What Government is About

In 2008, BERR published a ‘Code of Practice on Government Consultation'. BERR, incidentally, is what BIS was called that day, before, that is, the Right Honourable the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business and Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills again rebranded it (though I always just call it the DTI since I at least know what that stands for). This 2008 Code of Practice began thus, "Ongoing dialogue between Government and stakeholders is an important part of policymaking. This dialogue will, at times, need to become more formal and more public. When developing a new policy or considering a change to existing policies, processes or practices, it will often be desirable to carry out a formal, time-bound, public, written consultation exercise." (Before anyone asks, I add at this point that I don't really know what a stakeholder is - other, presumably, than an assistant to a fencing contractor. Nor, for that matter, do I know what ‘time-bound' means, though we can probably all agree it sounds jolly fun.) This week, the House of Commons has been debating the Academies Bill, a fantastic piece of legislation which will free up headteachers to lead , teachers to teach and all schools who want Academy freedoms to drive up standards. But the main focus of the opposition in relation to the Bill appears throughout to have been on the consultation provisions of the Bill. Why? I suspect because we disagree fundamentally about the role of government in our country. Ed Balls and others on the Labour front bench wanted a long list in the Bill of people who should always be consulted if a school wants to become an Academy. Their focus, as always, was on process. We thought - and I have to say it seems pretty obvious - that if the Bill contains a requirement to consult, as it did (and as is now the law), headteachers and governing bodies were probably smart enough to work out who they needed to ask for their views as to whether conversion to an Academy was a good idea. So the Government's focus throughout was on driving up standards, not on box ticking and form filling. Consultation has always been my particular poster child for what was wrong with government in this country before 6th May this year. As the last government's Code of Practice indicates, it was always very keen on saying that it would ask people for their views, but never, to my mind at least, so keen on actually listening to them. What Britain needs, and what it has now got, is a new way of doing government, so that we don't tell people the blindingly obvious and instead leave it up to the professionals to get on with their jobs. That's what the Academies Bill is about. It's also what this government is about.

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