Conclusion

NPM was by no means perfect. But at least it produced a system that gave public bodies a reasonably clear role as the purchasers of public services from specialist providers (whether public, private or voluntary).

One possible reason for the emergence of deep NPM seems to be a perception on the part of public bodies that they lack procurement expertise.^[1260] Although there are many examples of failed government projects in areas such as defence or information technology to support this view it is, nevertheless, a surprising proposi­tion. Under NPM, one of the state's core functions was to buy services from public or private providers. In the early years, this did involve acquiring new skills that were not previously found in the public sector, such as drawing up invitations to tender and conducting competitive bidding exercises.^[1261] What is genuinely puzzling is why, years after the introduction of NPM, it is not regarded as essential for every public body to have a core of employees with highly developed purchasing skills.^[1262] Of course, CCGs are new bodies to which this criticism does not apply, but in their case it is not clear why they are being encouraged to contract for com­missioning support services instead of simply employing people with the necessary skills.

The post NPM agenda has some laudable aims, as we have seen. However, from the perspective of accountability, there are two important points to consider. First, it is essential to strike a balance between giving local authorities freedom to participate in these arrangements and subjecting them to an appropriate package of accountability mechanisms. Accountability always involves some tension between those who are calling to account and those who are being called to account, since greater control for the former generally means less discretion for the latter. But local authorities, as public bodies, should be accountable not just at election time but routinely, through a variety of different internal and external mechanisms. The abolition of the CAA and the removal of important elements of local authorities' legal and financial accountability seem to have proceeded without regard to this important consideration. Second, if there is a problem about getting bodies to work together at the local level, perhaps we need to ask why we have so many separate public bodies, not just separate budgets. One way to bring local services together would be to give local authorities more power, not in the sense of making them less accountable, but rather by giving them more policy responsibilities, for example, in areas such as education and policing. This would provide a way of breaking down bureaucratic boundaries between public services, whilst at the same time maintaining formal mechanisms of accountability from the ‘front line' to elected councillors, and thus to local people. But for now at least, radical institutional reform of this kind does not seem to be on the political agenda.

Writing about NPM back in 1997, Harlow and Rawlings noted that it was ‘hard to exaggerate the scale and significance of the contractual revolution in government'.^[1263] The impact of NPM on the traditional, hierarchically-managed public sector was indeed considerable. As a result, it may seem rather difficult to imagine reforms with the potential to have an even greater impact than NPM did but, as this chapter has sought to demonstrate, such reforms are already being implemented in large parts of the UK public sector. Perhaps the most important lesson to emerge from the discussion is that, in a public sector driven by big policy ideas and limited resources, the continued existence of effective accountability mechanisms should never be taken for granted. To quote Harlow and Rawlings again, ‘in the brave new world of government by contract administrative lawyers must do more to make themselves heard'.⁷⁴

⁷⁴ Ibid 294.