Written evidence submitted by Councillor Terence Neville OBE JP, London Borough of Enfield [OSG 075]
1. Introduction
1.1 I am Terence Neville. I am a solicitor by profession and have a 50 year record of local government service – 20 years professionally, most of which as a senior or Chief Officer, and 30 years as an elected member of Enfield London Borough Council. Until 2016 I was a London magistrate for 30 years.
1.2 I was also a Director of John Lewis Partnership Plc for some 25 years, retiring from that role in 2006.
1.3 At Enfield I am currently Leader of the Opposition, but over the 30 years as a Member, I have served in several high profile roles either as a Committee Chairman, a Cabinet Member, Deputy Leader of the Council and twice as Opposition Leader, once in the nineties and currently. I can therefore claim, I think, extensive experience of local government and local government law and I have extensive practical experience of scrutiny. For 3 – 4 years in the nineties I was Chairman of the “Quality of Life” scrutiny panel which was responsible for scrutinising the Environment Service; I have also “called-in” many executive decisions for review, and while a member of the executive, defended my own decisions at scrutiny committees.
1.3 I will now make my submission by reference to the headings that the committee has specifically asked for.
2. Are scrutiny committees in local authorities in England effective in holding decision-makers to account?
2.1 Before answering that question specifically, I should say that immediately following the re-election of the present administration in Enfield in 2014 it was decided to reduce the scrutiny function, almost to the bare minimum. In the result, five standing scrutiny panels were abolished, leaving just the three statutory committees – an Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) and the two statutory–specific committees dealing with health, and police and crime scrutiny. I do not know the extent to which this practice was followed elsewhere, but if it was then it is unlikely that scrutiny in English local authorities is or can be truly effective. That said, even if there had been no reductions, for the reasons that follow I could not be confident that the process truly achieves its objectives.
2.2 I want to say at the outset that what I am saying is based not only on practical experience, but also on the record, albeit that it may give the flavour of a party political statement. In Enfield, when scrutiny was introduced following the commencement of the relevant provisions of the Local Government Act 2000, the council was controlled by my party. We duly established an OSC and six scrutiny panels broadly covering the various services that we were responsible for providing. The scrutiny system worked reasonably effectively, and I can think of several examples of where my own decisions as Cabinet Member for Environment at the time were “referred back” by scrutiny. By contrast, under the Labour Administration which followed in 2010, I can think of only one decision since then that was referred back, and even that in the most grudging and reluctant way. I should perhaps answer the separate question – why do I think that is the case.
2.3 Frankly, it is not simply a matter of whether the rules are adequate, but a matter of how they are applied and enforced in a relatively small political arena. The rules provide in effect that there should be no “whipping” of members of the scrutiny committee. Patently a look at the decisions of the Enfield OSC over the past 7 years will show there just has to have been “whipping” – unsaid of course, but an innocent observer or the so called “man on the Clapham omnibus” referred to in so many public law judgements, would have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that members of the majority side on scrutiny had been “whipped”, thus negating the purpose of scrutiny.
2.4 How could the system be improved? In my judgement an immediate and I believe effective improvement would be made if the Local Government Act 2000 was amended so as to require a minimum number of independent voting members of the scrutiny committee, just as there is an independent member n councillor conduct committees. To be clear, there are existing arrangements for co-opting members onto the committee particularly in the education field, and where an education topic is being discussed then those members will attend. What I am suggesting is that there should be an obligation on the council to appoint permanent paid independent members.
3. The extent to which scrutiny committees operate with political impartiality and independence from executives?
3.1 In my experience of Enfield it is plain that although there is a certain amount of pretence at impartiality, the record proves otherwise. I will demonstrate later in this paper by reference to a case history which is a very good example of why I am able to confidently express that view. In many ways this is unsurprising when one considers the relatively small size of councils and thus political groups, resulting in a smaller pool of members from the majority side from whom the membership of scrutiny committee must be chosen, combined with absence on any independent voting members.
4. Whether Scrutiny officers independent of and separate from those being scrutinised?
4.1 In Enfield those arrangements seem to be satisfactory and indeed when scrutiny was set up and throughout our term it was plainly a separate function. Unfortunately, reductions in expenditure have meant that there has necessarily been a joining up of functions by officers who have responsibility for administering scrutiny.
5. How are chairs and members selected?
5.1 Chairs are appointed by the council i.e. in practice the majority party through their own internal party arrangements, and the majority membership of the committee(s) likewise. The Opposition has its apportioned number of representatives who are nominees of the Opposition Leader.
6. Whether powers to summon witnesses are adequate?
6.1 I personally believe that they are although they are not often used other than to send for executive directors and senior management, plus in the case of health scrutiny and police & crime, the relevant management of those services.
7. Does Scrutiny have a potential to act as a voice for the local service users?
7.1 I would say that it does have the potential and indeed in some cases it has been effective. The Quality of Life Scrutiny Panel that I referred to earlier was regularly attended by a significant number of members of the public who were there to express their concerns and raise questions about poor service delivery. Equally today the Health Scrutiny Panel is relatively well attended by members of the public who plainly have interest and concerns about local health service delivery. I think that the problem is of course that if you are in administration you may not wish necessarily to give too much publicity to scrutiny meetings if there are problems with your service delivery. What tends to happen is that the bare minimum of publicity is given and unless public opinion is running high on a particular topic and attempts are made by other members to generate attendance, generally public attendance is poor.
8. How topics for Scrutiny are selected?
8.1 These are generally selected by the main Overview and Scrutiny Committee. In Enfield whereas, as I’ve indicated, there used to be a number of scrutiny committees responsible for scrutinising different services, the present administration has effectively cut all of that so that there is only one, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, and, what are called “workstreams”. These workstreams will look at particular topics but they tend to be less formal. The workstreams are decided by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, but the membership of those workstreams will decide the topics that they are going to review. This aspect of scrutiny has had varying degrees of success.
9. The support given to the scrutiny function given by political leaders and senior officers?
9.1 As I have said above the scrutiny process has been drastically cut back. There are not now five or six formal committees sitting to deal with particular services of the council; there is just the one committee and a few workstreams. While I can’t speak for the Leader of the Council I can say for myself that I am a great supporter of scrutiny having, as I said earlier in this submission, chaired a scrutiny committee for some considerable period of time which is generally reckoned to have produced a successful outcome.
Apart from an annual report we published reports on the work of the committee and again as I have indicated that committee was well attended – almost a full house in terms of public attendance. I would add that in my view successful scrutiny is now essential to ensuring democracy in local government.
10. What use is made of specialist advisors?
10.1 In my experience very little. There is, undoubtedly because of the nature and range of subjects covered, an opportunity to call in specialist advisers, but this has been used pretty sparingly by both Parties on the council.
11. The effectiveness and importance of local authority scrutiny of external organisations?
11.1 I think that currently, this is the most successful aspect of scrutiny inasmuch as the Committee will be aware that we have a statutory responsibility to scrutinise health services and crime and policing. I happen to be a member of the Health Scrutiny Committee and we have recently carried out a pretty thorough scrutiny of the North Middlesex Hospital which had been threatened with “Special Measures” by the CQC. We have interviewed senior management of the hospital on two occasions now, in order to press them into action to remedy some of the failings that have been identified by the CQC. Likewise my colleagues who serve on the Crime & Policing Scrutiny Committee, which chaired by my Deputy Leader of the Opposition, has also been quite successful in probing and holding to account local police management.
12. The role of scrutiny in devolution deals and the scrutiny models used in combined authorities?
12.1 I really can’t make any comment based on direct experience because it is not one that is relevant to the Enfield situation. I’d believe however that scrutiny has a significant role to play both in combined authorities and especially in devolution deals.
13. Examples of where scrutiny has worked well.
13.1 As I said earlier my experience of scrutiny is predominantly around “call-ins” and for the reasons indicated above by and large I have to say it has not worked well and I will deal with some examples later in this submission. To take the positive issue of where scrutiny has worked well, I believe it has worked well in terms of scrutinising health and in scrutinising police and crime. The record of holding the CCG to account in terms of health is very good and it has helped to bring into the public spotlight CCG plans for the area which might otherwise not have attracted the publicity or indeed wider knowledge that a well-attended scrutiny meeting can achieve. Likewise in terms of policing.
13.2 So far as council services are concerned I do recall we had a very successful scrutiny some years ago into the problem of young gangs in our area. There had at the time in the Edmonton district been a series of murders through stabbing, largely as a result of rivalry between youth gangs. We used the scrutiny process, although we called it a Scrutiny Commission for this purpose to give it the right sort of profile, to take evidence from a whole range of people interested in and involved with youth including young people themselves, which came up with a series of very good recommendations to try to deal with the problem. Sadly as we all know the problem has not been solved in its entirety, but I do believe that the work that was done through the scrutiny process in that regard was a success.
13.3 Similarly another scrutiny review was carried out more recently on housing and in particular homelessness, which was able to uncover the fact that detailed checks on applicants were not as thorough as they should have been with the result that people who were perhaps not genuinely homeless or who had not the relevant “local connection” were being housed/rehoused ahead of others.
14. Examples of cases where scrutiny has not worked so well.
14.1 The most recent or series of examples in fact, concerns a large project in the borough called Cycle Enfield which is a proposal for several £multimillion cycling lanes on major roads in the borough. One in particular is along an extensive part of route A105, where there had been significant public opposition to the proposals expressed both through the council’s official online consultation and also in a “postal referendum” conducted by the Enfield Southgate MP, David Burrowes, which had a 75% vote against in a turnout of over 2,500. Ultimately this scheme was signed off by the relevant Cabinet Member despite these protests and then went out to statutory consultation under the Road Traffic Regulation Act. Again the same relevant Cabinet Member signed off the statutory consultation and it was “called in” by me for scrutiny. At the scrutiny hearing which was extremely well attended by members of the public necessitating an overflow room, evidence was presented and not contradicted of the following:
a) Two days after the commencement of the statutory consultation, the council had placed an order for the works to commence, on the day immediately after the anticipated scrutiny date hearing, thus displaying a complete disregard for both the consultation and scrutiny process.
b) There had been over 1600 objections to the statutory consultation – a figure that in 30 years of active involvement with matters of this kind, I had never seen on a statutory as distinct from a formal consultation.
c) The consultation ended in the present case on 29 July 2016, yet by the 11 August 2016– officers had produced a report for the Cabinet Member recommending that the scheme should proceed, which he signed a mere 4 working days later. The consideration of 1600 objections would on any analysis, require much longer to be seen to be done properly. Moreover as was pointed out at the scrutiny committee, this flew in the face of a ruling by the Supreme Court in 2014 on what amounted to proper consultation by public authorities, in a case involving our neighbouring borough Haringey, the Supreme Court Rule that one of four principles satisfying the requirements of adequate public consultation was:
“that adequate time must be given for consideration and response and that the product of consultation must be conscientiously taken into account in finalising any proposals”
It was plain from the timescale that simply could not have happened in this case.
d) One of the local bus companies had objected to inter alia, the removal of a bus lane and under the relevant regulations if a bus company objects to such an order there must be a Public Local Inquiry. At the point at which the Cabinet Member had signed off the decision which was then being reviewed, the objection had not been withdrawn, ergo, he should not have signed it. It happened to have been withdrawn 2 or 3 days before the scrutiny committee hearing but it had plainly not been withdrawn when the decision that was being reviewed was taken. There were also produced internal minutes which showed that the officers were intent on avoiding a public inquiry and were looking at all costs to prevent such an inquiry.
14.2 Despite all of this evidence which was broadly was not contradicted, all of the majority members voted to uphold the decision.
14.3 On any analysis that cannot be right and only served to bring the scrutiny process into disrepute.
14.4 Another example of how scrutiny did not work well was when in November 2016 the council’s Cabinet had received a report on performance outturn which showed that aspects of its financial management was showing “red” on the traffic light indicator. The Cabinet “noted the paper” and when an attempt was made to call it in for a review this was resisted, as it was said that “no decision had been made. It was merely noted”.
14.5 Similarly as regards an overspend of in excess of £6m (3% of the budget), I had sought to call that in for review because again the Cabinet had simply “noted” it without giving any instructions or political direction as to how the overspend should be tackled. Again this was resisted initially on similar grounds. I had to present an argument to the officers who were resisting it – I am bound to say I suspect under instruction – pointing out that legally “noting” was a decision inasmuch the Cabinet could have chosen to do something other than note i.e. to give some direction and to the extent that it chose only to “note” it had made a decision which was therefore subject to review. That argument eventually prevailed and a call-in was heard. However the call-in on performance was not heard as a call-in but was simply referred to one of the workstreams and as a result that discussion and review has been seriously delayed. So again two further examples of how scrutiny has not worked because it is capable of political manipulation.