Chris Leslie, Director, NLGN
LGA First

There were some positive steps forward in the Government’s ‘Communities In Control’ White Paper which arguably make Whitehall more responsive to local needs, principally the extension of the yet-to-be-defined ‘duty to involve’ to a smattering of centralised quangoes, including the Arts Council, Environment Agency and JobCentre Plus. Whether anyone will ever sue a quango on the grounds it is in breach of its ‘duty to involve’ I doubt, but the principle is sound and should be welcomed.

Where the White Paper leaves us wanting more, however, is in the devolution of central government power from the other non-CLG departments. The ‘duty to respond to petitions’ proposed by Ministers for local government may help give citizens a stronger notion that they should hear back from councillors if they’ve gone to the trouble of gathering signatures. Of course, most local councils worth their salt will do this anyway.

However, there are very strong arguments for ensuring that a ‘duty to respond to petitions’ be extended to the rest of the public services and other government departments. How confusing might it be for a petitioner to be told that the social services department is duty bound to respond, but the local hospital is under no such duty? What is the rationale for having one duty for the nieghbourhood warden service to answer a petitioner’s argument, but exempting the police from such a requirement? A major criticism with Whitehall is too often the sense that there are in fact 22 different governments, one for each department of state, rather than a single joined-up entity.

As far as the public are concerned, they want their rights as citizens, taxpayers and service users to come first, regardless of the bureaucratic wiring. This is why I give two cheers to some of the ideas in the White Paper – including the duty to respond to petitions – but would urge the Government to look seriously at extending these provisions to every other public service too.

The Government may argue that petitions to central services should properly go via Parliament, which would be acceptable, although such a process would need elaboration, modernising and publicising. A core principle must be that Government departments need to be accountable too, not just local authorities.