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What difference is the operation of local authority health scrutiny making to the oversight and democratisation of decision making by health bodies? This article provides an insight into how a group of local authorities in England tackled the operation of a specific joint health scrutiny committee. This example highlights building relations with associated health bodies and other local authorities, choice of health scrutiny agenda, ways of working, capacity of committees, ambiguities within the policy itself, and the difficulties and challenges of adding meaningful democratic oversight to the decision‐making processes of NHS bodies. This review highlights some of the benefits of health scrutiny, but suggests that engaging more fully with patients and the public in such reviews could result in a more influential and inclusive process.

This article provides insights into how the health scrutiny function has performed in its first year of operation in a unitary authority in the North of England, through a case study of an inquiry into health inequalities.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the possible implications for health scrutiny in England of changes being made/consulted upon resulting from the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Analysis of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, associated secondary legislation and a review of the existing literature on health scrutiny over the last 10 years.

Health scrutiny legislation is in need of review, especially since the changes to the health care system introduced by the recent Health and Social Care Act 2012. The Department of Health has recently consulted on possible changes to be implemented from April 2013. If health scrutiny can become embedded in local commissioning processes, there is potential for health services appropriate to local populations to be more effectively provided within the current financially challenging environment.

Little has been written on health scrutiny in recent years. This article looks at the potential impacts on and opportunities for health scrutiny under the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of recent local government reform for political leadership in local authorities. In particular, it investigates the role played by local government officers in shaping and directing the work of politicians serving on overview and scrutiny committees.

Drawing on data from five case studies of local councils in England and Wales, the paper suggests that recent reform has done little to clarify decision making and leadership in local government.

The paper suggests that local councillors need to define their roles under the new system in order to reflect the changing requirements of their work.

The paper investigates the impact of the introduction of overview and scrutiny on the relations between councillors and local government officers. Research on leadership in local government is well established, but this literature needs updating in the light of recent reforms. The paper suggests a complex pattern of leadership in local democratic processes, and suggests that more work needs to be done to ensure that local councillors adapt to their new roles.

This paper aims to examine the impact of public scrutiny on chief executive officer (CEO) compensation at Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms.

This paper uses the unique opportunity provided by the 2008 financial crisis and, in particular, government support and legislated compensation restrictions in the US Department of the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It aggregates monetary and non-monetary executive compensation information from 2006 to 2012, with firm- and manager-level data. It presents univariate summary compensation results and uses multivariate regression analysis to isolate the impact of public scrutiny and legislated compensation restrictions on executive pay.

Overall, the results are consistent, with increased public scrutiny having a lasting impact on perks and temporary impact on wage and legislated compensation restrictions having a temporary impact on wage. Changes in specific perk items provide evidence on which perks firms perceive as excessive and which provide common value.

The paper contributes to the discussion of perks as excess by introducing a novel data set of perk compensation at S&P500 firms and by studying how firms choose to alter levels of specific perk items in response to increased public scrutiny and legislated compensation restrictions. The paper contributes to the literature on executive pay as there has been little inquiry into the impact of public scrutiny on compensation. Public scrutiny could be an important source of external governance if firms change behavior in response to explicit and implicit scrutiny costs.

The Local Government Act (2000) introduced new Overview and Scrutiny Committees, composed of elected non‐executive councillors, that can respond to proposals from the NHS for changes in services and also set their own agendas for more detailed scrutiny, including of the NHS. Limited capacity has meant that the focus of scrutiny has often been on statutory consultations from the NHS, service provision, NHS organisations and only occasionally on wider issues. However, it is commissioning that is officially seen as the main vehicle for shaping NHS services, so health scrutiny ought logically to address itself more to commissioning than to investigating providers. Practice‐based Commissioning (PBC) was introduced in 2004 with the aim of engaging front‐line clinicians in commissioning health care, though most such commissioning is being undertaken by groups of practices joining together to form consortia, rather than by individual GPs. In principle, this makes it more practicable for health scrutiny to include PBC, but consortia are not statutory bodies and cannot be compelled to participate. We suggest ways in which this omission might be addressed.

This paper describes the role and remit of the Scrutiny Unit, which assists members of parliament (MPs) with the analysis of accounting data.

The analysis is developed through an understanding of the secondary literature and practical experience of the work of the Unit.

The Scrutiny Unit is an unappreciated and yet vital part of the way in which financial scrutiny operates within the UK parliament. It translates to MPs key financial and economic documents including the budget and accounts. It is a unique institution, covering the entire financial cycle of approval and accountability within parliament.

This is the first descriptive piece on the Unit in an accounting journal and contributes to our understanding of how financial accountability works within the UK parliament.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of Police and Crime Panels (PCPs) within the new constitutional arrangements for governing police forces in England and Wales.

Desktop research of the web pages of PCPs, combined with documentary analysis of reports of panel meetings and a literature review of relevant academic materials.

During the first year of their operation the role of the PCP in the new constitutional arrangements for governing police forces in England and Wales has been widely criticised. This paper explores reasons that may impinge on the effectiveness of these local bodies to scrutinise how Police and Crime Commissioners discharge their statutory functions. In particular, it draws attention to the limited powers of the panel, the contradictions of the “critical/friend” model of scrutiny, the extent of political alignment between “the scrutinisers” and “the scrutinee”, and the ability of the latter to constrain the scrutiny function of the former.

This paper is the first to explore the scrutiny role of PCPs in the context of the research evidence regarding the development and use of scrutiny within the local government context.

The UK Government’s White paper stated their commitment to the development of medical audit. The subsequent growth of audit activity by all health‐care professions has led to a proliferation of activity, often involving direct contact with the patient. However, there seems to be wide acceptance that there are no ethical dimensions to audit activity, even though it may be wide‐ranging and unco‐ordinated. Argues that, while research has a well‐developed mechanism for ethical scrutiny, audit activity can sometimes be indistinguishable from research and so, in some cases, it should be submitted to external scrutiny in order to protect the patient. Suggests five criteria as activities where ethical scrutiny should be considered.

The authors examine whether the stronger information content of chief financial officer (CFO) insider trading relative to that of chief executive officers (CEOs) results from a different willingness to exploit the information asymmetry that exists between executives and outside shareholders (scrutiny hypothesis) or from differing financial acumen between CFOs and CEOs (financial acumen hypothesis). The authors consider the information content of equity purchases for CEOs and CFOs. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors examine purchase-based insider trading portfolio returns before and after the implementation of SOX in firms with high versus low regulation, for routine and opportunistic managers, and in samples of CEOs with prior CFO experience.

The authors provide evidence that SOX affected executives differently and provide support for the scrutiny hypothesis. CFO-based portfolios remain the most profitable post-SOX, but the magnitude of returns has fallen in absolute and relative terms compared to returns for CEOs. Superior financial acumen of CFOs does not appear to be supported. CEO purchase trade returns appear to be lower than CFO returns because CEOs face greater visibility and scrutiny and thus limit their own trading aggressiveness.

This research contributes to the literature in explaining why CFOs best CEOs in their insider trading purchases and documents that in the post-SOX period, CFO insider trading superiority disappears.