View Mark Lloyd's speech from the session "Influencing Whitehall" at the SOLACE summit.
Date: Thursday 14 October 2021
Session: "Influencing Whitehall" – Peter Cardwell, Mark Lloyd
It's brilliant to be here in Hull, with so many colleagues who have contributed so outstandignly to our country for so long, BUT especially through the pandemic. Massive thanks to you all for all you've done in your places – AND as a Society under Joanne Roney’s fabulous leadership…
Whilst it’s great to see so many of you for the first time for WAY too long, some leading figures from our profession are not here with us in Hull this week. SOLACE’s former President, Martin Swales, this morning asked me to pass on his very best wishes to you all and said he hopes to see you all very soon…
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I loved listening to Peter and will be tuning into Talk Radio… I’ll not try to match his insights and intrigue from the Special Adviser world… Rather, I’ll reflect on “Influencing Whitehall” based on my six years at the LGA following just over a decade as a council CEO… I think I’ll also focus a touch more on our relationship with officials given Peter’s focus on politicians and special advisers.
I’ve got ten minutes and I’ll use them to make ten points.
First, people do business with people….
An awful lot of what we do comes down to forming mutually beneficial relationships …
There’s a basic choice to be made – do you want to be in the room – real or virtual – having the important conversations? Like how Peter described Gary.
Or on the pavement howling at the building where the decisions are being taken?
As proud as we might feel about a dramatic splash headline in one of the national newspapers, it really isn’t – as Dale Carnegie said back in 1936 – the way to Win Friends and Influence People.
There’s always a careful balance to be struck of course. Residents want to know you’re fighting their corner… Or in the case of the LGA, Welsh LGA, COSLA and NILGA, councils expect us to be negotiating on the hardest issues… But slamming the people we want to make deals with through the media or social media doesn’t set us up positively for a negotiation or create a trusting relationship…
Second, one of the things our senior civil service colleagues value really highly is ‘Safe Space’ to explore the most difficult of issues knowing we can ALL set out the challenges we’re all juggling, the constraints that exist, explore the politics and test all the options – however outlandish – without fear of leaks… But this too comes back to building trusting and trusted relationships…
Third, as the civil service has stretched, adapted and reshaped through the pandemic, there has been the most frequent and significant changes in postholders in my time working with central government.
In this light, please never under-value the insight and expertise LG colleagues bring into each and every room. In the main, we have fewer generalists moving from portfolio to portfolio – we don’t do potato blight one week, flood defences the next… Rather, in Local Government we have people who have grappled with tricky operational and policy issues for significant periods bringing genuine expertise into our conversations with Whitehall. That expertise has significant value.
Fourth, I find that council colleagues are worrying about an issue – typically – 10-14 days ahead of it becoming a big deal for our colleagues in central government. That early insight has great value. Not only for the way you respond quickly for the communities we serve, but also to help our colleagues in central government do some early thinking about whether national interventions will be needed. The best of our central government colleagues know we provide a near perfect early warning system AND we are not generally prone to overstatement or sensationalism…
Fifth, as we travel through our careers, very many people cross our paths. Between us in local government, whether in the places we live, from our education or our time in various workplaces, we’ve got to know very many of the people who now work as our peers in central government – or indeed in both Parliamentary chambers…
Individually, we probably are maintaining and nurturing those links. BUT I also think we need to be much better at identifying who amongst the 1.35m people who work full or part time in the local government workforce have the strong links with the people we seek to influence AND do better than we have historically at using those links for the good of local government as well as our own councils…
Which leads me to just two points about politicians [that didn’t feature in Peter’s great opener]:
Sixth on my list, stating the darned obvious, is that every MP has a constituency. In that constituency, they have a relationship with their council, councillors, senior officers, constituency party chair, party members, etc… When I worked as Durham County’s CEO, the best way to influence Tony Blair when he was PM wasn’t through me rocking up on a Friday or Saturday at his home in Trimdon, it was through his constituency agent, Councillor John Burton and his very good friend Peter Brookes, who happened to work in the council's community development team. Understanding those relationships with MPs and utilising them mattered lots in terms of ensuring our legislators and national policy makers are alert to the things on our minds…
Seven, a confession. It was only when I moved into the LGA that I properly came to appreciate the role of Select Committees and members of the House of Lords in our national policy making.
You couldn’t have missed the Joint Report this week from the Health and Social Care & Science & Technology Committees regarding “Coronavirus Lessons Learned”…
Giving evidence to Parliamentary Committees, and even All Party Parliamentary Groups, is a great opportunity to make your points and have them captured in Hansard and also, when done well, to influence the recommendations.
And members of the House of Lords do take seriously their role as the revising chamber. Individual peers are often prepared to get into a surprising level of detail around areas of special interest and welcome well-argued briefings ahead of debates. When I was running a council, I didn’t know which of the 788 sitting Peers were from my patch or those with an interest in it… You’ve probably got this nailed but I could have done better…
On to point Eight. So much of what we need comes down to money… And we must keep pressing for a long-term sustainably financial solution… But, if we only talk about money we soon lose the interest of politicians and officials. One of the things that makes us special is our ability to bring forward solutions to the most difficult social, environmental and economic challenges facing our country. One of the best ways of seriously engaging our central government colleagues is to bring strongly argued and well-evidenced answers to the most challenging of problems. For example, as I’m talking to you, a group of LGA and council colleagues from across the UK are talking with Andy Haldane – the new head of the Levelling Up Task Force – about the best ways of delivering on the Government’s ambitions ahead of the White paper expected later this Autumn.
Bringing innovation, creativity and an insight into how what’s already being spent could be better delivered, better targeted or reshaped is WAY more engaging that just holding out our hands always asking for more money…
Nine, when I worked in Durham there was a massive miners’ banner on the wall of County Hall saying ‘unity is strength’. When local government’s approach to working with central government becomes factional – whether by council type, professional area or geographically – the weaker we become in any negotiations. And the more frustrating we are as a partner for central government. Of course, we have squabbles, disagreements and sometimes very different views, but we’re well-advised to sort them within Local Government rather than in our dealings with central government.
Tenth, I’m going to repeat point one. As much as I love evidence and data and brilliantly crafted policy papers, we are in the relationship business when it comes to our work with national politicians and our central government colleagues. If you only hang on to one of my ten points, do please, please, please think about how you nurture and maintain healthy and mutually beneficial links with your MPs, Peers and our colleagues in central government. It’s good for your council and, for all of us…
Thank you….