Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 21 JUNE 2000
MR BRIAN
BENDER, MR
RICHARD CARDEN
AND MR
GEORGE TREVELYAN
80. We are close up to 2001 now. Where are we
predicting thereafter? Do we have any information on that?
(Mr Carden) If we can pause for a minute, I think
we have that information here.
81. Would it be useful, Chairman, if I followed
with another question?
(Mr Carden) Are you happy to pause or shall we let
you have a note?
Mr Hurst: I think that would be useful.
Chairman: We do not want to waste time.
Mr Hurst
82. Now the Food Industry, Competitiveness and
Consumers Group in fact appears to have almost a double function,
does it not? There is the overall responsibility and the responsibility
in connection with the BSE Inquiry. It is also going to have an
input into the Government's response to that inquiry. Now this
is a situation where it might be felt there was a potential conflict
of interest?
(Mr Bender) The BSE Inquiry team—and Mr Carden
may correct me if I get this slightly wrong, as a new boy—is
a self-contained unit. It so happens that it was put under the
management of the person who was then head of that group, but
it is separate from the rest of the group. As it happens, that
person has now moved jobs within the Ministry. He has taken that
responsibility with him, and the people still report to him. It
is a self-contained unit; it has more than chinese walls between
it and the rest of the Ministry.
83. I am quite glad you said that because you
know how obsessive This Place is these days about not only must
you not have conflicts, you must be perceived, if I can use an
earlier word, not to have conflicts and you are quite satisfied
with that perception
(Mr Bender) Coming new to it, I am satisfied unless
Mr Carden wants to comment being in the Ministry at the time it
was set up.
84. Moving on to the Inquiry itself, there is
a million pounds of planned expenditure for that inquiry in the
year that we are presently in. Is the judgment that that is going
to be adequate for this year?
(Mr Carden) Yes, the delay in the delivery of the
Report that has been agreed from end of March to end of September
is not estimated to put costs up above the amount budgeted for.
85. Are you in a position to say how much has
been so far spent in regard to the cost of that Inquiry?
(Mr Carden) There was a PQ answer in March which gave
the latest figures for the cost of payments to the Inquiry team
themselves and their supporting staff and it also covered the
cost of liaison units in MAFF and other departments and legal
support given to witnesses, serving officials and retired officials.
That was an answer to Mr Cable in late March, I think.
86. Yes, but are you able to recall—
(Mr Carden) We have undertaken to this Committee to
give you additionally an estimate of the cost of time spent by
officials working in response to the Inquiry. That is a figure
that we do not yet have, but have undertaken to give you before
the Inquiry Report goes public.
87. Do you have an anticipation of the final
likely cost of the Inquiry?
(Mr Carden) The final cost will, I expect, be very
close to the figure which was given in the PQ answer in March,
plus the element that that answer did not purport to cover, of
the time of officials spent responding to the Inquiry which we
are going to give you.
Chairman
88. Can you just remind what that PQ answer
said?
(Mr Carden) I have that somewhere, Chairman. I have
now found—
89. Perhaps while you are looking at that one,
your colleague should be looking at this one?
(Mr Carden) May I just answer the question before
last. I have now found the figures you were asking for; as I understood
it, you were asking where we are now with the estimate of BSE
cases. In 1999, the central estimate within a range was 2,083
cases; the top of that range was 2,392. These are Central Veterinary
Laboratory figures. The actual outturn for 1999 was 2,275 so it
was over the central estimate but it was under the top end of
the range. The central estimate, from the same source, for the
year 2000, is 1,112, top of the range 1,337, and the central estimate
for 2001 470, top of the range 615. You started by referring to
our target for that year of 650; it is actually 647.
90. I think my question was, not really to take
the point too far at this stage, but do you have figures going
beyond 2001? Then again, I think I am quite happy, through the
Chair, to have a note on this.
(Mr Carden) I certainly do not have figures beyond
2001 here.
91. As far as the BSE Inquiry costs are concerned,
you have already undertaken that you are going to send us a note
on that. When you do, if you would make the information historic
because of course there was a peak time when officials were putting
together an account of the events which I know was a very contentious
issue and the actual physical chronology was actually quite a
difficult issue. So if you could get that historically and you
would no doubt specify what are MAFF costs because clearly the
Department of Health had parallel costs, amongst other departments
as well, there would be other departmental costs. We want to be
able to put it all together at the end of the day. Thank you very
much.
(Mr Carden) The PQ I was referring to was answered
by Ms Quin to Dr Cable, No. 883. I do not know the date; it was
in late March but it gave the cost on the basis that I described
as £27 million.
Mr Paterson
92. Will you definitely publish in September?
(Mr Bender) Will Lord Justice Phillips definitely
publish in September? We are not best equipped to answer that
question. There is no reason to believe he will not.
(Mr Carden) The commitment is for Lord Justice Phillips
to deliver his Report to Government by the end of September. It
would, I think, be normal for there to be a short pause before
the Government publishes the Report, so the publication will not
be September, I do not think. I would expect that to be some time
in October.
Chairman
93. We may emphasise the shortness of the pause
between the Government receiving it and publication because I
think people will want to come to their own judgment, on what
Lord Phillips is saying, if I may say so.
(Mr Bender) We will follow the correct procedures
on publication of these sorts of documents.
Chairman: Good. Now, Mr Marsden.
Mr Marsden
94. May I turn to regulations? MAFF report that
they undertake reviews of regulations partly through formal evaluation,
partly through wide ranging reviews and partly through regular
contacts within industry. How are formal evaluations of regulations
commissioned?
(Mr Carden) We regularly publish estimates of compliance
costs at the time regulations are being proposed and invite comments
on that. Is that the kind of evaluation that you have in mind?
We make an assessment of what the cost impact of the regulation
will be at the draft stage and we explain how we have arrived
at that estimate and we would generally put that out in public
in a form of consultation before we proceed to make a regulation.
95. So it is just the cost element that you
look at? You do not look at the other resource implications?
(Mr Carden) The analysis that we put out explains
what kind of impact we expect the regulations to have, on which
classes of operator and the cost or costs we expect it to impose.
96. What form of programme to review all regulations,
is there a formal mechanism?
(Mr Bender) The Regulatory Impact Unit of the Cabinet
Office is carrying out that sort of review with all Government
departments and MAFF is playing its part in that and as we have
mentioned earlier, MAFF itself set up various Red Tape Reviews
last year and have accepted the recommendations in almost every
case.
97. We are jumping ahead here. What I am looking
for is, dare I say, business planning here as to how you obviously
evaluate different regulations in a systematic way in order to
be able to (a) make sure you cover the whole lot and (b) obviously
you then send information, communications to the right people?
Now it sounds as if you do, but—
(Mr Bender) In advance of the regulation being adopted,
the process is the one that Mr Carden described. When it has been
adopted, I do not think I would say, with confidence, that every
single regulation is systematically reviewed in the way you have
described, but there are reviews of the burdens of regulation
of the sort I have described, and indeed some of the reviews described
in the Farming Summit outcome in March where Lord Haskin's task
force on better regulation will carry out a review of the impact
of environmental regulations systematically on the agricultural
industry. But I would not like to give the impression that in
every single case there is a systematic review of the effect of
regulations post facto. Maybe there should be, but I do
not think that is how Government has tended to operate.
98. I was all set to let you off the hook and
then you said " we do not systematically". Knowing how
sensitive this subject is in terms of the headlines of "Red
Tape Affecting Farmers", "Holding Them Back", "Millstones
round their neck". They just want to get on with it, so for
you to say that you do not systematically do it—I am obviously
encouraged by the fact that you are saying that maybe you should—I
would strongly urge that you do.
(Mr Carden) I mentioned, I think it was to Mr Borrow,
the operation last Autumn on Red Tape and the way that it started
with our Minister asking the NFU in that case to say which areas
of regulation they were most concerned about. The reason we did
that was—at odds with your suggestion—we felt that
we could not trust ourselves to home in on the right things if
we simply went about this in, let us say, a bureaucratic way,
taking an area of regulation and combing it over and seeing what
we thought of it. We felt that that was liable to waste time.
We might home in on the wrong things that did not really matter
and that it was better to invite those who felt regulation was
a pain to say where it was a pain and start from there. I would
suggest that, given that time is short and resources are limited
that might be the better way to go about it.
99. If you are suggesting that you should not
be carrying out self-assessment on your own regulations that you
are bringing in, or it is regulations being imposed upon you,
but then leave it to others in the hope that maybe, whether the
NFU or the Prime Minister, actually says: "Why do you not
look at the red tape" it sounds pretty poor, does it not,
to farmers out there?
(Mr Bender) Well does it? We have now referred to
two ways in which we have tried to keep a grip on the cost of
regulation. First, before we introduce them we try to take great
care to assess what the cost will be and then invite other people
to check that for us.
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