An excerpt from Stand & Deliver: A Design For Successful Government (2014) Ed Straw
Three separation of powers are taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. To prevent one branch from becoming supreme, protect the ‘opulent minority’ from the majority, and to induce the branches to cooperate, government systems that employ a separation of powers need a way to balance each of the branches. Typically this was accomplished through a system of ‘checks and balances’, the origin of which, like separation of powers itself, is credited to Montesquieu. Checks and balances allow for a system-based regulation that allows one branch to limit another, such as the power of Congress in the US to alter the composition and jurisdiction of the federal courts.
Just as powers are divided between the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature, so the vital missing separation essential for any government to succeed is the ‘Resulture’. The Resulture would be the part of the system of government responsible for feedback, its role and powers enshrined in a Fourth Separation of Powers in a tamper-proof constitution. Feedback of results and outcomes is not a matter of politics but a matter of fact. This cannot be a job for the executive – it would be rating itself, and this has no credibility nor track record. The task needs to be independent of the executive, and would be the responsibility of the second chamber – commonly termed the Senate or in the UK the House of Lords. Thus the second chamber would be the custodian of the public’s experience of government and of all public sector bodies, here to represent the citizen. The second chamber would thus gain a clear, unambiguous, and vital role. It would need to get organised in order to exercise the necessary powers to ensure accurate, independent feedback exists.
The various existing ‘independent scorekeepers’ of statistics and outcomes from crime, to GDP, to debt, to unemployment, to tax yields, health, and immigration would form part of the Resulture, responsible to the second chamber, including:
- NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which produces vital feedback on medical treatments and procedures, and is something of a feedback role model.
- ONS, the Office for National Statistics, whose independence and remit has developed successfully over the last ten years.
- NAO, the National Audit Office, that would have to develop some of its ineffective legacy methods to bring it up to standard, or be restricted to financial auditing only. I had a number of interactions with them and the previous Comptroller and Auditor General to think about and develop more effective methods of improving government performance than their zero harm gladiatorial exhibitions at the Public Accounts Committee (including some of the proposals here, like legislation league tables). Nothing happened.
- Existing feedback agents, i.e. universities, think tanks, and independent institutes that get commissions from public funders and usually produce good to excellent information but with somewhat random targets.
None of these bodies would ever be staffed by the Civil Service, and would have no connection with them. Each would hire and develop its own fit-for-purpose staff. Independence of feedback is not possible with common staffing. It is noteworthy that the Freedom of Information Act has become an excellent feedback mechanism, but we should not have to prise results from an unwilling government. It should produce them, and want to. In a design for successful government, FoI should be unnecessary, but clearly must remain and be strengthened if needed, for now.
Accounting standards, a key determinant of accurate information, would be a Resulture role too, including Golden Rules on debt. The second chamber would become a hive of activity and information, fulfilling this role for the people and for society, the ‘ticker tapes’ of results pouring through. Once you are monitoring and using feedback you really are performing a vital role in ‘running the country’. Indeed, the role is as important as the executive and the legislature.
The Resulture would also have the role of recommending abandonment of a body, programme, regulation, law, etc. The executive’s role would be to decide. The House of Lords would become energised with a sense of achievement rather than a sense of importance.
As part of our new system, we need to decide from where the members of the House of Lords or second chamber would come, and this is covered in Chapter 11, ‘Fit People’.
Similar although far smaller scale arrangements would operate for real local government with comprehensive coverage and independence.
