Earlier in the year, my colleague Eric Pickles announced that local authorities would be required to publish details of all of their spending above £500. This reform will go hand in hand with a requirement from November for central government departments to publish monthly details of all spending over £25,000. The Department for Communities and Local Government, however, have decided to go one better, and join our local government colleagues and publish everything over £500.
Why is this important, I hear you ask? Won’t it just provide the opposition, and for that matter, organisations like the Tax Payers Alliance with greater means to attack spending they don’t like? Yes it might, but getting all aspects of council spending out in the open will revolutionise local government.
Take some of the spending at CLG in the dying days of the last government. Labour Ministers authorised spending by Government Offices of the Regions that included £1,600 on massages, as well as more than £100,000 on market research and polling. There was a further £539 spent by CLG on a staff day-trip to Blackpool pleasure beach. Transparency may sound dull, but it tends to stop such pointless and excessive spending. And every little helps when you’re adding £400m to the overdraft every day.
Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard-earned cash is being spent, and how decisions are made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips. This greater transparency and accountability will help to reduce wasteful expenditure and allow councils to become more aware of best practice in other areas.
Transparency is key to our ambitions for the Big Society and decentralisation. It will drive the move from bureaucratic accountability to democratic accountability. From that perspective local people, rather than central government departments, should be the primary mechanism for shaping local services and holding local government and other service providers to account.
Liberal Democrats should welcome these moves. We’ve long campaigned for open and transparent government. From the Freedom of Information Act to making MPs Expense Claims public, Liberal Democrats have a long and proud history of fighting against obfuscation and concealment at all levels. The steps we are taking now in government are very much in that tradition.
At the start of this month CLG published details of our spending for the first quarter of 2010/11, and for 2008/09, having already published spending for 2009/10 back in August. As a department, we have been working hard with the Local Government Association on measures to increase transparency in councils, including new guidance from the LGA detailing best practice for putting council spending and senior salary information online. Local authorities have until January to follow suit, but already over 60 have published details of their spend over £500.
We can’t promise that these reforms will stop bad spending decisions from being made in the future, but we can promise that you will find out about them, and that in itself will be one of the best ways of stopping bad spending.
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17 Comments
Totally agree.
Contrast this with the Labour Party. They brought in the Freedom of Information Act, but Tony Blair says it was his biggest regret (along with banning fox hunting) of all his years in office!
Information without context is of little meaning, though, Andrew. That £539 trip to Blackpool might have given a team involved in regeneration a much better understanding of the problems involved in seaside town development. Or it may have added intangibly but profitably to team morale and bonding. Simply publishing headline figures tells us nothing about added value.
Very difficult not to welcome open government. But I must admit that it will be very easy to be critical of some issues, and I can see an awful waste of time on rebutting claims from the public – or even worse justifying spending or not on the basis of “how it might look” – on some (relatively) trivial spending which may “oil the wheels” internally in a Council.
Compare and contrast with the threat hanging over the Standards Regime for Councillors. The same ministers are ready to abolish this, in favour of criminal action against corrupt councillors (which may well be the right way to go for fraud and misuse of office, but I thought that could already be used?) The real and main problem is how bullying, egotistical and ill-motivated councillors treat individual members of their staff, members of the public, and fellow councillors. I have seen these often life-destroying actions described as trivial – sometimes they are, but often they need dealing with in the same way as any employee’s action of this type – by quick disciplinary action. And, yes, it is insufficient to say let the electorate vote them out. Firstly, the electorate may not be able to see what the problem is, secondly, the individual (s) may not be popular, thirdly, it is very easy for local power cliques to build, who can through local media ensure a distorted story gets out. We all know cases in our own party and others where without the Standards Regime people would get off scot free with totally unacceptable behaviour. Let’s stop this before it is too late.
“£1,600 on massages” Massages or messages? Massaging numerical figures or massaging anatomical figures? Was it
“£100,000 on market research and polling” Knowing how much these things cost, that doesn’t seem too bad. What was the research about? Did it help make a bigger operation more efficient?
“£539 spent by CLG on a staff day-trip to Blackpool pleasure beach.” Motivation and team-building is important in the public sector as it is in the private sector. Blackpool Pleasure Beach doesn’t seem like an appropriate venue though. How many staff were involved? A hundred or ten? Was it in recognition of doing overtime without pay? Or pulling a department out of trouble after a system failure?
Simply publishing the amount of money without expalining the context only feeds the Daily Mail. Elected representatives should be monitoring expenditure. It’s very difficult for members of the public to do this remotely from a computer in their home. The greatest benefit in doing this I believe, is not the information it gives to taxpayers and the public, but the affect it has on the employees, managers, accountants – working in public service departments.
I hope the government departments and the Cabinet office will also publish their expenditure details. The 85th birthday party for Margaret Thatcher, I hope was paid for by the Tory Party and not the taxpayers.
‘my colleague Eric Pickles.’ Words I never thought to hear from Andrew…
The BBC are obviously taking the government’s cuts message seriously. They’ve just dismissed 3 weathermen – Rob McElwee, Philip Avery , and the delightful Thomas Shafernaker (often heard on R4).
Tim13 seeks to defend the Standards Board (above) by saying that: “The real and main problem is how bullying, egotistical and ill-motivated councillors treat individual members of their staff, members of the public, and fellow councillors.” No Tim! The “real and main problem” with the Standards Board was how it was used by “bullying, egotistical and ill-motivated councillors” (and some council officers) to try and get their political opponents off local authorities by underhand and undemocratic means.
Andrew Stunell is absolutely right to abolish this unelected and unaccountable quango that has cost the taxpayer over £6 million a year. It’s just a pity it’s taking the coalition so long as the Standards Board is still in business right now and is still wasting over £120,000 of public money every week.
Conservative councillors in my own area of Gosport have cost the taxpayer over £100,000 in pursuing (unsuccessfully) numerous complaints against Liberal Democrat councillors, myself included, all of which have ended in them failing to remove the Lib. Dems. from office. Other Lib. Dems. elsewhere in the country haven’t been so lucky.
The sooner this quango is abolished, the better. And as part of the move towards more open and accountable local government maybe the coalition should also introduce a requirement that if Conservative or Labour councillors start using the police instead of the Standards Board to pursue their petty and vindictive vendettas then they should be made to meet the cost whenever a police investigation finds the Lib. Dem. complained about has done nothing wrong.
Peter, Why should we assume that vendettas are uniquely aimed at Lib Dems, and we never have any bad apples in the barrel. If you looked around prior to the May election you could and would have found quite a number of Lib Dems whose standards were not what we might have hoped! I am not suggesting that any party has a monopoly on these types, who can make others’ lives a misery.
A question. How would you deal – fairly, properly, with natural justice in mind, with those employed in any organisation, who break the rules of that organisation? And do individual cases take some investigation and expenditure? And why should councillors, who hold a lot of power in their local areas be exempt from these rules? Of course there are spurious and trivial allegations – as there are under the criminal law. It is the job of the professionals involved to sort those from the more serious ones. You wouldn’t get very far if you proposed the abolition of the criminal law!
Quis custodiet custodies?
Tim – You ask why councillors should be “exempt from these rules” but what about senior council officers? One of the many problems with the Standards regime, as a Standards Board Investigator admitted to me, was that the Board could only investigate councillors and not officers. That Investigator regretted that he could often find evidence of senior Council officers behaving badly but he had no power to investigate their actions, only those of councillors. Hardly an even playing field.
Councillors are accountable to the electorate and can be dismissed by them through the ballot box. But who are senior council officers accountable to? It is almost impossible for a Council to dismiss a poorly performing senior officer without incurring huge costs.
I agree, Peter. But if council officers are suspected of misconduct, the disciplinary process should be used. I know, we all know, that all of these processes are difficult, embarrassing, and often very hurtful – but as long as everyone can be faced with consequences if they step out of line, then at least the system has some protection in it for all concerned. Fairness in implementation, on the other hand, is another issue… As far as benefits if employment is terminated – normally gross misconduct would cut you off from any payment. I do actually think councillors sometimes overstate the advantages their senior officers have in these situations.
You mention poor performance, Peter. That should be addressed through “capability” proceedings. I don’t think there are any ways of dismissing councillors for poor performance. OK – if they fail to turn up – at all – for 6 months they are out, but what of the ones who give ill-thought out advice to members of the public (or no advice etc). They very rarely suffer as far as I know. We tried an appraisal scheme in Cornwall some years ago, and it didn’t fly very well at all! I wasn’t addressing poor performance, just trying to ensure the public is protected from those who would abuse their positions of trust and power.
Hmmmmmmmmm I wonder how Andrew Stunnells colleague Eric Pickles will react when he finds out that in Stockport [Andrew’s own Local Authority] when the big society roadshow hit town it was howled down in protest by erm………… specially invited local volunteers.Oh and the following week Stockports Council for Voluntary Service was wound up, as the local authority wiped out it’s grant, and who controls Stockport???? Why Andrew it’s the Liberal Democrats.Bye Bye big society in Stockport
Tim13 – You say above that you “don’t think there are any ways of dismissing councillors for poor performance”
Ummm, haven’t you heard of the ballot box?
Yes, Peter, ideally that would be good – though many poor performers don’t suffer that fate. It would and should be better under STV, where voters will have a free choice both of party, and of individual candidate. But you and I know that under FPTP, where people are voting for a particular party, it is very easy to slip through that particular net. Most parties, of whatever colour, are often very keen to have volunteers, and if they have already been elected that makes them doubly required. In short there are significant weaknesses of the ballot box as a way of dismissing councillors, or MPs for that matter. Most people are not interested in “politics” as you well know, apart from when it directly affects them!
I have tried to answer your point, Peter. What I am NOT advocating here is any body (such as Standards for England etc) to deal with capability / performance issues with councillors. We are supposed to take that on through the approval process (certainly in the Lib Dems). I am merely talking about those who abuse their position (not just financially, as Andrew has mentioned last month).
BIOLAP already has details of more than 70 other Councils’ payments to suppliers over £500 on its free Council Expenses Dashboard at – http://www.biolap.co.uk/index.php/councilexpenses.html
Users can slice and dice, compare and sort the data as well as drill through to underlying transactions.
BIOLAP is a BI Consultancy practice specialising in Planning, Analysis and Reporting solutions.
As a former Blackpool Councillor trying to get re elected next May, we need the detail of this £500 trip. There are conference type rooms available (in buildings within the Pleasure Beach Resort) rent free to some organisations that bring groups of people to Blackpool. They will buy food, beverages and may even spend the night in a local hotel.
Lib Dems suggesting that people cannot have a constructive, problem solving meeting in a room in Blackpool, followed by an hour or two of entertainment could be very damaging to the prospects of my collegues and I. Please give us all the facts, maybe it was a jolly with no reason, in which case call for those responsible to be sacked.