WRITTEN ON May 20th, 2009 BY Paul Smith AND STORED IN Political engagement
There are a whole load of interesting angles and comments on the Guardian site. I particularly enjoyed Michael White’s piece – that assertive parliamentary committees play a vital role in holding government to account. It does run counter, however, to the slightly-urban-myth view that the greatest barrier to change in the public sector is the fear of the Perm Sec having to appear in front of the PAC.
There’s a critical difference between assertiveness, on which most commons committees fall short, and bullying, on which they do rather better, and the PAC best of all. It’s hard to know why that is, but I have always thought it had something to do with an officers and other ranks mentality: committees are polite to ministers but feel less need to be polite to officials. PAC only has officials as witnesses, so has never learned the habit of contructive discussion at all.