Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
MONDAY 17 DECEMBER 2001
MAVIS MCDONALD,
MS LOUISE
CASEY, MS
NAOMI EISENSTADT,
MS VANESSA
HOGBIN AND
MR STEPHEN
MITCHELL
100. Fine. These things should be going on but
I am not sure whether this Committee needs to know about all of
these details. What I am interested in as a Member of Parliament
is whether the public sector is delivering the quality of services
and if they are value for money. I do not really want to know
about some of these nebulous concepts that are set out in the
Report. The BTI, British Trade International, how do you measure
the success or otherwise of that programme?
(Mr Whitehouse) The methodology we refer to in Appendix
1 of the Report, the process that we adopted is that we looked
at these programmes by mapping out a logical, consistent way,
one of which are the key imports and processes that are going
to be in place to demonstrate success or at least contribute to
success. We will be trying to identify if that good practice and
that success criteria were not in place what needed to be done
to achieve that. We also have undertaken international comparisons,
looking to see what extent this particular initiative mirrored
good practice elsewhere in industry and overseas and also by talking
to those involved in delivering the programme, the recipients
of the programme, to form a view, again a collective view, to
synthesis all of the points together to form an assessment as
to whether the programme itself was likely to be—
101. In effect you are providing a management
consultancy service to departments, is that right?
(Mr Whitehouse) We are not doing that. At the end
of the day we hope that this report would be of benefit to departments
to make sure that they act in a consistent way.
102. Do we need know about that here? It says
here, "Specific targets such as at least 15 per cent of firms
assisted which have not exported before, and at least 50 per cent
of established exporters assisted improve their business performance
within two years." There is no measure so far, why do you
choose this as an example of joint working if there is no measurement
here?
(Mr Whitehouse) One is that it was chosen because
what we tried to do is reflect the spectrum of services the government
provide. At one end we have preschool children and we have businesses,
and clearly specific targets in terms of rough sleeping. It is
a valuable observation to say that as yet this particular initiative
does not have in place information to assess its effectiveness.
We were trying to see what the department was doing to ensure
that that information was going to be in place. We have made recommendations
about the sort of information that needs to be collected and how
cost effectiveness can be assessed, which I think is an important
contribution to improve the service and making sure that taxpayers'
money is used effectively.
103. I am disappointed that we have been spending
time on this Report, I would like to have seen separate reports
so we could examine them properly. The state sector spends a huge
amount of public money and I think in many cases very badly, it
provides in many instances the public with a very poor service.
We have a huge amount of work to do on this Committee to examine
each and every one of those projects, which we do not have time
to do. I do not think we should be spending time examining concepts
which are really an internal matter for Whitehall and is really
effectively management consultancy advice to Whitehall departments.
(Sir John Bourn) What I would say is noted, Chairman.
Mr Davidson
104. Joining up to improve public services are
self-evident good. What I am not clear about is why we have to
take it as an initiative. We have had this marvellous machine
called the Civil Service, surely the Civil Service should have
self-corrected and it should not have to be ministers that tell
the machine to start working together?
(Mavis McDonald) If I may say, I do not really see
joined working as an initiative, we see it as part of an on-going
approach as to how policy is developed, managed and implemented.
105. How long has it is been going for?
(Mavis McDonald) I quoted the single regeneration
project which I think started in about 1991 as one particular
example.
106. Is it only in the last 10 years that people
have thought about working together!
(Mavis McDonald) That is as far as my memory goes
back, I am afraid.
107. Unless I am mistaken, the initiative that
we have to symbolise joined-up government are generally new tasks,
new schemes, they are targeted groups, targeted initiatives, there
is new money and there is a political momentum behind it, it is
generally sort of project based. If that does not succeed then
there is not much hope for the whole system. That is really the
easiest possible way of having joined working, to have a new initiative
with new funding?
(Mavis McDonald) That is just one way of tackling
a particular issue where the analysis has suggested you need that
particular kind of approach to address the problems that you are
concerned with. Across government as a whole there are a whole
raft of different ways of bringing people together to work jointly.
Somebody referred earlier to crosscutting PSAs which bring people
together, particularly something big like the criminal justice
system. There is the whole process of the PSX Committee monitoring
and the Treasury monitoring PSAs and SDAs and ensuring that those
key objectives are articulated.
108. Do you see the schemes that we have in
front of us as unrepresentative of joined up government that is
taking place at the moment because they are project based?
(Mavis McDonald) You may want to ask Sir John why
he choose these particular ones. Certainly some of them are high
profile and different in terms of the way they are trying to address
particular issues. The business link one is an example of where
Whitehall did realise something was going wrong because joint
working was not taking place and changing the approach as a result
of that.
109. It is noticeable that we have five of you
there in the front table and four of you are women and your minders
behind you, the majority of them, are women as well. Is there
anything of any significance there? Are women more naturally able
to work corroboratively than men?
(Mavis McDonald) You could argue, although this is
nothing do with the Report, that women are better at managing
several streams of different activity going on in their head at
the same time because more of them have to combine several different
streams of activity, whether it is work, family and providing
food, or whatever.
Chairman: Is that going to be in our final report?
Mr Davidson
110. The other alternative view is that women
are concentrated in joint working programmes and the men have
the real jobs, the high-fliers in the department and are away
high-flying and joint working projects are seen as something secondary.
(Mavis McDonald) Two answers, if I may, one is that
one of the targets of the Civil Service Reform Programme is to
increase the number of women in the senior Civil Service, you
are seeing some of the results of that here today. Secondly, we
are here because of the jobs we do, not because we are women.
111. I take your point. Could I move on to the
question of culture. To what extent is this project based approach
a diversion really from trying to change the culture of the Civil
Service as a whole, as has been touched on by some of my colleagues?
I always remember the example when community police were introduced
and the effect of that, not the intention, was that everybody
else felt they did not need to be nice any more, that the community
policemen were there to be nice to the community and the rest
of them were out to catch bad people. You might not accept that
example but it was certainly true in my area at one stage. To
what extent has the establishment of particular joint working
projects diverted other people or allowed other people to escape
from the need to co-operate in their main line work?
(Mavis McDonald) I think that is a very fair question.
I will ask both Louise and Naomi to comment if I may. One of the
reasons why some of the joint units have emerged is because they
are looking at issues which everybody has recognised as problems
but have never quite got high enough up any one individual set
of priorities within a department or in terms of the nature of
the expenditure you need for results, so they do not compete with
some of the big programmes, for example. This is a different way
of trying to ensure that those issues are handled and that the
priority is maintained. That is why we said earlier sustaining
that cross-cutting, whether through an exit strategy or through
main programmes, is actually a tricky issue and something that
we need to work through.
112. I want to stick with yourself, if I could.
I understand that the structure and the methods of establishing
a cross-cutting programme are difficult ones but the point that
you made there about individual problems not having reached high
enough up in a department's priority list to require collaborative
working and, therefore, getting hived off in a sense almost makes
the point, does it not, that these are issues that are not seen
as being first tier issues and the main work of the department
goes on regardless?
(Mavis McDonald) What I would say is joint units are
not the only way in which some of these issues are being addressed.
Things like the development of floor targets as part of the PSA
programme to ensure that in delivering education standards you
are setting minimum standards, so that the main targets are not
delivered at the expense of particularly the most vulnerable groups,
are programmes which are designed to ensure that in the way money
is given out the most vulnerable places get the amounts they actually
need through some of the mainstreaming programmes, such as Neighbourhood
Renewal.
113. I do understand but in that case if joint
working is so prevalent within the Civil Service why is it then
that the benefits system is such a shambles? I have got constituents
who end up caught in all sorts of benefits traps of one sort or
another where the Housing Benefit gets cut and the Council Tax
gets cut if they get a small increase and in the end are worse
off. I have got one couple at the moment where the husband has
just been murdered, he was previously getting Minimum Income Guarantee,
the wife does not get any support and she is now worse off than
she was before. If there had been joint working to any serious
extent things like that could not come to pass.
(Mavis McDonald) I think it is to avoid some of those
problems that the Department for Work and Pensions has been set
up and the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency have been
brought together in the new Job Centre Plus Agency to try and
pull together people who are used to working with a customer and
understanding the needs of a customer and what the impact is of
the various entitlements they might have or the various programmes
that they might have access to.
114. I wonder if I could pick up one point with
Ms Casey just to see the extent to which you have got influence.
One of the things that surprised me a little while ago was when
I was involved in a Church of Scotland charity looking after homeless
men in Scotland and I discovered an enormously high percentage
of them were ex-servicemen. They had clearly got into problems
because of drink problems which were caused by the macho culture
and high alcohol consumption in the services. I find it difficult
to believe that joint working will enable you and others to change
that culture in the services anyway. That is clearly part of the
problem. To what extent do you feel at the moment the structures
you have got enable you to make any real impact on that?
(Ms Casey) One of the things that has been enormously
helpful to us has been the Ministerial Committee on Rough Sleeping
because we have somebody there from the Ministry of Defence and,
in fact, having that person there—
115. What rank are they?
(Ms Casey) It was John Spellar previously. In fact,
I have now met with Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State. Once they
discovered what was going on they were quite concerned. They do
see, and particularly the personnel people in the armed forces,
that they have a duty of care to people who have worked in the
armed forces that goes beyond when they have finished.
116. I asked about the rank because I understand
John Spellar and Geoff Hoon doing it but in terms of civil servants
or military people within the MoD, what level of commitment are
you getting from them to assist with this?
(Ms Casey) A very high level of commitment. I have
somebody who is the equivalent of Grade 3 over there who I meet
with from time to time to try to make sure that we are—
117. I am not sure what Grade 3 is.
(Ms Casey) You have a Permanent Secretary, then you
have the next person down, then there is my grade, and basically
it is him. His ministers have told him that this is a priority
and he has to worry about it and he worries about it. The thing
is civil servants are not all closed shop, we just want to carry
on in our own way, if you point out to some of these people some
really simple things, ie I cannot influence the culture of what
happens in the armed forces but together we should be able to
influence what happens to somebody when they leave, when you say
to them "we did this and we did that, let us try it for six
to 12 months, see if it starts to make an impact, we will use
our money as a starting point", they are now taking it on
and they are going to do it themselves. You can make change.
118. I understand you can get change but this
is the question that I am not clear about, that is the extent
to which joint working—taking that example—has got
much mileage in it. The cost of alcoholism as a result of military
service falls on to somebody else, none of it falls on the military.
There is no incentive then for them to be involved in doing much
about it, except the point about duty of care. Anything that they
do in that field is an expense without return for them. Had it
not been for the politicians involved, would you have had much
success in getting them to do that out of the goodness of their
hearts?
(Ms Casey) Yes, I think we would have done actually
and I think we have done because the armed forces themselves have
been phenomenally positive. The most major change has been the
fact that across the whole of the armed forces, particularly aiming
it at squaddie level, anyone who is coming out of the armed forces
in less than three years now will have an assessment made by their
commanding officer so that before they are discharged, and sometimes
they are not discharged for positive reasons, somebody is forced
to look at what is happening to them in their lives and that includes
looking at homelessness. We could not have done that sitting in
the Rough Sleepers Unit in DTLR. The only way we could achieve
that was with the Ministry of Defence officials and the armed
forces' personnel department. At the end of the day I do not think
people want to see human beings sleeping on our streets. If they
think that they are part of something that is creating that then
genuinely if the answers are sometimes easy you can try. I am
not saying we have solved everything for people in the armed forces,
far from it, we have made some progress and time will only tell.
119. Can I just go on and ask your colleagues,
if I could, I have been involved in a number of joint working
projects of one sort or another and there are some people who
are involved in these things that are more bother than they are
worth because they are not committed to doing it. Has that been
your experience? Are there other ways of dealing with that situation
that is not covered in the report?
(Ms Eisenstadt) Yes, that has been our experience.
Obviously not all the partnerships work perfectly and I think
the report does give some good indicators on what sorts of things
make the partnerships work. One of the key things, which is interesting,
and you raised it in terms of rough sleepers, is having some notion
about a shared goal. If everyone on the partnership agrees "this
is what we are trying to achieve for children" and also is
there to say "what can my agency deliver for children"
as opposed to "what will my agency get out of being on this
partnership", it will work.
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