ON TUESDAY, we suggested that one of the side effects of the concerns about the Health and Social Services’s approach to taxpayers’ funds and a ‘don’t touch the staff’ approach to cutting costs was highlighting the role of deputies on the political boards of departments.

If, as in the case of HSSD, the officer level approach is to regard as much as possible ‘operational’ and thus not a matter for deputies to question, why have elected representatives involved at all? Whatever the answer, there are further ramifications to the affair of the money wasted on childcare.

The Treasury minister was very direct in his view that on that item alone Health was guilty of a lack of financial control but that responsibility for budgets rests with individual committees.

What islanders are likely to ask, however, is what happens in that case if circumstances were to arise in which a political board felt it had no remit to scrutinise the operational spending of their department yet the professional management team was doing things in an unsatisfactory way?

Who has the responsibility for ensuring the efficient administration of public funds?

No doubt the States internal audit function would pick up anything seriously wrong but a combination of a weak board and a management team reluctant to adopt best practice from the private sector would presumably continue unchecked unless or until there was a significant personnel change or other intervention.

And that is the biggest single criticism aimed at the States by the Wales Audit Office and consultants Tribal: that there is no central control or direction of budgets.

The other overlooked issue is the level of responsibility such a system places on departmental chief officers and their teams. In the absence of non-executive scrutiny, the lead civil servant is in effect in charge of setting strategic policy, managing the day-to-day administration of that policy – and scrutinising the efficacy of its implementation and monitoring the success of its outcome.

The other question is how the Policy Council, through its human resources department, assists and develops any individual in such a position.

Given the autonomous roles of the States departments, of course, it does not.