Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Minutes of Evidence



Examination of witnesses (Questions 420 - 439)

WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2000

SIR RICHARD MOTTRAM, MR JOHN BALLARD, MR TOM ADAMS and MR ALAN EVANS

Mrs Gorman

  420. You refer to the Urban Task Force. Do you agree with them about the 65 per cent going on the walking and all the rest of it, or do you believe that we are not spending anything like enough money to meet what most people want, which is a motor car?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) What the Urban Task Force says, without getting into the detail of their individual recommendations, whether it is 65 per cent or not, because we will be responding to their recommendations in due course in the Urban White Paper, is that when you think about the state of our cities and towns we need a different approach towards transport and the environment and we need to give priority to certain categories of people, such as pedestrians, we need to give priority to road safety, and so you get stuff about home zones and so on. The Department has a lot of sympathy for the approach which the Urban Task Force takes to the need to get the right balance between transport and non-transport considerations and the planning of cities and in the way in which individuals are treated within cities. This is not to be interpreted as therefore we are against cars or that we do not need to make provision for the use of cars where cars make a lot of sense. Cars make a lot of sense in rural areas, cars make a lot of sense for lots of longer journeys. What we want to do is to give people more choice however in relation to all those journeys.

  421. What evidence does your Department have that it is the motorist that is mainly using the road as opposed to people delivering services to people in urban areas, which can only use the roads? I am thinking about vans and lorries.
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Obviously we have to make provision for people to deliver services. Nobody is suggesting we should not.

  422. You need one set of roads, whether the motorist is on it or whether the service industries are on it.
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Yes, but I think we would all agree that if we think about the road network we would give priority to the people who are delivering the services.

Mr O'Brien

  423. Sir Richard, could I move on to public service agreements and targets that were set in the Comprehensive Spending Review two years ago? Having regard to the fact that the Government is saying now to local authorities that their funding could be allied to their performance, is the same going to apply to your Department?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Can I ask John Ballard to start off on that one?
  (Mr Ballard) There are two aspects to this. One is that when the PSAs were drawn up and published in December 1998 it was made very clear in that document published by the Government that there would not be a direct link between performance and the availability of resources over the CSR period because the underlying objective there was to give a degree of certainty so that people could plan for three years. Having said that, obviously if Departments fail to deliver or targets are not met, then that is something which is the subject of analysis and discussion because the performance of the Departments against targets is monitored on a regular quarterly basis both within the Department but also we are accountable to—

  424. Can I just put my question again? Is the Government considering the performance of Departments?
  (Mr Ballard) The Chief Secretary said in reply to the Treasury Select Committee last November that it would be considering how performance would lead into the availability of resources in the longer term. This is only a factor to be taken into account.

  425. Have there been any references to what penalties will be payable if they do not meet those targets?
  (Mr Ballard) What he has said is that he is considering it. Obviously it is a factor that is played into the current spending review. In the dialogues that go between Departments obviously one of the factors taken into account is the extent to which Departments are delivering, whether they are not delivering, why they are not delivering.

  426. The same thing applies in local government too. In local government they have problems, just like the Government have, with NHS and with education. Local authorities have problems with social services where there is a greater demand for their services, and yet we are saying to local government that their expenditure will be allied to their performance. Why are we not doing that with Government Departments?
  (Mr Ballard) What I have said is that this is a factor to be taken into account. What we are doing is making Departments accountable both internally to Ministers collectively but also to you and to people outside through the publication of our performance against targets. In our case in the departmental annual report we are setting out the degree to which we are meeting our targets. As it happens I think we are on target on the whole pretty well.

  427. Has there been any suggestion as to what penalties will apply if Departments or even departments within the Department do not meet their targets?
  (Mr Ballard) The straight answer is that there is not a scheduled penalty that will be applied because the Government has made it clear that this is not a mechanistic process. What you need to do in the first instance is to have a proper information base which is what the PSA monitoring system is intended to deliver, so you actually understand why these things are happening. When you know how they are happening you then decide what action you want to take to correct it.

  428. Your Department is responsible mainly for local government?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Yes.

  429. Is the same thing going to apply, that we are going to look at the way that local government is performing, that they will be able to submit their reasons why targets have not been met and will that be given favourable consideration by your Department?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Yes, because what we are proposing to do in relation to local government is two sets of things. One is in place and one we are thinking about. The regime that is in place is a regime of best value where there is an active dialogue with local government, where there is inspection and so on, about performance in relation to what they are seeking to achieve. In relation to local government there is, for the same reasons as in relation to central government, caution about, if you do not perform, taking money away if that money would have gone for a service that people need. If you have got a poorly performing education authority, for example, it is not logical that you should take the money away so that the children in those schools are themselves punished for a failure of the architecture above them. The right answer there would be to think about how the thing is being managed. Similarly, in relation to central government, I think there are two dimensions. One is thinking about what the outcomes are that you are trying to achieve and whether what a department is trying to do in relation to those outcomes actually stacking up and contributing. If it is not, then I think the Treasury would say, "We will stop spending that money, so we will stop seeking to achieve those outputs if they do not deliver against the outcome", and then there is a stronger culture I suppose of holding us all to account for individual performance in delivering, so there are clearer arrangements with departments, individuals within departments, "Did you deliver against what you were saying you were going to do?". For example, all of our PSA targets in the departmental Annual Report are allocated out to individuals and we spend a lot of time watching performance in relation to those targets.

  430. So we will come back to this in the future?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Yes.

Mr Gray

  431. Why is there no PSA relating to the urban renaissance?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) I think there are PSAs that relate to aspects of the urban renaissance, like for example the use of brownfield land.
  (Mr Ballard) There are a number of plans that the PSA targets do actually contribute to, so 60 per cent over 10 years to be brownfield sites is one. The commitment to modernising the planning system is another.
  (Sir Richard Mottram) The problem with all PSAs, and obviously this is a more general problem we are facing with the spending review, is to try and frame meaningful targets which people can understand which try to capture these things, so framing a target to capture the urban renaissance is quite a difficult thing to do.

  432. That is right, but those two you have mentioned are the only two I think and there are quite a number of other things which come to the Urban Task Force, like for example higher densities for building and better car parking, a number of changes in the Urban Task Force which are not featured, and in particular there is a specific recommendation for the Urban Task Force that you should have a PSA specifically related to urban renaissance. Is that something you are considering?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) It is something we are considering but it is not something where I would say with confidence that I think I could frame it.

  433. If that is right surely this shows you as pretty half-hearted? You have got PSAs with regard to almost anything else apart from urban renaissance. Probably one of the most important things for the people of Britain is urban renaissance, saving our countryside and rebuilding our cities. We have not got one.
  (Sir Richard Mottram) What we are talking about is targets. There are three dimensions to this. One is that there is pressure on us to have a comprehensive set of these targets. Secondly, there is a lot of concern that we have too many targets, and thirdly, in framing the targets they are supposed to be `SMART', that is, they are supposed to be things that actually people would understand what they meant and they could go out and achieve them. They are challenging but achievable.

Mrs Dunwoody

  434. So you are sorting them out and throwing half of them away?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) No. I can come on to what we are trying to do. I would be very happy to have a PSA target for the urban renaissance. I have not yet discovered a way in which I could frame it.

Mr Gray

  435. I am sure Lord Rogers could come up with quite a number. If funding is going to be linked into it in the future and you have not got a PSA presumably for urban renaissance, is there to a danger that urban regeneration money will therefore be damaged because if you can prove that we are doing frightfully well on countryside things or we are doing frightfully well on housing things but the urban renaissance does not have one, is there to a risk that if they are not in the spending review they will lose out as well?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) There is such a risk, yes. The Committee may think this is easy. I have not yet myself managed to find easy ways of doing this. What we are trying to do is to have a limited number of public service agreement targets backed up by more detailed targets in what is called the service delivery agreement, the SDA.

Mrs Dunwoody

  436. So we are moving away from PSA to SDA?
  (Sir Richard Mottram) Yes, and the reason why we are having the PSA and SDA is precisely that there was a lot of criticism that our Department for instance had too many high level targets, so we are trying to reduce the number. We are trying to ensure that the number of high level targets we have do capture key elements of what we do where you can actually measure performance and set a smart target. We have argued consistently that we must not assume that the only things that Departments do are the things covered by PSA and SDA targets because if they do, and if we are all personally incentivised in relation to central targets set, I think the danger that you have referred to arises, that you chase the targets. We are trying to tiptoe our way through what is quite a difficult and complicated area.

Mr Gray

  437. If all this is right and you have now done away with PSAs and SDAs—
  (Sir Richard Mottram) No, we have not done away with PSAs. We are going to have PSAs and SDAs.

  438. Surely there is an obvious criticism here which is to say you are going to set the targets for the reasons that you have given, primarily for PR reasons to say, "Have we not done well? We have achieved these targets",—
  (Sir Richard Mottram) We do not set them.

  439. But one of the most difficult things is urban renaissance and you say, "Oh, well, no, it is far too complicated to work out how we can judge that so we will not have one there" because the likelihood of achieving urban renaissance, according to Lord Rogers—and I challenge you: why do you not get Lord Rogers to set a PSA? He will think up some useful things and I bet you anything that if he did you would fail, if you see what I mean. He would set demanding targets. Sorry; I did not mean that rudely. What I meant was, if you ask him to do it he would set demanding targets.
  (Sir Richard Mottram) No, no. I did not take it rudely.


 
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