[Claire Lee]

Did anyone hear the interesting coverage of yesterday's select committee 'grilling' of Bob Diamond on the Today programme this morning? Nick Robinson commenting on the general consensus that the MPs hadn't been very effective, suggesting that they had made the sort of 'outraged' points that their constituents would have wanted, but had failed to effectively pursue a line of enquiry.

He also observed that the job of Today programme presenters interviewing politicians and others would be made a lot more difficult if they were accompanied by a dozen other people, all with their own questions they want to ask and their own political perspectives! See also Nick Robinson's blog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18711284

Welcome to the world of scrutiny! Can local government do better?

[tim gilling]

Thanks Claire, I have just listened to the clip on iplayer. I am sure there are many better examples of scrutiny in local government but I am also sure there are similar or worse examples.

I think the clip illiustrates two points:

(1) there is a 'web of accountability' - accountability works in lots of different ways, each with distinct powers, style, tone and influence.

(2) culture is more influential than structures and processes - this is true of banking practice/regulation and is also true of scrutiny/accountability. Getting the culture right is always more important than having 'compliant' structures or processes.

[Ed Hammond]

Yes, the approach to regulation in the finance sector appears to be one of "compliance" - which is arguably the core of the problem.

In terms of the practical differences between Select Committees, journalists and others carrying out scrutiny, this has been raised in the context of the Leveson inquiry too. I've seen it suggested that the experience with Leveson should be a strong driver to having barristers conduct questioning on behalf of select committees too!

I think the difficulty is that this is comparing apples and oranges. When you are conducting a rigorous, post-facto analysis of who said what when, and what happened as a result, you need to take a forensic approach, and questioning needs to be planned to reflect this. When a piece of work is more exploratory - like most select committee work is, gathering expert evidence on policy issues - the questioning line being taken will be utterly different. The mistake that many journos make is in assuming that forensic questioning is the only kind of questioning that exists - and assuming that politicians, by definition, are bad at it.

We all know councillors who are excellent question-askers but ultimately when you have a group of them together the level and quality of questioning can be dragged down to the lowest common denominator. Which is why members need to be encouraged to talk to each other about the questions they plan to ask, before they ask them. The Select Committee's phone hacking evidence session with the Murdochs was a classic example where this didn't happen, which led to momentum being lost and lines of questioning not picked up and followed adequately (in my personal opinion)

[Helen Kenny]

See also article in yesterday's Independent on the same theme:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com...23458.html