The dominance of the executive

At the heart of the new concern is the dominance of the executive over Parliament, enforced by the whips and party discipline. 

Parties and party discipline are necessary to good government, ensuring the ability of the Government to pursue its policies effectively. 

But party discipline can be carried too far, to the point where it curtails initiative and innovation by MPs, and enforces the views of government on matters of detail which are far from central features of policy.

The trick is to find a way of ensuring that the Government can achieve the main principles of its legislative programme, while providing scope for the views of MPs to be reflected in decisions within those principles, as well as giving MPs greater scope for initiatives on other matters.

The dominance of the executive has become a problem in local government, where the new political structures of the Local Government Act, 2000, are based on the national model, even to the extent of using the word ‘cabinet' to describe the executive. 

These structures are designed to create an executive dominant over the council and councillors, giving councillors little room for initiatives beyond the executive. 

Executive domination is reinforced by a party discipline which, in some authorities, is even more strictly enforced than in Parliament. The replication in local government of the dominance of the executive has its strengths, but also weaknesses that constitutional reform now challenges.

The Government is setting up an all-party inquiry under the chair of the public administration select committee, Tony Wright, who has put forward ideas that could make a more vibrant House of Commons without threatening the Government's main legislative programme. 

There is a need for a similar review in local government which could be carried out by individual local authorities, but would require national action because of the limits placed on innovation by current legislation and executive regulations.

The Local Government Association should set up its own review. Such examination could consider the scope for councillors generally to propose and decide policy, the extent to which the council can act on the recommendations of scrutiny committees, even when opposed by the executive, and measures to ensure that the council controls its business rather than the executive alone. 

In considering these issues, the review would be tackling the same sorts of areas being considered by the Tony Wright review. 

MPs and local government

This review should consider an important issue about local government – MPs dealing with matters under the control of local authorities.

Denied a meaningful role in relation to national government, MPs devote considerable time to local authority responsibilities. Much of the work of staff employed by MPs concerns these local topics, which should be dealt with by councillors.

The involvement of MPs undermines the role of councillors and confuses the public as to where responsibility lies, and weakens the role of MPs by transforming them from being national members of Parliament into local welfare workers. 

The national inquiry should consider the introduction of a self-denying ordinance by MPs not to become involved in local government's responsibilities, enforced by a refusal by the Commons to put forward questions about matters that are the responsibility of local authorities, in the same way as questions about the responsibilities of the devolved authorities are refused.

The electoral system

The prime minister wants a national debate on the electoral system, including the case for proportional representation. That debate is of vital concern to local government, where the case for proportional representation is even greater than for Parliament. The relative homogeneity of local authority areas means the distortion of first-past-the-post is even greater in local than in parliamentary elections. A single party can gain virtually all the seats on a council, even without a majority of the votes.

The electoral system should retain a link between electors and a local constituency, and should not increase the power of the party machine, as with the list system used in European elections that enhances party discipline. 

We favour the single transferable vote, as in Scottish and Northern Ireland local government, in multi-member constituencies of four or five members. 

The single transferable vote enables citizens to vote for a particular party, but also for particular candidates, strengthening the links between the electorate and councillors. 

The choice on which candidates to support is made by the electors, and not by a regional or national party machine.

National standards

We seek a commitment by the Government to decentralisation which strengthens local government, building on the prime minister's statement: ‘We must consider whether we should offer stronger, clearly-defined powers to local government and city regions, and strengthen their accountability to local people'. 

Such a commitment is a necessary element in constitutional reform. We are concerned about the current fashionable belief that decentralisation can be achieved by the introduction of national minimum standards, giving local authorities discretion as to whether they adopt higher standards.

We have already argued against this approach in a previous article for The MJ (6 November 2008). National minimum standards would be centralisation in a new form if the level of standards, and the resources available, made the minimum standard the actual standard. 

This danger, and the many practical problems of devising minimum standards which are not just input standards are concealed because minimum standards are advocated in the abstract. It is to easy to talk generally about minimum standards without showing what they would be in practice, and what choices there would be for local authorities. 

The balance of power

The way forward on decentralisation is to adopt the approach of the recent report on The balance of power: Central and local government from the CLG select committee, especially its proposal for a statutory constitutional settlement which recognises the constitutional position of local government and the principles that should govern central-local relations. 

A joint committee of the two Houses of Parliament, whose importance would be enhanced by measures taken to strengthen Parliament in relation to the executive, should monitor this settlement – another illustration of the way both central and local government are intermingled in constitutional reform.

The new secretary of state at CLG, John Denham, has already shown a welcome concern for constitutional reform in his proposal to set down the relationship between local authorities and central government, and to introduce a legally-enforceable charter giving local councils powers to prevent unwarranted interference by central government. 

The prime minster has indicated he supports a written constitution – in the longer term. In any such constitution, the role of local government should be covered, giving it constitutional recognition. A statutory constitutional settlement would be a step towards a written constitution. 

Fewer elected representatives

Some suggest a reduction in the number of MPs, which, if not accompanied by a reduction in the number of ministers, would increase the dominance of the executive, since ministers would constitute a much greater proportion of the membership of the House.

There are parallel suggestions that the number of councillors should be reduced, as has happened where unitary authorities have replaced existing counties and districts. 

The reduction in the number of elected representatives reflects disregard for the importance of representative democracy, of the vote and of elections. Our system of government is based on representative democracy. The fewer elected representatives, the less embedded is representative democracy in our system of government and in society generally. 
Already there are far fewer elected representatives in the UK in relation to population than in most European countries, and even in the US, when account is taken of state and local government as well as of federal government.

These constitutional issues are of importance for the future of local government and should be of central concern to an active Local Government Association as well as to individual authorities. As urged by the CLG select committee, boundaries can, and should be tested. 

George Jones is emeritus professor at the LSE, and John Stewart is emeritus professor at INLOGOV.