Running regulators: do chairs count? - The Guardian

Governance in the public sector is a mystery. The revelation at the Commons health select committee hearing on Tuesday of name-calling around the Care Quality Commission board table adds to that mystery.

Dame Jo Williams' exit from the care regulator is not going to stop NHS trusts worrying about inspections, at least as long as the public views them as credible. Nor will her going ease new chief executive David Behan's difficulties in reconciling the volume of registration and inspection he can afford with burgeoning demand, especially when it's shouted for by the very ministers and MPs intent on cutting his budget.

But nursery school behaviour on a corporate board matters. If the chair of the regulator of mental health provision in the NHS plays fast and loose with the alleged mental health of one of her board members, what does that imply about the regulator's capacity and fairness?

What can the CQC now say about the governance of NHS trusts with a straight face? We don't know enough about what inspectors actually do, either when they are present or when they hover as a potential threat. In my experience CQC visits are resented, rather than regarded as opportunities to learn. Relations between NHS and social care staff with individual CQC staff may be good, but there is a grinding resentment felt at the institution. That sense of the CQC as an imposition and cost can only have grown as a result of its corporate shenanigans.

In re-building the regulator, Behan will draw on personal experience. It's not that long since Guardian Public magazine featured Behan, then chief executive of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, and Dame Denise Platt, then chair of CSCI, as a formidable duo, who seemed to have resolved the tensions inherent in the twin roles. CSCI was of course subsequently absorbed into the CQC.

Behan has to cope, as do leaders of all state regulators, with the debilitating background presence of civil servants and ministers, who often treat the formula 'arm's length' with disdain – as perhaps Behan did in his former role at the Department of Health. Richmond House will be poking into the CQC and Behan, with Williams' successor, will enter a relationship of administrative troilism. It's an open question whether Whitehall departments want chairs to exercise independent judgement, whatever it says on the tin.

Last week, Communities and Local Government officials must have rubbed their hands as they listened to the pre-appointment hearing for the new chair of the Audit Commission, Jeremy Newman.

Newman, who is from the accountancy firm BDO, did his utmost to persuade listeners that the perception of accountants as the greyest of the grey is correct. In winding up the commission – provided the legislation goes through – Newman is not going to give communities secretary Eric Pickles or his civil servants any trouble.

That may not be the case, however, for another recent high profile regulatory appointment, that of writer and broadcaster William Shawcross as chair of the Charity Commission. Shawcross is, of course, politically sound, as a supporter of Margaret Thatcher and sweetly sympathetic biographer of Rupert Murdoch. But loud-mouthed journalists do not always know when to shut up, and Shawcross could well commit some verbal blunder, offending the voluntary sector and giving Francis Maude and his colleagues second thoughts about having one of their own in position.

But will Shawcross do the legwork, read the papers, master the detail of charity regulation to the point that he will make any difference to what chief executive Sam Younger and his staff, struggling with shrunken budgets, would do anyway?

That brings us back to the question of what difference any given boardroom or governance setup makes, especially in these regulatory bodies that are so closely monitored by their 'parent' Whitehall departments. If, pending sorely needed research and evaluation, their impact comes close to 'not a great deal', then we can safely watch the antics of Williams and Co as mere entertainment, lacking administrative significance.

David Walker is contributing editor to the Public Leaders Network.

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