PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

132 I PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
favourable light, the independence of a statistics office is best ensured by
making it accountable to parliament rather than the government, as has
recently been proposed in the United Kingdom.
A second type of independent agency comprises those which carry out
some of the executive and regulatory functions of government itself. Rather
than their being part of the parliamentary regime of oversight, as the first type
are, the issue is more how to exercise effective oversight over them, when they
do not form part of any government departmental structure. It is an increasing
practice in many countries for governments to devolve public functions, such
as regulatory activities or the delivery of front-line services, to independent
agencies. These can include public corporations such as a central bank or
public broadcasting service; regulatory bodies for health and safety, the major
utilities, and so on; agencies delivering services with public money in
transport, housing, education, urban regeneration, the penal system, etc.,
sometimes as public-private partnerships replacing local government control
and responsibility.
A number of problems are raised by the increasing use of independent
agencies of this type. One, raised in the submission from the Greek
Parliament, concerns the issuing of normative acts by independent authorities,
‘thus shifting the decision-making process on the normative level from
parliament to the independent authorities.’ Another lies in the weakening of
lines of responsibility and accountability. In theory, an independent agency
may fall within the purview of a government department, but it is designed to
be an arms-length process, which makes it difficult to secure effective
parliamentary oversight, even if significant sums of public money, with
considerable distributional consequences, are involved.
Further online reading about independent oversight bodies:
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2002).
Relations between supreme audit institutions and parliamentary committees.
World Bank (2001). Features and functions of supreme audit institutions.