Councillors' pocket money
Roland Freeman
Nothing about democracy seems to infuriate the public more than the payment of their elected representatives. The last row over parliamentary salaries will shortly be up-staged by an even more acrimonious controversy in local government. To adapt an old saying about rates and taxes, people pay their MPs in sorrow and their councillors in anger. So it is not surprising that the report of the Steering Committee on members' allowances set up by Mr Anthony Crosland early last year remains unpublished. A working group of local government officers and civil servants made recommendations in July to Mr Gordon Oakes, the junior minister who chairs the steering committee, but so far the proposals appear to be blocked at Cabinet level.
Continued delay has made Crosland's dilemma more acute than ever. If he refuses an increase in the £10 attendance allowance there will be an explosion of bitterness from local government, which is largely dominated by Labour councils whose members are not without influence in the constituencies. But if he accepts the principle of indexlinking and announces a rise of £445 to take account of inflation since 1973 (when the allowance system began) the uproar from the public will be equally earthshaking.
Ironically, it was the Heath Government which opted for allowances based on the odd notion that presence at meetings is a fair measure of the councillor's responsibilities and out-of-pocket expenses, apart from his fares and meals at the Town Hall, which are paid separately. Because the number of committees, the frequency of meetings and their length are all susceptible to members' own decisions the whole arrangement appears open to misuse.
Even the form-filling rigmarole of making claims open to inspection by the curious ratepayer, far from acting as a safeguard, merely attracts unenviable publicity. Local papers now publish 'league tables' of amounts paid to local representatives, thus discouraging the less well-off from claiming while inviting others to make the grand gesture of not drawing at all. (As payments are subject to tax the sacrifice by the high taxpayer is minimal.) More seriously, the interpretation of what is an 'approved duty' for the purpose of paying allowances has become a rather elastic procedure covering party caucus meetings, all the familiar visits (including, in one instance, attendance at a Royal Garden Party), and,representing the council on boards of school managers. The other managers who receive nothing for their endeavours have some cause for complaint. So too have co-opted members of council committees who are not entitled to the attendance allowance.
Perhaps the most absurd aspect of the scheme is that it fails to differentiate between daytime and evening meetings. Why, it might reasonably be asked, should we pay councillors anything above incidental expenses, if their work is conducted largely in their own leisure time outside normal working hours? For most district and borough councillors this is in fact the situation.
At the other extreme some authorities, like the Greater London Council, operate almost entirely through daytime meetings and committee chairmen may put in a fouror five-day week. Their remuneration is nonetheless limited to £10 a day at most. The inevitable effect of these clumsy arrangements is to restrict the membership of the larger councils and especially the key positions of power to a narrow range of people who can afford to give the time.
The social composition of local authorities at member level is increasingly biased towards the retired, the housewife whose family has grown up and the businessman with a partner who does all the work. Bright young politicians with an eye on careers at Westminster seldom stay long enough to make an impact. They may willingly forgo success in industry or commerce for the glamour of national politics, but never for local government. There are no glittering prizes at the town hall.
One unfortunate consequence of all this has been the steady proliferation of committees, sub-committees, boards and panels of all descriptions since 1973; partly no doubt because more allowances can be earned, but also because people with time to spare are especially prone to Parkinson's Law: 'work expands to fill the time available for its completion'. In the first full year after allowances began, GLC members attended 5,986 meetings, compared with only 4,686 in 1972-73.
Two years ago allowances totalled around £8 million and the annual figure is probably nearer £10 million today. For that sort of money something more satisfactory, effective and less unpopular ought to be devised. The Home Policy Committee of Labour'i National Executive has looked at two solutions. One is to reinstate the old 'loss of earnings' principle, but this discriminates in favour of the wage-earner, whose loss is quantifiable, and against the self-employed, where it is not.
The other alternative is an hourly payment based on average industrial wages. Again this would benefit the wage-earner and penalise the self-employed person or the company executive whose time is worth more than the average industrial wage. In both cases the ritual of claiming would have to continue.
An extraordinary feature of this classic democratic muddle is that, in another sphere altogether the Government adopts an entirely different method of payment which incites no public irritation or protest and, as far as one can tell, attracts the right personnel for the job. Members of public authorities, appointed by ministers instead of being elected, are paid part-time salaries. A New Town Corporation, for example, will pay its members £700 a year and its chairman rather more. The Thames Water Authority (which has recently taken over some council services) pays its chairman a salary and gives the committee chairmen annual allowances ranging from £750 to £1 ,000. In many cases councillors earn somewhat more on such bodies for less strenuous duties than they perform at County Hall, and without the problems of representing a constituency, the constant attentions of the media, or the public fuss about how much they receive.
The most celebrated instance of this was that of the late Lord Fiske, who drew £3,500 a year as Chairman of the Decimal Currency Board and £1,500 as Chairman of the Consultative Committee to the London Electricity Board while earning nothing as Leader of the Greater London Council, which was almost a full-time post in itself.
If Anthony Crosland's committee tinkers with the system it will merely postpone the problem to another day. Far better to scrap the attendance principle and substitute modest flat-rate allowances to all councillors, higher where daytime meetings are the norm, and providing for adequate salaries for the inner circle of council leaders and committee chairmen who shoulder the biggest daily burden. Changes in rates of payment could then be made in conjunction with pay for MPs, peers and members of other public corporations and authorities.
Eliminating abuses and anomalies will not of itself vastly improve the quality of councillors who currently direct one third of all public expenditure. We need a Fultonstyle inquiry into the role of the elected member in local government to study how to do that.
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