Davy Jones Consultancy

Tackling the democratic deficit ?

There is a major problem at the heart of the Government localist and empowerment agenda.

Everything important now runs through a multi-agency (Local Strategic Partnership) prism, based on the area as a whole, not the arbitrary catchment areas of the agencies. Good - this is a step forward.

But there is no equivalence in this multi-agency framework. The council is elected and accountable to local people. The other bodies, including the partnership (LSP) is not. So how are local people supposed to hold this partnership and all the other agencies working together to account?

Government has tied itself up in knots trying to sort this out without upsetting any vested interests within Whitehall or local public services. The council has the leadership role within LSPs and is termed the the accountable body. Except, it cannot determine what the police, health or other local public services do. They are still accountable to national civil servants and Ministers. It simply does not add up.

New Empowerment White Paper

Hazel Blears has admitted there is a problem. So, the recent Empowerment White Paper was a golden opportunity to tackle this. What did it propose?

Extending the duty to involve citizens to police forces (previously excluded from this duty due to opposition from the sector) and selected other local agencies;
Introducing directly elected Crime and Policing Representatives – spelt out in more details in the subsequent Policing Green Paper. Where mayors are introduced, they will automatically play this role;
And er, nothing else. Nothing in relation to local health services (except a promise that this will be looked at in the debate on the NHS Constitution).

This scarcely solves the problem. Indeed it just makes the local picture even more confusing. There will be an elected council, a single elected Crime and Policing Representative. There will be no accountability for local health services. And the LSP that brings all these agencies together remains unelected and unaccountable. Oh dear.

The problem will not go away!

In reality, the more Government goes down this multi-agency, area-based route, the more this democratic deficit will stand out like a sore thumb. The obvious logic is to bite the bullet and have an all-powerful elected local body responsible for all local public services. This could be the existing council with a wider remit, or via electing a new statutory Local Strategic Partnership, instead of the council.

Then, people would know who to hold to account for what was happening in their local area. In turn they would probably demand that they had more control over the funding for services and that they could take real decisions on local priorities. But Whitehall is terrified of devolving so much power. So it just keeps fudging away.