Are you really sure you want to tell folk roast potatoes are bad for them on the basis of a very tiny increased cancer risk? You'll look very silly." Or, after said experts have rushed out with their shocking advice, no-one is pulling them into the office and telling them to go and change the bloody advice to something that doesn't make the FSA look like a bunch of rather dumb health fascists.

Let's imagine for a second that some MP - maybe Philip Davies - asks the appropriate Secretary of State (it's pretty tricky to actually find out who this is by the way) what's going on and why, despite the lack of scientific evidence, they thought is just fine to tell folk not to eat well-done toast. I'm pretty sure that the minister in question will respond with some sort of well-honed quip followed by an explanation that the FSA is a "non-ministerial department, supported by 7 agencies and public bodies" so nothing to do with me guv.

All this brings me to the matter of tax offices. Now, whatever we think of Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs, there are a lot of people working in tax offices. And, here in Bradford we have two of these offices - one in the centre of Bradford and one at Shipley. The nice people at HMRC propose, as part of some sort of reorganisation or restruture, to close these offices and open a brand spanking new shiny office. The problem is that HMRC propose to put that office in Leeds. Apparently (although this isn't very clear) because they don't think they can recruit the right quality of staff if they're based in Bradford.

It may well be that all this is absolutely the right thing to do, that the efficiency and effectiveness of tax collection will be enhanced by the merging of these offices into the new super-office in Leeds. But just like the roast potatoes it's pretty difficult for us to make any persuasive contrary argument - such as why not have your super-office in Bradford. I know this because Philip Davies did ask questions of the correct minister who defended the HMRC decision. It's important to note here that the minister, for all his willingness to respond, is not really in a position to overrule the HMRC on this matter because HMRC is a "non-ministerial department, supported by 2 agencies and public bodies".

There's nothing new about this problem and ministers have for three decades hidden behind the semi-detached nature of these "non-ministerial departments" with their "boards" and "directors". From the prison service through defence procurement to decisions about overseas aid such agencies act without proper accountability while making pronouncements and decisions affecting millions without the benefit of public accountability. They are the experts and neither their "boards" not ministers seem able to control what they do.

Here in Bradford we'll keep making the case for those tax officials to come to Bradford but the experts in question - the HMRC management and its property advisors - do not have to do anything except politely nod, smile and proceed to remove a few hundred jobs (and a pile of business rates) from Bradford. And the worldwide coverage of roast potatoes will fade while the advice remains on the FSA website and gradually becomes, like salt and raw milk, received wisdom among those who enforce food standards.

There's plenty of good reasons to have agencies of these sort and plenty of reason to listen carefully to what experts tell us. But there are also good reasons why our Government - by which I mean the secretaries-of-state and assorted ministers not officialdom - should be accountable for their decisions and empowered to change them if they seem wrong or unhelpful.

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Quote of the day - on the accountability of the NHS

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In Christian Niemietz's 'Diagnosis: Overrated' is this observation:

The idea that the NHS is run by ‘the people’, as a joint endeavour, is a romantic fantasy. The NHS is an elite project, and this could not be otherwise. Collective choice is not a substitute for individual choice and ‘voice’ is not a substitute for ‘exit’. The illusory ‘accountability’ mediated through the political process cannot come anywhere near the accountability of a marketplace, or of a properly designed quasi-market setting, in which providers stand and fall with the choices consumers make, and depend on them for their very economic survival.

Anyone with experience of the NHS's sclerotic organisation will know this to be absolutely true.

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"A spokesman says..." On NHS executive pay and accountability

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A couple of days ago our local paper contacted me following the latest batch of Taxpayers Alliance agitation about the pay of senior executives at Bradford Council. Quite right to make the challenge - this is, after all, public money. My response (given that I really don't agree with the Taxpayers Alliance on this one) was:

Councillor Simon Cooke said while he had "a lot of time for the TaxPayers' Alliance", it was time the campaign group recognised that billion-pound-turnover organisations like Bradford Council would have well-paid chief executives.

He said if the council didn't pay competitive salaries, it would lose its "very best people" to the private sector.

He said: "The argument is really marginal to the costs of the council to the taxpayer.

"They keep repeating these things time and time again. It's really not the kind of line I'm happy with at all.

"I don't think anyone who works for Bradford Council - and this is not a reflection of the quality of their work - is overpaid."

You don't have to agree with me. And remember that those big salaries are all agreed by us as councillors - we vote on them at full council meetings. It's open and transparent - if you don't like what we decide, you have the chance to elect someone else.

Today I'm reading the same story only this time its the NHS.

Figures for Bradford district showing how many NHS employees get in excess of £100,000 revealed Airedale NHS Foundation Trust has 74 including four non-clinical employees, Bradford District Care Trust has 24 employees including three in non-clinical roles, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has 220 employees including its four non-clinical Trust's board members while NHS Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven CCG has none, NHS Bradford City CCG has two non-clinical employees and finally NHS Bradford Districts CCG has two non-clinical staff.

The same applies. If we want the best quality of staff then we've to pay the sort of salaries that attract the best staff. However, there's a problem - for most of these organisations no-one was available to be accountable, to respond to the Taxpayers Alliance's criticism:

"A Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said..."

"A spokesman for Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said..."

This concerns me - whereas criticism of Bradford Council gets substantive response from three people who are in positions to influence the decisions, for the NHS the critic is fobbed off with an anonymous 'spokesman'.

This reminds me just how the NHS is more or less unaccountable, how difficult it is to level any substantive criticism of their decision-making, and how impenetrable the system has become to anyone not granted privileged access.

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So you thought the World Health Organisation was accountable to governments? Think again.

Does the man on the left have too much influence over international health policy?

Today's egregious piece of nannying fussbucketry is about the health risks associated with eating processed meats like sausages and bacon:

The World Health Organisation is reportedly planning to declare that bacon, sausages and other processed meat cause cancer.

Red meat is also expected to be listed as being “probably carcinogenic to humans”.

A source told The Daily Mail that the announcements were expected to be made on Monday with processed meat put in the same category as cigarettes, alcohol and asbestos.

Truth be told, the WHO isn't really doing this at all merely repeating again that there is some evidence linking the heavy consumption of these foods to bowel cancers. The problem is that, as we're finding out with sugar and found out with salt, the health establishments in western countries use the WHO as the source for 'evidence' to substantiate decisions around all-population health interventions (erroneously called 'public health').

For once, I'm not going to raise questions about the validity of the research on which the WHO bases its argument (although the reporting in the Daily Mail, Independent and other media is utterly misleading and appalling). Instead I want to talk about the World Health Organisation itself.

The WHO was set up in 1948 and describes its primary role as to "direct and coordinate international health within the United Nations’ system". To do this the WHO employs over 7000 people working in 150 country offices, in 6 regional offices and at their headquarters in Geneva. The organisation's recently approved budget is $4,385 million which is spent across the following areas: health systems, promoting health through the life-course, noncommunicable diseases, communicable diseases, corporate services, preparedness, surveillance and response. Although most of the spend is still on communicable diseases, disaster response and preparedness, there has been a gradual shift towards a focus on 'non-communicable' diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. This reflects success (not much of which is down to the WHO) in reducing levels of communicable disease.

Now you'd have thought that this $4.4 billion budget comes from the members of the WHO - the 194 countries who subscribe to the organisation. However, you'd be wrong. While a lot of money does come from members (which is means tested to reflect differentials in national wealth), the biggest part of the WHO's income comes in the form of 'voluntary' contributions.

That money comes from two separate sources of funding: assessed contributions from WHO’s 194 member states (means tested) and voluntary contributions from member states and non-government funders such as foundations, investment banks, multi-national corporations, and non-government organisations.

Back in 2011, 80% of the WHO's income came from those voluntary contributions with the single largest contributor in that category being the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF):

Just one foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (yes Bill Gates, the man who gave the world Microsoft and his wife) donated most of that – slightly more than $446m in fact. That’s more than any other donor except the United States and 24 times more money than Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa combined

And these voluntary contributions aren't freely available to the WHO, they come with strings attached - how that $446m gets spent is determined by Bill and Melinda not by the WHO.

On one level this isn't a problem because the WHO gets extra money to spend on its great work improving the health of millions. But on another level it is a problem. The WHO is, as a UN agency, granted authority and influence over public policy decisions. In most cases this isn't direct - the WHO has no regulatory authority - but things such as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control show how the organisation can lead on international, regional and national policy. As vapers discovered when directing their campaign to the European Union, that body was able to use the FCTC's statements on e-cigs as the basis for decision-making.

This means that private organisations like BMGF and Bloomberg Philanthropies, by providing much of the WHO's funding while exercising control over how that money is used, are more influential than the majority of national governments. And because these are philanthropic institutions there is little control or regulation of that influence (unlike for corporations or groups of corporations). The truth is that the WHO is more accountable to Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg than it is to its recognised governance structures, let alone national member governments or the public in general.

The WHO - like other UN agencies - has a veneer of democratic accountability covering over its effective control through collaboration between private foundations and the organisation's management. You might have thought the WHO was accountable to governments, but you'd be wrong.

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The NHS is not "ours"

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I sit on Bradford's Health and Wellbeing Board. This observation is pretty much spot on:

Dear NHS worshippers, sorry to be a killjoy, but look, the NHS is not ‘yours’, and never has been. You have no control over it. You feel like you are in control when you spin your little toy wheel, but try steering the car in any direction other than the one where it is already heading, and see what happens. The ones who really drive the car are the political class and the medical establishment. ‘Democratic accountability’ is a mirage. All it really means is that healthcare managers answer to bureaucrats, who answer to other bureaucrats, who also answer to other bureaucrats, who, after some more detours, answer to some politician. That’s democratic accountability. Feel powerful now?

The result is that healthcare delivery planning becomes an academic exercise. Nobody sat round the table in Bradford - yours truly included - feels remotely challenged, let alone worried about the decisions we might make (assuming we actually make any). We won't be held to account for those choices. The same is true for the boards of Clinical Commissioning Groups, the senior management of Hospital Trusts or any of the many other 'pseudo-business' structures and systems of accountability that litter the NHS landscape.

The result, of course, is that decisions are made very slowly. And when they are made the default is to indulge either the prejudice or the convenience of clinicians or managers. This doesn't mean every decision is wrong but it does mean that the organisation is deeply conservative preferring to sustain the structures, systems and operational principles developed for a paper-based (and smaller) 1950s NHS. It wouldn't surprise us if Sir Lancelott Spratt were to appear in the hospital corridor attended by clucking nurses and stressed looking junior doctors.

The problem isn't fat cat salaries or a glut of managers but rather than the managers getting those salaries aren't accountable for the decisions they make. So long, of course, as those decisions are made within the comfort zone of the NHS system. As a result, when really hard decisions have to be taken - closing a hospital, moving a specialist unit - they are made in a manner that absolves management from any negative consequences. Or not made at all.

Right now the NHS is busy talking up its financial problems. It has run a deficit (one that's slightly less than 1% of its budget but a deficit nonetheless). Senior managers and 'clinical leaders' are talking sternly about burning platforms, which apparently is jargon for a financially-mismanaged hospital rather than the consequence of an explosion at an off-shore oil well. And endless reams of unintelligible documentation clog up the in-boxes of those who perhaps have to make a decision at some point. These don't talk about what we actually need to have to deliver a great health system but instead consider "whole system thinking" and "effective governance". Then we're asked what a "remodelled system" would involve without having any coherent picture of the current system.

That the NHS delivers for most of us most of the time is a credit to the front line staff - those doctors, nurses and so forth that we think of as "Our NHS". But beyond this front there is an impenetrable jungle of non-accountability - that bureaucratic paperchase described in the quotation above. The primary purpose of that bureaucracy is to ensure that the 'whole system' is accountable meaning. of course, that no individual is accountable when things go badly wrong. In truth system accountability means there is no accountability.

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The case for democracy under devolution is simple...

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I wrote this under the ancien regime - it still applies:

So, dear readers, you need to stop with the 'we don't need more politicians' nonsense and understand that unless you elect people directly to make decisions on your behalf, you make it harder to hold the decision-makers to account. And you need to tell your councillor and your MP that devolution is all fine and dandy, an absolutely spiffing idea, but only if the spending of that public money is subject to your accountability through the tried and tested method of having the chance to vote the bastards out if you don't like them.

You've a choice between devolution managed by bureaucrasts and government appointees or devolution under the control of people you elect. Having a mayor and assembly works for London - I've no doubt it will work for Yorkshire too.

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Crime down, drinking down but more licenced premises. Hogan Howe is talking authoritarian rubbish.

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The Hillsborough enquiry reveals how police called for dogs rather than ambulances and every new day reveals another example of the police failing to respond to cases of child sexual abuse - given this it would be a good idea if the leaders of the police showed a little humility and addressed themselves to the enormous lump of timber in their eye rather than mounting yet another illiberal assault on private businesses.

“We need to make sure there is good control of the supply of alcohol. This means licence numbers, density and licensee-regulation being a priority for local authorities, however much they would like to develop their local economies.

“We know that many injuries occur inside or outside licensed premises, and if we can close down repeat offenders, we will.

“But do we really need as many licensed premised chasing limited business. The system needs reform and we need to police it better.”

This from the same jumped up little fascist who called for CCTV in every home, wants water cannon to deal with disorder and who leads an unaccountable, dysfunctional paramilitary force.

The failings an inadequacies of police leadership and management are legion. It's not just the high profile cases - Hillsborough, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes or child abuse in Rotherham - it's an every day in every community problem.

In answer to "Britain's Top Cop" as the tabloids would call him - no we don't need more control over the supply of alcohol. You already have all the powers you need to deal with drunks, to respond to badly managed pubs and to manage the effects of alcohol in our communities.

Britain has about 204,000 licensed premises a figure that has risen by some 3% over the last five years. And during that period our consumption of alcohol has continued to fall - it has dropped nearly 20% over the last decade. So it's no surprise that violent crime is now at its lowest level for over 30 years:

The CSEW covers a broad range of victim based crimes and includes crimes which do not come to the attention of the police. Decreases were evident for all major crime types compared with the previous year; violence saw a 23% fall, criminal damage fell by 20%, and theft offences decreased by 12%.

This represents a 16% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981.

I for one am completely fed up with top police officers making out that there's a problem where there isn't while at the same time making excuses for the complete failure of the police to deal with a real problem such as child sexual exploitation.

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Oxford - more evidence social work is not accountable

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Inevitably the finger will point at those in high authority (and this is always right - if you doubt this read Lord Carrington's letter) but there is, for me, a much deeper malaise in social services. Perhaps it relates to the way in which social workers are taught or trained - my feeling is that the left wing sociology dominating social work courses, a sort of Heinz Kiosk "we are all guilty" approach, has contributed. But there's no doubt we have a problem and the Serious Case Review into grooming and abuse in Oxford reminds us (it should also remind us that the problem isn't party political - Oxfordshire has a Tory leadership after all):

Blyth said that from 2005-10 there was sufficient knowledge about the girls, drugs and prostitution and their association with adult men to have generated a rigorous and strategic response from police and social workers.

This knowledge included many “worrying” warning signs over a number of years involving more than one girl, multiple alleged perpetrators, who were usually Pakistani, and a strong association with children in care. But this was not passed on to the highest levels of management or acted upon until 2011, when police and social services finally started to piece together the organised grooming and sexual exploitation.

So for perhaps as long as six years, social workers in Oxford simply allowed what was happening to carry on. The abuse was in front of their eyes but was not seen as a problem worth reporting to senior management.  This may be true but it must raise serious questions about supervision, management and appraisal within Oxfordshire social services. And at the heart of this is a culture that - as the report makes clear - tolerated under age sex and seemed not to understand that, in UK law, having sex with a minor is always a crime.

However, the fundamental problem here is that authorities simply believed there was nothing that either could - or in some cases even needed to - be done:

The fact that scores of professionals from numerous disciplines, and tens of organisations or departments, took a long time to recognise CSE, used language that appeared at least in part to blame victims and see them as adults, and had a view that little could be done in the face of ‘no cooperation’ demonstrates that the failures were common to organisational systems.

The shock of the public at failings of this sort has begun to change how local authorities view child sexual exploitation and, in particular, the situation where that exploitation involved girls in their mid-teens. Every example of street grooming throws up the same limitations - girls making complaints then withdrawing them, other girls denying there's any problem and the police or social services not following through where they know the situation is exploitative.

In the end (which is the point Lord Carrington made) accountability is absolute. But this means that political leadership in social services needs to be clear - it isn't because successive national governments and the social work profession has undermined it - and prepared to challenge the decision-making of professionals. I don't think, for example, that the leadership of Oxfordshire County Council would consider underage sex as something to be tolerated, to be understood, yet that is precisely the view taken by those acting on that leadership's authority.

The problem in the police is less clear. The move to Police and Crime Commissioners should act in time to make accountability clearer but the situation remains that the police are simply not accountable - in corporate terms - for their operation decisions. We have seen local councillors in Rotherham resigning. Senior council officers resigning. The elected police and crime commissioners for South Yorkshire (eventually) resigned. Yet not one senior police officer in the South Yorkshire force has gone despite so many of the poor decisions and service failures landing at that force's door.

This situation is a reminder of what you get - and let this be a warning to NHS campaigners - when you allow public services to operate without effective political scrutiny. Yet this is the reality across many of our locally delivered services - there is either no realistic scrutiny or else (as with response to child sexual exploitation) scrutiny is simply not possible or even allowed.

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Rotherham and local government's crisis of accountability

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We are supposed to breathe a sigh of relief, to relax as the government imposes five 'commissioners' on the metropolitan borough of Rotherham. The implication here is that the cavalry is over the brow of the hill and charging down amongst the wrongdoers. I intend in the next few paragraphs to disabuse you of this view and to argue that, however warranted the intervention into Rotherham might be, it doesn't suggest that somehow this means that in our particular local council things are more-or-less OK.

First though a reminder of what the Casey Report into Rotherham says:

‘In denial. They denied that there had been a problem, or if there had been, that it was as big as was said. If there was a problem they certainly were not told – it was someone else’s job. They were no worse than anyone else. They had won awards. The media were out to get them.’

Pretty damning. Just as the Jay Report a few months ago was pretty damning. But every single councillor in the country, every chief executive and every council director should read these reports. Not for the shock factor or the schadenfreude of seeing another council in such trouble but to be reminded that, as the saying goes, 'there but for the grace of god go I'.

I'm a local councillor. I've been a local councillor for twenty years. I've been a cabinet member in a big metropolitan authority. I've chaired scrutiny committees. I've been an opposition front-bencher. I reckon I've a handle on how local councils work. And I think the most telling phrase in that quotation above is 'they certainly weren't told'. Because that is the reality of how council operations - and especially social services and social care - work.

A council is a body of men and women elected by the people to govern a specified set of activities delegated, defined or permitted by national government. This means that, in Bradford, "the Council" isn't a lot of officers but ninety councillors meeting together. The problem is that central government has gradually eroded this in the following ways:

1. By giving statutory authority to people appointed by the council (i.e. by those ninety councillors in Bradford's case). This is authority that, because it is set out in statute, councillors cannot challenge yet results in decisions for which we are accountable.

2. By allowing officers the ability to be selective as to what they tell councillors. I was recently asked to submit a formal request for some information (relating to a property transaction) so that request could be considered by officers. Yet I am, as a councillor, accountable for that decision - a decision officers felt I had no right to be informed about.

3. By blurring the boundaries between officers and councillors in decision-making. Health and Wellbeing Boards contain - as voting members - both officers and councillors (as well as board members and executives of health bodies). I am not fussing when I say that, once again, this process raises questions about who is actually accountable and in what way for the decisions we take.

The thread through all of this is accountability. Most of the time it doesn't matter much and we let it slide accepting blurred edges and fuzzy boundaries because we want to get the job done. But Rotherham tells us we need to stop doing this - at least if we want to do our job as councillors (a simple one of making decisions on behalf of the folk who elect us and being therefore accountable for those decisions).

I wrote this a while back - it sums up the problem:

There's a dangerous view out there among professional public sector 'leaders' that we've moved to some sort of 'post-democracy', to a world where what they are doing is too detailed, technical, specialised and private for elected politicians at any level to merit any say over those decisions.

The other day, at a Health & Wellbeing Board, I was informed by the chair (I paraphrase) not to worry my pretty little head about the 'Implementation and Change Board' as they were doing the 'heavy lifting' for the Board and it would all come to us in good time. For 'heavy lifting' read too detailed, technical and specialised for us mere elected folk to be usefully involved. And anyway the Chair was 'briefed' so that's fine isn't it?

The problem we have in local government isn't one party rule (although that doesn't help), nor is it corruption or poor councillors. The problem is that the chain of accountability from the front line to the council - the councillors meeting together to make decisions - simply doesn't exist in any recognisable way. A while ago Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale rather summed the issue up:

We’re also starting to see a worrying cult of leadership. Highly paid managers are seemingly untouchable and distant from front-line workers. The rise of the unsackable, unaccountable and unapologetic public-sector manager is a trend that will only see services continue to deteriorate. And let’s be clear about what that means. It won’t be just missed targets or a poor Ofsted rating. We’re storing up huge social costs. 

The terrible reality is that, unless we resolve this problem of accountability, we will have more Rotherhams. Even more worrying will be all the failures, all the let down residents and all the mismanaged decisions that don't result in Eric Pickles sending in the cavalry. Right now local government is crying out for more powers, for devolution and for central government's apron strings to be loosened. And unless the crisis of accountability is addressed and resolved we won't see the better, more effective government but a whole series of Rotherhams.

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Can we still trust the police?

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This report worries me:

Police investigated the political beliefs of a grieving woman – including her views on human rights and the war in Afghanistan – after she complained about the police’s handling of the death of her mother.

The police also claimed that the woman appeared to be mentally ill and placed her on an official register for vulnerable adults without consulting any medical professionals. They later conceded that she was not mentally ill.

Internal police documents reveal how Sussex police compiled a 14-page secret report on Eccy de Jonge, a philosophy academic, shortly after her 83-year-old mother died in a road accident.

The police carried out “full intelligence checks” on de Jonge and gathered comments she had posted on media sites.

It seems to me that this is an abuse of power plain and simple. Perhaps the police here were over-zealous and the woman in question was persistent in her complaints. But the defence put up is equally disturbing:

“There are objectively no credible grounds on which to base an allegation of police officers being engaged in secret operations against the complainant or seeking to protect any officer involved in the tragic road traffic collision.

“In fact, we have done everything to seek to resolve allegations in a fair and proportionate way and attempt to act in the complainant’s best interests.

“Officers are entitled or expected to have discussions as to how to address complaints, make decisions, or how to attempt to make progress with fatal road traffic collision victim’s relatives – this is not evidence of nefarious dossiers, collusion, or protectionism.”

Now there may be more to all this than meets the eye but I fail to see how trawling through someone's life to see if they're 'anti-police' is not why we employ police officers. And more to the point the spokesman is wrong - we know this because the police did compile a 14-page document that did not relate in any manner at all to the matter under investigation (a complaint about the handling of a road traffic fatality).

This story reminds me that the police probably haven't got enough to do, are not subject to sufficient scrutiny and have more than sufficient powers. We are told that "if we've done nothing wrong, we've nothing to fear" - the woman in this case did nothing wrong yet the police used their powers to set about compiling a hatchet job - we do have something to fear after all.

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On the accountability of public sector management

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I don't make a habit of quoting Labour MPs (they have a depressing tendency to spout nonsense) but this from Simon Danczuk is spot on:

We’re also starting to see a worrying cult of leadership. Highly paid managers are seemingly untouchable and distant from front-line workers. The rise of the unsackable, unaccountable and unapologetic public-sector manager is a trend that will only see services continue to deteriorate. And let’s be clear about what that means. It won’t be just missed targets or a poor Ofsted rating. We’re storing up huge social costs. 

I saw an article the other day, from an organisation called Democratic Audit UK, that argued (in a defence of modern politics) that accountability was greater today:

It is heresy in Britain to suggest that anything in its public life may have got better, but in terms of accountability it most certainly has. It is scarcely too much to say that over the past twenty years there has been a revolution in accountability. From human rights to freedom of information, with much else along the way, governments have been held to account in a way that was previously not the case.

Simon Danczuk's article and the reality of government, the experience of all of us trying to hold social services, police and planners to account for their decisions, is that too many of the decisions government takes are beyond the reach of that accountability. Moreover they are the result of activist government extending its regulatory and management reach ever deeper into society - chasing the shades and demons of modern society and feeding the industry of professional 'experts' that lives on the back of those broken and dysfunctional bits of our society.

We have a semblance of accountability, select committees, scrutiny panels, freedom of information requests and endless teams of inspectors, but with this comes a feeling that what those organisations do makes little difference to teflon-coated managers protected by a library of HR rules. So we aren't surprised - disappointed, even shocked, but not surprised - when David Nicholson, the bloke in part responsible for the scandal of deaths at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital crops up in ever more senior roles. We shrug our shoulders and sigh when we see Lin Homer lurch from one procurement or management crisis to the next. And we cry angrily at the pay out given to Sharon Shoesmith, who led Haringey Social Services at the time of the 'Baby P' death.

I could go on with this and I know you can add dozens - maybe hundreds -of names to the list of people who simply weren't accountable for the actions of the organisations they led. I'm not arguing here for lynchings, heads on poles or even summary dismissal but for a sense of duty and responsibility and for the idea that failure shouldn't, as if in some dark version of Dilbert, be rewarded with promotion. And for the idea that the people we elect to represent us - to make decisions on our behalf - should be able to do so and, so they can, for the activities of police, social services, courts and procurements to be open and transparent to those people.

There's a dangerous view out there among professional public sector 'leaders' that we've moved to some sort of 'post-democracy', to a world where what they are doing is too detailed, technical, specialised and private for elected politicians at any level to merit any say over those decisions. Much of the promotion of this 'post-democracy' comes from the social democratic left, from the inheritors of the Fabian mantle - they claim that far from promoting an unaccountable technocratic governance they are seeing how power has shifted to 'business'. Except they dismiss liberal, local and participatory solutions as 'populism' preferring instead to fall back on the belief in their own inherent rightness and fitness to rule.

To return to Simon Danczuk, he illustrates this problem perfectly:

Last week I received a text message from a current Labour MP saying she was disappointed by my views on this issue. I was only elected in 2010 and already I’ve found that politicians are sometimes discouraged from exploring and investigating complex issues because they’re expected to stay tethered to a dominant ideology and not stray far from the stock replies to difficult questions. This does nothing to strengthen democracy. It weakens it, and creates cynicism. The public want to see matters like this discussed and they want politicians to come up with answers, not just endless hand-wringing. 

Yet when we do what Simon suggests, too often we're told either that it's terribly complicated and involved and not quite what we're saying or worse still (and as a Conservative this is more likely) accused of racism, sexism, class prejudice or some other sort of discriminatory practice. There are a few brave souls out there (I'm not sure I qualify here, for what it's worth) but perhaps too few to crack open the edifice of modern government and shine some light into it's interior - to bring a little more accountability.

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Life in the castle: Politicians, bureaucracy and accountability

“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”  From Franz Kafka, "The Castle"

People really don't like politicians. We've known this for years, it should come as no surprise to any observer. And maybe it's a problem:

The research, which explores the reasons behind the precipitous drop in voter turnout – particularly among under-30s – finds that it is anger with the political class and broken promises made by high-profile figures that most rile voters, rather than boredom with Westminster.

But for as long as I can remember people have said that politicians don't keep promises. The problem is that, in the political game the making of promises is part of the currency. This is because the nature of democracy - the election thing especially - is for that currency to be votes rather than money.

For some the issue is fundamental:

This is no recent trend but is, in my view, the outcome of many centuries of shift away from deference to collective authority towards the free choice of the individual. At one stage, parliamentary democracy was a major consequence of this shift as feudal elites in charge by virtue of force and divinity made way for democratic elites chosen by free voting individuals. Now this historic shift is swamping parliamentary democracy itself.

The strange thing is that, while we get more detached from politics (perhaps because of the "shift away from deference to collective authority"),  that 'collective authority' gets more and more powerful and less and less accountable. We do not have 'feudal elites' but we do live in a world where government and its agents dominate large parts of life and interfere in the rest, mostly for some supposed 'common purpose'. The collective persists but it does so in a manner where any control or influence we have as individuals happens more by accident or good fortune rather than by design.

In the simplest of terms the management of our public services is largely unaccountable. And the reasons for this lack are many - from my near twenty year experience in local government here are a few:

• The sheer size of government - look at the NHS, at higher education or at planning and ask how it could be possible for a few ministers (mostly buried in paperwork) and an inefficient select committee of parliament to hold these departments to account?
• Resistance to change - for all that political leadership demands (and legislates for) change, the response of the bureaucracy, unions and academia is to organise the reform so as to secure the minimum possible actual change
• Professionalisation - everything must be 'professional', which means that those who aren't professionals in the given area are probably unqualified to comment and certainly unqualified to hold those professionals to account. As a result boards of professionals are used resulting in an inevitable closing of ranks.
• Secrecy and cover up - we hear every now and then about terrible things that happen in public agencies but only ever thanks to leaks and whistleblowers never through the usual processes of scrutiny or appraisal. The default position for government, for its agents and for the courts is always secrecy, always the gag.
• Centralisation, command and control - Anne Widdecombe observed how this was inevitable so long as the Minister has to go on the Today programme in response to things that go wrong. But this merely reinforces the chimera of ministerial control and prevents other forms of scrutiny working

I've resisted talking about more politically contested areas such as the role of trade unions, the impact of contracting and outsourcing and the role of the media in sustaining the myth of government's accountability. These few examples are not addressed by well-meaning attempts to improve public accountability, for example the apple pie and motherhood that is "the Nolan Principles", the creation of statutory officer positions in local government or the new Health & Wellbeing Boards (with a completely damaged and dysfunctional governance system imposed by an ignorant central government bureaucracy).

Public services in the UK are only accountable by happy and occasional accident - the conscientious local manager, the especially honest council leader or the whistle-blowing doctor - but in the main the way in which essential services are planned and managed is not accountable to the public who pay the bills.

Far too often as citizens we find ourselves waiting on the often arbitrary, certainly value-judged decisions of bureaucratic managers. The planning decision so we can open our cafe, a choice as to what care or treatment grandma will receive or some or other seemingly random ban, restriction or injunction imposed with no chance for challenge by some public official - we are powerless to stop this, we might through the efforts of a local councillor or the anger of a lawyer get the system bent enough to allow us to do our innocent business, but mostly we just bow our heads and mutter "jobsworth" before moving on.

And we blame the politicians. We blame them for promising accountability where there is none (nor hope of any) and then failing to deliver. We blame them for the breaking public systems, the uncaring public officials and the lousy results at our children's schools.

And the politicians promise to fix it all. The problem is that we can't, we're not allowed to.

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Accountability, choice and a new political divide

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet. 

This isn't intended as a criticism of our current leaders - Chesterton's poem in all its glorious cynicism was written long ago before any of them were born. But it is a common comment on the state of politics, it reminds us that the wisdom of our rulers is always to be doubted and questioned.

Nor am I about to launch into a rant about the inadequacies - even the evils - of government. Rather I want to take you on a personal journey and to show that, despite its current mass and majesty, the days of big government are numbered. I observe that I write this at a time when the power of government is plain to be seen - the bans, the controls, the surveillance, the ordering about, the seizures and the arrogance dominate our news.

Alongside the Chesterton quote I'm taking a reference from Alan Massie in The Spectator. It happens to be about Ed Miliband but it could apply in some measure to any of our current leaders and to too many of those who aspire to be leaders in the future:

Ed Miliband is a puritan.

And a hopeless, nagging, fish-faced puritan at that. A ninny, in other words.

The Labour leader has a rare gift. He knows, you see, how you should spend your money. What’s more, if you fail to spend your cash in the proper Miliband-approved manner he thinks he should be – nay is! – entitled to coerce you into changing your miserable behaviour.

This is, in every way, the essence of government today. The idea that matters need organising, directing and managing. The belief that most people are too stupid or too gullible to be trusted with such simple ideas as advertising, budgeting or the consequences of personal choice. And the certainty that only those investments (and I use this word in the deceiving meaning pioneered by Gordon Brown) under the aegis of government are "good" investments.

I write a great deal about what I term 'nannying fussbuckets' - those New Puritans who think it right that government control and direct - even prevent - personal choices. Mostly, I write about this because it makes me angry - not just the manner in which the evidence is abused but from a principled and essentially Tory belief in personal responsibility. Most of the time it simply isn't someone else's fault. It was your choice.

These are simple matters that everyone can understand - do we ban smoking in pubs, should we fix the price of booze, how much tax should we have on whiskey and can people be trusted with gambling. The typical voter can grasp the argument here - for many these are personal choices they want (or don't want) to make.

But there's another scale, a level at which we don't understand, where these same New Puritan preferences apply - the means by which we pay for something, whether we can sell something we own to someone in another country, where we are able (or allowed) to live and the manner in which we work. These are all things that are matters, largely speaking, of personal choice. Yet, just as with smoking, drinking and eating, our government wants to control and direct our personal choice and, on occasion, prevent us from making that choice.

US singer Kelly Clarkson has been thwarted in her bid to take a ring which once belonged to Jane Austen out of the UK.

We are expected to applaud as this vital piece of heritage is "saved for the nation". But the salvation was only achieved by preventing Ms Clarkson from taking the ring out of the country - as far as I know the singer simply wanted to wear the ring, which seems to me a better use of the treasure than sticking it in a glass case for tourists to gawp at.

Government also want to prevent us from making what we want, where we want. The best examples of this needless (and damaging) tendency is the "protected geographical indication' (PGI):

Only cheese produced in the Yorkshire Dales will in future be allowed to use the name Yorkshire Wensleydale.

The European Commission has awarded the cheese Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status.

The decision means the name can only be applied to cheese which is produced within an area around Hawes in North Yorkshire.

Our sense of Yorkshire pride covers over the truth that this is simply protectionism - we may as well protect Lancashire Hotpot, Oldham Rag Pudding and Jellied Eels. And it is especially annoying in Yorkshire:

A cheesemaker has lost a five-year battle with the EU to keep calling her product Yorkshire Feta.

The European Court of Justice said only cheese made in certain areas of Greece can carry the name feta.

Everywhere we look we see the same - government justifying itself through the imposition of rules that to many seem like a good thing but, when you slice into them, turn out to be either a solution to a problem that either doesn't exist or else is deliberately exaggerated so as to justify the law.

The divide in our society is no longer between workers and owners, kings and serfs, middle- and working-classes but between those who believe that their neighbours' lives are proper things for government intervention and those who do not. This isn't to deny government but to say that too much of modern government, the bans, the cameras, the secret courts, the whole rigmarole of 'post-democracy' addresses an audience of the scared and the servile.

The alternative - personal choice, independence, self-determination and responsibility - is dismissed as 'libertarianism' with its supporters badged as uncaring, selfish and intolerant. The reality is that the position I describe is not 'libertarian' (although many libertarians will agree with it) but a traditional, mainstream conservative position. And the selfish, intolerant, uncaring ones are those who hand caring, choice and community over to the government not the 'libertarians'.

As technology advances, these two positions - the New Puritan nanny state and a society founded on free choice, association and enterprise - become more starkly defined. The technology allows for government to watch us more closely, to record and store what we do and say, and to manage the manner in which we interact with those around us. At the same time that technology affords us greater choice, more free time and wealth - meaning that we have less use or need for government.

There won't be some revolution or overthrow of government. It will gradually become less relevant - the choices and decisions about our bins, the roads, healthcare and education will shift from the contested political sphere to a more sustainable consumer-producer relationship. The great edifices of government will break up, localise and be forced open by us as citizen consumers. And we will be better for this change.

Rather than grand committees of experts planning and directing as if in some Kafka-esque dystopia, we will have more local choices - some private, some government but all of them responding to the consumer, to us as people exercising our right to choice. A right newly empowered by the might of the on-line world with its connections, its forums and its ability to raise an army where once there were just one or two with paper and a pen.

But in getting to this state we will face resistance from that New Puritan state. From the people who believe that pleasure is addictive and should be stopped for the sake of health. From those who want us all watched from morn to night out of fear that one or other of us might do something wrong. From those who want to police our words, who find offence in anything and everything. And above all from those who, like Saruman, are beguiled by the false hope that power can be wielded without corrupting its wielder.

In the end government will always serve the interests of government before it serves the interests of the governed. But the closer those governed are to government, the less that government is able to ignore the interests of those people. I wrote the other day that democracy isn't enough. Someone asked me was was enough - I think the answer lies in accountability - not just the accountability of the politician to the electorate but the direct accountability of the people providing services to the people receiving services.

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What Bradford Council said about Kings Science Academy in September...

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Risks and weaknesses in financial systems, such as procurement authorisations, payroll and credit card payments were identified by EFA Audit - the governing body has since appointed key personnel, including the appointment of an RO (Responsible Officer), and is in the process of stabilising procedures to enable effective financial management.*

It seems to me that, if there were real problems in current financial management at the school, they would have been mentioned? More to the point, the school was seeking the Council's help and advice and, had Cllr Berry been doing something other than trying to get selected as a Labour parliamentary candidate, he might have noticed! It's clear that the school had some financial management problems that have been addressed - there is no suggestion of wrongdoing.

To suggest that the school isn't accountable - as Cllr Berry did more than once through his Twitter account - is a complete misrepresentation of the situation at the school. And - more to the point - the Council appears to have known about the position all along!

*Quote is from a governance audit conducted by the Council in September.

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Do mutuals scale?

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Charles Moore (among many) comments:

More attention should be paid to the failure of the Co-op Bank. It suggests that an ‘ethical’ motivation does not guarantee that the interests of the customer will be well served.

This may well be true, indeed the 'ethical' argument was always more of a positioning statement than something inherent to mutual organisation models.

My question is more fundamental given the problems with the Co-op (and the banking disaster has taken attention away from its underperformance as a retailer and aggressive behaviour as an undertaker) - can mutuals scale up to be large national organisations and maintain business effectiveness?

It seems to me that the problem is one of accountability - the leaders of large mutual organisations (especially those that are consumer mutuals rather than worker mutuals) are not as accountable to their members as joint stock companies are to shareholders. The business cannot go to its 'owners' for more cash and those owners either cannot or do not act to replace the management when it fails (such as by arriving cap in hand asking for the money to clear up mistakes).

Cullingworth Conservative Club is a mutual organisation - it works because having about 800 members who live in the village and use the club means that the leadership is accountable. A national mutual - the Co-op or one of the big building societies - has a leadership that isn't subject to this attention or scrutiny, that isn't really accountable. Perhaps here lie some of the problems?

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