Examination of Witnesses (Questions 125-139)
MR TONY
BURTON AND
MS ELLIE
ROBINSON
WEDNESDAY 3 JULY 2002
Chairman
125. Now, Mr Tony Burton is the Director of
Policy and Strategy of the National Trust and Ms Ellie Robinson
is the Policy Officer; is that right?
(Mr Burton) That is correct.
126. Thank you for coming today. You are familiar
with what this inquiry is about. To what extent do you think that
the new Department has actually established a clear, grand image,
as it were, of what it is about?
(Mr Burton) I have to say, I think that is the one
area where it has made significant progress. The Department has
done considerable and welcome work in establishing its rationale,
its vision, its aims and objectives in an effective way; you can
always quibble about the detail, but we welcome the commitment
that has been made, and the focus really on the business planning
side of the new Department in difficult circumstances. The key
questions in our mind are how do you take that forward and how
do you convert that aspiration into delivery and the change in
internal culture and operations which will actually help the process
of change, rather than, at the moment, slowing it down.
127. And that was about to be my second question;
to what extent has that aspirational architecture been accompanied
by a perception, right throughout the Department, what it is about,
and its ability to deliver that?
(Mr Burton) I do not think DEFRA is alone in facing
those sorts of internal organisational challenges and cultural
challenges, they are ones that we recognise, they are ones that
other Government Departments recognise, so I do not think we should
see them as unusual, in that respect; and the need to deliver
those changes happened overnight, literally, with no additional
support, no lead-in, no finances. So it is a difficult process
which they are going through. They have started correctly, in
giving a sense of direction, but it is slower than it should be
in moving on to the next stages. We would see the three elements
which they need to focus on. One being the leadership and direction,
and that is where they have made most progress. The second being
the people and the skills within the staff to make those changes,
and, there, it is operating at different speeds, depending on
the genesis of the different sections. And the third is, essentially,
the support systems and processes and administration to make that
change happen, and that is also an area where it is patchy, at
best. I suppose, the one area of particular concern I would want
to highlight with you is that there have been opportunities to
make really quite significant jumps forward. We are looking for
the sort of carpe diem moment, within DEFRA, of which something
like the Curry Commission Report could have been, not just because
of the external policy changes that it would bring about, but
actually by taking a bold approach, by recognising the opportunity,
it would catalyse change internally and move further forward more
quickly than would normally be the case, in the normal process
of administrative change.
128. There is a problem though, is there not,
with taking the Curry Report as sort of a touchstone of the whole
spirit of the Department, because, after all, that was what was
produced before the Department had any provision in order to fund
it; and one of the consequences of this sequence of fundamental
Spending Reviews is that every single Department seems to go into
absolute throes of immobility for at least six months before it
is published, because it does not know whether it has got any
money or not. So, in a sense, it is a bit difficult to judge it,
at the moment, on that, is it not, it is impossible in judging
the Treasury, or the Department's ability to influence the Treasury,
more than anything else?
(Mr Burton) Clearly, the outcome of the Spending Review
is crucial to the delivery on that agenda; but money is not the
only issue here. We could have been, at an earlier stage, working
through the approach necessary to tackle the delivery of the Curry
package of recommendations. Instead of setting off on a set of
regional roadshows, which had the potential, and in reality tended
to reopen the debates around the Curry Commission Report, which,
in our view, was crucial, because it was a point of consensus
from which you move forward, that those should have been action-oriented,
problem-solving, geared to how do we deliver the change, not whether
the change should be delivered. So the building-blocks necessary
then to drive the motor, once the funding became available, we
could have made more progress on that, to this date, regardless
of the outcome from the Spending Review.
129. The Department's responsibility for the
environment is fairly clearly defined, you can put a long list
of things underneath the headline "Environment", and
I suppose the Department's responsibility for food is pretty well
defined, though obviously some of the safety issues come under
the Department of Health. Are not the words "rural affairs"
a bit of a, you hear a Department is in charge of rural affairs
and immediately a whole series of things comes into mind, but
when you investigate what the Department is actually responsible
for it is responsible for none of the things which immediately
spring to mind; is that a bit of a misnomer, and what does one
do about it?
(Mr Burton) It is a difficulty, and it is most visible
in terms of the slow progress of something like the Rural White
Paper, where the strategy has been established under a previous
regime, in the previous process, but the delivery, which is the
stage we should now be in, is now scattered across Government,
in a way that it was less scattered under previous arrangements.
Now that is not necessarily something which is an insurmountable
problem, because, the building-blocks in Machinery of Government,
there is no right answer to that sort of eternal process of change
and revisiting of structure. What it does require is, as we hear
so often, a silo-busting approach to delivery, which actually
recognises that the opportunities for taking these debates forward
lie beyond the Department, but that does not mean to say they
should not be prioritised and integrated, in the way that the
Rural White Paper envisaged. The other problem we identify here
is the separation of the urban and the rural, and although they
were separate when the Rural White Paper was produced they were
produced within the same sort of mind set and the same processes,
at the same stage, and came out very closely connected to each
other; that connection very visibly has been broken, and they
are now visibly being taken forward virtually independent of each
other.
Mr Borrow: Last week, the RSPB came along, and
one of the points they made was that, in their dealings with the
Department, they felt there was still an element of silo thinking,
which had been carried over from the previous constituent parts
of the new DEFRA. I wonder to what extent you have had the same
perception, and whether you actually feel that things are getting
better, rather than worse, and whether that silo thinking lies
within certain parts of the Department?
Mr Jack
130. Excuse me, could you just explain what
silo thinking is; it is not something that I am awfully familiar
with?
(Mr Burton) I would envisage that, in relation to
DEFRA, essentially, there are three large sections to DEFRA, one
around the environment, one around rural affairs and one around
agriculture, and are the three talking to each other, or are they
operating independently of each other; and we would share the
concern about silo thinking, although this is not new, this is
a problem of big bureaucracies, wherever they are. We would argue
that the process is getting better and that the visioning exercises
and the clarity of aims and objectives and the Sustainable Development
Strategy are part of that process of improvement; that the most
tangible example of a problem for us, and our sort of core relationships
with DEFRA, is the mismatch between the integration of the farming
and rural and environmental agendas, which is the sort of middle
silo, as I described it, and the sort of carrying on business
as usual, commodity production, CAP, MAFF type processes, in relation
to Agriculture, almost unrelated to the changes that have been
brought about.
(Ms Robinson) Yes, actually to deliver on a lot of
the things the Secretary of State has said, that the Department
is committed to, both in the Sustainable Development Strategy
and "Working for the Essentials of Life", is going to
require a lot more cross-departmental working. One of the good
examples is how they are going to bring together all the different
people within DEFRA and their agencies that deliver advice to
all their different stakeholders; they recognise that there is
a big problem in co-ordinating the information they give out,
in making themselves accessible, making the grants they give out
much more integrated and actually deliver the kinds of objectives
they have set out. So I think that the big delivery reviews that
are going on at the moment are going to have to come out with
some very radical changes to the way they work; and a recent example,
which is partly to do with silo working and partly to do with
being constantly on the back foot, is the NVZ announcement that
came out last week. To be fair to DEFRA, they were up against
legal and financial hurdles. But what would have been really nice
to see is the actions to implement NVZ put within a much wider
framework of resource protection. The Department has recognised
this, in announcing their strategic review of diffuse pollution
from agriculture, but it is a really big, missed opportunity,
and what they could have been doing was setting what we consider,
and what the Trust consider, to be good farming practice and good
business management, look at the incentives, the capital investment,
the planning and advice information tools, to make implementation
of NVZ just one small element of a much wider strategy for tackling
environmental protection.
Chairman
131. The Water Framework Directive, as you know,
has now been agreed and will shortly come into national legislation,
and that is, in fact, is it not, the measure which will provide
the sort of integrated approach to all these issues?
(Ms Robinson) It is definitely a target, to achieve
that, and we know the issues that need tackling, and what do we
have to keep waiting for actually to be proactive and develop
the tools and the instruments now; it is always waiting until
we really have to. There are actually really good, sound business
reasons for the farming industry to adopt these practices now,
it is going to save them money, it is going to save the taxpayer,
the citizen, money as well, and it would be a really good demonstration
of the way DEFRA can have joined-up thinking between water quality,
environmental protection, between agri-environment, between agriculture,
and much wider resource industries that, until now, have had slightly
to take a back seat.
Mr Borrow
132. One of the points in the initial question
was whether you felt there were differences, depending upon which
level of the organisation you were dealing with, in the sense
that previous witnesses have made the point that they felt that
at the top there was some broader thinking, but dealing with middle-ranking
officials, they were still, if you like, in many ways, in their
very narrow area of expertise, without much knowledge or awareness
of the wider policy issues across the Department?
(Mr Burton) We would share that analysis, but we would
also recognise there are examples of very good practice at what
you term a lower level; but I think something like the agri-environment
review we would see as a model of how DEFRA could be approaching
issues in a much more integrated and participative and inclusive
way. But there are other examples which are less effective and
the cultural changes are not clear, or not visible, and the sort
of limited horizons within which the work is being undertaken
are very visible to us.
133. Is it your perception that that problem
is recognised at senior management level, and in some ways has
been addressed?
(Mr Burton) It is far better recognised, and, as I
was indicating earlier, one of the things that I do not think
we would ever have seen from the MAFF process would have been
a recognition of the importance of business planning, of staff,
of skills, of the internal challenges, and the fact that it is
recognised, even the Secretary of State, in some of her public
pronouncements, has identified that we need actually to look to
ourselves, as well as look to what we can do for others, I think,
is an honest and welcome acknowledgement of those challenges.
Clearly, there is an important step to go from recognition to
making the changes, but we do believe that it is recognised, we
would wish that the processes of change were quicker, and that
we use some of the key decisions that DEFRA has to make as catalysts,
so it became a less risk-averse approach to policy development
as well as to cultural change.
Mr Mitchell
134. It seems to me there are three roles in
environment, rural affairs and agriculture, it did not mention
fishing, incidentally, but I just wonder about the calibre of
the staff, and the way they are able to motivate them; what is
your impression of the quality and calibre in each of those three
areas?
(Mr Burton) I do see that as a leading question, but
I will seek to respond in kind.
135. It is; give us a leading answer?
(Mr Burton) The resource, commodity production, farming
and fisheries Directorate is that which has most of the sort of
difficult associations that we have with the former approach from
MAFF; the Environment Protection Directorate is one that, in its
previous incarnation, in DETR and elsewhere, in DoE, has had an
international reputation, and that is an international reputation
which, I know, from the inside, feels that it is not being given
the priority it deserves. And the bit in the middle is, actually,
in some ways, the most important and biggest challenge, and it
is the one where a lot of the real challenging, integrating opportunities
are going to lie, and that is probably the one where the gap in
the levels of the organisation is clearest. I do not know if that
is precise enough.
136. That is a nice answer. Is it, in the first
department, the agriculture role, much the same people carrying
on in much the same job?
(Mr Burton) Yes. There is some churning, but there
has not been the interchange that ideally we would have wished;
so, in that sense, yes, there is a strong continuity with the
former Department, the former Ministry, and the people involved,
and indeed some of the structures are the same.
(Ms Robinson) Following on from that, and there is
a slight mismatch of staff resourcing between some of the core
regulatory and administration compliance in delivering CAP, on
the one hand, the sort of old MAFF functions, which, of course,
have to continue, and some of the very much more creative, challenging
and agenda-setting policy development that is going to be required
both to develop and implement the England Farming and Food Strategy
and a whole host of other measures, including diffuse pollution
in the Water Framework Directive. And it is those teams that are
leading that work tend to be much smaller, less resourced and
they are being pulled in lots of different directions. And, yes,
it is here that the Department is going to make a really big impression
of doing something new and different, in new and different ways.
So I think there is an element there of a bit of a time lag between
wanting to do these things and having the resources actually to
achieve them.
(Mr Burton) And one very practical example is, we
would have wished, I think, given the option, to have seen the
leadership within DEFRA, on what do we do with this Curry Commission
Report, to have come from the middle, the sort of rural affairs
and the integration of land and environment, as opposed to from
the agriculture and fisheries.
137. I do not want you to feel you were being
too frank with us, those were the answers I wanted to a leading
question. Just give us a few more words on morale within the different
sections?
(Mr Burton) I think, quite a lot of DEFRA, it is a
bit rabbit in the headlights, because they are being asked to
move very quickly, on some very challenging agendas, and it is
running up against the culture, which has not actually been about
policy development, particularly from the sort of agriculture
and farming side, it has been about administration of funding
arrangements from Brussels to farms, and it has been a real intellectual
and personal challenge for many of those involved, coming also
on the back of the real challenges of tackling foot and mouth.
On the environmental protection side, I think, clearly, Johannesburg,
the Climate Change agenda, is a big focus there, but, I think,
beyond that, a concern really that the shine and the gloss of
what was seen as a very powerful Department is perhaps not getting
the attention that it deserves.
Mr Drew
138. Surely, one of the problems, Tony, is that
you have got a lot of these autonomous offices, largely in the
area of animal health, and, with the best will in the world, when
you visit them, there is not a lot of difference from the old
MAFF, they do not see themselves naturally fitting into a region,
the regions were always different for MAFF, and I feel quite sorry
for them, in the sense that they have almost been further cut
adrift, because there was an empire, whether good, bad or indifferent,
that you could associate with MAFF. Now they often sit in splendid
isolation, and I think, if you want to develop policy, it can
be seen almost to be more difficult, unless you are relocating
those offices closer to the Regional Offices, or wherever, but
I do not see a lot of evidence for that. I do not know what your
views are on that?
(Mr Burton) I would agree with that, and there is
quite a lot of just carrying on as usual and trying to pretend
the outside world is not changing going on. And we would also
see that in terms of some of the agencies reporting to DEFRA,
and we would encourage you to look at the real panoply of agencies
which are reporting to DEFRA, which are part of that carrying
on business as usual, and whether they are not just a bit of a
time capsule of the old way of looking at some of these challenges
and they do not need to be revisited and revised in the round
to support the change, which we do support, that DEFRA is making
at the highest level, so whether it be individual departments
or sections within the Department, or agencies and NDPBs and others
who are reporting to it.
Paddy Tipping
139. Since you produced your written evidence,
the Department's own Sustainable Development Strategy has been
published. Now, presumably, you were involved in the process;
can you tell us a little bit about the process of being involved
in it, and about the product as well?
(Mr Burton) I have to say, we were not particularly
involved in the process.
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