Broadcaster Iain Dale has recently interviewed Liz Truss and reviewed her book about her brief time in office. Although not a fan of the former PM, he made this interesting observation:
Truss is right that the last thirty years have seen politicians divesting themselves of powers in order to avoid democratic accountability when things go wrong. Â The agencification of government has made government far more remote from ordinary voters.
(There is a longer quote below.)
Significant delegation of power to regulators and others began with privatisation in the 1980s. The aim was to de-politicise regulation so that the new utility regulators could take sensible long term decisions free from political pressure - for instance to reduce prices and hence starve companies of the funds needed for necessary investment. In order to assure independence from politicians, several key regulators were created as non-ministerial government departments so that they became directly accountable to Parliament itself.Â
However, as Iain points out, a much larger number of regulators (not accountable to Parliament) nowadays carry out functions that should be of considerable interest to our elected representatives. Many regulatory decisions are essentially political in nature in that they involve choices, including whether to prohibit or deter behaviour that would otherwise be perfectly legal. But such decisions are not now taken by Ministers who instead find it very convenient not to be blamed by those who disagree with regulators' decisions.
So who makes sure that all these regulators are taking sensible decisions? Not Parliament, it would appear. An excellent report from the Institute for Government looks at Parliament and regulators and finds that all is not well. Here are some extracts:
Since December 2019, less than a third of regulators (35 out of the 116 we identify) have attended a dedicated, routine select committee hearing scrutinising their work as a whole. This means a clear majority of regulators are almost never examined in a meaningful way by parliamentarians on fundamental issues like whether they have the right statutory objectives, how they balance these, their performance across the breadth of their responsibilities, or their plans to mitigate future risks.
Another 35 regulators â again nearly a third â have not been called in front of parliament in any capacity since before the 2019 general election. Many of these are smaller bodies, but it is concerning that they have not been seen at all. They include, for example, Social Work England, which is neither small nor uncontroversial, and the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA).
The problem, of course is that ...
Parliament's primary function is politics, not audit. ... But only parliament can set regulatorsâ statutory objectives and powers, assess their relationships with government and parliament, and determine whether they serve the public interest as befits a democracy. Parliamentarians should refocus their efforts on these essential tasks that only they can carry out with legitimacy.
The IfG's interviewees suggested that too often:
           Committees are poorly informed,
           Hearings are poorly planned,
           Committees are overly adversarial, and
           Committees are unengaged.
The problems caused by reactive and poorly informed oversight were summarised by a former parliamentary clerk:
âItâs the difference between the community policeman on his beat vs. a SWAT team. Select committees mistakenly go for the SWAT team approach straight away - come in all guns blazing, launch a few scattergun shots, and people end up dead, only sometimes the right ones. If relationships and dialogue were established and regulators and committees knew and talked to each other it would work much better".
The result is that:
"The [regulator's] aim is no headlines. Organisationally, you send the person in there to be as boring and bland as possible."
The IfG's report contains numerous sensible suggestions for ways in which parliamentary scrutiny of regulators could be improved. As they are all addressed to Parliament itself, I am not optimistic that they will be acted upon, at least before the General Election. But maybe some of the new MPs, waiting for their first front bench job, might be persuaded to take more responsibility for audit/accountability than have their predecessors?
Postscript
Iain Dale's review of Liz Truss's book contains this interesting comment:
This [agencification] phenomenon is now present right through the core of government. âWhat did you personally do to change this, during your ten years as a minister?â I asked [Ms Truss] during our 83 minute long interview. She replied that there was nothing, as a junior minister, or even a cabinet minister, she could have done to change things. Even as prime minister she said sheâd have needed years to bring forward any meaningful change.
In this, she echoes the argument put forward by Gillian Shephard, her predecessor but one as MP for South West Norfolk. Â In her book SHEPHARDâS WATCH â ILLUSIONS OF POWER IN BRITISH POLITICS , which I published nearly a quarter of a century ago, Gillian Shephard explains that in her long political career, which started as parish councillor and culminated as a cabinet minister, she always felt that power was held at the rung above the level she had just achieved. She concluded in the end that real power lay with the prime minister. When she told this to the then prime minister John Major, he said he felt the same, but didnât feel he had the power as prime minister which most people assumed he had.
The reason for that is twofold. Firstly, prime ministers are not dictators and do not have carte blanche to do what they want. And secondly, itâs the âsystemâ that wields the power â especially the power to obstruct. And it is here that as so often in the book, Truss weakens her case by overstating it. She assumes a malevolence of intention and an anti-Tory bias among the blob. On occasion she may be right, but itâs too simplistic to blame the system for everything. What she should be doing is to blame the political class for being so weak and ineffectual.
If a cabinet minister cannot get their own way, it is often, but not always, their fault. Truss admits she wasnât easy to work with but never confronts the harsh reality that a cabinet minister who treats their civil service badly is less likely to persuade people to their way of thinking. Ask Dominic Raab.
Notes
1. I am a great fan of Iain Dale who published the first edition of my How to be a Civil Servant as long ago as 2000 and frequently tells me that I do not charge enough when selling it. He now broadcasts on LBC and owns the Politicos online bookshop.
2. Follow this link for more information about the difference between non-ministerial government departments, executive agencies and other public bodies.
3. Here is IfG's list of regulators which are non-ministerial departments and hence directly accountable to Parliament:
The CMA
The Charity Commission
National Archives
Ofsted
Ofqual
Ofgem
The Forestry Commission
Ofwat
The Food Standards Agency
HM Land Registry
The UK Statistics Authority
Office of Rail and Road
Martin Stanley
"Parliament should take more interest" is quite an easy charge for think tanks such as Hansard Soc and IfG to throw at the institution.
In truth, in the Commons the systematic integration of this sort of scrutiny into business-as-usual work of committees does not happen without Government support, eg for changes in committee orders of reference.
Thank you for this.
By "parliamentary clerk" do you mean one of the officials in each department whose job it is to manage the Department's parliamentary business; or do you mean one of the Commons or Lords officials whose function is to advise Members of the respective House on procedure and practice?
Full disclosure: I'm a serving member of the second cadre and have long considered the application of the term to us to be a monstrous solecism...