Some more links on the Audit Commission story, which back up my view that axing the Commission is an error:
Via Liberal Conspiracy and Full Fact
A version of this post appeared on the Liberal Conspiracy
I was astonished to learn today that Eric Pickles will be axing the Audit Commission. Or more precisely, according to the leaked memo on the FT site, the commission will be privatised. Pickles is notorious for being ideologically wedded to cuts as shown from his time as leader of Bradford Council.
From the Telegraph’s one-sided report you’d think the Commission were a bunch of no-good layabouts responsible for, among other things, the terror of the fortnightly bin collection which keeps all good Tories awake at night.
No doubt mistakes have been made by the Commission at times, and they have overpaid some top staff – but which public or private sector organisation hasn’t in recent times?
In my three years on the Audit Committee at Brighton & Hove City Council I have been struck by the conscientious, helpful and detailed work Audit Commission staff have done for the council. The Commission has also helped to make the performance of public bodies more accountable, such as with the OnePlace site which barely got the chance to get going before being canned.
All the staff are experienced and understand local government – because that’s what they do. They also are public servants and take their duties seriously. It must be especially galling that these highly skilled, dedicated staff have been given the axe in a way that, without any consultation or debate, goes against all that might be called ‘good governance’.
How on earth does Pickles think we are going to get the same kind of scrutiny of our public bodies from corporate auditors, inexperienced in local government, and who failed to prevent a litany of corporate fraud and failures? Furthermore, why are private-sector corporate auditors going to be any cheaper to hire in than the Audit Commission who didn’t need to make a profit from their work?
As public bodies continue to be rocked by the cuts and upheavals being rained down on them, I don’t think that now is a sensible time to also completely uproot the key scrutiny and overview body which works to ensure services are robust and money well spent.
If Pickles wanted some genuine savings he could have simplified the framework used to audit local government services. There would be plenty of people, including those in the Commission, with good suggestions on how to streamline the audit framework. Instead, as I understand it, he’s ditched the entire framework and now the Commission too.
I’m appalled by this political meddling in what is an arms-length commission to hold local government to account. This is yet another ill-judged, ideological and unnecessary cut which will end up costing us all a lot more in the long term.
(Updated 14/8/10 to include a link to the Liberal Conspiracy, and include paragraph on saving through simplifying the audit framework.)
[Apologies to non-Green party member readers, this post is about the Green Party’s leadership contest, which is held every two years]
Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay are seeking re-election as the Green Party’s leader and deputy, and I’m supporting them in their campaign.
Our party’s leaders must be serious, frontline politicians. Some have been arguing in the webosphere that Caroline and Adrian are too busy to do the job properly. I disagree. Of course they are busy, they are high profile, respected Green politicians – a credible and hard working leadership team, who’ve delivered results.
However they do not have a fraction of the office and staff support that other party leaders have. This is due to our more limited funds but also inexperience in supporting our leaders. We need to work to provide better support for them, not elect less busy leaders with less experience or profile! (Jim Jepps touches on this in his post)
Ultimately I believe that if they are to lead us as a party, they greatly benefit from being publicly elected representatives who understand the hard choices that need to be made when in office. And, as just two votes on the national party executive, they have a strong track record in improving the party’s position in terms of membership, finance, profile and elections (Peter Cranie makes the case in more detail).
Let’s discuss the support and structures we provide them at conference in September. In the meantime I’d encourage new and old members alike to vote for Caroline and Adrian, for another two years of growth and increasing influence.
Greens oppose Brighton & Hove City Council’s move to an ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ model, as I’ve detailed previously.
Commissioning creates a split between who buys a service and who provides it – which in the public sector is often rather artificial. Public services are not like the business sector and cannot be treated in that way. If I recall rightly, the council tried several times to outsource municipal waste collection before having to bring it back in-house after experiencing serious problems with managing the contracts with provide suppliers.
It’s much harder to manage and monitor contracts than many people realise. Which makes the House of Commons Health Committee’s March 2010 report on Commissioning [PDF] very interesting reading.
The report is fairly damning of Primary Care Trusts, the main NHS bodies tasked with commissioning. The committee also pulls no punches on the idea of commissioning itself. The report (which I highly recommend) finds that before introducing the purchaser-provider split (aka commissioning) the NHS had admin costs of about 5% of total NHS expenditure. Since then it has risen to be around 13.5% of NHS expenditure. That’s an absolutely huge increase.
“In the English NHS, the purchaser-provider split, private finance, national tariffs and other policies aiming to stimulate efficiency in the system and create a mix of public and private finance and provision mean almost unavoidably that the more information is needed to make contracts, hence transactions costs of providing care have increased, and may continue to increase.”
(It’s worth nothing that despite commissioning the York study, the Department of Health never published it, the Health Committee had to winkle it out direct from the academics over protests from civil servants. The same civil servants were also rebuked by the committee for failing to provide accurate figures for costs themselves!)
The committee’s report concludes that unless some convincing, rigorous new data shows benefits for the 20 years of NHS commissioning, it should be abolished as a costly failure.
I find it hard to believe that the city council are going to be able to somehow avoid these risks and pitfalls. Commissioning would need to deliver some immense cost-savings (which nobody has the evidence to prove it can) to justify almost trebled admin costs!
I have asked, and will keep asking, for evidence to justify the council’s leap into ‘Intelligent Commissioning’.
So that’s it, we’ve had our council meeting and there won’t be another one until October. In spite of that Conservative and Labour councillors voted to axe proceedings at 9pm with two motions still to be debated.
The meeting started with my challenging the minutes of the 18th March meeting. Back then the Conservatives, backed once again by Labour, voted to defer the Independent Remuneration Panel’s report on councillor allowances (full background info). Four months later and the report still isn’t before us. In the meantime there are 34 councillors instead of 25 receiving additional allowances, which for a full year will cost the council £25k more than if the panel’s report was implemented. Back in March I had made a point of order noting that the deferral of the report would have budgetary implications. This point was not minuted and I asked for the minutes to be amended accordingly, but the Mayor refused to accept this. Not good.
Our new Green Cllr Lizzie Deane was introduced to the chamber and took her seat – well done Lizzie!
Next for me was the new system of questions. I can put as many written questions as I want to the administration, but they aren’t discussed at the meeting. You can read them online along with the rest of the agenda.
The replies were not particularly marvellous. For example in asking for an update on recycling figures Cllr Geoffrey Theobald gave me numbers for 2005/6 and 2008/9 but nothing for 2009/10 or a part of that financial year, which is several months behind us now.
I specifically asked for details of the licence under which the council’s financial data will be published. I would like it to be a very open, permissive licence that allows for all sorts of re-use and mashups. This point was not even acknowledged in Cllr Young’s reply. I also asked when they would start publishing the data, again no hint of dates was provided.
Asking about the council’s website, which has been due a rebuild for years, I received a lot of waffle about resident needs etc. The council website was supposed to be upgraded years ago, and every year it seems to slip a year.
Onto oral questions, which shamefully are limited to only one per councillor. I asked the Leader of the Council:
“In the face of drastic budget cuts which both Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors on East Sussex County Council are calling ‘unavoidable’, what policies does the Leader of the Council propose to put in place to prevent even greater inequality amongst Brighton & Hove’s residents?”
To which I received a rant about the Green Party but as far as I recall, no response to my question. I followed up by asking what evidence the Leader could provide to support her preferred approach of ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ would be able to meet the challenges this city faces. She could provide none, saying that because it hadn’t started yet there wasn’t any evidence. Which rather implies, as I suspect, that there is no solid evidence from other councils in the UK or elsewhere to back up the Intelligent Commissioning approach.
Next we debated a report on budget cuts. However all the report contained was a list of the reductions to grants that central government are applying. There were no details on when or how these cuts would be managed by the administration. The report was completely inadequate to facilitate any proper debate or scrutiny. It did emerge through the meeting however that the administration clearly do have plans written up, they just weren’t willing to share them to the full council. In the face of repeated questioning on several specific grants to community grants, the Leader started reeling off which funds were definitely secure. Cllr Mears knows the detail of what’s going to happen — she just refuses to share it with councillors.
I made the case that we should be open, inclusive and participatory in handling these budget changes. It’s only by engaging the entire city are we going to be able to find a path out of these unnecessary cuts imposed on us by ideologues in the coalition government.
A number of important reports were briefly discussed before moving onto Notices of Motion. We supported Labour’s motion calling for a return to the committee system of running the council. Labour have a bit of a cheek proposing such a motion after having tried to foist a directly elected mayor and several forms of cabinet system onto this council. Still it was good to see councillors agreeing that we all want a more democratic, collaborative form of governance if possible.
Next the two Green motions addressing cuts, first housing benefit and then cuts more generally as well as proposals for ‘Intelligent Commissioning’. Most of the way through the housing benefit motion, the Mayor activated the new guillotine motion supported by Tories & Labour in March. All debate ended and the motions were voted on. Both Green motions fell, without my having even been able to propose the one I had proposed.
Conservative and Labour councillors continue to show their preference for expediency over proper democratic discourse. They do their voters a disservice by their desire to shut down meetings rather than open them up with guillotine motions, limiting questions and speaking times. I have copied below the text of the speech I would have delivered if I had been given a chance. It is shameful when elected representatives are denied their right to speak because others just want to be home before the ten o’clock news begins.
Speech to Notice of Motion: OPPOSING CUTS AND ‘INTELLIGENT COMMISSIONING’ AS THE RESPONSE
In 1988 Eric Pickles, using the casting vote of the mayor, took control of Bradford council. On Tuesday 25th October, in a 12 hour budget meeting, Pickles forced cuts of £5.8 million from the council budget that night and cut £13 million within 6 months. His 5 year plan was to remove £50 million from the budget and restructure the authority to become a “holding company” that signed contracts with private providers.
By the end of that long October 1988 meeting Pickles had received a personal message of support from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as protestors roared outside. And now, the wheel has turned and Eric Pickles is a minister, unleashing his same awful vision on all councils in this country.
The cuts being imposed on this council are ideological – that is, they are completely avoidable. The country is solvent and credit rating solid, however Conservatives are committed to pouring yet more money into defence whilst failing to apply sufficient tax the wealthiest people and firms.
Let us not forget that Tories, LibDems and Labour all agree on the need for cuts – their only quibble during the general election campaign was when the cuts should start. Greens were alone in opposing cuts and offering an alternative path out of the mess, fully costed by economists.
Our motion speaks for itself on the cuts. We absolutely deplore them and believe it to be grossly unfair that the British government can find the resources to bail out banks and fight foreign wars, whilst dramatically cutting services to its own most vulnerable citizens.
Furthermore it is our view that Intelligent Commissioning is not the answer to coping with the cuts. We have yet to see evidence from any other councils that it works. Commissioning large corporations, who often have legal departments many times the size of ours, is a fraught business.
Only at yesterday’s health committee did we hear that a private contractor for the SOTC made an extra £750,000 profit last year, because of NHS commissioning which means they get the same fee regardless of how much or, in this case, how little work they deliver.
It cannot be good for staff morale, and it certainly isn’t good for the budget, for Intelligent Commissioning to require new directors at inflated salaries. We should be moving to a smaller gap between the pay levels of our staff, not a greater gap.
Of course there are times when a specialist product or service is needed from a private provider, we shouldn’t be re-inventing the wheel when, for example, software to meet our needs is readily available.
It is our view that the best possible value and service for this city comes from a different approach. It comes from dedicated officers, with decent pay and conditions, who are treated with respect and dignity by the leadership of this council. Constant reviews and the threat of being ‘commissioned into the private sector’ are not, in my view, the way to motivate people to deliver their best.
We and our MPs must fight these cuts as fiercely as we can. Furthermore locally I believe our response is for the council to come together, not to be split apart. We should focus on our positive spirit, that together we can meet these challenges and provide the best services possible locally, with public servants paid decent, but not excessive wages. We oppose these cuts and believe Intelligent Commissioning is not the way forward. Please support this motion.
Further to my previous post, here’s the release I’ve put out on the whole matter. Due to the procedures, I’ve not been able to discuss this publicly in detail since the complaint was filed in February 2009. Feels good to talk about it now!
For immediate release: 09 July 2010
From the Green Group of Councillors, Brighton & Hove City Council
TORY COUNCILLORS TRY TO BLOCK GREEN FROM PUTTING COUNCIL MEETINGS ON YOUTUBE
Open government in Brighton & Hove was dealt a blow today when Conservative councillors attempted to stop Green Cllr Jason Kitcat from putting clips of a council meeting on YouTube.
Cllr Kitcat was subject to a standards panel hearing over his use of YouTube, after a complaint was made by Conservative Cllr Ted Kemble (a Cabinet member at the time of his complaint) supported by Council Leader Cllr Mary Mears and Deputy Leader Cllr Brian Oxley.
The complaint centred on Conservative members’ unhappiness with how Cllr Kitcat had put clips of council meetings on YouTube. These clips are already published for all to see online, but in a less easy-to-access format through the Council’s website.
“Many residents don’t want to sit through entire three or four hour meetings nor watch the whole thing online; they want to jump to the bits they’re interested in. When I found I couldn’t reliably link to sections of the webcasts, I put them on YouTube for ease of access by residents,” commented Cllr Kitcat.
“Most of these clips featured my questions on behalf of residents about communal bins. This seems to have caused Conservatives to try blocking my actions through a politically-motivated Code of Conduct complaint.”
“Rather than celebrating and encouraging openness, transparency and greater resident interest in the workings of our council, the Conservatives seem to prefer that the webcasts of council meetings stay restricted to the less than user-friendly council site.
“Putting clips of these webcasts on sites like YouTube makes them much more accessible and easy to use. As a councillor I am committed to being as open and accessible to my constituents as possible, hence my use of a blog, Twitter and YouTube.”
Despite one member admitting to not having even viewed the videos before attending the hearing, the panel decided that Cllr Kitcat had failed to treat Cllr Geoffrey Theobald with respect and had used the council’s resources improperly for political purposes.
The panel decided that Cllr Kitcat should be censured for his actions and be suspended for up to six months if he does not write an apology to Cllr Theobald and submit to re-training on the roles and responsibilities of being a councillor.
“The panel completely failed to understand the arguments I made, that putting a video on YouTube does not deprive the council of any resources whilst also making its working more open,” says Cllr Kitcat. “Furthermore, the investigating officer and Cllr Theobald felt there was no breach of the code with regard to respect. Additionally the officer report accepted that there had been no material loss to the council through my actions. Yet the Conservative complainant and the panel chose to pursue this complaint when clearly my actions benefited the people of this city at no detriment to the council.”
“I shall be fighting this case at an appeal Tribunal, it has been a complete waste of council officer time and money investigating this matter and I refute the panel’s findings,” concluded Cllr Kitcat. “With Conservative-led changes to the council constitution including cutting down speaking times, the number of questions councillors can ask and limiting the number of motions at council meetings – this complaint is a another step in the Tory attempts to close down democratic debate in our city.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
* Cllr Jason Kitcat can be contacted for comment on 07956 886 508
* At Cllr Kitcat’s request the papers and (once ready) the minutes from the panel hearing are available to the public online at http://bit.ly/bqUmdS
* Cllr Kitcat’s YouTube channel can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/jpkitcat
* Cllr Kitcat’s statement to the panel will shortly be available on his blog at http://www.jasonkitcat.com
In haste, because I’ve got a busy afternoon working on some great upgrades for Netmums, this morning I had to attend a standards hearing due to a Tory complaint. Tories weren’t happy that I put clips of council meeting webcasts, which are already online, onto YouTube and then my blog.
The panel decided I had breached the code and agreed some sanctions – I’ll type the details up later but in essence suspension hangs over my head for just putting some video on YouTube to make it easier for residents to see. So the Conservative attack on our local democracy continues – they forced through the cabinet system early, they have cut speaking times, the number of questions and motions councillors can put and now they’re trying to block our making videos more accessible. So much for their priority of openness and transparency!
I’m grateful to officers that, after my request, they have already published all the papers for the panel online. My presentation to the panel is copied below, more later. I will be appealing this decision.
UPDATE: Perhaps the oddest thing of this whole bizarre episode is that, in spite of their obvious unhappiness with the putting of Council webcasts onto YouTube videos, they haven’t asked me to take them down!
My presentation to the Panel
The Standards Committee’s Assessment Panel considered that Cllr Kemble’s complaint against me could be considered as being under three points of the code:
I will argue that I have not breached the code under any of these three points. And just to clarify, the videos I put online were not edited in any way, just cropped down to be shorted. Full details of the meeting they were taken from was included next to the videos on YouTube.
I will address these three items in turn, briefly as most of the arguments have been covered in the papers.
Failure to treat others with respect
The investigating officer does not find that I have failed to treat others with respect. Cllr Kemble complained that I had been “underhand and devious”.
Given that the council meetings are held in public, broadcast to the world via the Internet, and I merely put portions of them on another part of the Internet (and so still in public) – my actions cannot have been underhand or devious – as they were clearly there for all to see!
If these had been videos of speeches delivered at private events I would accept the need to request permission before publishing the videos. But these videos were already published and the meetings already very clearly public.
Furthermore they did nothing more than show what happened at the council meetings. Anything “malicious or bullying” at the meetings themselves would have been ruled out of order, as well as the being subject of their own standards complaint. Merely pointing to sections of a meeting cannot be taken as being malicious or bullying.
So I refute this aspect of the complaint fully, and have done so in more detail in my letter to Mr Foley of 4th August 2009.
Failure to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements
Again, as the investigating officer notes, at the time of the complaint the webcasting protocol did nothing to restrict my actions in terms of putting clips on YouTube. The protocol did however encourage openness as do the Ten General Principles of Public Life included in the code of conduct and promoted by the Committee for Standards in Public Life.
I believe I acted completely properly in this regard and so agree with the report that there isn’t a case to answer with regards to failing to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements.
Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes
Section 6(b)(ii) of the code is the nub of the matter where I disagree with the investigating officer’s reasoning.
I would like to clarify my understanding of the word “political”. In my view everything I do as a councillor is political and politics is the ‘trade’ I am in when acting as a councillor. So when I said that I posted the clips onto YouTube for political reasons, that is because I believe council meetings and everything relating to them is political. However I do not believe my usage, as will be addressed late, was ‘political’ in the sense meant by the code of conduct.
In the investigating officer’s summary report he accepts that “there was no material loss” to the council – so it is arguable whether any resources were used at all. The report also mentions that facilities and resources can only be used properly if justified as being part of their roles as a councillor. The Independent Remuneration Panel’s definitions of formal councillor duties includes attending full council and cabinet meetings, which is exactly what I was doing in the clips published – hence their use was proper.
Of the 5 clips this complaint covers, one is just myself speaking to second a notice of motion on pre-pay energy meter charges. This was a motion jointly proposed with the Labour group – it was not party political. Furthermore, as the House of Commons allows MPs to post videos of their own speeches on YouTube without difficulty, I do not see why my own speech should be cause for concern under this complaint.
That leaves the four other clips involving questions about communal bins from myself with responses from Councillors Mears and Theobald.
Communal bins were at that time being rolled out in my ward, as they were in neighbouring wards. All councillors whose wards were being affected asked questions in council and cabinet meetings, as did those with an interest in the Environment Cabinet brief. At that time I was not the Green Group’s waste and recycling spokesperson, I was purely acting as a ward councillor as were others from all parties when asking such questions.
Furthermore, in his interview, Cllr Kemble alleges that I had placed the videos on my blog to further my ambitions for the European elections. I didn’t post anything on my site relating to the European Elections until 12th May 2009, more than two months after Cllr Kemble sent in his complaint.
Long before and long after Cllr Kemble’s complaint I have been posting on my blog reports of my council work including text, sections of meeting minutes, photos and videos. So his accusation that these clips were posted for those reasons do not stand up.
Finally, if webcasts were deemed political they should have been taken down during the election ‘purdah’ periods but they were not this year nor last year. The videos just show members undertaking their democratic duties, as is right and proper.
So, the clips were not posted for political or party political reasons because members from all affected wards and all parties were asking similar questions. I was not campaigning for European Parliament at that time and I was not the Green Group’s spokesperson on this matter at the time, Cllr Rufus was.
So on that basis I do not believe I have broken 6(b)(ii).
However I also would argue that I have not broken this section of the code on the basis that I have not used the council’s resources. So not only was the act not political, but furthermore no council resources were used to post the videos to YouTube.
As repeatedly stated, and agreed by the investigating officers, I used my personal computer and broadband to view the webcasts as I often do to refresh my memory before writing a blog post.
On seeing some pertinent sections I screen grabbed the video for posting on YouTube. Technically this did not touch the Council’s servers further whatsoever. To view the webcast the video file is downloaded to your computer over the Internet. Rewinding to view sections already viewed just retrieves the video from your computer’s local memory, no further Internet access is required. Hence the video capture used no council resources in terms of computers or broadband beyond what I used to view the webcast normally. Viewing the webcast alone cannot reasonably be considered a breach of the code!
Furthermore digital files like the webcast videos are what economists call ‘non-rival goods’. That is they are unlike a cake, for example. If I eat all of a cake then you cannot eat it too, but with a digital file I can use it and so can you with neither of us being any worse off.
Indeed, I can copy a digital file online a thousand times at zero cost for all my friends and the original will still be in perfect condition. A cake cannot manage that feat – you would need to bake a new cake, with the costs of all the ingredients, to copy it even once.
So in my copying the video for use on YouTube I did not deprive anyone of the ability to view or save the webcast in the future. In fact I made it easier for people to view certain points of interest from council meetings.
The final argument made by the investigating officer is that the webcast’s copyright is a resource of the council. As a matter of principle I disagree. These webcasts show elected members, officers and residents participating in public meetings which make up the workings of our local democracy. If they belong to the council they only do so in trust for the good of the entire city. Indeed if one were to take the idea that the copyright is a resource of the council then should each person shown on camera not get a royalty payment for each sale of the webcast covering their recorded performance?
There is no serious commercial market for these webcasts, they are a public good. A £35 charge is made for copying them onto disc, that is to cover the cost of someone actually doing the job of retrieving the archive, getting a disc and delivering it to the member of the public who wants the disc. This £35 charge is in no way a meaningful source of income for the council.
In Form A (ii) the investigating officer rebuts this argument claiming good authority for intellectual property having financial and commercial value. However the citations provided relate to the world of commerce – of course Apple or Hewlett-Packard have plenty of value in their patents, copyrights and other intellectual property. But this council and its members are owned by the people of this city and acts on their behalf.
Parliament, despite complex TV licensing agreements for video coverage, already allows MPs to post videos of their own speeches on YouTube and is shortly going to allow all clips to be posted by anyone on sites such as YouTube.
Indeed minutes from council meetings are already regularly copied onto local blogs by councillors and members of the public. The council has, as yet, not been seen to pursue any of these bloggers for breach of the council’s intellectual property. If the investigating officer’s line of argument was to believed, these bloggers too are depriving the council of financial resources. But no action has arisen, because of course these are resources for the good of the whole city. In addition, copyright law has a provision for ‘fair dealing’ which permits the use of limited excerpts, even in commercial works, without recompense or license to the copyright holder.
So, I have already made the case that these clips were not political, and so the charge of “Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes” falls. I have also argued that technically, I did not use any additional IT resources beyond those needed to view the clip. So I did not breach the code on that count. Finally I have detailed how I did not deprive the council of any intellectual property or implied financial resource because digital goods are non-rival, the council has not previously chosen to enforce any intellectual rights on previous copying, they have no meaningful commercial value and there is a fair-dealing option under copyright which covers reasonable excerpts.
Thus, I respectfully put to the panel that there is no case for me to answer. I have not breached the code with regard to:
Failure to treat others with respect
Failure to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements
Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes
I thank you for your consideration, I urge you to reject these charges and am open to your questions.
[ENDS]
This week, on the day of George Osborne’s emergency budget and Brighton Trades Council’s anti-cuts protest, Greens announced our opposition to a council restructure process known as ‘Intelligent Commissioning’. We will also not participate in the recruitment process to find new ‘Strategic Directors’ to push this process forward.
As I spoke about this to the gathered protestors there were strong cheers of agreement. The unions understand that, as has happened in the NHS and the education system, commissioning tends to result in privatisation, poorer working conditions and reduced democratic control of public services.
However the other opposition parties, while they have been critical of the £125k + benefits packages for these new directors, were quick to criticise our position. They felt we should be ‘inside the process’ of recruiting these people and so on.
I don’t agree. When the council’s new Chief Executive John Barradell was recruited, Greens participated in the process. Barradell spoke then, I’m told, of his desire to improve the council’s reputation amongst residents, make it more customer service orientated and more efficient. Who could disagree with that? After starting work he continued to expand on his ambition to improve the council. We share that desire.
However it wasn’t until recently that he explained that he wanted to do this through a process of ‘intelligent commissioning’ led by a set of new directors, a series of delivery units and so abolishing the existing council directorates. As I’ll explain below, we oppose commissioning in the way proposed. We won’t get to vote on these proposals as the Tory cabinet supports them and Chief Exec Barradell doesn’t need council approval to re-organise his staff. So to show our opposition to this process, to make our stand clear, we have refused to participate in the recruitment process.
I have no strong desire the retain the directorates as they are. However the thinking behind commissioning is flawed. As I understand it from the reports I’ve read and how it works in our local NHS, this is the proposal: A service is defined, such as waste collection, day care, tourism promotion or licensing enforcement. What the council wants delivered for that service is specified and then put out to tender. Council teams can bid to run this service (alone or in partnership with other groups), private firms can also bid as well as the ‘third sector’ such as charities and co-operatives.
What’s ‘intelligent’ about this process is the way the service is specified with ‘customers’ in mind, that it will be results orientated, that charities and other groups can get involved and we could jointly tender for services (so pooling budgets and saving money) with other local public sector organisations such as NHS Trusts.
What could be wrong with that? Well as the Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee found with local NHS commissioning, these processes tend to favour large corporations who can afford to participate in these complex bidding processes. The staff used to provide the services are usually on less secure, less well paid contracts with worse pensions. Quality can also be an issue.
Additionally, the evidence so far with NHS contracting, is that the costs are often higher. This is because the tender process is not that competitive (the same big players are the only ones pitching around the country for the same types of contracts), the tender process itself is time-cosnuming and costly plus for some services private companies demand premiums for the risks involved which the public sector would have otherwise regularly borne.
Of course there are cases when partnership working makes sense, and using the expertise of private companies and the third sector can absolutely be the right thing to do. But government, the public sector, is about providing those services for all sectors of society which a market has failed to do, need to be managed in the general public interest or that individuals alone could not possibly afford, such as expert social care or careful management of our seafront.
Furthermore, as we’ve seen time and again in the NHS, once the services are contracted out it’s much harder for democratically elected representatives to hold them to account. We get told basic information is ‘commercially sensitive’ or that we’ll only find out more once a formal target review is held. We can’t hold managers employed by private firms to account. If things go wrong there is little option other than trying to terminate the contract – which can prove very costly. We’ve been here before locally, our waste collection contract went to two private firms before being returned in-house for a much improved service.
I believe that we should be focussing on running a council that is proud of its staff: A group of people expert in what they do, striving for excellence and delivering public services at decent value for the tax payer.
By keeping services in-house we can give staff the job security they need to do their best work, develop their skills and also train new generations to serve their city. Sometimes it will make sense to go for private help, such as for expert restoration of specific historic artefact or construction of a major project. However, as I saw when a private consultant was used to negotiate rents for seafront traders, once an in-house surveyor was hired a much more reasonable and long term approach was taken.
It’s my view that we can take this city from good to superb only with a strong commitment to council staff. They do many wonderful things already. But I believe they can deliver even more. To get there it would help if they were removed from being under the constant threat of tendering that ‘intelligent commissioning’ would bring.
For no good reason other than showing how tough they are – a sort of budgetary chest thumping – we have cuts being imposed now. Even if you accept the need for cuts (which Greens do not), it doesn’t seem to me that we are getting the best value or service quality from rushing through in-year cuts. During the general election only the Tories were arguing the cuts should happen this year. How the LibDems have changed their tune.
At a recent Cabinet meeting I called for the local Tory administration to publish details of their budget plans as soon as possible, with councillors from all parties being involved in the process. This fell on stoney ground.
All we know at this point is what officers have been able to glean an announcement by Eric Pickles about 2 weeks ago. In summary for this year the council is obliged to cut £3.55 million from the budget already balanced and passed at the February budget council meeting.
That we’re being asked to change a budget in-year is less than ideal, it is threatening many long-planned projects and adds a great deal of uncertainty to council staff. Currently they are being told to carry on with planning but implement as little as possible.
However, and here’s the kicker, as long as the Tory cabinet manage the budget reductions within departments and don’t push money across departmental lines then none of the cuts will have to come to full council for decision. Instead they can sign them off at the Tory-only Cabinet-level meetings. In any circumstances, but especially for a council of no overall control, this is not the inclusive, democratic decision making that I believe residents deserve.
Additionally, pushing these cuts onto local government is confirmation that the Tory/LibDem government are intent on continuing the emasculation of local councils that the previous Labour and Conservative governments undertook with relish.
All the talk of ‘localism’, devolving power and such like from Tories and LibDems is immediately shown to be completely false. If they truly believed and understood these issues they would not have imposed swingeing cuts on local government without also granting new local powers. Let us not forget that local government had nothing to do with creating this budgetary deficit and have been delivering Gershon efficiency savings of 2-3% a year.
Local government haven’t been showered in cash the past years. The least the government could have done is offered local councils some new powers, perhaps alternative models for fundraising or a fairer local taxation system before cutting off our funds. Certainly the government’s only gesture to councils of removing the ring-fencing from a motley collection of grants is not much of a tonic in the face of these cuts.
Greens will oppose the cuts all the way, but it looks like the Tories will make sure we won’t even get a chance to vote on them. What sort of open politics is that?
I’ve just seen the first leaflet from Labour’s by-election candidate for St Peter’s & North Laine, Tom French.
Does Tom offer any new ideas for the area or the city? No.
Does he use misleading statistics to support his candidacy? Yes!
Rather than quote figures from the last council elections, recent council by-elections in neighbouring wards or even the recent Parliamentary results in the constituency the ward is in, he comes up with a new metric… Tom aggregates the general election vote across the three constituencies (and thus includes the parts of Lewes district in Brighton Kemptown) to suggest Labour are in a close second place. If that’s how any of these elections worked – maybe, but that figure is of no relevance to anyone as it’s not restricted to the Brighton & Hove municipal boundary, it was for a different electoral arrangement and resulted in Labour winning no MPs whilst the Greens did win one.
Tom also writes that he’s “stood shoulder to shoulder with students, teachers and parents against the cuts in Higher Education” – which is intriguing given that the cuts higher education institutions in this city have experienced so far were all brought in by the Labour government.
Tom – You just can’t walk away from Labour’s record of 13 years in government nationally and over a decade on the local council.
And sadly calling Labour the opposition to the Tories is demonstrably untrue. I’ve sat in the council chamber and seen Labour vote with the Conservatives to end our committee system, award themselves additional allowances, to support health privatisation, curtail councillor speaking rights and much more.
Greens will keep putting forward positive proposals, such as for 20mph residential streets, and we’ll fight elections on the back of our ideas for the future. Let’s have a battle of ideas – that’s what would benefit this city at election times.
Jason Kitcat 