John Clancy will examine the possibility of scrapping the cabinet in favour of a return to the committee system of local government if he becomes Birmingham City Council leader.
The challenger for the Labour group leadership is promising to establish a commission to decide whether housing, finance and transportation committees, which last operated in 2001, would “be a better way of running the city” by involving many more people in decision making.
It’s believed the suggestion, which has been floated informally with colleagues by Cllr Clancy, has gained a broad measure of support from councillors who feel that the cabinet system inevitably results in decisions being taken by a very small number of politicians.
A clause in the Local Government Act allows councils to return to the committee system as an alternative to cabinet if they have rejected the idea of having a directly elected mayor.
Birmingham would become the first major city to go back to committees, which were scrapped by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997 on the grounds that a cabinet and leader system would result in swifter decision making.
Cllr Clancy will stand against Sir Albert Bore for the leadership of the council’s controlling Labour group and if he wins at the group’s annual meeting on May 11 he will become council leader.
In a detailed policy statement sent to senior councillors, Clancy is promising to give backbench Labour councillors and ward parties across the city more involvement before decisions are taken. He has said he intends to “put Labour politics back into the Labour group”.
PS very interesting blog on this topic by Birmingham’s very own local government expert Dr Andrew Coulson:
“…committees are much more inclusive than any other form of governance. They give a voice to all the elected councillors, and potentially bring to the table all their talents. They make it harder to take decisions in secret. They give councillors a means of putting into effect the commitments they make when they stand for election, and they keep council officers on their toes because they can never be quite sure what will happen when they attend a committee – even if most of the major changes that might be made to a report will have been agreed in the group meeting of a majority party beforehand. They also allow backbench councillors to specialise, and provide a means to induct them into how council services are run. They develop leadership – many strong leaders emerged over the years from the committee system.”
Indeed.
@johnclancy wants to go back to ctte system for @bhamCityCouncil great idea: via @TheChamberlainFiles
Looks like Hartlepool has just dumped the Mayor and gone to a Committee system as well:
If Birmingham went for it I bet you other big cities would look at it as well. Current system anyway doesn’t work as was widely recognised during the mayoral debate last year, even if a mayor wasn’t seen as the solution.
Looking around, Barnet, Brighton, Kingston, and Sutton have gone to Committees and Cambridge has got rid of the system as Birmingham has it.
Cambridge City Council has an interesting hybrid system: “which means that decisions are recommended by scrutiny committees and formally made by the cabinet member or leader if there’s a disagreement. This, Councillor Bick says, means that all backbenchers get a chance to debate proposals.” Interesting.
Great to see Catharine now getting the point that we need a real debate on whether to go to a ctte system. I’m sure councillors could work very well as a team in cttes.
[...] Why it may be time to scrap Birmingham council cabinet [...]
@ChamberlainFile if John Clancy thinks committee system better why not just put forward motion at council? He might be surprised at outcome
It is incredibly important for Birmingham to be at the forefront of discussion and debate on effective democratic processs. We elect our Councillors to ensure we have the best public services that we possibly can with a high level of accountability for delivery.
I hope the Labour Group can work together as a Team to achieve this.
Catharine, btw you seem to miss the fact that there is a very active debate on going back to the committee system across England and several councils have in fact done this already: … Why shouldn’t Birmingham look at this when others clearly are?
The Chamberlain News via @The Chamberlain News interesting take on transport to involve more in decision making.
Most cabinet members do not make decisions under the new constitution
They will fight to keep their big pay packets
Interesting – of course it would be more democratic to involve more people in public discussion.
Sir Albert believed in democracy previously but now that he is acting as if he had been elected mayor he believes in keeping all matters secret so he can do what he likes without let or hindrance
The Labour group just does as it is told by the great man
1. It was anyway better than this current centralised Cabinet set-up with its ambiguous lines of accountability and responsibility; 2. we can anyway look at improving on the previous ctte system if we were to scrap the cabinet and go to a ctte system. It’s well worth a look and that’s all Cllr Clancy is – rightly – proposing here.
I’m not confident that the Committee system was entirely effective in the City previously?
Yet again Catherine ignores the key issue here which is the completely unintelligible current set of Cabinet posts. She clearly doesn’t care about genuine public democratic accountability. The scrutiny system isn’t working. The Local Government Act offers this as an option – surely it’s a sensible thing to explore it? You seem to want to see ghosts and shadows where there are none.
It clearly appears that Cllr Clancy is desperately trying to appeal to the back benchers and those of his colleagues who have the single goal of getting Cabinet positions.
This looks like a sorry state of affairs if he has to construct these positions and hand them out like sweeties to the Labour Group in order to secure backing!
The integrity of the Councillors will be evident within this process, as to whether they put their shoulder to the wheel and back the current leadership, in the difficult budget situation the Council is in …. or seek posts for their own self importance.
It’s obvious that Cllr Clancy has already offered the potential posts to key voting colleagues and has no confidence in his own leadership or ability that he needs more than one Deputy Leader to prop him up!
How refreshing. A can do rather than a can’t do approach. Ordinary Brummies can understand this without a PhD in Business Process Re-engineering.
RT @ChamberlainFile: Bore-challenger Clancy wants to bring back committees << sounds like jobs for the boys to me
Great to see some fresh ideas here. I can’t get my head round the current cabinet responsibilities. It’s not clear who is actually responsible for what.
EXCLUSIVE: Brum Labour leadership challenger John Clancy could return council to committee system @ChamberlainFile