A recent article on Birmingham Against the Cuts (13 March) described the process of erosion of democracy in local government as a neo-liberal strategy of depoliticisation. A key element in the ongoing process of weakening of local Councils is the growing powers of Combined Authorities, governed by directly elected Mayors and leading local councillors, with direct involvement by business representatives and under overarching Government supervision. By next year Combined Authorities will cover 15 million citizens in England. This article examines aspects of the impact of the West Midlands Combined Authority on Birmingham City Council, its largest constituent authority, and BCC’s response.
The Combined Authority is run by an executive body, the Board, of which the Mayor is the only member who is directly elected by the citizens of the West Midlands. The other voting members of the Board consist of leading members of the 7 constituent local authorities. The Board also has non-voting representatives of 11 other local authorities and 4 business-led Local Enterprise Partnerships (which are now in the process of being integrated into the CA).
The CA has 7 policy-making committees: Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee, Economic Growth Board, Employment Committee, Environment and Energy Board, Housing and Land Delivery Board, Investment Board, Transport Delivery Committee. The CA also has just one Overview and Scrutiny Committee, with a Transport Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee.
The role of Scrutiny in local government
The section on Scrutiny in the WMCA Constitution is currently not available on its website for some reason, but it will be much like what Birmingham City Council’s Constitution says: “Overview and Scrutiny Committees have responsibility for scrutinising and reviewing the performance of the Council as a whole. They assist in strategic policy development, drive improvement in public services and enable the voice of the public to be heard. In addition to undertaking inquiries they have the power to ‘call in’ a decision of the Executive and to ask for it to be reviewed.” BCC’s Constitution quotes the statutory “Principles of Good Scrutiny” developed by the Centre for Public Scrutiny:
“i. Good Overview and Scrutiny adds value to Councils as it:
- a) Amplifies public voice and concerns;
- b) Drives improvement in public services;
- c) Provides constructive “critical friend” challenge;
- d) Is led by ‘independent minded people’ who take responsibility for their role.
CfPS thinks that there are three further components of good scrutiny and good governance which support and reinforce these principles. These components are necessary in order for democracy at a local level to be participative; they are necessary for good scrutiny to thrive. These are:
- Accountability – an environment where responsibility for services and decisions is clear and where those holding responsibility can and are answerable for success and failure;
- Transparency – the publication, proactively, of information relating to services and decisions to allow local people, and others, to hold policymakers and decision-makers to account;
- Involvement – rules, principles and processes whereby a wide range of stakeholders (including elected representatives) can play active roles in holding to account, and influencing and directing the development of policy.
These principles and components rely on the presence of a strong and supportive political and organisational culture; one in which forensic and robust scrutiny can develop and thrive.”
The 2019 Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Statutory Guidance on Overview and Scrutiny in Local and Combined Authorities says:
“A strong organisational culture that supports scrutiny work is particularly important in authorities with a directly-elected mayor to ensure there are the checks and balances to maintain a robust democratic system. Mayoral systems offer the opportunity for greater public accountability and stronger governance, but there have also been incidents that highlight the importance of creating and maintaining a culture that puts scrutiny at the heart of its operations.”
The CA has one specialist Scrutiny Committee, on Transport. That leaves Audit, Risk and Assurance, Economic Growth, Employment, Environment and Energy, Housing and Land, Investment, and the workings of the Board itself, to be held to account by just one Scrutiny Committee meeting only 7 times a year. (In fact, the Scrutiny Committee doesn’t even function properly in terms of attendance: of the 15 Councillor members only 7 attended more than 2 of the last 5 meetings and 3 attended none.) In that context, can the WMCA really claim to be “creating and maintaining a culture that puts scrutiny at the heart of its operations”?
BCC Councillors on WMCA bodies
There are 16 BCC Councillors who are representatives on WMCA bodies. Two of them – Ian Ward and Brigid Jones, the Council Leader and Deputy – are members of the governing Board. But the CA also has 10 Committees on which there is a total of 17 Birmingham Councillors, as follows:
Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee: Yvonne Mosquito
Economic Growth Board: Ian Ward
Employment Committee: Ian Ward
Environment and Energy Board: Majid Mahmood
Housing and Land Delivery Board: Sharon Thompson
Investment Board: Brigid Jones
Transport Delivery Committee: Timothy Huxtable (vice-chair), Mary Locke (vice-chair), Robert Alden, Zaker Choudhry, Shabrana Hussain, Narinder Kaur Kooner, Saddak Miah
Wellbeing Board; Karen McCarthy (vice-chair)
Overview and Scrutiny Committee: Lauren Rainbow, Jamie Tennant, Ken Wood
Transport Scrutiny Sub-Committee; Chaman Lal (vice-chair)
It is significant that 6 of the 10 CA Committees each have only a single BCC Councillor representative, and they are all members of the BCC Cabinet. Ian Ward, Leader, is on two key policy Committees as well as the Board – Economic Growth and Employment – and Brigid Jones, Deputy Leader, and also on the Board, is on one – Investment. Majid Mahmood, BCC Cabinet Member for Environment, is on the Environment and Energy Scrutiny Committee, Sharon Thompson, BCC Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness, is on the Housing and Land Delivery Board, and Yvonne Mosquito, BCC Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources, is on the CA’s Audit, Risk & Assurance Committee. This means that there are no Birmingham voices independent of the BCC Cabinet on these 6 key Committees.
Birmingham City Council, like most local Councils, uses the Executive Leader model, known as the ‘Strong Leader’ Model, launched in 2000 by the Blair government. All executive powers and functions are vested in the Leader, including the selection of a Cabinet committee, the key policy-making body. What BCC is doing on the 6 key CA Executive Committees is applying the ‘Strong Leader’ Model where all BCC’s powers are in the sole hands of BCC Cabinet Members. The advantage for the ‘Strong Leader’ model of restricting BCC representation to a single member of the BCC Cabinet is that it ensures that they each solely promote the view of the BCC leadership. (This contrasts with other Committees with more than one BCC member, especially the largest Committee, the Transport Delivery Committee, with 19 members, 6 of whom are BCC Councillors.)
But this strategy comes at a price – it does the opposite of creating “a strong and supportive political and organisational culture”. The exclusion by the Birmingham Council leadership of non-Cabinet Members from these 6 Committees, which are responsible for key issues for Birmingham, seems to be clearly in breach of the principles of good overview and scrutiny laid down by the Centre for Public Scrutiny: “rules, principles and processes whereby a wide range of stakeholders (including elected representatives) can play active roles in holding to account, and influencing and directing the development of policy”.
The consequences for Birmingham’s Scrutiny Committees
To be democratically accountable, Birmingham councillors on Combined Authority committees should be members of and answerable to the relevant BCC Overview and Scrutiny Committee. But in fact this is often not the case. The CA Transport Delivery Board has 6 BCC Councillors on it, but only one – Timothy Huxtable – is a member of a relevant BCC committee – the Sustainability and Transport Scrutiny Committee.
But the most contentious cases are represented by Cllr Majid Mahmood and Cllr Sharon Thompson. Cllr Mahmood is BCC’s Cabinet Member for Environment. His responsibilities include “Engaging in proactive citywide and national policy development to tackle the causes and consequences of climate change”. He is also BCC’s sole representative on the CA’s Environment and Energy Board. BCC’s most relevant Committee – their briefs are not identical – is its Sustainability and Transport Scrutiny Committee. But Cllr Mahmood is not a member of it because BCC’s Constitution forbids Cabinet Members from being on BCC Scrutiny Committees.
Similarly, Cllr Sharon Thompson is BCC’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness. She is also BCC’s only representative on the CA’s Housing Scrutiny Committee. But because she is a Cabinet Member she is not allowed to be a member of BCC’s Housing and Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Committee.
The explanation for both cases is that it is to protect the independence of Scrutiny from the Executive. (It is mandated by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government 2019 Statutory Guidance on Overview and Scrutiny in Local and Combined Authorities.) But BCC leadership’s decision to restrict places on these two key Committees solely to the Cabinet Members, excluding any other Birmingham Councillors, is deliberate. These two Committees are responsible for two key issues which are priorities for BCC to influence the policies of the CA. Restricting the Council’s representatives to just one Cabinet Member in each of these Committees ensures that only the official views of the BCU Cabinet are voiced, but at the expense of seriously undermining the “Principles of Good Scrutiny” developed by the Centre for Public Scrutiny and quoted in BCC’s Constitution. Although they can attend the relevant BCC Scrutiny Committee to present an item when requested, they aren’t integral members, feeding in information about views within the CA and gathering the views of BCC’s Scrutiny Committee in return at every meeting.
Combined Authority issues and BCC Scrutiny Committees
One consequence is that CA issues, which are key to many Birmingham Council reports, often don’t feature on the agendas of BCC Scrutiny Committees. To give a recent example, BCC’s Sustainability and Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 15 March 2023 approved the 20 page Birmingham Transport Plan. It contained nothing on transport in the wider West Midlands, including the Metro network. And there is no mention of CA issues in the Sustainability and Transport Scrutiny Committee Work Programme for the year. Another example is BCC’s Housing and Homelessness Scrutiny Committee. In the 37 page ‘City Wide Housing Strategy 2022-2027 Consultation’ report at the October 13 meeting last year there is just one mention of the WMCA: one of the 9 Key Workstreams is to “Collaborate with WMCA to Access New Sites and Investment Opportunities”. No further information is given. Nor is there any mention of the CA in the Action Tracker from September 2022 to February 2023.
There is one significant exception: BCC’s Coordinating Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which consists of the chairs of the individual Scrutiny Committees and is chaired by Sir Albert Bore, previously the Council Leader. Its Terms of Reference are to plan and co-ordinate the work of all the other Scrutiny Committees. Significantly, they include the following: “To fulfil the functions of an Overview and Scrutiny Committee as they relate to any policies, services and activities concerning governance (including transparency, regional working and partnerships)…”. So for example at its meeting on 17 March 2023 Cllr Ian Ward, Leader of the Council, provided the Committee with “an overview of current priorities and issues relating to the Leader’s responsibilities covered by the Committee”, and these included a 468 word item on the “West Midlands Combined Authority”, dealing with issues including the Trailblazer Devolution Deal for new and “deeper” devolution (“The most important work with the WMCA at present”), new “powers and flexibilities for local authorities”, Levelling Up Zones, and the WMCA Budget for 2023/24 “forecast to be in significant deficit” over the medium term.
All these issues need to be on the agendas of BCC’s Scrutiny Committees, not insulated in the Coordinating Committee, so that members who are on CA Committees are geared up to discuss them there and speak for Birmingham. (Ideally of course also at an elected West Midlands Assembly.)
Two processes of depoliticisation
The developments discussed in this article represent two processes of depoliticisation. One is the weakness of the Scrutiny process of the WMCA. The second one is the policy of the leadership of Birmingham City Council to restrict its membership of 6 key CA Committees to Cabinet members, preventing the opportunity of a direct, integrated and more democratically accountable relationship between its own Scrutiny Committees and the policy-making Committees of the CA. What drives the Council leadership is the struggle to assert its own policies in the face of the growing and undemocratic powers of the Combined Authority, but the cost of the Council’s ‘Strong Model’ of leadership is the undermining of its own processes of what the Centre for Public Scrutiny defines as three “components of good scrutiny and good governance: accountability, transparency and involvement – “rules, principles and processes whereby a wide range of stakeholders (including elected representatives) can play active roles in holding to account, and influencing and directing the development of policy”.
At present the citizens of Birmingham have little idea of what their Councillors are doing in the Combined Authority. There needs to be a clear and public network of relationships connecting the Councillors, through the pathways of not just the Cabinet but also the Scrutiny Committees, to all the committees of the Combined Authority: not just the Board but the issue-based committees and the Scrutiny Committees. The flow of issues, views and policies in both directions needs to be transparent. At present this is far from the case. For Birmingham one key channel is between the CA’s committees and its own Scrutiny Committees, and this needs a thorough re-thinking.
Richard Hatcher
13 April 2023
Footnote
It would be very useful to know more about whether the other Constituent Authorities in the WMCA are implementing a similar strategy. For example, in addition to Cllr Mahmood there are 7 other members of the Environment and Energy Scrutiny Committee. It is chaired by Ian Courts, the Leader of Solihull Council and its Environment, Energy and HS2 Portfolio Lead. Solihull does have one other member of the CA Scrutiny Committee, but all the other Councils have just one representative on it, all Cabinet members or Portfolio Leads for Environment issues. What are their links with their Council committees?
Birmingham Against The Cuts 