Examination of witnesses (Questions 500
- 519)
WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2000
SIR RICHARD
MOTTRAM, MR
JOHN BALLARD,
MR TOM
ADAMS and MR
ALAN EVANS
Dr Ladyman
500. Before we move on could I just clarify
that you are not kidding us slightly with this?
(Sir Richard Mottram) I am not trying to.
501. I am sure you are not but the DVLA conducts
millions of transactions.
(Sir Richard Mottram) Correct.
502. There are other departments, some of them
possibly only conducting hundreds of transactions. You could achieve
your target by allowing electronic transactions with the DVLA
without making any effort whatsoever in all of your other departments.
(Sir Richard Mottram) Yes. The counting rules for
this are very interesting and have proved quite difficult. Could
we give you advice on that? Originally this was a thing that covered
telephones as well but there have now been issues as to is the
telephone an electronic thing, all of these issues. We could give
you a note.
503. Why bother publishing forecast expenditure
in the Annual Report three months ahead of the Comprehensive Spending
Review which is going to make a nonsense of those figures?
(Sir Richard Mottram) What our Annual Report does
is it looks back and it looks forward to the current year. The
current year is not going to be affected by the Spending Review.
It has some figures for 2001-02. The Government's position is
that the Spending Review was not designed to change all expenditure
in 2001-02. In fact, the Government's position was the exact opposite,
that the presumption was that expenditure in 2001-02 would not
be changed by the Spending Review. That is why we are doing it.
504. So there would not have been merit in publishing
your Annual Report this year in two parts, publishing the second
part after July?
(Sir Richard Mottram) Effectively when the Government
collectively publishes the results of Spending Review 2000 they
will in a sense change the 2001-02 figures if we get more money.
The Annual Report really is a look back and a look particularly
to what we are doing in the current year.
505. One of the tools that Parliament uses to
scrutinise Government is of course the supply estimates.
(Sir Richard Mottram) Yes.
506. Given that we now have Comprehensive Spending
Reviews predicting three years spending plans and we have you
talking about a ten year spending plan for transport—
(Sir Richard Mottram) That is right.
507. How is Parliament going to keep track of
Government if we have to rely on one year's supply estimates and
all these other schemes are going ahead based on a much longer
time frame?
(Sir Richard Mottram) This is a matter for Parliament,
of course. My understanding would be that Parliament prefers to
vote the estimates annually because that gives Parliament more
control. You can monitor our expenditure proposals against what
we say on a three year basis. We could help you to do that.
508. Given that we have a Comprehensive Spending
Review which is on a three year basis, what is the purpose of
a ten year plan?
(Sir Richard Mottram) Because in the case of transport
you cannot make sense of what you are trying to achieve on a three
year basis. What you need in the case of transport is to be confident
that you can commit yourselves to projects now that will have
substantial expenditure demands in five, six, seven, eight years'
time. One of the things that most struck me coming into this world
from a different one was just how bound up in annual thinking
and short-term thinking the processes have been. In the Ministry
of Defence, because like Transport it was something where you
had to invest in infrastructure, obviously a different kind, we
always thought long-term, we always planned on a long-term basis,
on a ten to 15 year basis, otherwise we could not make sense of
what we were trying to do. What we are now doing is saying we
must have an indication of what we can do over ten years, but
obviously we cannot be precise because the world will keep changing,
and using that indication to feed that back into an approach to
expenditure over three years which makes sense for the long-term
interests of the country. If I can say one more thing, Chairman.
Looking at other bits of the Department too, they need to think
on a three year basis. Local authorities, which are obviously
not part of the Department, need the capacity to think on a three
year basis otherwise you get a lot of waste and inefficiency.
509. Very briefly on the subject of resource
accounting, the Forecast Operating Cost Statement gives us costs
per administration and programmes but not costs against objectives.
Would it not be more helpful to provide costs against objectives?
(Mr Ballard) We can certainly consider that if you
would find it helpful. There is no difficulty in principle to
doing that. My only caution would be that you are going to get
a lot of information under resource accounting which you have
not had before. While all information in one sense is helpful,
whether this would be an important piece of information you might
just want to reflect on. I say that because there are particular
challenges within this Department in terms of the boundaries under
which certain expenditure is counted. For example, Schedule 5,
which is in the Department's accounts, relates to the accounting
boundary that does not include NDPBs, public corporations, whereas
the budgeting boundary does. It goes back to what you are really
trying to measure as to whether you find this useful or not. I
am happy to have a dialogue with you about that.
(Sir Richard Mottram) We can look at that.
510. Given that that information might be helpful
to us, is that not a perfect application for your website, to
provide that information on your website? If it is a lot of information
people can use it or not use it as they see fit but at least it
is there for them.
(Mr Ballard) Certainly we could put it on the website.
Exactly what it would tell them about the Department, I am not
sure. For example, change in status of bodies within the Department's
boundaries makes a big difference to the figures. Moving OPRAF
into the SRA and therefore becoming an NDPB takes it outside of
the accounts there and makes a big difference to the figures.
That is just an example.
(Sir Richard Mottram) We can look at that.
Mr O'Brien
511. Sir Richard, the Government has set up
this Office of Government Commerce to co-ordinate the procurement
in the various areas. Your Department have set this target of
ten per cent of your energy from renewable sources by 2002. What
proportion of the Department's electricity is currently certified
as coming from renewable sources?
(Mr Ballard) Currently I think it is 4.25 per cent.
That is against the national availability, if you like, of renewable
sources of about 2.5. We are at about 4.25 per cent. By the end
of the year we would hope to be doing considerably better than
that because one of our main headquarters building contracts comes
up for renewal. We hope by the end of the year we will be around
13 per cent.
512. Thirteen per cent?
(Mr Ballard) Thirteen per cent.
513. How do you monitor this?
(Mr Ballard) Obviously we know what we are buying
and how much we are consuming, so it is relatively straight forward.
514. You are buying electricity, are you not?
(Mr Ballard) Yes, but we buy it from sources that
are accredited as being from renewable sources.
515. So we will have further information on
that in due course?
(Mr Ballard) Yes.
Chairman
516. Energy targets, I think you are about eleventh
out of the 26 Government departments for energy saving. Why is
that?
(Mr Ballard) You need to look back at the circumstances.
Those figures relate to the circumstances in 1997-98 when, against
the Government's target of 20 per cent savings, our performance
overall was at 12 per cent. If I can say that in the year 1998-99
we moved that up to 16 per cent and we are pretty confident that
we will get to 20 per cent by the end of March 2000, when the
figures are available, that is an indication of the underlying
trend. Why it was down particularly in 1997-98 I think was directly
attributable to the fact that was the change-over period in which
we were running two sets of buildings, we were still running Marsham
Street and moving people out into the new buildings at the same
time so we had a particularly heavy burden at that time. We have
moved out of that and that is reflected in the improving figures.
517. So eleventh out of 26, what are you going
to be when the new figures come out?
(Mr Ballard) I think what we would like to see is
everybody being joint first.
518. No doubt, give everyone a prize. That is
a very good principle, yes.
(Mr Ballard) The point is I clearly do not know how
far other departments have improved but what we do know is that
our own performance has improved given the figures of our own
internal monitoring. We have now got two buildings which have
combined heat and power and they have also got very efficient
lighting systems. We have done a lot of work with the buying agency
to develop systems that will be available across Government for
measuring performance in terms of energy, so we are much better
equipped at knowing what is actually happening in our buildings
and what opportunities there are for improving them.
519. When you came before the Sub-Committee
on the question of heritage and capital taxation relief we had
a slightly difficult session on that. Do you want to add anything
to that?
(Mr Ballard) Would you like to ask me a question I
can respond to?
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