Letters
Spending and the ILEA
Sir: Poor Charles Moore (13 August). He really is terribly confused about who does what in local government and how well they do it.
He criticises, for example, the arrangement whereby the Inner London Education Authority sets its own rate but collects it through the boroughs. Suggesting that this confuses voters, he contrasts it with the counties 'where at least you vote for the authority that sends you the bill'. In fact, of course, the arrangement in the counties is in principle the same as in inner London: the county council, which is the education authority, sets its rate and then precepts upon the minor authority (the district) which has to collect the rate. The major difference in inner London is that the boroughs, which collect the rate, have representatives on the ILEA and can influence the setting of the rate. The districts have no such influence upon the counties.
Mr Moore castigates large authorities because their scale prevents councillors exercising real control over what their officers are doing, then ridicules the `centralism' of the ILEA with an apocryphal story about discussions over the minutiae of a college menu. He can't have it both ways. (I realise, of course, that this story also serves as an illustration of the entertaining theory that the time devoted by councillors to discussion of any item is in inverse proportion to the cost. This is a convenient myth for people like Mr Moore, but it remains a myth. Anyone who believes otherwise is welcome to join our budget discussion.) The fact is that elected members do spend a great deal of time ensuring that they know how public money is being spent and exercising real control over it. Indeed, my colleagues and I are frequently criticised for becoming 'full-time' politicians who 'live on' attendance allowances and ignore officers' advice instead, presumably, of doing 'proper' jobs and coming into County Hall for the odd evening to give a respectable veneer of democratic control to a bureaucratic machine.
Incidentally, though it is often said that ministers cannot control everything that happens in their departmental empires, I have not seen that advanced as an argument for a proliferation of smaller, localised departments.
Which brings me to Mr Moore's really mildewed chestnut: the suggestion that the ILEA should be dismantled and the inner London boroughs run their own education
services. He must be aware, though he gives no indication that he is, 'that there was a concerted Conservative-led campaign to do just that three years ago. That campaign, despite obvious sympathy in government circles, foundered under the overwhelming weight of educational and financial evidence. Mark Carlisle acknowledged as much in the formal statement with which he brought an end to it.
Briefly, the burden of that evidence can be summarised as follows: given the concentration of problems 'of a type, range and complexity unmatched in other ILEAs (the phrase is HM Inspectorate's), there is no way single boroughs could provide an adequate educational service alone without either an enormous increase in rates (in all areas but the City and the West End) or some continued financial equalisation mechanism. Equalisation on this scale demands, in equity, representation. That representation is provided by the present ILEA, both by direct election and by nomination from the boroughs.
Nevertheless, it was probably a political consideration which clinched the Government's decision. The people of inner London — parents and students, the consumers of the education service — demonstrated in large numbers that theY wanted to retain the ILEA. Could these be the same voters who, says Mr Moore, 'it Is unreasonable to expect . . to work out who is responsible for what'?
Ruth Gee
Deputy Leader, ILEA, The County Hall, London SEI
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