Select Committees vs Overview and Scrutiny

Last updated:31 March 2010

Huw Yardley
Clerk, Communities and Local Government Committee
House of Commons

As the “link man” for the House of Commons Committee Office with our colleagues in local government overview and scrutiny, I have recently started attending, when I can, meetings of the County and Unitary Councils Officer Overview and Scrutiny Network.

These meetings are regularly attended by our colleagues from over the fence in the Department for Communities and Local Government, who tell us what they can (which frustratingly often isn’t much) about the most recent developments in Government thinking on overview and scrutiny.

During one recent such session—and particularly during the discussion and questions afterwards—I found myself listening with growing incredulity to the exchanges going on. “When will you be completing the guidance on this?”, colleagues asked. “How do you suggest that we go about that?” “What will the procedures be for doing the other?”
Eventually, I could restrain myself no longer. I put up my hand and caught the facilitator’s eye. I explained my astonishment at the nature of the questions being asked and the apparent slavish reliance on explanation, guidance, instruction, direction from CLG. “Why”, I asked, “don’t you just get on with it?”.

Of course all I demonstrated in so doing was my own lack of appreciation of the nature of the job which you do and the huge differences in the context of the work of local government overview and scrutiny committees, on the one hand, and Parliamentary select committees, the model on which O&S was originally based, on the other.

Over the next few weeks—assuming, as we all are, a 6 May general election—I and a number of colleagues from the House of Commons Committee Office (along with one or two from Hansard and the Library) will be attempting to redress this lack of understanding and appreciation by spending some time working with you in various local authority overview and scrutiny teams around England.

There should be much to be gained for both sides through this arrangement. The House of Commons is not such a stuffy, hide-bound organisation as the outside world likes to think we are. Difficult though it may be for you to imagine, there is much dynamism and creativity going on here! But, especially for a career House employee such as myself (thirteen years down, twenty-seven to go), the opportunity to see how other organisations work, how they go about things, and how they organise themselves, and to understand the very different restraints and conventions which apply to their work, will, I hope, prove invaluable in improving the way we do our jobs. But there should be more than that, too. We hope to get an insight into:

• The local impact of the policies we scrutinise at national level;
• How other public sector scrutineers work;
• How the business of scrutiny operates in local authorities – committees, task and finish panels, other formal and informal bodies;
• How scrutiny works when it has to rely on “soft” power to get its work done;
• How scrutiny operates when it is quite low profile, struggling to make its voice heard in the locality;
• How scrutiny works (and doesn’t work) with other local scrutineers – police authorities, probation boards, NHS Local Involvement Networks etc;
• How local scrutiny grapples with issues with which we are already familiar: demonstrating its effectiveness, getting Members involved, gathering and evaluating evidence, and dealing with political issues which may threaten to derail inquiries.

And for those of you who have been kind enough to offer to host me and my colleagues, I hope that there will be more in it than just an extra pair of hands (valuable though I know that is in itself). We should bring a knowledge of national government policy and practice, certainly, and an understanding of the workings of Parliament, which may—or may not!—help you to appreciate the welter of initiatives and directions which rain down on you from those sources. But we may also bring some useful thoughts on being an independent scrutiny service, free of ties to the Executive; on the value of an approach based on holding that executive to account—as opposed to a policy development/policy overview approach; and, to return to where I started, on the freedom of deciding, with and for your Committee, what you want to do, and getting on and doing it in the way which suits the Committee best, without having to adhere to guidelines or checklists.

Not all of what we learn from each other will be transferable. The political, legal and cultural contexts in which we each operate are very different, and will remain so. But I and my colleagues are looking forward to finding out about those differences, to sharing our experiences, and to coming back not just with some ideas about how we can do our jobs better, but also with a better understanding of scrutiny and accountability at a local level. Look out for later e-digests, and see how we got on.

31 March 2010