Examination of Witnesses (Questions 882
- 899)
WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 2000
MS MOIRA
WALLACE AND
MR ANDREW
CROOK
Chairman
882. Can I welcome you to the Committee and
can I ask you to identify yourselves for the record, please?
(Ms Wallace) Yes. I am Moira Wallace,
the Head of the Social Exclusion Unit, and this is Andrew Crook,
who does a lot of the work on the National Strategy for Neighbourhood
Renewal and, also, links with the work on the Urban White
Paper.
883. Thank you very much. Do you want to say
anything by way of introduction, or are you happy for us to go
straight into questions?
(Ms Wallace) Happy for questions.
884. Do you agree that your report, A National
Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal is strong and long on analysis
but short on money and specific measures which should be implemented?
(Ms Wallace) No, I do not agree with that. It is a
consultation document and, as I am sure you know, its timing is
about three months before the completion of the spending review.
Although it sets out some of the thinking that is going on in
that spending review, obviously, it cannot set out the results
of it. I think one of the things that the report does try and
do is pick up some of the very practical, grass-roots ideas that
have come up in the work that the Social Exclusion Unit has done
and other departments have done through their Policy Action Teams.
885. Which neighbourhoods do you want to focus
most on?
(Ms Wallace) I would like to put this answer in context
a little bit. I think one of the things that our work has picked
up on is that one of the problems with approaches to deprivation
can be that people say "Here are the 20 or 100 neighbourhoods
we are going to focus on", put an awful lot of resources
into them and not so much into others and, sometimes, all you
can achieve there is something that is quite short-term, and you
just get one set of poor neighbourhoods, effectively, swapping
places with the next. The report we published last week actually
sets out the scale of the problem that is facing us in terms of
area deprivation, and suggests that perhaps as many as 20 per
cent of electoral wards could be described as deprived—in
the sense that they have got double the national average of child
poverty and a range of other measures. So the approaches that
the National Strategy is floating are more universal and
are more about making mainstream services and local joint working
try and deliver in all these neighbourhoods. That is what we are
talking about measuring—results in all these neighbourhoods
rather than just picking a few that are particularly targeted.
886. You are really just looking at poverty
rather than neighbourhoods, are you not?
(Ms Wallace) No, I do not think so. The report is
about income poverty but it is also about all sorts of issues
that affect life as it is lived in these neighbourhoods—housing,
crime, access to services, education and so on. So I think it
is actually quite broad based.
887. How much money do you need to make a real
impact?
(Ms Wallace) I cannot prejudge what is going to come
out of the spending review—
888. I did not ask you what was going to come
out of the spending review, I asked you how much money you estimated
that you need.
(Ms Wallace) It slightly depends. A lot of work is
going on in the spending review to cost what will be necessary
to deliver different targets and a different balance of different
targets between housing, crime, education, and so on. I would
say that, although, like everyone, we would always like to see
more money spent on the things we are working on, one of the key
points in our work is that it is not just about how much money
is spent; a lot of these neighbourhoods have an awful lot of money
spent on them, but it is not spent effectively and it is not spent
in a way where one service talks to another about what they are
trying to achieve. There are overlaps and there are gaps.
889. Can you give us any idea of the scale of
money you are asking for?
(Ms Wallace) I do not think I can give you a sensible
answer on that because the work we are talking about affects so
many different programmes—mainstream programmes as well
as area regeneration programmes—and it also depends how
quickly the Government wants to make progress on what specific
targets.
890. You cannot give us a sensible answer, so
how can there be negotiations going on with the Treasury about
making funds available?
(Ms Wallace) Negotiations are going on across a range
of main department programmes and, also, about area-based initiatives
for regeneration programmes.
Mrs Dunwoody
891. Are you saying you have six different alternatives
and you say "These are the models. If you want this outcome
you must do this"? Is that what you are saying?
(Ms Wallace) This is the work that is actually going
on at the moment. I am not concealing it, this is the work that
is going on, actually, trying to bring quite a new focus to the
way that some departments have looked at their services. At the
moment we have public service agreements for big departments and
they tend to focus on the average result across the country. One
of the things that is quite new about the strategy that we set
out for consultation last week is that we are actually trying
to look at how do you make sure that those programmes—their
spending and the targets they are working to—are focused
on delivering in the poorest neighbourhoods? That is a completely
new approach. Arguably, we should have been doing this for some
time, but that is completely new in terms of the way that mainstream
programmes are being managed. So it is causing an awful lot of
thinking and analysis to go on.
892. I understand that, but that is method and
I think what the Committee want to know is how realistic is this?
Either you are saying to the Treasury masters "We have a
series of objectives but we need political decisions on which
of these you want, and these are the ways you can achieve it",
or you are providing, in a sense, an academic and very interesting
study, which will not be a lot of use to people on the ground.
Which is it?
(Ms Wallace) I would say that what we have already
done, and what the Government has already made clear, is that
it has a long-term aim, and an extremely difficult and ambitious
aim, of narrowing the gap between the poorest neighbourhoods and
the average. That continues to be repeated: the Chancellor repeated
that in the Budget documents, and the Treasury has bought into
that by setting up the cross-cutting review that we are talking
about. So there is a political objective. There is also a recognition
of how difficult it is, and there is also a recognition that this
needs to be a priority in the spending review.
Chairman: But if it is to be a priority in the
spending review, surely you have to have some idea of how much
money it is.
Mrs Dunwoody
893. What is it you are asking them to do? You
can produce the most marvellous frameworks, political priorities—fine—but
somebody has to say what that means in pounds, shillings and pence—if
we can talk about pounds, shillings and pence these days. Groats—whatever.
(Ms Wallace) I remember pounds, shillings and pence.
Lots of departments are looking at this. You will have looked
at the strategy that we are talking about and you will see that
it does affect the key business of some of the big departments.
894. We are not arguing with you. What we want
to know is what you are asking for. Tell us what you are asking
for.
(Ms Wallace) I, personally, am not asking for something.
Seriously, this is being done by a range of government departments
and I do not think any Select Committee will get any minister
or department to actually reveal those negotiations.
895. We are aware that ministers quite frequently
come here in order not to say anything at great length. That has
actually occurred to us. However, you keep telling us "We
have got a framework"; all I want you to do is tell me what
the Social Exclusion Unit is saying that will produce political
results and to define it in a way that this Committee can recognise
as being useful for our common—common—goal of getting
rid of child poverty and deprivation.
(Ms Wallace) I think this is a question that will
be easier to answer when the spending review results have been
announced. We are consulting on a framework. One of the risks
that you take when you consult on things at this stage—and
this is quite unusual for the government to do—is that people
say "Where is the money?" What we are actually consulting
on is "Are these the right ideas?" "Would this
help deal with some of the problems you have just been discussing
with the Deputy Prime Minister and Hilary Armstrong?" So
we are talking about structures, models, ideas—money will
come later. I do not think there is much more I can say on that.
Mr Benn
896. Just on this point: can I ask whether extending
the number of projects able to benefit from New Deal for Communities
is one of the things that is currently under consideration?
(Ms Wallace) Undoubtedly, how you take forward the
New Deal for Communities is one of the things that will be looked
at in the spending review. Our document also sets out the critical
issue of balance between big ticket projects that are only ever
going to be affordable in a few areas—
Mrs Dunwoody
897. "Big ticket projects"?
(Ms Wallace) Big sums of money.
Mrs Dunwoody: That is all right. I just like
to keep up with the sort of vocabulary that is used in Whitehall.
Big ticket projects.
Mr Gray
898. Cross-cutting big ticket projects.
(Ms Wallace) One of the things that the document we
published last week did was look at the balance between large
sums of money spent in a handful of individual areas and the scale
of the problem affecting thousands of estates and how you get
to raise the quality of services and quality of life in those
neighbourhoods.
Mrs Ellman
899. Your report says a lot about the importance
of employment but it says very little about how to provide jobs
for people in poor neighbourhoods. What ideas have you come up
with?
(Ms Wallace) I will ask Mr Crook to answer this.
(Mr Crook) First of all, it is quite helpful to see
the background that the report also paints, which is that there
has been a very encouraging development in employment in deprived
areas in the past two years. It records some statistics for metropolitan
areas. It also shows that in Sheffield, a typical city with many
deprived areas, deprived wards have had substantially reduced
unemployment in the last few years. Our aim is not to push to
one side the Government's tools for doing that but to build upon
them. If I can give two examples: the report makes it very clear
that reviving and involving communities is a key part of the Social
Exclusion Unit's approach, and there are examples of that both
in terms of linking people with jobs and, also, in terms of creating
an environment in which jobs can be created. So an example of
the first one is that, as the Committee will know, voluntary organisations
can be very good at reaching people that traditional private sector
organisations cannot—and there are examples we have got
from Peckham and Harlesden in London—and an Intermediaries
Fund has been set up by DfEE to encourage that sort of activity.
That is one of the proposals on getting people matched with jobs.
In terms of generating business—
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