Examination of witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 12 APRIL 2000
MR IAN
MCCARTNEY,
MR JONATHAN
REES and MR
ALAN WHYSALL
480. All public bodies?
(Mr Rees) The code itself applies primarily to central
government by which we mean departments and agencies. We then
have non-departmental public bodies and, as the code says, we
expect ministers to try to apply it to those as well, although
as you well know some of them have their own statutory constraints.
That is a slightly further area. As the minister just said, the
principles apply more broadly to local government under the Best
Value regime, to the Health Service, where there are different
rules applying, so the principles apply across the public sector;
the code itself is primarily aimed at central government.
(Mr McCartney) In terms of the voluntary sector with
the Home Office, the discussion just now about a compact between
the voluntary sector and the Home Office in respect of appropriate
consultations with the voluntary sector, we would like to see
that compact being able to be put in place on the same basis of
what we are saying here today.
481. We have a Charter Mark scheme which rewards
good practice in the public sector. Would one way of developing
good practice in this area be through giving Charter Mark awards
or something similar, good consultation awards, so for people
who really do engage in innovative kinds of public participation
where the feedback into the decision making process is clear,
some kind of award system could be developed, particularly to
develop that.
(Mr McCartney) It is an idea which I instantly find
favour with. Perhaps that could be part of your views as a Committee.
In principle, the whole concept of the reward system is to identify
a way in which a public body transforms in focusing on the customer
rather than on themselves. Secondly, in doing that and improving
services, it is important that they receive a public recognition
for that factor. Obviously, consultation is one of those areas.
In better government for older people, one of the key pilots we
will be looking at is to improve consultation. By all means, if
you want as a Committee to make a recommendation for that, we
will look at it very seriously indeed.
Mr Trend
482. Can I ask a couple of questions around
how you make decisions informed by consultation? I am a fairly
new Member of this Committee. I have not heard a lot of the evidence
but that which I have heard and my own views on this matter definitely
put me in the sceptical camp. A lot of the language used here
is of pious platitudes. I am worried about what you would call
the practical outcome of what happens. I think this would be true
whatever government was in power. Clearly, we as politicians say
that we are going to consult people and we make warm and friendly
noises towards people but at the same time we understand very
well that we are discussing here the exercise of power. Is there
any thought being given to how consultation can cut people being
consulted into the decision making process? I can give you many
examples over perhaps hundreds of years where people have appeared
to consult but have not actually wanted to relinquish any exercise
of power. Is thought being given to making that more formal?
(Mr McCartney) You must have trained to be a special
adviser.
483. No; I was one of the few who has not.
(Mr McCartney) I was going to suggest that special
advisers had invented the system of pious platitudes. I have tried
in a very positive way to show not just what the government policy
is but a sense of enthusiasm here, a sense of vision, if that
is not sounding too platitudinous. This is not worth a candle
if you cannot and do not involve people from the outset in what
the outcome shall be. Therefore, whether it is a group of businessmen
looking at issues around Europe or a group of pensioners looking
at transport policy in the local community or a group of residents
looking at the regeneration of their estate, those policies can
only work if from the outset you sit down and discuss with them
what their aspirations are and what they expect the outcome to
be. What we are doing here is going wider than just the code.
The code is setting out a set of basic minimum standards. What
we need to move from the minimum standards is the practical aspect.
One of the areas I would like to move tothis is not in
my briefis pre-consultation in many respects. Before we
go out with the written work, the aspirations, the potentially
different ways of doing a particular issue, we sit down. I did
this in the Department of Trade and Industry. One of the most
difficult areas of law in Britain for both employers, trade unions
and the legal system has been the acquired rights directive. It
is a very complex, difficult area of work. We had a requirement
to refurbish this. Rather than going to consultation, we established
a pre-consultation committee made up of all of those three groups,
the legal profession, the trade unions and employers. They took
ownership of the process. As a consequence, consultation that
will come from that although I am not in the DTI nowis
in the ownership of that group they have between themselves been
able to note out the difficult areas of policy, the differences
between them, and bring them together. If the consultation document
will come out, it is not one that has been established by officials
and politicians in isolation. The practitioners who are involved
on a day to day basis in the front lines, who deal with this complex
area of law, have been involved right at the outset in putting
forward what the solution should be. I think we need to do more
of this across the board.
484. As a constituency MP, I am involved in
a question with the DETR about night flights into Heathrow. I
would personally ban them all, but that is a different point.
There has been a consultation exercise going on from the department.
We are on the third step of it. It has come back again and again.
It has been going on for about 18 months. As an MP, knowing that
my constituents do not want any change in the current regimethey
do not want it to be made worse by the government whose decision
it is, and they consulted on the first occasionI encouraged
as many people as possible in my area to write in knowing that
some weight would be given to the quantity of responses, if not
the quality of the responses. There is no indication from the
department how much weight is given to the number of submissions.
It is very much an east/west thing, east of the airport, west
of the airport, how many submissions I could excite from the west
of the airport and how many other people could excite from the
east of the airport. I do not understand the ground rules of the
particular consultation exercise that is going on over Heathrow.
To be cynical again, I think the government probably had made
up its mind from the beginning and was trying to find a gentle
way of steering us to a position where we get a compromise half
of the night flights. That is rather complicated but what I want
to know is was it worth me doing it? Can I know how the weighting
was arrived at? What process went through ministerial minds in
evaluating the responses?
(Mr McCartney) First of all, one of the key factors
with minimum standards is for departments to publish the outcome
of the inquiry. Nobody ever weighs responses. It is quantity and
quality, is it not? I cannot get into the details of your inquiry,
although it is a very clever way of bringing up a constituency
issue. The point you are making is: can you and your constituents
expect in this new regime to have reasonable answers to the responses
that have been put in? The answer is yes. Secondly, you are asking
as a Member of Parliament what provisions are made to ensure that
the qualitative nature of your constituents' response are adequately
dealt with. We are saying in our minimum standards that ministers,
in responding, have to give adequate answers to the decisions
that they make. Thirdly, given you have raised the issue and you
feel rather aggrieved at how the matter has been dealt with at
the moment in the DETR, I will make you an offer. I will take
on board what you have said and pass on your complaint to my colleagues
in the DETR.
485. They are fully aware of it. Despite the
fact that this may look like special pleading, although I hope
it does not, the reason the government has given for wanting to
make a change is that they think it is fair. That is fine. I accept
that. There are two things I do not understand about the process.
First of all, the consultation papersand I think this is
true of most consultation papers I have readare in immensely
technical and complex language. It is very difficult for ordinary
people in the street to get an idea of what is being asked of
them. Secondly, I have no clear idea of how evaluation is made.
Thirdly, in a sense those of us on one side of this argument do
not feel we have been consulted if the exercise of power has gone
against us and those who feel it has gone in their favour will
feel they have. It seems to me there is a general, inescapable
point here that people, if they feel their views have been agreed
with, will think it was worthwhile and will not if their views
have not been agreed with.
(Mr McCartney) The point is well met in criterion
six of the document where it makes it clear, to keep as full an
account as possible of responses, formal or informal, to consultation:
both to ensure that everyone's view is fairly considered but also
to help address any allegation of privileged access. That is important
too. We are at the start of a process. I confidently see, as time
goes by, improvement being made in the minimum standards and the
quality of the minimum standards, to get to the position, wherever
the public wants to engage themselves with government in consultation,
that whatever the outcome is likely to be from the start, there
is a buy-in to the process because they trust the process. It
is important that the processes are trusted even in the most complex
and difficult areas like flying, for example. You talk about the
issues around Heathrow Airport. Both myself and my colleague,
Neil Turner from Wigan, have scars on our backs over the planning
application about terminal two, Manchester. I understand the complexities
and what happens in these situations but I am hoping, in an open
minded way, I will be able set out that these minimum standards
are about addressing some of the problems you raise.
486. Can I try once more on the question of
weighting, because it seems to me that when a department has a
lot of responses to a consultation exercise there is clearly going
to be some sort of weighting system used within the department
to evaluate what is more significant in the mind of the government
than others. I do not know if it is in the code. Is it possible
for the weighting factors to be published before the consultation
begins so that everybody understands? That in a sense does give
you the ability to try and direct constituents or indeed interested
parties in any issue to make their response in a way which may
change the exercise of power.
(Mr McCartney) There is not a weighting exercise where
we take the post bags and put them on this side or that side.
The issue here for a minister surely is about openness of decision
making. There is an intellectual sense, to weigh up the argument
and the debate and come to decisions and, having come to decisions,
to set out clearly in user friendly fashion the reasons for coming
to the conclusions he or she has come to. I think that is important.
487. Could you do it in advance and say, "What
is going to matter to us here is the number of people who write
or the number of people who write about elderly relatives, if
they are living near a road", or whatever? Clearly those
factors are used when decisions are made.
(Mr McCartney) The consultation documents, in the
way in which they are written, will obviously set out the objectives
that the government are trying to reach in terms of the issues
concerned. The documents will want to be written not in the jargon
that you have set out. That is a failure and it reduces access
to decision making. We must get rid of that type of jargon, although
there are occasions on technical issues where you have to use
technical language but that should not be an excuse for writing
gobbledygook and giving a reply in gobbledygook; then wondering
why the policy is gobbledygook. We have to get rid of gobbledygook
from beginning to end. You are asking me to give you a certainty
about something I cannot. That is that each consultation document
will have to be written on the basis of what the issue is. There
is no hidden agenda here. It is based simply on crude analysis
of the numbers of responses put in, the qualitative nature of
the responses. It has to be processed in the system to make sure
that is the case.
Mr McFall
488. You mentioned post bags. I suppose a good
example of a consultation is one that is happening today with
the delegation in the central lobby. In the past, some people
have seen consultation essentially as a management exercise, but
what I am taking from what you are saying today is that you see
MPs and other elected representatives having a greater role to
play in that. Just give us an example, say, with regard to the
Post Office or what the Chancellor mentioned in his budget about
pensioner credit. How should consultation be taken forward there
and what role could we play in that?
(Mr McCartney) I can deal with the Post Office. Without
sounding arrogant, I am a bit of an authority in the sense that
I was, until the last reshuffle, the minister responsible for
the Post Office and the production of the White Paper. We commenced
there with a one-line commitment in our party's manifesto at the
last general election. I spent the first year in a complete consultation
process with all of the stakeholders in the Post Office, the private
postal parcel and postal services, the community organisations
and groups that work with the Post Office and the main users of
the Post Office services. As a consequence of that consultation,
we produced the White Paper which then had a further consultation
which will lead to the publication of the Postal Bill which will
be about the methods of transforming the Post Office. In addition
to that, there were a number of key issues in the Post Office
which were critical to sub-postmasters and mistresses, one being
the technology and the modernisation of the network. Therefore,
we established at the DTI a group. On the group was the Post Office
Board, the sub-postmasters and mistresses and the employees and
the DTI. That committee was charged with the responsibility of
ensuring that the technology platform was put in place and delivered
in time; and, as a consequence of that, about the issues around
the modernisation of the network. That is right at the heart of
decision making. Despite what you may hear today, in quite a legitimate
lobby, we are very acutely aware of involving everybody in the
Post Office at the decision making process as well as the hopefully
successful outcome of the modernisation of the postal network.
In terms of the wider issues of other forms of consultation, I
did say at the outset that we had opened a Pandora's Box. Once
we start the process at local government level, at national government
level, government quangos, the health authorities, opening up
in an ever increasing way qualitative consultations with the communities
or stakeholders, a number of things will flow from this. One,
significant requests will be made on government to meet need,
to change services, to invest in services. There will be increasing
numbers of organisations in the community who want to have a say
in the decision making process of the local authority. I reckon,
in five or six years' time, unless political parties and government
machines change the way in which they develop their ideas for
policy, we will have a situation with the community over here,
sitting down, discussing with officials, quangos, local government,
decisions about their community and their services and politicians
being over here, talking to themselves. Therefore, what we have
started is a dynamic of where fundamental changes will have to
take place and how politicians and political parties in the decision
making regimes connect with the citizen in a very proactive way
and respond in a very effective way to the demands placed on them
by the citizens through the consultation process. I keep using
the word "dynamic" but I believe that to be the case.
When we come back in five years' time, the landscape will be completely
different in terms of the demands being placed on us because of
the quality of involvement of the community in the decision making
process.
489. You mentioned the consultation with the
Post Office as a good example. I take the point you made about
good consultation at the beginning of that spectrum. At the end
of the spectrum, there is the delivery element but we are in the
middle at the moment and it strikes me that a number of people
have a misconception or they feel they have been disadvantaged.
Whatever that is, they are down here to lobby us. That part of
the spectrum in the middle is the one that has to be dealt with,
even though there was good consultation at the beginning. We have
to get to delivery and there has to be a better outcome; but a
better outcome for whom? The government or the people? At that
level, how best can we tackle it in the middle of the spectrum
so that we get to the end of the spectrum, namely the delivery
outcome, and how can MPs and others play a part in that so that
they are not left on the sidelines as you alluded to earlier?
(Mr McCartney) Increasingly, MPs like ministers will
face the demand to be in front of their constituents on a regular
basis, to be able to set out issues and to be consulted. A classic
example surely must be increasingly, as we modernise the Health
Service, Members of Parliament will be in the front line, sitting
down in the community, discussing with them what it means in terms
of their local community and acute services. Increasingly, I find
as a local MP I am asked to chair meetings jointly between myself
and the local authority on issues in the community, where they
think the Member of Parliament is a conduit to bring people together.
This is a new adventure for Members of Parliament. Not all Members
of Parliament like to be put under such pressure. I do not mean
that in a negative way. It is a new way of having to communicate
with people and it is going to be a growing trend. This is politics
about sectional interests. We have consultations and bringing
people involved, but there are occasions where a sectional interest
will take the view that they want to have their sectional interest
above all else; or they believe that their sectional interest,
unless they take a certain action, will be undermined by something
else. The sectional interests of the sub-postmasters in this relationship
is trying to give a message, but it is a message that has already
been answered. The issue they asked to be answered was already
answered to them over a year ago and is the position of the government.
That is, anybody who wants to get their benefits from the Post
Office through cash can do so but if they want to do it in a non-cash
way, because we will have put in a technology platform, they can
do that also. Therefore, I think we have responded in an effective
way, and will continue to, to the modernisation of the postal
network. Therefore, this is the dynamics of politics. It is the
food and drink of politics and that is why, thank God, people
can come here and lobby us and give us a hard time.
Chairman
490. I wonder if the draft code should not have
said what you have just said, which is that no consultation exercise
should simply be seen as a route for sectional interest.
(Mr McCartney) I suppose I could add a lot of things
to the code. One has, in collective responsibility terms, to get
what one can in the system. What I have given you is a personal,
political opinion about the dynamics of things. The code is about
setting minimum standards and the processes it needs to apply.
Sticking behind my brief, saying, "This is the process",
there is a dynamic in all these processes but as we enter a whole
range of other forms of consultation the dynamics change again.
A classic example would be the single regeneration budget where
increasingly we have learned from the mistakes of the past and
you just cannot go into the community and say, "Here is some
£3 million. We are going to refurbish your community. Be
thankful for it." These processes have all collapsed. The
demand now is consultation on the basis of an ownership of the
project by the community itself. The ownership of the project
is a critical factor in the successful outcome of it. That means
local councillors, civil servants, the voluntary sector, council
officials, are increasingly engaged on a day to day basis in decision
making by residents in deciding what the priorities are in the
community. I think that is a wonderful extension of democracy,
personally. That is why I want to see minimum standards in there.
We learn from these processes. We will involve people in a real
sense in having an ownership of the process, both about the decision
making but also about the type and range of services provided
from the policy.
491. Do you know when the report that is up
and coming from the Cabinet Office, the performance innovation
report which is seen by many people as very much part of this
developing consultation process on the future of the Post Office,
is going to appear?
(Mr McCartney) I am not the responsible minister for
it. It is Charles Clarke. The report is in its final stages of
preparation, as I understand it, and out to consultation among
ministers. I am assuming that, as we have done with all the PIU
reports, as soon as we can after those consultations, we publish.
Mr Lepper
492. Apologies for not being here at the start
of the session. I was talking about the Post Office with constituents.
All of us are used, from our own post bags, even before we invite
constituents' views on particular issues, we get told them sometimes
through what are clearly organised letters from particular groups,
local or national. On the other hand, we have all had the experience
as well where, as individual MPs, we have gradually become aware
of the importance of an issue as the individual letters from constituents
begin to arrive and they are clearly written from a very personal
basis, rather than organised. On this issue of consultation, I
can see that consulting with organised groups of people, whatever
their interests might be, is perhaps a comparatively easy processmaybe
I am wrong. It is making sure that individual citizens have their
views taken into account through a consultation process whichagain,
maybe I am wrongseems to me more difficult. I wonder if
you can say something about different methods of consultation
to suit those two different sorts of cases?
(Mr McCartney) We have listening events that are very
innovative on women's issues, older people and, alongside older
people, a subset of that was Asian elders and how we can respond
in improving services for them in communities, and young people.
Those are key elements. What has fallen out of all of those has
been significant development of policy. Either a new policy initiative
has been taken on and developed and is in the process of being
developed. Practical issues around the creation of new or improved
services. For example, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and a new
rape inquiry unit fell out of one of the consultations about public
services. We have had day care centres for Asian elders being
resources out of the consultation processes. For young people,
a range of measures which were announced yesterday. If you want,
I will send to the Committee a submission of the kind of practical
things that have happened and, alongside the practical things,
the fall out of policy development. Some have gone to PIUs. Major
pieces of work have come out of this process of consultation and
changes in policy.
Mr White
493. One of the interesting things that has
come out of the Cabinet Office is the PIU report. They have produced
a number of interesting things, particularly wiring it up and
adding it all up. It makes two points. Where do they go from there?
Do they just sit on the shelf? One of the key points is about
the feedback loop into policy making, how consultation becomes
a feedback loop. I wonder if you could say a few things about
that?
(Mr McCartney) One of the advantages of upgrading
and extending your consultation procedures has been a sea change
in the way in which government speaks to itself in terms of decision
making about policy. Significantly more cross cutting takes place
in bringing together different departments who have different
parts of the jigsaw to deliver. One, we are in agreement about
what the jigsaw is and the priority placed by each department
in fitting that piece into the picture. Secondly in cross cutting,
as well as the deliberative stage of agreeing joint policy, there
is the common approach. Hopefully we will see fruition of this
in July in the Comprehensive Spending Review, the cross cutting
exercises that are taking place there in terms of agreement of
resources to deliver services on the ground. I think it is 15
different cross cutting initiatives. This will provide quite a
radical shake-up of the decision making processes in government.
This has not been easy, by the way, for officials or politicians
to get out of these silos. What I have found very interesting,
once they are out of the silos, how liberating it is and how cooperative
people are. One of the areas where cooperation is criticalI
give one example: drugs policy, where there is a clear ten year
strategy and a number one priority for the government in a range
of areas on drugs. Unless there is cross cutting, being a number
one priority is not enough. It may be a number one priority for
the Home Office but not for the department who has a piece of
the jigsaw. The whole purpose of the cross cutting is to make
sure there is an equality about the prioritisation of the delivery
of the policy. That has been one of the most significant factors
in coming out of these listening events that we have. The public
are forcing governmentvery committed to doing itto
actually for the first time work together. The other factor is
local government and other government bodies like the Benefits
Agency and the Health Service. Increasingly out of the listening
events we are seeing cross cooperation. The government is funding
some of this. We are putting financial resources into the modernisation
agenda. Organisations who come together for single gateway delivery
of services and modernisation of serviceswe will help fund
that process. That is gathering apace. That is why some of the
other things like Charter Mark are working so well. It is seeing
cooperation, a cross-fertilisation across government departments,
local government and quangos, working together for the first time
and almost merging for all practical purposes in delivering services
on the ground.
(Mr Rees) On the particular Performance and Innovation
Unit reports you mentioned, both come with implementation plans.
Both have therefore a timetable and the Modernising Government
Project Board will ensure that they do not just rest on the shelf
and that they are implemented.
494. Some of us do not think, until you get
budgets away from departments, you will make rapid progress but
that is a debate for another day. Have you seen any evidence of
departments using consultation exercises in order to win their
arguments in the interdepartmental discussions?
(Mr McCartney) All the time. It is the ace card to
play. If you can come to a discussion internally in government
and it is always the case that you have to prioritise; you always
have to try to get other people on board for your case. The most
telling way of putting a case in government now internally is
not the big stick, "I am from the Treasury" or, "I
am from the Cabinet Office." The big stick is the evidence
that you bring with you of the constituents, whether it is pensioners
or postmasters or postmistresses. That capacity there, within
your hand; not just your knowledge about the debate and discussion,
but the strength of that is a very strong bargaining tool when
it comes to getting cooperation with colleagues. Increasingly,
that is why some of the larger departments are extending the whole
concept of consultation right down like single regeneration or
whatever, because that feeds through. They get cooperation from
other departments, DfEE, Department of Health, the Home Office.
They are having to cooperate in a very effective way with John
Prescott's department to deliver it because in the single regeneration
budget the feedback from the communities is: "We want these
things done on a cooperative, joined-up basis, not in the silos".
That is my language, not theirs. It is becoming a very effective
tool for ministers to use in trying to get their policies through.
Chairman
495. That is fascinating. Does that mean that
the louder you shout the more you get?
(Mr McCartney) No. The more intelligent you speak,
the more likely you are to persuade people.
Mr White
496. One of the things local government said
to us about participation was that you had to set the boundaries
and that one of the most inappropriate things was that you ask
questions on things that you could not actually change. How much
evidence from the code and how much evidence from other departments
is there that that whole area has been addressed, about getting
the appropriateness of the consultation?
(Mr McCartney) The introduction to the code, paragraph
five, says: "Consultation should never be undertaken about
aspects of an issue about which the decision is inevitable, for
whatever reason. The pretence of consultation simply causes cynicism
and mistrust." There has to be an openness and an honesty
about the process. There are always going to be situations in
any consultation, are there not? Individuals or organisations
will want to raise matters. The classic is in planning. I have
always found in planning that nine out of ten submissions, when
I was a member of a planning committee, were all very sympathetic
but it was nothing to do with the planning application. However,
the dynamics were and are now planning departments used to throw
that in the bucket. The planning committee should be far more
sensitive in the way of dealing with community and planning matters.
There has to be an honesty and a transparency about the system.
That is what the code says.
Mr Turner
497. I was interested in your discussions on
how things worked in the Cabinet.
(Mr McCartney) The Cabinet Office. Do not ask me about
the Cabinet.
498. One of the differences I find between local
government and central government is that you have a much stronger
sense of cooperativeness within local government, or you can have,
than you seem to get in central government. In other words, you
can sit down with the chief officers and the senior councillors
and work a policy through there. That does not seem to be the
same in central government. Is the process that you are describing
aimed at trying to achieve that in a better way?
(Mr McCartney) Yes. Alongside the modernisation of
government is the process of modernisation of the Civil Service.
Increasingly, the problem is putting training in place for appropriate
working relationships between ministers and civil servants, both
at a senior management level and along a more cooperative, hands-on
approach with front line staff. This is important. In government
departments, large as they are, there is a leadership role to
be played by ministers, a sense of clarity about the objectives,
a sense of ownership about the policy and the capacity to harness
the talents in the departments by having an open, transparent
but very cooperative relationship with the front line staff and
the senior management. That is what we have been trying to engender.
This is not to challenge the impartiality of the Civil Service,
in case somebody says so, but in truth, in large organisations
like government departments, in the private sector, in big companies
or local authorities, the more you try to engage in a partnership
approach with everybody who is in the enterprise, the more effective
you are in getting decisions from the thought stage to the stage
of implementation. That will go on apace, in my view, increasingly
as we modernise both the delivery of government and the Civil
Service.
499. You raised quangos earlier and the need
to involve them in the consultation process. Who in the government
at the moment is doing its Best Value process and community leadership
in the Local Government Act and Bill that is going through now?
There is no provision within there for local government to require
other agencies and quangos to become part of that process. There
is an expectation that they will become part of it but there is
no requirement. Do you think it would be helpful if local authorities,
associations, agencies etc., were going to do that properly, for
them to have that requirement to be part of it, rather than having
the ability to step aside?
(Mr McCartney) What is happening at the moment is
this increasing process of partnership cooperation and coordination.
Every time we have available single regeneration, health or education
action zones or whatever, all of these by the nature of them are
established as a partnership from the outset. Sometimes they are
a legal entity. The East Manchester Initiative, for example. It
is not an either/or, is it? In some respects, we are bringing
together, almost as a physical entity, an incorporation. In other
areas it is a looser but still effective arrangement of cooperation
and working together. The classic there is, for example, increasing
the employment service in the Benefit Agency, working with local
housing departments or finance departments or council tax offices.
There is no legal way you can merge them for obvious reasons.
However, they are essentially dealing with the same client group
and the same information and increasingly wanting to operate a
single gateway system. We are resourcing that. This is happening.
We are not just giving them a Charter Mark. We are bringing the
financial resources to see through that process of change. There
is a myriad of things happening. Forcing people to work in partnership
never works. It is a process of changing culture here, getting
people from their own perspective to realise that there is a detailed
partnership. I think we will see an increasing involvement of
partnerships, some formal, some informal. This is not in my brief
but, as time goes by, government agencies and others coming physically
together where there is an appropriateness for that to happen.
I think we will see again more of that.
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