A few cutting remarks

The prevailing wisdom is that local authorities should cut back office or support services while protecting the front line. John Emms is unconvinced by the logic.

I’m thinking about cuts. Well, who isn’t? Apart from George Osborne, who clearly based his decisions on the spin of a roulette wheel.

In the current turmoil, local authorities will need legal advice (assuming they haven’t already dumped all the lawyers) when deciding which services to lacerate, if only to avoid excising something compulsory.

I have some conclusions about cuts which may help, though based largely on newspaper headlines, scanning stories, TV snippets, conversations, anecdotes. So, they may be entirely unfair. But no apologies. The government’s pronouncements are, or so they tell us, so awash in, so soaked by, so utterly saturated and sopping with fairness that I must try to restore the normal natural balance to which life has accustomed us all.

First conclusion (and for lawyers, most important; let’s start with a bit of self interest): no-one knows what support services do. Why? Because there’s so much tripe about protecting frontline services. Target the wasteful bureaucracy of support services, they say. Lawyers, for instance. But, hang on. If I cut a leg off a table, I’ve achieved a 25% cut in support without affecting the frontline, public-facing part of the table at all. Though the effectiveness of the service provided by the table may be reduced, just a bit.

Also, I suspect that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the frontline troops playing golf on the moon, would have been unhappy to be told that their support, Michael Collins in the command module, had been called home as part of an economy drive. The expression used by Osborne is “back office”. But that’s just another name for the same thing. Anyway, imagine someone in the front office identifying a resident’s problem, passing it to the back office for investigation and advice and finding there’s no-one there. Please repeat after me: What do support services do? They support. What happens if your support is withdrawn? You fall over.

Of course there may be inefficiencies in support services – even after local government’s excellent (compared to central government) response to Gershon. But doesn’t that apply to frontline services too?

Second conclusion: all cuts are created and assessed as pure figures. 28% here, £2.5 billion there, 490,000 jobs elsewhere. So government cutters reach their targets without having to say to anyone, even in principle, “sorry, love, no more help for you” or “you’re fired.” Certainly the speeches and headlines seem to be mainly about figures. Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing has become a cliché but it seems to hit the spot.

OK, general comments are made about effects of the figures, but few hard facts. So the Prime Minister says the rich will pay more, while Labour, the Guardian and a bunch of other folk say the poor will suffer most. From which I assume that no-one knows and we’ll have to wait and see.

But where do the figures come from? Is there any consideration of consequences and alternatives? It’s hard to believe, for instance, that defence supremo Liam Fox’s dispute with the Treasury went like this:

“Ten per cent”.  “Six”.  “No.”  “Please.”  “No.”  “Pretty please.”  “No.”  “Meanie. I’ll tell David.”  “Don’t care.” “David!  He’s not being fair!”   “Eight per cent.”  “Oh, thank you, David!  You’re so wonderful.” “Grrrr!!”

As it happens we do know some of the background there – around aircraft carriers – and interestingly, the importance of the (literal) support service in that case (the carrier) has apparently been acknowledged. So a new carrier will be available long before the frontline service (the aircraft) arrive. Presumably an airman explained to someone that aircraft would look silly flying around until they fell into the sea. Shame a sailor didn’t explain how silly an aircraft carrier would look driving around without aircraft. Irrelevant to local government? Not at all. Once there’s a power of general competence councils may decide to create their own defence forces. After all, they’ll need some way of protecting themselves from Eric Pickles. I look forward to seeing the legal advice on that.

Third conclusion: it’s easier to announce cuts if you merely set the amount you’re intending to give local authorities and then let them decide what to stop doing. And it directs public anger at them rather than you. Neat, eh? Then dress it up, call it “localism” and it becomes a good and commendable thing. But, frankly, localism is well-nigh meaningless with 28% cuts of the centrally controlled 80% of the money. The newly added funding to allow freezing of council tax will gather even more financial power to the centre. But to be fair (I said I wasn’t going to be fair, but just this once) ring-fences are being demolished. Except the biggest, education, which is not only ring-fenced, but also protected. But still – reducing ring-fencing is a modest increase to local autonomy.

Anyway - legal advice on decisions on implementation. I remember an inexperienced leader of an opposition political group (I won’t say which, but she read the Daily Telegraph) bringing me a query. It was budget time and she had realised she needed an alternative budget. She wanted a list of everything the council was legally obliged to do; the implication being that anything else could be cut.

Silly request? Certainly not; perfectly reasonable. I knew the difficulty in responding; she didn’t. So I explained things like the duty to provide “sufficient” schools etc. to ensure each pupil received “appropriate” education offering such instruction and training “as may be desirable” ; or the duty to “maintain the highway”. I could tell her we couldn’t stop doing these things – but telling her how much we could slow down was a problem. I hope I told her an assortment of more helpful things too, but I can’t remember.

I suspect that around the country there are going to be many similar problems. And yet, some chief legal officers are increasingly isolated from the centre, hidden away at third tier level in some diverse, amorphous directorate – and now considering many specialist lawyers being shovelled into shared services or private companies, or lodged miles away in regional centres. Not the easiest way to provide hands-on support to councillors, in power or opposition, with knowledge and understanding of their political culture and aspirations.

The Bains Report on Local Authority Management and Structures of 1972, from which the 1974 authorities constructed their shiny new corporate management systems (a concept which central government hasn’t yet quite mastered) described the lawyer as the council’s “geographer”, showing and easing the way to desired destinations. That’s exactly what’s needed now. But how do you find your way when the person with the map is stuck in a cupboard in another building - or another city?

Easy to say – but the legal department, like everything else, is having figures chucked at it which must be met. The way the government is operating, there isn’t time to assess this, measure that, compare benefits, make choices. CUT! Value for money? Oh, yes, I remember that. Sorry, not appropriate now. It’s money, not value that counts.

But finally – an interesting point. Cuts are spreading to unexpected areas. Crime, it seems, has dropped by 8%. Even criminals are feeling the pinch (sorry – pun not intended, but I quite like it so it’s staying in). Except for sexual offences which have increased by 8%. Coincidence? I suspect the cause is unemployed criminals filling their unaccustomed spare time.

What if 490,000 newly unemployed public sector workers react similarly? Not criminally, naturally, but legally and in long-term supportive relationships. There will be a new baby boom shortly making its way into schools, thus turning the protected ring-fenced education budget into a real-terms cut! They’re sly, this government. They hid that one well.

John Emms was Solicitor to Kirklees Metropolitan Council between 1994 and 2007.