“Is the government’s “devolution revolution” stalling? The National Audit Office’s new report on English cities’ devolution deals, published last week, suggests it could be. The report makes clear what council leaders have been telling the government for months: many councils don’t know what powers are on offer to them, when they may get them, or how they will pay for them.

All these concerns should have been addressed much earlier in the process. Last year, the Tories blocked Labour amendments to the cities and local government devolution bill that would have made devolution work much better.

We called on the government to let areas choose whether they wanted a mayor or not, to publish a full list of services available for devolution, and to devolve resources alongside powers, so local areas aren’t just left to take the blame for government-imposed cuts. We also called for more devolution, beyond town halls to communities, giving people more control over the services they use.

Despite demands for more transparency, government ministers have become ever more secretive. In the past month alone, the communities secretary Greg Clark has refused two parliamentary questions and a Freedom of Information request to publish a list of which councils he’s talking to about devolution.

Transparency matters because you can’t devolve powers to communities if they don’t know anything about it. Involving communities will lead to better devolution deals because local people understand their own communities better than Whitehall does.

Polling by Ipsos Mori demonstrates a close link between awareness of devolution and positive attitudes towards it. Being open about devolution builds support, while doing deals in secret breeds opposition. That’s why the most successful transformations in public services are coming from local, not central, government. Plymouth council, for example, has set up more than 30 energy co-ops working with their community; Rochdale has recently mutualised its housing stock to give tenants a real stake in ownership, and Oldham council has improved care for older people and better conditions for care staff in its ethical care company.

Rochdale joins staff and tenants together as biggest mutual in housing
As leader of Lambeth council until 2012 I learned that giving communities a bigger voice leads to better public services. A tenant management board gave residents the power to lead the transformation of Blenheim Gardens housing estate in Brixton, improving repairs and rent collection, and cutting crime. A community-led youth trust is creating new opportunities for young people and tackling gang crime in some of the south London borough’s most disadvantaged communities.

This is real devolution – people getting the chance to influence decisions that affect them, and making the professionals who run those services listen more carefully to the people they serve.

The NAO raises concerns that devolution has been so tightly controlled by the chancellor, George Osborne, excluding even other government ministers, that it could go into reverse if there is a change of chancellor. How ironic that an agenda based on letting go is being so tightly gripped by a single over-controlling individual. And there is no consistency to the government’s approach. At the same time as the devolution bill was going through parliament last year, the government was pushing through a housing bill that centralised more than 30 powers in Whitehall.

Labour has argued for more ambitious devolution that shapes a new relationship between citizens and the state and redefines the relationship between local and national government.

We believe in devolution by default. That means a new approach that assumes powers will be devolved unless there is a compelling reason not to. We want to see resources devolved alongside powers, with fiscal devolution that ensures funding follows need. And we want devolution to mean something more than a transfer of power from one set of politicians to another – communities need a new right to request control.

Maybe Jenkin and fellow MPs will remedy this when they sit down to deliberate, but already they seem to have fallen prey to Whitehall’s chronic disease – myopic departmentalism. That’s odd because under Jenkin, the former public administration select committee singled out lack of strategic co-ordination as one of the centre’s besetting faults.

In 2016, to see the size and capacity of the civil service you have to look at what is happening to the rest of the public sector, including the devolved administrations. If English devolution goes further, Whitehall’s numbers, function (and culture) will be affected – yet the terms of reference for the Jenkin committee inquiry don’t mention the D-word.

Of course devolution isn’t a given. Localists have taken umbrage at the sceptical tone adopted in the National Audit Office’s (NAO) progress report on the devolution deals, especially its observation that there isn’t a great deal of rhyme or reason to some of the arrangements. The money being passed out to the (unaccountable) local enterprise partnerships far exceeds the supplementary investment grants going to the consortia of councils. Even in Greater Manchester, the most advanced and best favoured deal, the NAO can’t fathom what influence, if any, the new combined authority and mayor are going to have on NHS budgets. As for schools, the NAO notes dryly that proposals from councils to retain their role “have not been accepted by central government”.

Without clarity and local scrutiny we risk the prize of devolution
Here’s a paradox of devolution and one that really does get the localists foaming: handing over power (and even just promising to hand over power) requires the centre to have more bodies. The cities and local growth unit, run jointly by the communities and business departments, has 155 civil servants plus another seven in the Treasury dealing with devolution. All those departments are losing numbers, raising concerns about capacity to negotiate and implement deals.

There’s also accountability. When Lord Bob Kerslake was permanent secretary for the department of communities and local government, he asked some wide-ranging questions about who was in charge, as public services are contracted out and fragmented. The NAO comptroller and auditor general, Amyas Morse, recently refused to sign off the accounts of the Department for Education due to his opinion that “the level of error and uncertainty in the statements to be both material and pervasive”, which bears out Kerslake’s concern: Morse says he simply does not know whether academy schools are spending public money well enough.

The newly appointed permanent secretary for the Department of Education, Jonathan Slater, will have his work cut out. It’s not clear whether his previous experience as a senior officer in Islington council will be a help or hindrance. But his boss, education secretary Nicky Morgan, is adamant that forcing all schools to become academies will cut central interference – which ought to mean Slater will need even fewer civil servants.

The NAO poses a big question for Jenkin: what effect will devolution have on Whitehall’s departmental structure?

Another big question is what happens to the wider field of public management? If city regions and combined authorities are now doing things formerly dealt with in Whitehall, will their managers need different skills; will they be a different breed? To find out about the future of the civil service, the MPs will have to look outside Whitehall.”