Holding to Account

At least once a year, usually around this time, every one of the Portfolio Holders in Medway Council's Cabinet comes before the Scrutiny Committee that scrutinises their portfolio. This is to give an account of what they have achieved during the past year and to answer questions from members of the committee. In a couple of cases, the one portfolio spreads across two committees so they are called to both.

One such is the Leader of the Council, Rodney Chambers (pictured here) whose portfolio covers both Regeneration and Democracy & Governance. Last night was his appointment with the Regeneration and Development Scrutiny Committee, and I was there as a substitute for an absent colleague.

It is no doubt tempting to ask a pre-arranged "friendly" question -- as Labour MPs so often (and rather obviously!) do at Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament. I don't believe in that, though, and prepare my own questions which are often quite challenging. The clue to this is how quickly and glibly the Portfolio Holder answers, especially at the start of his/her reply. When I ask a question, there is usually a lot of obvious thinking going on to formulate the answer. This happened last night, as usual...

As always at such events, I tried to think of something appropriate to ask, on this occasion bearing in mind that I was not a regular member of the committee. Thus I was able to answer a general question that could shed some light on why so much is happening now and did not do so before we took over running the council. I am sure that many people now living or working in Medway who were not here while places like Chatham began a long period of decline would find that interesting.

Indeed, I reasoned, as a relative newcomer here myself, it must seem strange that so much is going on at once, with disruption to places such as the aforementioned Chatham, whereas if this had been done earlier -- when traffic was not so heavy -- there would have been less pain. I commented that I was aware that all the preliminary work toward much of this (including Chatham and Rochester Riverside) was done by the early 'nineties -- and that would not have been conducted (at Council Tax-payers' expense) if there were no realistic prospect of taking those projects forward. This point was important as, with the change of political make-up of the former Rochester-upon-Medway City Council in 1991, these projects suddenly stalled.

I think the Leader was being rather generous in his reply, in that he did not blame the Labour administration of the period from 1991 to 2000 for sitting on all this while Chatham in particular fell into ever greater decay. He suggested that a city-sized council couldn't have afforded to invest in the necessary land assembly. I pointed out that the predecessor council had some £210 million is reserves in 1991 (most of which had gone by 2000, by the way!) but as Cllr Chambers came from the Gillingham half of the constituent parts of what became Medway Unitary Authority he couldn't verify this.

A second aspect to my question concerned the rate of progress we were making relative to other parts of the Thames Gateway region. Although all parts of the Gateway had already had substantial sums of capital investment funding made available to them, at around the same time as us, only we had made any real progress until very recently. Indeed, the Leader quoted the case of Thurrock in Essex who were setting up an Urban Development Corporation (UDC) to deal with their regeneration; but they had taken a year just to decide where the UDC would be housed. Similar tales apparently abound throughout the Gateway.

The Leader explained that the key difference is that we are leading, driving, and delivering our regeneration ourselves -- that's the Medway Renaissance Partnership, with us as the Administration of Medway Council being the lead partner. What has now become known as the "Medway Model" has been recognised elsewhere; and the Leader was able to tell the meeting that other councils were thinking of adopting it themselves. Indeed, Southend Council were due to visit us shortly for this very purpose.

Meanwhile, the Government Minister had recently visited and HERE is a short video made during that visit.

All fascinating stuff -- both the question and the response -- and I think it was well worth bringing this to public awareness right now. There was a press reporter in attendance throughout the meeting, but this part might not be considered worthy of reporting, so I have put it here for the benefit of anyone who might be interested.

As one would expect, the questions from the regular members of the committee were more to do with specific issues and details, and were also interesting in their own way, though most of it has already been aired in recent months so need not be reported here. It will probably appear in this Friday's local newspaper anyway...

Holding to Account

I mentioned a few days ago that Medway's Scrutiny Committees a currently going through our customary "end of term" exercise of holding the Executive to account, as it's termed. I was at Children's Services Scrutiny last night, and the latest Cabinet "victim" to sit in our equivalent of the Mastermind chair and be questioned was the portfolio holder for children's social care -- Councillor David Wildey.

Now, his is a fairly recently created position, and has existed for just eight months, so I felt he needed to justify this additional Cabinet post.

I had (as always) done my homework, and found that someone looking at the official information available from the council's website wouldn't give an impression of much being done by him. Indeed, there have been only four reports to Cabinet that have concerned his portfolio, and all four of those also included the (statutory) "Lead Member" for Children's Services, so do we really need a second portfolio?

I was first off the blocks, so put all of this to him, though not in precisely these terms: asking questions is of course done differently from reporting the sense and import here. David answered fairly well (although, as he will be the first to admit, he isn't the best person in the world at expressing himself clearly in situations such as this), as he did through his forty-minute stint.

By the end of this session, he had justified his job quite well, though it is of course still early days and next year's such event should be much more conclusive. I have a strong feeling that by then his position will have become rock solid. David's a good fellow, his heart is definitely in the right place, and he has that determination to make a success of what he is doing.

Something a little strange happened when the next questioner -- the Labour spokesman on the committee -- first commented (as he likes to do) on what I had asked. He referred to my "ringing endorsement" of the portfolio holder, in his typical sarcastic manner.

Later I came back to remark on that, and to explain that it was not my job to endorse Cabinet members. It was my job to challenge and scrutinise, though I wondered what some other members of this committee "sitting elsewhere in this room" (i.e. not my own side -- we know our jobs!) thought there were here to do. I informed the meeting that I already have something of a track record of challenging our portfolio holders at these events on other committees, so it wasn't something new or strange.

Well, it has always been obvious that the Labour Group have only one end in mind, and one purpose, and that is to try to make us look bad so that (they hope, rather forlornly I suspect) we shall lose support and lose our overall majority on the Council one day. Not much chance of that! Their's is the group in terminal decline...

Thus their policy is to disregard their own Government's requirement that Scrutiny be essentially non-party political. They have never, since Day One of Scrutiny in Medway (more than six years ago) stopped being as party political as they can get away with, especially when there are members of the public and/or journalists or other media present.

We have learned to live with it, and are generally sharp enough to deal effectively with their worst excesses when necessary. It doesn't really matter, though, as they merely show themselves up most of the time. I have had lifelong Labour supporters tell me in private just how appalled they have been at Labour Councillors' behaviour they have witnessed, especially (but not exclusively) at Scrutiny meetings. It is little wonder that the Labour Group shrinks in numbers at every local election here, and even between elections.

As for my colleagues and me: we definitely know our job, and play it cleanly every time. I think the Medway public appreciates that far more than the Labour Group realise. Yes, sometimes we have to take the opposition's blows right on the chin, but we're big and able enough to do so and come bouncing back every time. We'll do what we do properly, because in the final analysis that is the best way to serve the people of Medway. Labour do what they do because it is the best way for them to serve their own ends and thus themselves, which seems to be what their Party is all about, as recent months have shown (cf. Peter Hain et al).

I definitely prefer our way!

Friendly Fire

This is the time of year when Portfolio Holders (the members of the Council's Executive -- the Cabinet) are called to appear before the Scrutiny Committees to account for their work in that position during the past year. The photograph shows Medway's Cabinet in session, where their decisions are taken.

We have had two Portfolio Holders appear before the scrutiny committee of which I am the vice-chairman already this year -- one in January, and one this month -- and have the Council Leader himself booked to come to our next meeting. The other scrutiny committees have been doing the same with the executive members relevant to their own areas of overview and scrutiny.

The general sequence of events with these "being held to account" agenda items (as they are billed) is that the portfolio holders give a short run-down of what their portfolio covers and what they have been doing during the past year, then the committee members ask questions on any aspect of their work.

At this point I am always reminded of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons, and the difference between the searching and challenging questions from Opposition MPs, and the "friendly fire" from Labour MPs. You know the sort of thing: "Does my Right Honourable friend, the Prime Minister, agree with me that..." It's a dead give-away that it isn't really a proper question at all, merely a way to make the Government appear good. No doubt the PM was notified of the question well in advance and was thus able to get hold of all the facts and figures invariably quoted in reply to any of these "friendly" questions.

Indeed, it is probable that it was the PM's own office that wrote at least some of the questions, and the Whips found some backbenchers who hadn't asked anything at PMQs (or not for a long time, at least) to be, in effect, the PM's mouthpieces.

The temptation is to do the same kind of thing here, when one of our Portfolio Holders comes before Scrutiny. It would be so easy for us to do something similar to what Labour MPs generally do at PMQs -- but we don't. Specifically, I devise and write my own questions, with no input, advice or anything else from anyone, so I can come out with just about anything. I know that my colleagues in the Conservative Group do the same. As a reporter is invariably present at these events, this is genuine scrutiny at work, with no punches being pulled.

The only concession I occasionally make is to let the Portfolio Holder know the question a day or two in advance if it is rather technical (as some of mine are!) as I'd rather have a researched and complete answer in the public domain straight away than a response in the nature of "I shall have to find out what the answer is and let you know."

It is to the credit of our Portfolio Holders that they tend to be very well on top of their briefs, and can usually answer just about any question from any Member -- ruling group or otherwise -- that isn't too technical or in minute detail. Although they'd never admit it in public (and especially not when a reporter is present) in private many opposition members have acknowledged how impressed they are with our Executive members at these times in particular.

Just contrast that with the scenario in Westminster!