Tony Travers

Regulation Inside Government: Where New Public Management Meets the Audit Explosion

This article explores the scale and growth of regulation inside UK government, defined as standard-setting and monitoring by bodies constituted at arm’s-length from those they oversee. It argues regulation inside government is comparable in scale to regulation of business and has grown sharply over two decades, while public organizations in general have substantially downsized. Regulation inside government is highly diverse and there is a marked disjunction between the control regimes applied by regulators of government to those they regulate and the way the regulators are themselves assessed and controlled.

A new era for social policy: a new enlightenment or a new leviathan?

A succession of Acts of Parliament passed between 1988 and 1990 mark the most decisive break in British social policy since the period between 1944 and 1948. This paper examines the extent to which common principles underlie this legislation. One of the most important common elements has been the reduction in the powers of local government and in the presumption that local authorities should be the main providers of social welfare outside the social security system. Schools, housing estates and social care services are to be given greater powers to run themselves or to become separate organisations. Local authorities are to use their resources to fund and contract with external agencies. The possible outcomes of this change in governance are discussed.

Financing School-Based Education in England: Poverty, Examination Results, and Expenditure

The authors examine two main research issues. First, they focus on the way in which funds for education are targeted on disadvantage at the level of the local education authority (LEA). They explore the relationship between various indicators of disadvantage and national test and public examination results and find that the relationship between one measure of disadvantage—the proportion of children dependent on Income Support recipients in an LEA—has a stronger negative relationship with examination results of that LEA than the additional educational needs (AEN) index currently used by central government in the formula to distribute resources to local authorities. Second, the authors focus on the relationship between expenditure and performance and find evidence that higher expenditure by LEAs on education is associated with better examination results once poverty (as measured by the Income Support measure) has been controlled for. The first finding suggests that targeting educational need could be improved by substituting the Income Support measure for the current AEN index; the second lends support to the use of increased expenditure as a means of combating educational disadvantage.

London: Planning the ungovernable city

Abstract This paper relates the processes of strategic planning in London during the first decade of an executive Mayoral system to Doug Yates’ thesis about the ungovernability of major cities and London’s long history of conflict around metropolitan governance issues. Yates’ thesis only partially fits the London case because a separate lower tier of lower tier of borough authorities carries the main responsibilities for actual service provision. This London case, does, however, exemplify the proposition that without effective fiscal autonomy in planning for infrastructure provision, the need to manage diplomatic relations with higher levels of government (and other funders) can divert city strategies from those appropriate to the needs of the mass of their own constituents/businesses. In London as in other national capitals, this tension is intensified by a symbolic importance that inhibits central government from taking a detached stance in relation to priorities of the city administration. Examination of the experience of Mayoral Plans for London suggest that sheer complexity of relations and interdependences across a much extended, diverse and dynamic metropolitan region is also a major restraint on governability as far as strategic planning is concerned. An inability to face up to this complexity, particularly in relation to cross-border relations has – as much as the (diplomatic) obsession with the ‘global city’ priorities – so far proved a major obstacle to using Mayoral strategic planning as an effective means of steering change in the region, and addressing central issues affecting economic efficiency and residents’ quality of life.

Getting Public Private Partnerships Going in Transport

This paper is a contribution to the debate about appropriate financing mechanisms for public investment in Britain. The paper examines the governments plans for the London Underground Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), against the experience offunding the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), and examines alternative funding mechanisms, including bond financing. The keyfindings are that whilst the PFI is a usefulfinancial toolfor certain types of projects and to fill certain types of financing gaps, an alternative option of funding Underground investments by way of a bond issue is preferable, with project management and construction work being undertaken by the private sector. Should the Government go ahead with the PPP in its present form, it is essential that the commitment to undertake a Public Sector Comparator be seen to be a genuine test for good value for money against the best realistic alternative, namely one using the cheaper financing offered by a bond issue. The comparison should be undertaken by an independent agency such as the National Audit Office, and be in the public domain. But the PPP is not the only way forward. The arrangements for the PPP cut across the Governments own desire to return local democracy to London. There is still an opportunity to deliver a cheaper, more democratic, alternative.

Competition and Investment

The policy of the Conservative governments between 1979 and 1997 was to use market forces to improve the delivery of transport services — driving down fares, costs, charges and subsidies and increasing the quantity and quality of investment — by releasing it from the restraints of public-sector control. Competition has been increased in the provision of air, bus, rail and road freight services. The regulatory arrangements have been adjusted accordingly to secure the public interest within the new structures. This chapter assesses the extent to which these goals have been attained, particularly in road and rail transport.

Devolving Funding and Taxation in the UK: A Unique Challenge

This article describes the centralised nature of the UK, briefly describes the changes now under way in Scotland and Wales and then analyses differences in output per head as between nations and regions. It then considers the scope for devolution, including fiscal devolution within England. The United Kingdom today is one of the most fiscally-centralised of all OECD countries, but there will soon be reform in Scotland and Wales, with significant devolution of tax-raising powers to Edinburgh and Cardiff. In England, there is currently no ‘state’ or ‘regional’ tier of government. There have been significant differences in GDP/GVA per head of the nations and regions of the UK for many decades. Efforts to ‘rebalance’ the GDP/GVA totals shown above have involved public expenditure and investment programmes over several decades. The results of the UKs centralised distribution of resources, if any, on changes in regional and sub-regional performance are little studied. A highly-centralised system of taxation and public expenditure is not, it would appear, a guarantee of territorial economic equalisation. In a potentially radical policy departure, George Osborne has moved further than any minister in recent times towards a form of city-regional devolution within England. In the first instance, any devolved power is likely to be over public expenditure, though in the longer term fiscal devolution may become possible. The move towards a quasi-federal UK is now well under way.

Central Government Perceptions of Local Government

Local government in Britain has been reformed relentlessly during the past 20 or so years. The structure, functions and finance of local authorities have been changed, though rarely in a co-ordinated way. Between the mid-1970s and 1994, local government moved from being a traditional, powerful, provider of public services to a more strategic and less autonomous institution.

Block grant: The story of a failure

Rate‐capping marks the end of all attempts to control local spending through financial and other incentives. This is scarcely the result that a Government committed to deregulation can have wanted. What went wrong? And why?

London: Crossing London: Overcoming the Obstacles to CrossRail

Londons main transport modes are over-loaded. An important part of the solution is CrossRail, a new east-west underground railway. It was agreed and fully planned all of ten years ago; but the obstacles to its construction are severe and have become worse as time has passed. While the value of CrossRail is clear and generally recognized, a large number of direct interests have both the incentive and the power to object to it as a specific proposal, in an attempt to secure a better outcome for themselves. Many commercial, public and governing institutions will have to be persuaded to make a sacrifice in the interests of the project going ahead.