Accountability, New Public Management, and the Problems of the Child Support Agency

AuthorCarol Harlow
Date01 June 1999
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00120
Published date01 June 1999
This paper seeks to evaluate the accountability of Next Steps Agencies
through the medium of a case study of the Child Support Agency (CSA).
The CSA was widely considered to offer a substandard service to its
customers. It was the subject of multiple reports by the House of Commons
Social Services Select Committee, the Select Committee on the
Parliamentary Commissioner, and the Public Accounts Committee. In
addition, these committees had at their disposal internal reports from an
adjudicator and the Child Support commissioner. The interlock between
internal and external machinery for accountability is also considered.
I. THE ACCOUNTABILITY DEBATE
At the time when Next Steps Agencies (NSA) were mooted,1concern was
expressed over their compatibility with the existing constitutional frame-
work.2Ministerial responsibility, a doctrine of doubtful efficacy dismissed
by many as a piece of ‘constitutional folklore’,3was becoming largely nomi-
nal, dependent for enforcement on the current strength of the government
in the House of Commons and the toughness and durability of the minister
in question. The actors, if not the public, realized that resignation was no
longer a serious danger, except perhaps in case of personal misconduct.4
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Law Department, London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England
My thanks are due to my research assistant, Elizabeth Start, to my colleagues Richard Rawlings
and Adam Tomkins for comments on earlier drafts, and to the Journal’s referees, whose
comments were invaluable.
150
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 26, NUMBER 2, JUNE 1999
ISSN: 0263–323X, pp. 150–74
Accountability, New Public Management, and the Problems of
the Child Support Agency
CAROL HARLOW*
1 R. Ibbs, Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps (1988).
2R. Baldwin, ‘The Next Steps: Ministerial Responsibility and Government by Agency’ (1988)
51 Modern Law Rev. 622.
3C. Turpin, ‘Ministerial Responsibility’, The Changing Constitution, eds. J. Jowell and D.
Oliver (3rd edn., 1994).
4For the classic exposition see S. Finer, ‘The Individual Responsibility of Ministers’ (1953)
34 Public Administration 377.
The classic doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility is based on the
twin fictions that a minister delegates powers to civil servants (the so-called
‘Carltona’ doctrine5) and that she or he is in charge of their department. The
development of giant, multi-functional departments in practice rendered the
doctrine for the most part unworkable. It was perhaps inevitable that a
distinction would develop between ‘policy’, for which ministers could be held
to responsibility, and ‘operational matters’, for which civil servants seemed
properly responsible, the advantage for ministers being that no one has ever
been able to draw a dividing line between policy and operations with any
degree of precision.6The Public Service Select Committee of the House of
Commons has certainly expressed itself as less than happy with the distinc-
tion, believing that operational failures may on occasion require resignation.7
It would seem, none the less, that the distinction is now ‘firmly entrenched’
and can be relied on by ministers entirely to deflect responsibility.
The implications of NSAs for ministerial responsibility are self-evident.
The delegation of responsibility to NSAs represents a technique of manage-
rial administration designed specifically to inculcate a greater sense of
responsibility and accountability in managers and functionaries.8On the
other hand, the degree of operational delegation is deliberate. NSAs were
designed to relieve ministers of responsibility for operational matters, which
were thought to be creating ‘overload’, thus budgetary responsibility rests
with a chief executive as does responsibility for staffing and personnel.9Yet,
as NSAs were established without general statutory authority and their rela-
tionship with the parent department rests on the common law principle of
delegation,10 structurally they remain part of the central department without
distinct legal personality and the relationship between agency and depart-
ment is governed by a ‘framework document’. The problematic division of
functions is implicit in the Ibbs report, which describes the framework
document as:
set[ting] out the policy, the budget, specific targets and the results to be achieved. It must
also specify how politically sensitive issues are to be dealt with and the extent of the
delegated authority of management. The management of the agency must be held rigor-
ously to account by their department for the results they achieve.11
In sharp contrast, the Public Service Committee has underlined the super-
visory role retained by departments and ministers, justifying it in terms of
the classic doctrine of ministerial responsibility to Parliament:
151
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999
5Carltona v. Minister of Works [1943] 2 All E.R. 560.
6 A. Tomkins, The Constitution After Scott (1998) 45–9.
7Public Service Committee, Ministerial Accountability and Responsibility, HC (1995/6) 313,
para. 19.
8 R. Pyper, The British Civil Service (1995) 63–4.
9 This required statutory power: see The Civil Service (Management Functions) Act 1992.
10 M. Freedland questions the legality of this procedure in ‘The rule against delegation and
the Carltona doctrine in an agency context’ [1996] Public Law 19.
11 Ibbs, op. cit., n. 1, para. 20.

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