Vanishing act

Scrutiny, then silence. How can a Commons health committee
report disappear in to thin air? Anna Coote looks at the fate of
the latest report on public health, much of it concerning social
work.

have been partly because the committee’s recommendations were
not confrontational. The report was timely and salient, it didn’t
mince words, and some of it will have made uncomfortable reading
for ministers and mandarins. But it provided no scandal, no storm
of controversy. So it raised scarcely a murmur in the media and
caused barely a ripple on the Whitehall pond.

This is a problem that afflicts not just the health committee’s
latest inquiry, but most House of Commons select committees much of
the time. It so happened that my work with the health committee
coincided with time as a member of the Hansard Society’s commission
on the scrutiny role of parliament, chaired by Lord Newton and due
to report this summer. I sat on a sub-group of the commission that
looked at select committees. It seemed a bit like peering through
both sides of a keyhole at once.

For the Hansard commission, the value of select committees was
never in doubt. They are the mainstay of parliamentary scrutiny –
where representatives of the people call government to account. The
question at stake is how to make them stronger and more influential
players in the democratic process.

One problem is the quality of technical assistance available to
select committees, not only for research and analysis but also for
presenting and promoting their work. The report on public health
came out in plain blue covers, without any media campaign beyond a
thinly attended press conference. These days, any government
department, commercial enterprise or voluntary organisation knows
the value of careful design, glossy presentation, separate
summaries for busy readers, and experts who know how to sell a
story to the media. Yet select committees still offer up their
reports as though they were intended only to gather dust.

A preliminary paper prepared for the Hansard commission suggests
that select committees urgently need more staff resources. “Most
comparable organisations seek to retain and nurture their
specialist and expert staff. The House of Commons seems determined
to have no permanent, long-serving experts working on select
committees at all.”

Only the House of Commons itself can raise the profile and
status of select committees, for example, by changing procedures
and voting them more resources. So far it has failed to rise to the
challenge. One reason is that government has an interest in
constraining the scrutiny potential of MPs and government
effectively controls parliament. Another is that select committees
are not rated highly by MPs themselves. They are expected to throw
over the potentially powerful job of select committee chairperson
when offered the most junior, bag-carrying post in the government
or shadow team.

So select committees rely for continuity and experience on
old-timers and perennial backbenchers who have abandoned
ministerial ambitions. Newcomers with calibre and ambition pass
through like a dose of salts. If select committee membership is
something that ministers have shaken off on their way up the greasy
pole, is it any wonder that they fail to tremble – or even focus –
when a committee report is published?

Next month the Hansard commission will set out proposals for
sharpening up the performance of select committees. I hope its own
report makes more of a splash than most of theirs. CC

Anna Coote is director of public health at the King’s Fund

Eleven members of parliament, six months of hearings and
discussions, 57 witnesses and 111 items of written evidence: this
is what it took to produce the House of Commons health select
committee’s latest report on public health – two substantial
volumes, with 63 conclusions and recommendations and 553 pages of
supporting minutes of evidence, memoranda and appendices, published
on 19 March 2001.

If I say it is a good report, you must allow for the fact that I
was one of its advisers, and so inclined to like the way it turned
out. But don’t take my word for it. Browse through it yourself. It
has much of relevance to the field of social care. For example, the
inquiry was concerned with the effectiveness of local partnership
arrangements between health and local government, as well as
measures to tackle the social and economic determinants of health
and reduce inequalities – all of which have a bearing on why
individuals become vulnerable and needy. And it is, of course, the
same health committee that is responsible for scrutinising
government action on social services and community care.

The report offers plenty of gritty recommendations. Policy, it
says, should not just target “the small group who are the most
deprived” but try to level out the gradient between those with high
and low chances of enjoying good health. The NHS Plan lost a “great
opportunity” by its “lack of emphasis” on public health. In “the
race for resources” the government’s “laudable rhetoric” about
“dragging public health from the ghetto… runs the risk of
trailing well behind fix-and-mend medical services”. Action Zones
and other local initiatives suffer because of their “quantity and
lack of integration” – difficulties that reflect “profound systemic
and structural problems”. There should be a presumption in favour
of public health staff being jointly appointed by – and accountable
to – health and local authorities. Local plans for health
improvement and community well-being should be merged. The NHS
should use its “substantial resources… to improve health through
direct and indirect employment and through its procurement and
planning functions”. And so on… all this and much more. The
supporting evidence is a treasure trove of data, ideas and analysis
from almost every prominent figure in public health.

What is troubling is not the quality of the report, but the
deafening silence that greeted its launch. This may have been
partly because the committee’s recommendations were not
confrontational. The report was timely and salient, it didn’t mince
words, and some of it will have made uncomfortable reading for
ministers and mandarins. But it provided no scandal, no storm of
controversy. So it raised scarcely a murmur in the media and caused
barely a ripple on the Whitehall pond.

This is a problem that afflicts not just the health committee’s
latest inquiry, but most House of Commons select committees much of
the time. It so happened that my work with the health committee
coincided with time as a member of the Hansard Society’s commission
on the scrutiny role of parliament, chaired by Lord Newton and due
to report this summer. I sat on a sub-group of the commission that
looked at select committees. It seemed a bit like peering through
both sides of a keyhole at once.

For the Hansard commission, the value of select committees was
never in doubt. They are the mainstay of parliamentary scrutiny –
where representatives of the people call government to account. The
question at stake is how to make them stronger and more influential
players in the democratic process.

One problem is the quality of technical assistance available to
select committees, not only for research and analysis but also for
presenting and promoting their work. The report on public health
came out in plain blue covers, without any media campaign beyond a
thinly attended press conference. These days, any government
department, commercial enterprise or voluntary organisation knows
the value of careful design, glossy presentation, separate
summaries for busy readers, and experts who know how to sell a
story to the media. Yet select committees still offer up their
reports as though they were intended only to gather dust.

A preliminary paper prepared for the Hansard commission suggests
that select committees urgently need more staff resources. “Most
comparable organisations seek to retain and nurture their
specialist and expert staff. The House of Commons seems determined
to have no permanent, long-serving experts working on select
committees at all.”

Only the House of Commons itself can raise the profile and
status of select committees, for example, by changing procedures
and voting them more resources. So far it has failed to rise to the
challenge. One reason is that government has an interest in
constraining the scrutiny potential of MPs and government
effectively controls parliament. Another is that select committees
are not rated highly by MPs themselves. They are expected to throw
over the potentially powerful job of select committee chairperson
when offered the most junior, bag-carrying post in the government
or shadow team.

So select committees rely for continuity and experience on
old-timers and perennial backbenchers who have abandoned
ministerial ambitions. Newcomers with calibre and ambition pass
through like a dose of salts. If select committee membership is
something that ministers have shaken off on their way up the greasy
pole, is it any wonder that they fail to tremble – or even focus –
when a committee report is published?

Next month the Hansard commission will set out proposals for
sharpening up the performance of select committees. I hope its own
report makes more of a splash than most of theirs.

Anna Coote is director of public health at the King’s
Fund.

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