Steve Richards: A dull concept that ministers try to avoid. But public services won't work without it

The views of Tony Benn are not as fashionable as they once were. The old rebel still packs them in when performing his one-man show, but his audiences come to worship the performance rather than the political creed. After all, Benn can sell out in Guildford, not a place known for its commitment to Socialism.

Most of the current Cabinet and many former ministers were once ardent Bennites. When Benn was at his political peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was the dominant figure in British politics, more talked about and analysed than Margaret Thatcher. Now, however, ministers are less keen on the Bennite era than even theatregoers in Guildford. They associate it only with divisions and election defeats.

But those warily defensive ministers reject their pasts too speedily. In one respect at least, Benn was on to something very big. If part of his creed was rehabilitated, it would benefit greatly the theatregoers in Guildford and the poorer constituents of ministers.

Currently there are many fashionable words and phrases whirling around politics. Visit a deputy leadership campaign meeting and you will hear much talk about "tackling inequality". Read an article by David Cameron or David Willetts and the phrase "social mobility" will almost certainly appear. Listen to Tony Blair or Cameron and before long the words "public service reform" will leave their lips. No one raises a theme of more vital importance, although addressing it is a pre-condition to achieving better public services, social mobility and the rest. Benn raised it persistently, and he was right to do so.

The theme is "accountability". The word sounds tediously clinical. Yet it touches everything in British politics at the moment. "To whom are you accountable?" Pose the question and the answers light up the political stage, making sense of much that has gone wrong and illuminating new pathways for the future.

Benn posed the question in many forms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sadly, he came up with the wrong answer. For example, he asked why it was that a Labour government became more accountable to the International Monetary Fund than to those voters who had put it in power in the first place, an important question. But his solution was to make the Labour leadership accountable to party activists alone. With an evangelical zeal and mesmerising oratory he put the case at a time when the party's activists were at best unrepresentative of potential Labour voters and at worst were deranged.

Ever since, the issue of accountability has been overlooked. But it remains central. Where the lines of accountability are clear, reforms are always successful. Where the lines are blurred and unclear, the reforms are doomed.

Take a successful reform. When Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent, the lines of accountability had been clearly thought through. He appointed the Monetary Policy Committee and set the terms, in particular the need to avoid going above or below a specified inflation target. Within these important constraints the committee was free to act and the rest of us could make judgements each month on what it was up to. There was a transparent simplicity in the lines of accountability.

Compare this with the railways. Private companies run the trains. A non-profit-making company maintains the tracks. The non-elected rail regulator can demand money from the Treasury. The Health and Safety Executive has separate powers. The Transport Secretary provides some of the cash. The regulator is accountable to the Transport Secretary, but wields his own powers. The train companies are accountable to their shareholders. The Transport Secretary is accountable to Parliament and is ultimately responsible for ensuring that Britain has a modern transport network, even though he has limited powers to bring this about.

The result of the blurred lines of accountability is the nightmarish chaos of Britain's transport system. When privatising the railways and in seeking to correct the privatisation, no minister asked the pivotal question: Who is accountable to the passengers? As a result, passengers are powerless.

On a much bigger scale, there are some forms of accountability that are robust and others that are not. The Government is held to account in ways that are clear. Ministers are always on their toes, fearful of the intense scrutiny. They are accountable to Parliament in a manner that is too easily underestimated. It should not be forgotten that Blair only managed to get backing for the disastrous war against Iraq because the Conservatives and enough Labour MPs supported him. If they had not done so he would not have got away with it.

The British media also holds the central government to account obsessively, minute by minute and day by day. It shows no interest in the owner of a private company who wields more power than most ministers. On the other hand, if a virtually powerless minister opens his mouth he is the subject of myriad columns within 24 hours. At a national political level, accountability works. We know where to look.

But view other political trends through the prism of accountability and all sorts of warning signs flicker into life. The current fashion for localism becomes worrying. Few vote in local elections, and therefore councils are not held properly to account. The media culture focuses on the centre rather than the local. It is possible that if the Government gives powers away to a disparate range of local providers, people will feel less empowered, not more.

Already the lines are too blurred in the NHS. The Government is ultimately accountable as it raises the cash from taxpayers. But to whom are hospital managers and GPs accountable? They answer to everyone from the Health Secretary to local health bodies and in some cases the private sector. In contrast, city academies will remain precarious while they are accountable solely to the centre. They will be impossible to supervise if there is a substantial expansion.

To take another example, the current fashion for the voluntary sector is more risky than it seems. Elected politicians make much of their determination to tackle poverty, yet they are placing too much responsibility on charities that are not accountable to them in any way.

But the prism also lights up interesting future paths. At least the introduction of co-payments for some services would make providers more directly accountable to the users: pay GPs to see them at the weekend and they better be good.

Benn used to pose a pivotal question in relation to those who exert power over our lives: "How do we get rid of them?"

Until voters know precisely who is responsible for delivery and how they can get rid of them, Britain's public services will continue to be delivered in a spirit of chaotic confusion.

s.richards@independent.co.uk

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