Game Over (From Times Series)

Game Over

3:49pm Friday 27th February 2009

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Many years back the Labour Government changed the way Local Government works. Legislation set up the present Cabinet System. Members of the Cabinet are known as the Executive. The role of non cabinet councillors is to scrutinise and hold to account the work of the Executive.

Does it work in general? In my view probably not; does it work in Barnet? Definitely not! The way it operates in Barnet is that there are a number of scrutiny committees. Their task is to scrutinise policy and to make recommendations. Occasionally some good work is done but in my view this is more the exception than the rule.

A glaring weakness in Barnet’s system is that the Scrutiny Committees are all chaired by members of the ruling group. In Barnet’s case, the Conservatives. with the best will in world I suggest that within the small confines of Local Government members of the ruling group are hardly going to publicly criticise their colleagues, in any meaningful way.

Well last year a special scrutiny committee was tasked to look at the way Scrutiny works. They reported their findings to a full meeting of Council. I and others were not entirely convinced about the findings but the Conservative majority agreed most of the recommendations.

On Tuesday at a Special meeting to review the Constitution, Council Officers presented to top honcho Councillors (including me) a raft of ideas for changing the way scrutiny works. They gave us a slide show presentation. This was titled “Raising the Game”

Proposals included scrapping the existing scrutiny arrangement and replacing it with a completely new system; pretty harmless stuff in my view. But of course it must be more than just changing the process. Unless the members of the scrutiny committees ask the right questions and challenge the executive, no system in the world will work.

So far so good; but the officers had other recommendation. Regular readers will know about the mechanism for individual members of the Cabinet and Overview Committee to “call in “items from the Cabinet Meetings and Cabinet Resources Committee Meetings.

This procedure gives us a chance to quiz cabinet members about their work. It has led to some interesting exchanges. One of these exchanges directly led to the Leader getting his “Banker of the Year “award.

Well seems that we have been doing it all wrong. Only certain key decisions should be called in. The purpose of scrutiny apparently is not to ask questions.

The suggestion put to us was that instead of one member being able to call in an item it would require five and what’s more a special form would have to be completed. The Officers did put forward that perhaps at this time any item could still be called not just key decisions. The officers also proposed that the Leader of the Council should provide monthly reports to the Council.

The Committee members then tossed a few of these ideas around. There was some consensus that all of this was being rushed through to quickly. We all agreed not to proceed with the proposal that would take away the right of one member to call in an item from cabinet. The Leader also felt he did not have the resources to fulfil a commitment to produce monthly reports.

The next vote was on whether any item could be called in, not just a key decision. The Conservatives used their majority to agree that only key decisions could be scrutinised. What is key decision, good question, no one seemed to know. What I do know is that this will stop us quizzing Cabinet Members in the way we have been used to in the past.

Oh and finally, what about two other matters before us. The first on the involvement of the public in scrutiny and second the question whether opposition Councillors should chair Scrutiny Committees. Silence.