Blaming ministers for every failure drives the centralisation of power
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The problems which the government has faced with Public Health England and with Ofqual show how difficult it is to discover a wholly satisfactory way of making our public services accountable to ministers. In the old days of the nationalised industries, the public corporation was supposed to enable ministers to concentrate on policy, leaving operational matters to those who ran the industry. MPs therefore could question ministers as to whether it was government policy to subsidise loss-making branch lines, but not on why my train from Oxford to London was so often late.
This division of powers never really worked. If trains were late, commuters complained. They were not mollified by being told to contact railway staff. They blamed “the government”. Ministers, fearing loss of votes, realised that if they were to be held responsible for such operational matters as train timetables, they needed to acquire the powers to match their responsibilities. So they intervened on matters of detail, and managers found themselves with one hand tied behind their backs. No wonder that it seemed better for these industries to be run not by politicians but by those who stood to lose money if they were badly run.
More recently, the fashion has been to hive off public services into executive agencies, so that the delivery of public services can be separated from Whitehall departments. But similar problems arise.
It is the principle of ministerial responsibility which limits the degree of devolution or decentralisation in public services. A minister can at any time be brought down by what seems a matter of detail unconnected with policy — delays, for example, in issuing passports, or poor management of care homes. When Andrew Lansley set up Public Health England in 2012, he hoped to evade this problem. When something went wrong in a hospital, so he hoped, people would blame the managers not the government. In fact the public blames ministers for whatever goes wrong in the NHS, whether it is the fault of ministers or not.
A similar process, incidentally, has been apparent, even in matters which were the province of local government. In the 1970s, parents began to complain that the new comprehensives were not teaching Johnny or Mary to read or write. They were not mollified by being told to contact their local councillor or chief education officer. It was for government to ensure that children were equipped with the skills they needed. So once again ministers sought to acquire the powers to match their responsibilities. That meant, starting with James Callaghan’s “Great Debate” in the 1970s, the centralisation of education. This culminated in the reforms of David Blunkett and Michael Gove which diversified the secondary school system. These were necessary reforms no doubt, but they were undertaken by central government, not local authorities.
Perhaps devolution will alter this situation. In Scotland, voters may come to blame Holyrood for poor services, not ministers in London. In Greater Manchester, voters may blame Andy Burnham, not central government for deficiencies in public services for which the mayor is responsible. It is too early to tell. But it is we, the people, not wicked politicians, who are responsible for excessive centralisation.
Ofqual is of course in a different category to public health or schools, since politicians must not be allowed to get their sticky fingers onto examination outcomes. For this reason Ofqual is a non-ministerial department, not an executive agency. It has been suggested that Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, intervened at an early stage to ask that, in the absence of exams, there be no grade inflation in this year’s A level results. Even if he did, he has no power to issue instructions, except on minimum requirements for educational qualifications. For Ofqual is accountable not to ministers but to Parliament and the courts. So Williamson could have done no more than make a suggestion to Ofqual — indeed anyone can make a suggestion — which Ofqual would be free to accept or ignore.
But when Ofqual produced its algorithm, pressure from parents, teachers and indeed the general public, persuaded it to do a u-turn, so setting a bad precedent. Does it mean that, whenever examination results are deemed ungenerous or unfair, public pressure can compel a public body to revise them? In any case, grade inflation does no one any good — not the universities who accept students unsuited to their courses, not to those students unsuitable for university education, and, above all, not to employers who will have less evidence on the comparative worth of job applicants.
Williamson has been much criticised. But there were no easy answers. Indeed, it is not clear what else Williamson could have done, once the government had decided that the exams would not take place. Had it decided differently, it is not difficult to imagine the furore which the teachers unions and indeed parents would have created, claiming that the health of teachers and children was being put at risk.
The very worst option would have been to rely on teachers assessments. Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with teachers knows that, for the best of reasons, they are congenitally over-optimistic. I blush with shame when I remember my degree result predictions in references to employers and graduate schools, in which ugly ducklings were miraculously transformed into swans.
If we, the voters, wish examination results to be free from political intervention, and if we really wish to see genuine decentralisation, we must cease to demand the head of the minister when things go wrong. It is all too easy to damn the minister rather than analysing what has gone wrong and how it can be put right.
