JOHN HUMPHRYS:                    Paul Wilenius reporting 
there.  We did invite the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to join us to talk 
about that but he didn't want to.

                              One of the things 
about local government over the years has been its openness.  If you want 
to find out what your council's getting up to, you just pop along to the 
meeting.  Well, that's how it is supposed to be.  But more and more councils 
are making it more and more difficult to find out how they arrive at their 
decisions.  As Terry Dignan reports, there's growing concern that local 
government is becoming less accountable.

TERRY DIGNAN:                     In many regional and 
local newspaper offices journalists say they're facing a new challenge. 
 How to break down secrecy in town halls. Here in Newcastle, the north-east 
of England's biggest-selling paper complains decisions about the lives 
of its readers are now made behind closed doors.  And all because of New 
Labour's drive to modernise local government.     

ALISON HASTINGS:               Why do you allow meetings to 
be held in private, that's the bottom line, it's quite an easy argument, 
don't have your meeting in private if you don't want to be accused of being 
secretive.

DIGNAN:                         Newspaper editors 
aren't the only ones complaining about growing secrecy in local government. 
 Many Labour councillors are also unhappy.  While Tony Blair and his ministers 
say all they're trying to do is to modernise local government, their critics 
claim the policy is undermining local democracy by concentrating more and 
more power in fewer and fewer hands.

                         All councils in England and 
Wales will have to change the way they are run under a Government bill 
now before Parliament. Up till now, decisions have been made by committees 
of councillors meeting in public.

                              Under the bill an 
elected mayor or cabinet - or a combination of the two - will be given 
the power to make decisions.  Most Labour councils aren't keen on elected 
mayors - many have already decided they'll be run by cabinets instead. 
Mayors and cabinets are allowed to meet in private, despite protests to 
the Government.

We were allowed to film some of the proceedings of Newcastle City Council's 
recently-formed cabinet.    The council's committee system has been 
scrapped and policies are now made here.  Decisions of the members of the 
cabinet are published but the discussions and debate leading up them are 
kept private. 

COUNCILLOR TONY FLYNN:        Well, the government is allowing 
the option of having the Cabinet meeting privately just as the Cabinet 
does at national level.   It's a one party committee and it has the opportunity 
to debate things on a party political basis, then it makes its proposals 
to the Council Committee where there's two members of the Opposition on 
that committee and that is open to the press and public.

DIGNAN:                    Journalists at the Evening 
Chronicle plan their coverage of the day's big stories in the north-east. 
 Increasingly they rely on leaks from councillors for information about 
the local authority.  The editor would like to send her reporters to cover 
meetings of the council's cabinet because that's where important decisions 
are reached. Previously they were made in committees open to the media 
and public.
 
ALISON HASTINGS:            You don't know where to go to 
find out and to chase what's happening and decisions now are being made 
very often by one member of the cabinet, who has a special responsibility 
for that area and one paid council officer.  That doesn't appear to me 
to be a particularly democratic way of making decisions that affect, you 
know, hundreds of thousands of people's lives day in day out.

DIGNAN:                    The Society of Editors, 
which represents local papers, is pressing the Government to ban private 
cabinet meetings.  But ministers have turned down the request, arguing 
that under the new system all decisions made by cabinets will see the light 
of day.  
    
HILARY ARMSTRONG:            I believe that people will actually 
see this is a move forward in terms of openness of information and not 
a closing up.   In future every decision whether it is taken in public 
or in private will have to be recorded and will have to be published and 
will also have to have the considerations that were taken and the options 
that were looked at. 

DIGNAN:                    But the flow of information 
from these office blocks at Newcastle City Council is closing up, according 
to some of the Labour members here.  Only ten out of seventy-eight councillors 
are in the cabinet.  The remainder, now called backbenchers, are, like 
the public, excluded from cabinet meetings.  
  
COUNCILLOR DON PRICE:        We need to hear the debate, we need 
to hear the discussion, we need to hear what's being said by officers and 
by members so that people can be fully held to account for their input 
into the decisions and the reasons explained why particular decisions have 
been, been arrived at and that needs all meetings open to the public.

DIGNAN:                    In this new system of local 
government the role of our elected councillors is being transformed.  The 
Government says that instead of wasting time in endless meetings in council 
chambers like this one, they'll be in their communities working on behalf 
of the people they represent.  They'll only have to come here to scrutinise 
the decisions and policies of the council.  But some Labour councillors 
are warning there are worrying signs for local democracy that the system 
just isn't working.

                        Time for play before the 
day starts at Holy Cross school in London.  And a chance for parents to 
talk to their local councillor.  But Brendan Bird no longer has all the 
answers.  He's on Labour-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham council, now 
run by a cabinet consisting of a mayor and his deputies.  They - and not 
an education committee - now make decisions about schools.  Some councillors 
feel sidelined.
 
BRENDAN BIRD:                You get asked things at governing 
body about what is the views of the local authority on, say, Continental 
day, say, asset management of schools, and whereas you probably would have 
known if there was, when you had the training of a committee, now you don't. 
You say, well, the best you could do is, well, I'll make a phone call, 
I'll try and find out from the council and come back to you, and that weakens 
your constituency role.

ANDREW SLAUGHTER:            These are people who have chosen 
to be publicly-elected representatives.  They cannot any longer sit on 
their backsides in committee rooms for hours on end possibly absorbing 
information, but then what were they doing with that information?  They've 
got to be more proactive.
  
DIGNAN:                    Because a majority of councillors 
under the new system are no longer involved in the running of a council 
the Government has had to find a new role for them.  They sit on panels 
scrutinising closely decisions made by the cabinet. The idea is they hold 
the cabinet or elected mayor to account for the way in which the council's 
policies are carried out. 

ARMSTRONG:                There is a scrutiny process 
which the council as a whole has responsibility for policy and they need 
and will have the assurance that the decisions are being taken within that 
policy framework but also they will then have the right to examine the 
decisions.

DIGNAN:                    In Hammersmith, as in Newcastle, 
cabinet decisions are scrutinised by panels of councillors.  This is how 
the Government wants all local authorities to be run.  But some of those 
who do the scrutinising claim it's a meaningless exercise.     

BIRD:                        You don't have the 
power to amend.  All you have the power to do is to refer back to the mayoral 
board, perhaps with a recommendation but not actually an amending power. 
 So, in many ways, review panels, scrutiny panels are toothless.

SLAUGHTER:                Well I think the first thing 
you have to say is, what scrutiny went on beforehand?  And precious little,and 
what it was of an uncoordinated and inadequate kind.

DIGNAN:                    So strongly did Keith Mallinson 
object to the new system that he walked out of Hammersmith and Fulham's 
Labour group.  He's on his own now and he lobbies for better facilities 
- such as improved play areas for his constituents. What made him go independent 
was the transfer of power to a handful of people in a cabinet.    

COUNCILLOR KEITH MALLINSON:    I don't see how you can call it democratic 
when you just have a bunch of seven dictating policy.  There's no room 
for discussion, there's no room for debate.  The role of the council has 
been basically downgraded to a meaningless talking shop.  Yeah, motions 
are still brought before it, but it doesn't have the same clout as it did 
in the past. 

DIGNAN:                    The Government says backbench 
councillors, in carrying out their scrutiny role, should be able to criticise 
any decision of members of the cabinet.  But that doesn't happen often 
in those Labour authorities where, it's alleged, the council leadership 
controls the scrutiny process by deciding who will chair the scrutiny committees 
or panels. 

PRICE:                    In the Labour Group cabinet 
members shouldn't be participating, for example, in the election of the 
chairs and vice chairs of committees but they are up and down the country 
and that's a significant problem.  So that at the very start of the process 
weakens the level of scrutiny.  Chairs of scrutiny committees are dependent 
on the leadership for their positions.

ARMSTRONG:                We in the Labour Party are saying 
very strongly that there will be no whipping on scrutiny panels and we 
are also saying that the scrutiny chairs shouldn't be appointed by the 
leadership or by the cabinet or the executive or the Mayor or whatever, 
they should have a degree of independence.

DIGNAN:                    At Holy Cross primary Brendan 
Bird's meetings with the head are one side of being a councillor.  Scrutinising 
the town hall's Labour administration is just as important.  Backbenchers 
can ask for cabinet decisions to be reconsidered.  A power Labour members 
appear reluctant to use. 

BIRD:                        The Conservatives 
have called in a hundred and sixty one items and the Labour non executive 
members have called in just three in that time. Clearly Labour members 
do not criticise their own side in public and as a consequence, the value 
of scrutiny is very much devalued.

MALLINSON:                The party members don't really 
want to rock the boat.  Many of them are looking for promotion themselves 
and may be taking over the role of deputy.

DIGNAN:                    Local papers are joining 
forces with growing numbers of Labour councillors.  They're warning ministers 
of the dangers of putting power into fewer hands without proper safeguards.

PRICE:                    We don't have any serious 
allegations of corruption in Newcastle, we're delighted to say.  But we're 
talking about what might happen in the future if there isn't a higher level 
of scrutiny by the political process.  Unless there is an improvement in 
the scrutiny function, both in terms of the decisions made by officers 
and cabinet members, there is a greater potential for corrupt behaviour.

DIGNAN:                    Newspapers are demanding 
that town hall cabinets open their doors.  They're lining up with Labour 
councillors who complain modernising local government is leading to more 
secrecy and less democracy.