Public Bodies: Governance and Accountability

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I take a real interest in these matters, and my right hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. I believe it is ultimately about unaccountable power, and we need to find ways to hold these institutions to account. I can give the example of Bootham Park hospital in my constituency. It closed 10 years ago and is in the hands of NHS Property Services, which has paid nearly £2 million to keep the building empty while waiting for a developer to come along, when we could really use it. Is that not another example of how these bodies are hoarding our national assets, as opposed to using them for the benefit of the community?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for that example, and it is important that she put it on the record. In the end, we as politicians get blamed for things that do not happen. I know the Minister has been tasked with a huge job, but hopefully these buildings will be used for the benefit of the community and all our constituents.

Walsall football club is nicknamed the Saddlers because of the leather industry. Way back on 16 September 2022, supporters contacted me because a disabled fan could not access the stadium—he had to go all the way into the town centre and then come back to the stadium. It has taken me three years and 10 letters to a series of Ministers for them to say “not yet.” The station will be used more if it is accessible. We have a bizarre situation where footfall is used to work out if a station is being used, and only then can we get Access for All funding. I do not know who makes up the criteria, but they clearly exclude most disabled people, as well as parents who will not access the station because they have to take prams up the stairs. The station serves the football club and is an accessible route to Birmingham and Walsall.

We met Network Rail and Transport for West Midlands in November 2023, and my constituents were promised a solution that never materialised. I wrote again on 11 December 2023, 10 June 2024 and 4 October 2024, and then on 6 December 2024 we were told that Bescot Stadium station was not on the list for 2024 to 2029, but that the Government can make funds available outside of that time. In the meantime, we have Poppyfields estate nearby, and on matchday there is parking and congestion everywhere. Fans would use public transport if the station were accessible.

Network Rail said that Jacobs consultancy is now undertaking a feasibility study. All it requires is a lift on either side of the walkway—how difficult is that? I ask, to whom is Network Rail accountable? I am happy to write letters, but my constituents want action. An accessible station means increased productivity and more use of public transport as the bus links are excellent, allowing parents, carers and even those going on holiday to use it—there is a hotel nearby, and the thud of suitcases can be heard as they go up the stairs. I just want someone, anyone, to say, “Yes, it is in the scheme, and it will be done.”

National Highways is another agency from which a simple yes would be great; I have had a succession of noes. Murdoch Way is near the motorway; while we are blessed with good connectivity, living near a motorway is difficult. National Highways has refused to introduce soundproofing barriers for my constituents on that road, despite the council stating in a letter that current sound mapping remains high and night-time noise levels exceed World Health Organisation guidelines. The evidence is there, yet the unaccountable arm’s length bodies say no.

Like Samuel Pepys, I can write letter after letter, but there has to be some change, because this issue goes to the heart of democracy. If people do not see change, and when their views are not taken on board or listened to, they will despair of democracy. For the school, I ask the Secretary of State to intervene and convene a meeting of interested parties. I can draw up a list so that everyone can sit round the table and be consulted. It must be fair to all schools, not just the favoured one that happened to be in that VIP lane on the arm’s length board. Public money must be used in the best way.

For the Leather Museum, the arm’s length heritage bodies should be tasked to support and preserve heritage, which I think they are. I therefore ask them to intervene and for the Secretary of State for Education to say to Walsall college, “This is contentious. Enough. You do not need this cultural heritage building.” And I want Bescot Stadium station to be told, “Yes, you will have an accessible station, because that is morally the right thing to do.”

For the residents of Walsall, unaccountable, unelected bodies will be reformed so that we as elected representatives can act in the public interest for the common good and for a good society.

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[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to take a moment to pay huge tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz). She is the epitome of a first-class MP and a doughty champion for her constituents, picking up local issues that people care passionately about and bringing them to the heart of Government. If anyone can knock heads together and make things happen, I believe it will be her. I look forward to seeing over the next few years all those problems solved.

I wish I could stand here with the power to wave a wand and give my right hon. Friend all the things she has asked for, but she has put them on the record, which is the purpose of this place. Ministers and Secretaries of State will hear what she has said, and I will do anything I can to support her in taking these matters forward. I have every confidence that the people of Walsall and Bloxwich could not ask for a better representative, and I completely agree with everything she has said.

Public bodies should be accountable and responsive, with democratic oversight. That is the foundation of our democracy. I understand my right hon. Friend’s frustration, because it is one that I share as an elected representative—even as a member of the Government. It can sometimes feel that decisions are taken too far away from the people we are meant to serve. People expect their Member of Parliament to have power and their Government to be responsive to them. When they vote for change, they expect those they voted for to be able to deliver.

Too often we see layers of bureaucracy building up over many years. We see power handed to unelected officials and arm’s length bodies that no one has ever heard of. All too often democratically elected Ministers—who are accountable to the public—pull the levers, but arm’s length bodies do not respond, and control sits in the wrong place. Far too often, such bodies have been an easy solution when there has been a problem in government and no policy solution; it is a case of saying, “Create another body, create another commission,” but all that does is to take decisions further away from the people they are there to serve.

I am delighted to say that in April this year, the Government ordered a fundamental review of arm’s length bodies. I am really excited to be the Minister playing a part in delivering that review. We no longer live in a world where we can simply spend our way to better public services. We have to rewire the state through system-wide reform, which is what we are undertaking to do.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for raising this issue. She is right to recognise that the existing landscape of public bodies is overly complex, needs streamlining, and needs to be accountable in order to deliver our plan for change. The Prime Minister himself said in his speech earlier this year:

“It is not about questioning the dedication or the effort of civil servants. It is about the system that we have in place. That system was created by politicians… But…over a number of years politicians chose to hide behind a vast array of quangos, arm’s length bodies and regulators”.

I am pleased to tell my right hon. Friend that we will hide no more. Through our programme of work to reform the state, of which arm’s length bodies are a part, we will ensure that Ministers have the right accountability where services are delivered, and that those public services are delivered in the simplest, most effective way, ensuring value for money for taxpayers.

We launched the review on 7 April. It is examining the Government’s more than 300 arm’s length bodies and asking Departments to assess them against four key principles. The first key principle is ministerial policy oversight. Nationally important policies must be steered and controlled by Ministers. The public expect that level of accountability. The second is duplication and efficiency. We have to root that out wherever possible, including overlaps between arm’s length bodies and Departments.

The third key principle is stakeholder management. The Government have to engage with partners and constituents—the people—at every stage, but that cannot in its own right justify an arm’s length body’s existence. The fourth is independent advice. The Government think that arm’s length decisions should be justified only where there is a clear case for it, such as the need for operationally independent regulatory decisions. There should not be any other reason for decisions to be taken at arm’s length. If those challenges are not met, arm’s length bodies should not exist—it is that simple.

Our aims are straightforward: we will drive out waste and inefficiency across Whitehall, save the taxpayer money and cut the cost of doing government. More importantly, we are bringing democratic scrutiny back to the major decisions that affect people’s lives through ministerial control.

The review is ongoing, but we have already announced a number of changes to arm’s length bodies, which my right hon. Friend may have heard about. For example, we are abolishing NHS England and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Doing so has returned nearly £250 billion of Government funding to direct ministerial oversight, ensuring that decisions about the NHS and the school system—a crucial issue mentioned by both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—are taken by the Health and Education Secretaries, as they should be.

[Rachael Maskell]

I want to draw another two bodies to the Minister’s attention. Integrated care boards are completely unaccountable as they make clinical decisions about our constituents. They need to be evidence-based, but they are simply not working. Multi-academy trusts, too, are certainly not accountable—I have felt as though I was in the matrix, unable to escape or to nail the behaviours of some of the chief executives of those organisations, which have huge resources but are not delivering in the interests of students. It is so important that we get democratic accountability into those systems.

[Anna Turley]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She articulates the struggle that so many of us find in picking up bits of casework and trying to champion our constituents’ needs and wishes; we can get lost in the matrix, and it can be deeply frustrating. I know that Secretaries of State, including the Health and Education Secretaries, see that. They want to know that their decisions are having a real impact, and that there are not unaccountable people making decisions against the grain of what we are trying to achieve on behalf of our constituents. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point.

We are also repatriating the Valuation Office Agency into His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to speed up tax administration. We are abolishing Ofwat and creating a single regulator to cut water pollution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich will be delighted that we are folding LocatED into the Department for Education to accelerate school building, combining property knowledge with schools’ needs for better value—I urge her to focus her campaign about the free school she referred to on the Secretary of State. We are also repatriating the UK Space Agency into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. We are taking action on a number of fronts, but that is just the start. We want the body of the state to be accountable to those elected to bring about change and deliver for their constituents.

I will briefly set out some of our existing processes that ensure effective arm’s length body accountability. Where possible, robust but fair departmental sponsorship is the key way to ensure clear lines of accountability between the arm’s length bodies and the Department. Those sponsorship arrangements promote regular interaction between bodies and sponsoring Departments to ensure that bodies are held to account for their use of public money and operate in line with the priorities of the Government of the day. I urge right hon. and hon. Friends with concerns about particular bodies to write to the sponsoring Secretary of State about those issues, because ultimately, those arm’s length bodies do have accountability arrangements in place.

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[Anna Turley]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important issue. Far too often there have been departmental silos, and silos within other public bodies, and they are not talking to each other. As she says, people can bounce around, failing upwards, and far too often there have not been channels of accountability and scrutiny to enable us to look at and manage performance. As part of our broader approach to public service reform, we are keen to look not just at how we manage recruitment, retention, training, accountability and performance within the civil service, but at how we ensure that people in the broader public sector are not failing upwards and are accountable to those they should be accountable to. I thank her for raising that.

To further raise the bar on accountability, we are committed to the continuous improvement of day-to-day checks and balances. A sponsorship code has been available since 2022, but we will look at it in the light of the arm’s length body review. Arm’s length bodies are also consistently reviewed through long-established lines of accountability, and through their boards and sponsoring Departments. Those boards scrutinise the arm’s length body’s executive decision making and oversee compliance with statutory and non-statutory guidance issued by the Government. Again, though, we will look at all those levels of compliance and accountability to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, the public are impatient to see the change they voted for. They want it to become a reality. For them, it is not an abstract question of public service reform; it is about whether their local station has a lift to make it accessible, or where a school is built.

The Leather Museum that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich mentioned sounds fantastic—a significant local and national asset that deserves to be recognised and supported. I urge her to continue her doughty campaign, along with Linda, Adam and Lauren, who sound as though they are doing a fantastic job. That museum deserves to have a bright future and I know she will do all she can to make that happen. I hope the Government will support her in that.

At a time when people are impatient to see change, I want to assure everybody that the Government are committed to transforming accountability across our arm’s length bodies.

[Rachael Maskell]

Could the Minister quickly say how we can participate in the review the Government are undertaking?

[Anna Turley]

That is a great question. I will take it on myself, as an outcome of this discussion, to write to colleagues to invite them to submit the kind of examples and evidence that we have heard here to the relevant Departments, and to me, as the Minister responsible for arm’s length bodies, to identify areas where public scrutiny and accountability have fallen short. There may be some more formal mechanisms that we can also undertake in the review but, in the meantime, I ask all them to write to Secretaries of State and to me with those examples; we would be happy to incorporate them into the review.

I will take this opportunity to repeat my sincere thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for securing this debate, which is important for her constituents as well as all our constituents across the country. We put ourselves forward to serve because we want to bring about change and make things better for people in our communities, on our doorsteps and in our local areas. Only by reforming the way that accountability, transparency and power are delegated in this country can we have that effect.

It is right that the public expect public bodies to be accountable, to run effectively and to be aligned with our Government’s priorities. We only want them where they offer best value for the public, ensure that money is spent efficiently and effectively and, crucially, are democratically accountable. That is exactly what we are seeking to achieve through our programme of ALB reform. I thank my right hon. Friend and all hon. Members present for adding more grist to the mill on this issue.

Question put and agreed to.