Consultation or advice

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Dylan Jones-Evans posts an interesting comparison today between the membership of the ‘Economic Renewal Council’ in Wales and the membership of the ‘Council of Economic Advisors’ in Scotland.  As a like-for-like comparison, it makes for grim reading, but I wonder whether that is entirely fair.

The two animals have evolved by very different routes.  Whilst the purpose of the Scottish body is to give the best possible economic advice to the Scottish Government, the Welsh body has, as Dylan himself notes, grown out of a statutory requirement to consult; and it seems to be more about seeking consensus than setting a new direction. 

During the early part of the recession, the Welsh body seemed to be performing quite well in that more limited role, although I suspected at the time that there was more than an element of spin about the extent of its contribution.  However, a body containing representatives of the different stakeholders, meeting periodically to discuss the economic situation with the Welsh ministers is no bad thing in itself.  To that extent, I’d disagree with Dylan’s criticism. 

However, the unanswered question for me is this – where is the body in Wales which is performing the rôle being performed in Scotland by the Council of Economic Advisors?  This is not a representative body taking part in consultation, but a group of leading people in the field with a much better capability to do some pro-active and wide-ranging thinking and advising – and it appears to be missing in Wales.

I doubt that the ‘sector groups’ which the Welsh Government spent the best part of two years setting up are really working on the same level, or are likely to do so.  The problem, it seems to me, isn’t so much with the membership of the body we have trying to perform the functions allocated to it, but with the lack of a rather different focus which could probably only be provided with a very different membership.

On that point, I can only echo Dylan’s question about a lack of economic ambition on the part of the Welsh Government.

"Consulting"

Tweet The principle of consulting with people before adopting a particular proposal or course of action sounds like one of those 'good' things to do. So good that it's become a statutory requirement in all sorts of circumstances, and a requirement, at that, which causes delay and cost before implementing any proposal.

Now, if the consultation is genuine, then there's a reasonable argument that allowing time for comment and input before making a final decision makes it a reasonable cost to pay in a democracy. Far too often, however, 'consultation' has become a meaningless process during which documents are published and people respond before the consulting body carries on and does exactly what it was planning to do in the first place - usually claiming an increased validity as a result of the 'consultation'.

It can also help to disguise where and how decisions are being taken.

I've mentioned previously that two scrutiny committees in Carmarthenshire rejected a proposal to close four care homes. The council's response was to argue that the committees did no such thing; they merely rejected a proposal to go out to 'consultation' on the plans. Technically, of course, they're right. But had they proposed going out to consultation on a range of possible options, then I'm pretty certain that they would not have lost the vote in the way that they did.

It was one of those examples where there was only one option on the table, and after the consultation, the council's Executive Board would have simply rubber-stamped and then implemented its decision. It's a sad state of affairs when the only stage at which councillors could put a stop to a bad proposal was when they were asked to approve it going out for consultation. It underlines the powerlessness of the average councillor under the Executive Board system.

It's not uncommon though. Most of the 'consultations' launched by county councils and the Assembly Government seem to be of the same nature - a process which has to be gone through but which will not make any difference to the outcome. I'm not sure that I'd want to argue that the 'consultation' phase should be abandoned; but unless it is meaningful, it really does look as though it adds cost for no real benefit in most cases.

Another day, another post office

Tweet On to Talog last night for another extremely well-attended meeting. Talog is another small village facing the loss of its post office. Taking the post office closure proposals as a whole locally (Llanboidy, Trelech, Talog, Blaenwaun), there's a huge sweep of the northern part of this constituency which will be left with no fixed post offices at all, just a travelling van.

We had the usual speech from the local MP about how he supports the plans and processes in principle, but the post office have got this particular one wrong. I now have a collection of three near-identical leaflets from him explaining why it's wrong to close _____ post office, and in all of them he claims that the post office is "forgetting the most important factor (...in the future of ___ Post Office...) - the wishes of local people".

Er, no, Nick. Not the post office – your government told them the criteria to use, and that wasn't one of them. The post office isn't allowed to take people's wishes into account – if it were they would never achieve the government-imposed target of around 2,500 closures, because no community 'wishes' its post office to close. Neither was the impact of the changes on the environment one of the factors involved – particularly the extra travelling that people will have to do.

Ultimately, that's why this whole consultation process is badly flawed – because the consultation isn't about the programme, or the decisions already taken on which that programme is based, or the criteria used to make those decisions. It's limited to which post offices should close, with the inherent danger that we end up pitting communities against each other instead of making common cause against a bad government decision.

It's consultation, Jim,

Tweet …but not as we know it.

The post office closure programme has now reached Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, with a total of ten post offices across this constituency earmarked for closure or downgrading. It’s already rolled through Powys, as Glyn Davies has posted on more than one occasion. Closing the post offices is only part of the danger. Many post offices are operated as part of local shops; the post office salary often makes the difference between viability and failure; so it’s not just post offices that we could be losing.

What’s really staggering is how little real scope there is for local views to influence the process. All the key decisions have already been made, and they’ve been made not by the post office, but by the government. The government has decided how many post offices will close, the government has decided that the closures will be compulsory rather than by agreement, and the government has set the criteria for closure. (The government, of course, is the only shareholder in the Post Office.)

The Post Office have been left holding a consultation exercise in which the only real question is whether they’ve selected the right ones to close, and in which the grounds for challenging those decisions are very limited. It’s hardly a meaningful consultation exercise about an issue which will have a major impact on a large number of rural communities.

Listening to representatives of the Post Office explaining the process and their decisions to community councillors last night, I was reminded of the words of Aneurin Bevan – “There is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ-grinder is also present”. The problem is that on this occasion the organ grinder was very much absent, obviously happy to let the monkey take the flak (with no disrespect intended to the Post Office representatives).

Of course our post offices are facing some real problems as the number of people visiting them has fallen and the amount of business which they transact has reduced. Again, however, the hand of government lurks behind much of this. It isn't an accident that services such as TV licensing were removed from Post Offices; it’s a deliberate decision. Government, and its agencies, have chosen to use services such as PayPoint in preference to using post offices. And the threat of removing the Post Office Card Account from post offices is another potential blow.

It is claimed that the government are acting to reduce the £150 million subsidy which they pay to the Post Office. However, the value of services withdrawn from Post Offices by government decision was £168 million in 2006/7.

Closure isn’t an inevitable fact of life, but it is an inevitable result of government decisions, past and present. A truly meaningful consultation, and a truly meaningful commitment to protecting post offices would involve a review of those government decisions, not an assumption that they are inviolate. We need the organ grinder to listen as well.

PS I don’t know quite what to make of the Tories’ position on this issue. They are making a lot of the right noises, but how sincere are they? They did, after all, close 3,500 post offices themselves when they were in government, and they are still banging on about reducing government expenditure (such as the subsidy being paid to post offices?) and taxes. So how would they fund the network?