Generals with maps

Tweet I rather liked the line about the dangers of a general with a map in a combat zone.  I’m not sure that it stands up to scrutiny though – it strikes me that a general without a map might potentially be even more dangerous.

It’s clear by now that the minister is determined to press ahead with a reorganisation of local authorities which will reduce the number of 8 or 9 in total.  It’s also clear that the other three centralist parties represented in the Assembly agree in principle with the push for a reduced number, even if they are quibbling about the detail.

It’s also clear that there are councillors in all the parties who will resist the proposed changes.  Here in Carmarthenshire, in a rare display of unity a few weeks ago, Labour, Plaid, and the Independent Party joined forces to declare that Carmarthenshire should remain a stand-alone authority.  They’re whistling in the wind though – their influence on their leaders in Cardiff is about as close to zero as it can get, and their views will simply be dismissed as self-interest.

It might be true that their protests are based on self-interest, but even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are genuinely seeking to do what’s best for local democracy in Wales, they’ll still be ignored.  That simply isn’t the question being asked; and having the right answer to the wrong question won’t advance their case greatly.

It seems to me that the question being asked by Cardiff’s centralists has little to do with good or effective local democracy at all – it is, rather, about finding the most efficient way of delivering certain key services, and primarily amongst those, education.  Efficiency and democracy are not at all the same thing.  But seeking to judge the latest proposals against that key criterion of ‘efficiency’ (assuming that the term even has a simple agreed definition) raises more questions that it answers.

Firstly, why does the area of Glamorgan and Gwent require four regions, when four or at most five is deemed adequate for the whole of the rest of Wales?  Where is the evidence that requires the population of a region to be less than x and no more than y?

Secondly, why is the sanctity of existing boundaries taken as a given?  What’s wrong, for instance, with splitting Conwy and merging half with Gwynedd and the other half with the rest of north Wales?  Yes, I know, of course, that it’s easier to treat existing authorities as whole units, but if the question is how we find the most ‘efficient’ structure, this is an unnecessary constraint.

Thirdly, why do all services have to be delivered to the same pattern?  I can understand – even if I’m not entirely convinced by the evidence – why fewer education authorities might be an improvement, but why do services such as leisure centres have to be managed at the same level?  It simply looks like a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.

Fourthly, given the need for better co-ordination between health and social services, why is the NHS not being included, and aligned to the same boundaries, as Plaid have in fact suggested?

Fifthly, where does this leave the Welsh Government’s drive for city regions?  Whereas the regions have previously included ‘whole’ authorities (for instance, Carmarthenshire in Swansea Bay), the new plan will mean that some authorities (such as Dyfed) are partly in and partly out.

But the biggest question of all, which the minister seems to be completely unwilling even to contemplate, is about the value of democratic elections to these new ‘authorities’.  If the aim is to ensure the most efficient delivery of centrally prescribed services to centrally ordained standards in a consistent fashion, how does electing councillors to regional authorities add any value at all?  How much influence can any elected councillors actually have?

It’s a point that I’ve raised before – if certain services are considered so important that they have to be uniform and consistent in terms of both policy and delivery across the whole of Wales (I’m not at all convinced about that, but it seems that all four Assembly parties are), then why pretend that elected local government has any rôle in delivering them?  Better by far to keep local government local and let it concentrate on those services where there is room for local variation and difference.

Who decides?

Tweet When I hear a politician talking about ‘post code lotteries’, I hear the voice of a centralist demanding uniformity and consistency driven from the centre.  It's something from which all four parties in the Assembly suffer on a regular basis, but latest up last week was the leader of the Tories in the Assembly, demanding a ring-fenced cancer drugs fund, like they have in England, so that cancer patients can get access to the drugs they need.

His timing was unfortunate, to say the least, coming as it did just a day or two before it was announced that the said English fund will no longer be funding certain drugs because they’re too expensive.  But then, expecting ‘Dave’ to tell RT what he was going to do would be wholly unrealistic. Even RT himself would never expect that.

The idea of a ring-fenced fund to pay for certain drugs for certain illnesses is superficially attractive, particularly for the patients involved.  The fund in England has undoubtedly made some drugs available to people who would not otherwise have had them; and I can well understand why that would make this a popular initiative.  And it’s that popularity, of course, which drives the Tories in Wales to keep demanding that Wales follows suit - they think that there are votes in it.

But is it the right way to run a health service?  Effectively, it is a case of the politicians telling the doctors that they can’t have enough money to treat everyone, whatever their illness, in the way that the doctors would like.  Instead, the politicians will set the priorities for them, and ring fence a sum of money for certain drugs for use only in the case of certain illnesses, regardless of whether the medical professionals consider that to be the best use of funds to achieve the best outcomes for the largest number of people. 

Driven, as it is, by electoral considerations, I’m far from convinced that this is the best way of making clinical decisions.  And, as they’ve discovered in England, it gives the drugs companies no incentive to reduce the cost of the drugs.

Responding to wholly understandable public demands that the latest drugs should be available by creating a ring-fenced fund is no way to address the overall problem of lack of resources in the health service.  Attending to the high profile diverts attention from, but does not resolve, the decisions which doctors face daily about how best to use the resources they do have to benefit the greatest number.  And, ultimately, that’s my real objection to the idea of a ring-fenced fund – it’s not tackling the real problem.

More centralisation and quangoes

Tweet When I served on a planning committee back in the 1980s, no one batted an eyelid at the idea that I could talk to voters in my ward, ascertain their views, declare in advance that I’d support them, and then go along to a meeting and argue the case on their behalf.  It was sometimes difficult to find out what people thought – opinions were often divided – but representing the views of electors was part of what I thought I was there to do.

It was just after I’d retired as a councillor in 1991 that the new law was implemented turning the planning process into a quasi-judicial one, where any views expressed in advance were held to be prejudicial and to exclude the councillors concerned from speaking of voting on the issue.  It was a part of the then Conservative Government’s policy aimed at emasculating local councils in the interest of promoting development - as if the Town & Country Planning Acts weren’t already sufficiently biased in favour of developers.

Coupled with formal timescales for determining applications, the result was pretty inevitable.  More and more decisions were delegated to officers, and there was less and less room for local democratic expression.

It looks as though Labour in Cardiff are about to complete the process started by the Tories in London, taking further responsibilities away from councillors and giving them either to council officers or else to an arm of central government.

Coupled with a proposal to give the unelected local service boards power to draw up strategic development plans which will sit above the plans drawn up by local councils, it’s another huge shift of power away from elected bodies and into the hands of appointees.  When Labour pretended to be against this sort of thing in the past, they called them quangos.

It also underlines once again the disjointed and incoherent approach to local government which was also well demonstrated in the appointment of the Williams commission.  The government and the Labour Party still haven’t decided what they think local government is for, let alone what powers it should have.

What is the point of local councils – supposedly run by elected members – having a planning function at all if the plans are set elsewhere, along with all the rules for determining applications?  Why not just be honest and have a single national planning authority with a few regional offices?  That would seem to be the direction of travel for Welsh Labour.

Totals, averages, and fair shares

Tweet Monday’s Western Mail carried this interesting report quoting a transport consultant as saying that it would be better on average for the Welsh economy to put all new jobs in Cardiff, rather than attempt to spread them around.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he’s right.

But averages can hide a lot of important detail.  There’s a danger that governments which are focussed on ‘averages’ and ‘overall’ seize on this type of argument as justification for further economic centralisation, and for allowing ‘the market’ to do what it would like to do anyway.  It’s a lot easier than attempting to exercise some control. 

The question we face if we’re serious about building a better Wales is not simply about how we increase the country’s total wealth, nor even about how we increase the country’s average wealth.  Both of those can be achieved by economic centralisation and greater inequality.  It is rather about how we spread wealth more evenly.  I for one would prefer to have a less than the maximum possible total national wealth if that wealth was spread more evenly, and a less than the maximum possible average wealth if the variation around the mean was lower.  Otherwise we’re just mimicking the UK.

How big is big enough?

Tweet In its editorial reaction to the report of the Williams Commission, yesterday’s Western Mail told us sternly that “post code lotteries are intolerable within a country of only three million”.  It’s one of those things that “everybody knows” to be true, but it begs two questions.

The first is this: what is the difference between a ‘post code lottery’ on the one hand and differing service levels based on local democratic choice on the other?  The answer, in essence, is that there is no difference; it all depends on perspective.  Centralists instinctively demand complete standardisation and conformity whereas decentralists accept that differing levels and quality of service are an inevitable concomitant – from those two viewpoints they merely describe the same phenomenon in different words.

The second question is this: if three million is too small to allow differing service levels, how many is enough?  It is implicit in any statement saying that ‘n’ is too small that there is a larger number which is not too small; in this case, what the paper calls ‘post code lotteries’ are apparently acceptable if only the population is large enough.  Why?

Hidden behind this is the way in which supporters of devolution – whom I had long thought to be instinctive decentralists – turn out to be centralists in practice in a Welsh context.  Strangely, I’ve heard some argue that they are in favour both of rigid central standards and powerful local government.  I can only conclude that they’re either confused or dishonest, because, for any given service, we really can’t have both.

Somehow, since the advent of devolution from London to Cardiff, an idea seems to have caught on amongst the politicians and media that there is no need or justification for any differences within Wales, whereas differences between Wales and England are perfectly acceptable.  It’s a valid vision for Wales, but it isn’t the one which many espoused before the Assembly was established.  And it isn’t one which ever drove me.

Another missed opportunity

Tweet A cynical description of a management consultant of the sort so popular with businesses and government organisations is “a person who borrows your watch to tell you the time”.  It encapsulates the view that the ‘independent’ ‘experts’ have been hired, first and foremost, to confirm what those hiring them already ‘know’ – but with the extra credibility that comes from being external.

Crucial to this approach is hiring the ‘right’ consultants – they need to be sufficiently compliant – and giving them the ‘right’ brief.  It’s a definition which somehow sprang to mind when I read this sentence in the foreword to the report of the Williams Commission yesterday:

“In establishing us, the First Minister made clear that the status quo was not an option.  We have found extensive and compelling evidence that that is indeed the case.”

The consultants that I’m used to don’t often make their role quite as crystal clear as that; it’s usually a bit more nuanced!  But there can be little doubt that the Commission has told the Welsh Government what it wanted to hear.  Quelle surprise.

Sadly, their brief was written entirely around “governance and delivery”, thereby absolving them of any duty to consider what local government should actually do, and concentrate instead on how they do it.  I wouldn’t argue that there aren’t problems with the how at present, but to adapt a piece of management speak, “doing the wrong things well is probably worse than doing the right things badly”.  It seems, however, that doing things well is deemed more important by the Welsh Government than doing the right things. 

Local Government in Wales is a complete mish-mash of three types of activities, with vague and imprecise boundaries between them:

·         Services where the councils really are free to decide on policy and delivery as they wish.  They can choose to spend more and deliver a better service, or to spend less and cut the council tax.  Different parties and candidates really can promise different approaches which they can then implement when elected.  This category includes things like parks, leisure centres, and libraries.  It’s worth noting that this one area where they have complete freedom is the one area where they currently seem, perversely, to be trying to divest themselves of all responsibility.

·         Secondly, we have some services where the councils have absolutely no scope to set any policy and are totally constrained by the law as to what they can do.  The limit of their scope for being different is perhaps using different and incompatible IT systems to achieve the same ends – things like electoral registration, for instance; or births, deaths and marriages.  I find it hard to see what, if any, value is added in these areas by having locally elected councillors responsible for them.  They are administrative tasks which could just as easily – and probably more efficiently – be managed nationally.

·         Then we have the services in the middle where the local councils like to believe that they have some freedom to set policy and do things differently, but in reality are hide-bound by central directives and standards.  These are things like Social Services and Education – and it’s worth noting that these are precisely the service areas in which local authorities are perceived to be failing.  The two facts might not be unconnected…

I’m not sure whether the services referred to in the third category should actually be delivered by Local Councils at all; I’m open to be convinced either way.  My starting point is that if local councillors with their own democratic mandate are to run services, they should have the freedom to set policy – and the freedom to deliver a poor service as well if they so choose, and if the local electorate choose a bunch of incompetents to run the council.  It’s called democracy.  But if a service is deemed to be too important to be left to local decision-making, then we should stop pretending that local authorities add any value and run the service nationally. 

It all depends on your viewpoint on the extent of any local democratic mandate; I tend to the view that we should maximise local control, and I accept that one inevitable result of that is that service levels and quality will vary; but if the majority believe that consistent service levels are more important, then they should advocate proper central control, as the only way of meeting that objective.

The latest report doesn’t address that sort of question at all – and the Commission is recommending a series of local government mergers on the basis of an assumption that we should simply continue as we are.  The merger process will be costly in the short term, even if we believe that there will be savings in the longer term.  Eyes will inevitably be taken off balls in the process; such problems as we currently have will continue until the process is complete.  It’s a serious missed opportunity.

Creeping centralism

Tweet One of the disappointments of devolution for me has been the way in which politicians who appear to be decentralists at a UK level end up being centralists at a Wales level.  Perhaps it’s just that politicians usually believe that power should be wielded by themselves, and should therefore reside at whatever level they happen to be operating – and I really wish that I could dismiss that thought as just a bit of unnecessary cynicism.

The latest evidence of creeping centralism down in the Bay is the proposal floated by Leighton Andrews to centralise the provision of education services under the control of the Assembly Government.  I don’t disagree with everything he says; like him, if I were designing a way of delivering services such as education, I wouldn’t have come up with the idea of 22 authorities within Wales.  And, like him, I’m unhappy at the performance of the education system in Wales.

What I’m not so convinced about, however, is that the answer to those problems lies in the organisational structure.  I have seen no evidence to support the proposition that a centrally managed service will of necessity produce results which are any better than we are seeing now.  I certainly don’t accept the utter self-confidence with which so many AMs seem to assume that services run by them will deliver better results than those same services run by someone else.

One of my major problems with the centralising proposal is the implicit assumption that education authorities are accountable to the minister for their performance, rather than to the electorate in the areas they serve.  AMs are, quite rightly, quick enough to bridle at any suggestion that they are accountable to the UK Government for their performance; why are they so ready to defend their own electoral mandate whilst denying that of local councillors?

But the biggest problem that I have with what is being suggested is that it looks like reorganising local government in Wales by the back door, without proper discussion or consideration.  According to the glossy leaflet which Carmarthenshire issued with my council tax bill, marginally over half of all expenditure paid for by council tax goes on education and children’s services.  Education alone probably accounts for 30 – 40% of what the county council does.  Taking that away from local government is a huge – and unprecedented – reduction in the scope and powers of local authorities, and doing it in isolation without consideration of the wider impact looks to be very rash.

I’m not wedded to the idea that there should be 22 local authorities in Wales; nor am I wedded to the idea that their responsibilities and powers are immutable and set in stone.  But I am wedded to the idea that there is a value to local democracy, to devolution of power within Wales, not just to Wales, and that local exercise of power, if it is meaningful, has to include the right to do things differently rather than simply adhere to standards and processes laid down elsewhere. 

My politics starts from the notion that sovereignty resides with the people, and that we can choose how that should be pooled and where; AMs, like MPs, seem increasingly to believe that sovereignty is theirs to divvy out – or retain – as they wish.  The gulf between those viewpoints is far from being a small one, and unless we are careful, Wales could end up being more centralised than the unitary British state ever managed to be.

Paracetamol and millionaires

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Given the high profile of the Welsh Government’s commitment to free prescriptions, I find it hard to believe that any Health Board in Wales would have decided to ban GPs from prescribing certain medicines without consulting the government.  And the calm response by “a spokesman” also suggests that the decision by the Hywel Dda Board did not exactly come as a surprise.

It amounts to the introduction of what Welsh politicians usually like to call a “post code lottery”; which items can be had for free will now vary from one part of Wales to another.  It touches on the long standing issue that there is a lack of consensus about which decisions should be taken nationally and which should be taken locally. 

As a general rule, I tend to favour local democracy rather than central imposition; but in this case, health boards are not subject to local democracy, and this looks like a case of local appointees trying to weaken or undermine a decision taken by electorally-accountable politicians.  Purely for that reason, I’m surprised at the calm response of the government – unless, of course, they are actually looking for a way of back-pedalling on their commitment.

From the figures included in the report, it appears that the introduction of free prescriptions has had no impact on ‘over-the-counter’ sales, which have remained static, but it has increased the number of prescriptions for those same medicines by a significant margin.  It therefore appears, at first sight, as though the extra prescriptions are not for people who would otherwise have purchased the same medicines.  And as far as I’m aware, there is not a single reported instance of a millionaire obtaining a prescription for paracetamol.

But I’d like to understand better where that increase has come from before coming to a conclusion.  Is it the case that people are now going to see the doctor when they wouldn’t have bothered before?  Is it that doctors are now issuing a prescription when they might previously have just said “take a couple of paracetamol”?  What’s the impact on health of removing that option?

From the reports so far, the decision appears to have been taken on purely financial grounds, without considering that health impact at all.

Over-riding local views

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One of the cornerstones of my own political outlook is the idea that democracy should be both as local as possible and as participatory as possible.  But one of the big stumbling blocks is “what happens if, or rather when, local people take the ‘wrong’ decision?”.  It’s when nice idealistic theory meets hard practical reality.

The UK Government has got itself into a bit of a corner on the question this week, over the establishment of a site to bury low level radioactive waste.  What makes it harder for them is that the minister who’s taken the decision is the same Communities Minister who’s trumpeting localism as a principle, and piloting the Localism Bill through parliament.

Unfortunately for the government, albeit entirely predictably, the people living in the area of the proposed tip don’t want it.  In a local referendum, 98% of them voted against it; and the local county council voted unanimously against it as well.  I suspect that most, if not all, local communities would react in similar fashion to such a proposal.

The government have, of course, relied on ‘expert advice’ that the site will not be ‘harmful’ in coming to their decision to ignore local opinion.  Well, yes; but the experts aren’t necessarily local, and decision-making on the basis of expert advice isn’t the same thing as empowering local communities.  Nor is ‘expert advice’ in itself sufficient reason to disregard local opinion.

It’s not a situation which is unique to the question of nuclear waste.  There are parallels with the protest earlier this week outside the National Assembly against the infrastructure which will be needed to transmit power from mid-Wales windfarms to the National Grid.  In both cases, the government is trying to implement a cohesive overall policy, whereas local opinion is opposed to the impact on themselves.

By stretching the point just a little, we could also draw a parallel with some EU decisions, where ‘local’ opinion – even if ‘local’ means the UK – sometimes opposes those decisions.

In every case, the larger body, I am sure, would argue that it is acting for the greater good of the whole.

In the specific, it’s clear that nuclear waste has to be disposed of somewhere, and ultimately it is the responsibility of government to identify where.  But they shouldn’t expect the waste to be welcomed with open arms, wherever they decide to put it.

The underlying quandary is one with which I’ve long struggled.  How local is local, and how much decision-making should be local?  And, for those of us who believe that power is not something which comes from the centre and can be passed down, but something which belongs to the people in the first place, on what grounds should other people ever over-ride local wishes?

The legalistic answer would be that parliament has determined which powers reside where, and parliament has given the minister the right to over-ride local opinion in this case.  My problem with that is that parliament’s right to decide is predicated on the assumption that the power belongs to parliament (on behalf of the sovereign, naturally) in the first place.

Some suggest a ‘financial’ answer, based around an input of cash into the local community from either the government or the developers so that they see some direct benefit from accepting an unwelcome proposal.  Others see that as a form of bribery.

A more honest answer is that communities sometimes have to pay a price for belonging to a greater whole; membership of a wider community has both benefits and costs.  Building a more localised society and maintaining the consent of the governed requires rather more work in spelling out that balance, and that communities accept it.  What governments generally do in practice, though, is to simply carry on regardless.

If it is to be more than a mere slogan, building a more localised and empowered network of communities requires a complete change of approach, which seeks the active participation and support of local communities rather than just using raw power.  It depends on a more informed populace as well. 

It’s about more than simply persuasion; it’s a different paradigm.  Believing that it can be achieved by passing legislation or offering cash rewards simply shows how little some politicians really understand the issue.

22 of everything

Tweet The subject of local government reform is raising its head again, as financial tightening starts to hit local government. The Local Government Minister is quoted as saying that he can't see why we need 22 of everything, and I agree with him in principle. (Although in the case of one of his examples, I'm not sure that reducing 22 fleets of vehicles to a smaller number of larger fleets necessarily results in fewer vehicles overall. And even if it did lead to fewer vehicles, if they had to travel a significant extra distance to cover larger areas, the cost saving may turn out to somewhat illusory.)

What concerns me however, is the suggestion that we rush straight from 22 into some other number, and do so in a higgledy-piggledy manner with arbitrary cross-border service mergers based on joint filling of senior vacancies, and without giving any real thought to what the 'right' number is.

For political reasons which I can understand (to say nothing of the potential cost implications in the short term), the Welsh Government has fought shy of taking a thorough look at local government boundaries and functions. I think they're as wrong to avoid taking that big picture look as they are to try and rush into opportunistic changes. We're also not looking at what can and should be democratically accountable at a local level and which services might be better delivered nationally.

In the 2007 Assembly elections, I (and every other Plaid candidate) fought on the basis of a manifesto which called for a thorough review of the whole way in which Wales is governed – local government, health, etc. It's one of our promises which didn't get into the One Wales coalition agreement, more's the pity. Instead of a thorough review, we've had a piecemeal approach which delivers neither radical change nor stability.

Sooner or later, we need to face up to the question rather than continue to avoid it.

Ring fencing

Tweet The E-coli outbreak five years ago was a very serious matter, and justified the holding of a public inquiry. But public inquiries are only of any real value if lessons are learned. From the Consumer Focus Wales report published on Tuesday, it appears that not enough has yet been done.

One particular point which emerges from this is the question of resources – who supplies them and how they are used. There seems to be a difference of opinion on whether adequate funding has or has not been supplied to councils; but whether the funding was adequate or not, it seems not to have been directed to the necessary activities.

Consumer Focus Wales argue that this topic is so important that money must be ring-fenced to ensure that it is spent in the way required. I think this raises two issues.

The first is that merely ring-fencing the extra cash doesn't necessarily ensure that it achieves the desired result. To ensure that the money really is extra, the whole budget for relevant activities probably needs to be ring-fenced, otherwise authorities can simply add with one hand and take away with the other.

The second issue is that merely spending the requisite amount of money does not, of itself, guarantee the outcomes required – and I think it's the outcomes which are more important to us.

The whole issue also takes us back to the point I've raised a few times recently – what is local government for, and what is the right balance of centralisation versus local control?

In the case of food hygiene, central government already sets the standards and rules under which it operates. If it is also going to decree exactly how much each council spends on the issue, and how that is spent, and then monitor performance, what exactly is the input from locally elected democratic representatives? If the answer is, to all intents and purposes, none, then why not say so and run a single national food hygiene service?

I'm not necessarily advocating that, simply pointing out that that is a logical outcome of ring-fencing money. On this issue, as on so many others, we really need to decide whether, and to what extent, local variations are acceptable - if we decide that they are not, then there is no real value in pretending that this is a locally run service.

Competing for customers

Tweet More and more counties are now preparing their plans to re-organise secondary education at the behest of the Assembly Government, and it seems that more and more counties are going to find themselves in the sort of battles which people in Carmarthenshire have been fighting for many months already.

Although not all the councils are coming up with completely identical solutions, the similarity of approach seems to me to undermine the oft-repeated claim by the Assembly Government that this is not being driven from the centre. I have suspected for some time that whatever is being said publicly, this is, in practice, a central agenda, being driven by a combination of carrot and stick.

Part of the rationale, of course, is the Measure passed by the Assembly under which it has been decreed that all pupils must have a choice of at least 30 subjects in years 12 and 13. Whilst there are good arguments for ensuring a wide range of choice, ultimately the figure of 30 is pretty arbitrary. Why not 29, or 31?

But the effect of the number is highly significant, and is leading directly to the closure of some sixth forms, and the merger of others. It's been set at a level which effectively guarantees that counties will have to close or merge a number of smaller secondary schools. I do not believe that is merely coincidental. It's surprising that this arbitrary decision has not been more strongly challenged.

Another factor is the way in which FE colleges were given such a high degree of independence that they are now directly competing with schools for 'customers' (pupils or students to the rest of us!). Yes, that's right, in some of our most rural areas, where critical mass is so important in enabling viable numbers on courses, we have two sets of institutions competing for students, and offering the same courses in the process.

It's set to get worse. Although, in theory, schools and FE colleges can collaborate to reduce duplication, it seems to me that, on current direction of travel, FE colleges – currently looking at mergers and consolidations anyway - will be subsumed into HE institutions in the fairly near future. The result will be that 'school' education finishes at year 11 (GCSE year), and education beyond that happens at multi-campus HE institutions.

That may be the right thing to do, although I happen to be highly sceptical about it. But my real concern is that it is happening by stealth, without adequate public debate or scrutiny.

Local Democracy

Tweet A few different things have come together recently to make me wonder what county councils are for, and what they are achieving.

The first has been the repeated suggestion that Wales has 'too many' councils and that we will need to rationalise the number. It's most often accompanied by a claim that Wales cannot afford 22 Directors of (insert Education, Social Services, or whatever here). The argument feels right, but is not generally accompanied by much light about what the 'right' number is, or how we arrive at that magic number.

The second has been the increasing regulation and drive for standardisation of services across councils, often presented as 'ending the postcode lottery'. The implicit assumption is that there are some services which are 'too important' to allow there to be any variation in quality of provision, or the nature of the provision. (Or in extreme cases some seem to be arguing that we should not even permit a different spend per head).

And the third is the increasing financial pressures on local authorities, all of which are claiming that this year's settlement is the 'tightest ever' (a phrase that I don't think I've heard since last year), and that cash is going to get even tighter in future (with a suitable amount of hype and exaggeration about the likely implications thrown in for good measure). And with something like two-thirds of council funding supplied by the Welsh Government, councils always have a convenient scapegoat to hand.

One consequence of the third factor is that a number of councils are looking to distinguish between the statutory services (which they have to provide), and the non-statutory services (which they do not), and to concentrate their efforts and finances increasingly on the first. Within current legislation, and from the councils' viewpoint, that is a pretty logical decision to be making.

But, if we take a step back a moment, is there a case for standing that logic on its head, and moving to a situation where the councils deal only with the non-statutory services?

After all, the principle of local democracy is that people can exercise local choice, through electing a council, on what level of services they want and are prepared to pay for. And if they want a bit more of one type of service, and a bit less of another, they should be able to choose that.

However, in relation to the statutory services, there is an increasingly diminishing scope for local councils to make those sort of decisions, due to the second factor identified above, namely the drive to increased regulation and standardisation. It is increasingly the case that only in the non-statutory services is there any real scope for differentiation.

What would local government look like if we took all the statutory services away, and ran them under some sort of more central control (which is basically the model of the NHS)?

Firstly, rather than reducing the number of county councils, there could actually be a case for increasing the number and making them more local and accountable.

Secondly, rather than funding them centrally, the remaining services could be funded entirely out of local taxation (either council tax, or Plaid's preferred alternative of a local income tax). Councils would be in a position to raise and spend their income without external control on a range of optional services which local residents could choose either to expand or contract, and be clear of the tax implications in so doing.

It would of course represent a huge degree of centralisation of the management of services like education and social services, but it would be more honest than the creeping centralisation which comes through regulation, defining standards, target-setting, and hypothecated grants.

One of the hardest lessons that I learned when I first moved into a management role is that delegation includes delegating the right to take different decisions and to make mistakes. As far as local government is concerned, I think that we need either to delegate real authority to councils, or else decide that the services are too important to delegate, and manage them properly from the centre. Delegation to people whose hands central government then tie is no delegation at all.

It's a pretty radical suggestion, of course. But we really do need to decide what local councils are for – before we start thinking about how many we need.