Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
Wednesday 18 June 2003
SIR
BRIAN BENDER,
KCB, MR PAUL
ELLIOTT, MR
ANDREW BURCHELL
AND MR
DAVID BILLS
Q1 Chairman: Gentlemen, welcome to
the Committee. First of all, Sir Brian, congratulations on becoming
a greater man since you were here last year.
Sir Brian Bender: Thank you, Chairman.
Q2 Chairman: You see what appearing
before the Select Committee does for you. For the record, you
are the Permanent Secretary at Defra; Paul Elliott is in charge
of rural economies and he is the Communities Director; Andrew
Burchell is a Finance Director and Mr David Bills is the Director
General of the Forestry Commission. We are delighted to see Mr
Bills's contribution to last year's report, which tends to be
the tail wagging the dog, has now been reduced to an economical
ten pages. That seems to me to be about right but we may wait
for the film! Sir Brian, can I begin by asking you a question
which I think has troubled this Committee in the course of a number
of our inquiries and that is about the actual capacity of Defra
to deliver in practical terms the policies which the politicians
decide on. What I mean by that is when we did our waste inquiry
we came across a series of concerns that the Department just simply
did not have the expertise to deliver the sort of economic models
and the forecasting which was a necessary part of the way the
waste programmes work. We know there is a couple of areas where
national legislation to transfer into European Union directives
have not yet been laid even though the European Union directives
are in force. It may well be that this is a problem across Government
but our responsibilities obviously are with Defra. The question
is not intended to be an aggressive question. Is there a problem
now within Government of getting hold of the people with the expertise
to deal with the extraordinarily complex areas which, for example,
environment legislation now poses and the translation of that
into accessible legislation which the people who have got to operate
it can understand, assimilate, implement and apply?
Sir Brian Bender: Can I come back
to your point about legislation at the end of the answer because
the essence of what we are trying to do with our change programme
is to increase the Department's capacity; the capacity to deliver
what the Government has said the Department should do. That is
what it is all about and a crucial part of that is the process
of delivery planning. So we have targets—and no doubt you
will want to ask questions about some of those later on—and
delivery plans then work through what is needed to be done in
terms of the analysis, the skills, the people in place, the people
we have to work with through local government or through other
departments, or with other departments or other agencies or our
own NDPBs to make it happen. That delivery planning process I
would say, frankly, across Government was patchy up until the
end of the 2002 Spending Review and one of the themes of the 2002
Spending Review was actually for all departments to raise their
game and their capacity to deliver. As I say, the purpose of the
delivery planning is to bring these various issues together. So
if you take an area like waste—and I have, of course, read
the Committee's report and the Department will be giving its response
to it soon—we have a delivery plan now in place. We have
been examining the skills needed and we have brought in someone
as a programme director to lead that work who has external experience.
We have brought in from within the Department a programme manager
who has expertise in programme and project management and we are
running the waste programme on a programme/project basis. We are
setting up a steering committee which will be chaired by Mr David
Varney, to bring in some external expertise to drive and make
it happen and we are working on the links with local government
and what actually makes a good local government perform well.
An interesting example is the area of Sunderland, which is a high
performing local authority under the Comprehensive Performance
Assessment but has a very low performance on recycling. So the
general answer to your question is the purpose of our change programme
is to increase our capacity. We are focussing that attention in
the first instance on the priority areas of the PSA targets but
we are trying to do it across the board. Coming back to your specific
question about environmental legislation, I do not think it is
a question primarily of skills, although I think that is probably
a part of it. I think it is a matter of ensuring that the Department
and the implementers (in most cases the Environment Agency) work
well together and that there is a better (again using these words)
programme management relationship between the departmental lawyers
and the administrators through the negotiating process and through
the implementation, so that the lawyers are not brought in too
late into the game. I think the history is that too often the
lawyers have been playing catch-up on these issues. So I would
not like to give the impression that everything is rosy. What
I am trying to say to the Committee is that we recognise these
sorts of issues and we have a lot of action in hand to improve
them, and there is an internal assessment process of the Department's
delivery plans by the Treasury, which they will be doing again
in October, to see how our performance shapes up and is likely
to be shaping up.
Q3 Chairman: I will forebear on commenting
on whether the fact that the Treasury is doing it gives me any
confidence. So many of the targets set by the Treasury seem to
be fantasist, somewhat remote from the real world. On the Civil
Service, which you now manage a significant chunk of, how would
you describe the difference between the skills it needs now and
perhaps the Civil Service you entered?
Sir Brian Bender: I think it is
very different. The sorts of skills needed now include—the
word "leadership", which had not been invented in 1973
when I joined the Civil Service. Management became a theme during
the 70s and 80s, and now we have the issue of what makes an effective
leader, whether it is in a school, a hospital or a government
department, at many levels. So the whole issue of leadership skills
is crucial. I have mentioned already the issue of programme and
project management skills. In many cases the reason for failed
Government projects is because of a lack of skills within the
organisation, so up-skilling in that area. Skills around what
I call partnership working, working through others, and that is
an area again where Defra certainly needs to raise its game because
so much of our activity is done through local government, through
the Regional Development Authorities, through local communities
of one sort or another. I think there are skills that are different,
so it is not the sort of mandarin Civil Service that I joined
where if you are good at giving policy advice that was the main
criterion. But you still need to be able to give good policy advice.
Q4 Chairman: But technical skills
as well? The skills you have just described tend to be skills
of process in a sense but there are also sheer technical skills,
economic and metric skills, modelling skills, are there not now,
which so much depends on?
Sir Brian Bender: Well, we need
legal skills in all departments, we need sufficiency in or access
to economic/statistical skills. A department like Defra needs
to have and have access to, scientific skills, self-evidently,
veterinary skills. Again, in the Civil Service I joined human
resources was handled by bright people seconded there for a while,
who learned it on the job. Professionalising the internal services
like human resources, finance, communications and of course like
IT, having people who have those skills. Those things have changed
certainly over the last ten years and increasingly over a longer
period.
Q5 Chairman: We will obviously want
to talk about Lord Haskins's recommendations and indeed this time
next week Lord Haskins will be sitting where you are so we will
have the opportunity to ask him about it. So I am not going to
pursue that now, although quite clearly the implications of what
he suggested, as anybody who listened to the Farming programme
this morning heard—which Mr Jack, I have to tell you, did
so and has been kind enough to inform the Committee about this
particular discovery—has got very wide implications. You
are going to have to throw the whole lot up in the air if that
was implemented, are you not?
Sir Brian Bender: I suppose the
slightly facetious answer to your question is we asked for it:
that is to say we recognised a little over a year ago that there
was an issue around the way in which the Department's rural policies
and services were delivered in rural communities. Therefore, we
wanted a study led by someone external to look at, that because
the delivery organisations, the bodies had grown up historically,
some to Environment, Transport and the Regions, some to MAFF,
and therefore we wanted a review. The terms of reference were
how to simplify or rationalise the existing organisation and establish
clearer roles and responsibilities so that everybody is involved.
He has not yet made recommendations. He referred on Farming Today
to his thinking and he has referred more widely to his thinking.
The only thing he has published at the moment are some guiding
principles, one of which is devolution, that the delivery of economic
and social policy must be devolved in accordance with the principle
of public service reform. Devolution away from central departments
rather more is actually something that both the Prime Minister
and the Chancellor have mentioned in various speeches, the notion
of separating out from a core department the responsibility for
delivery but then ensuring there are good and close links of accountability
back. If he makes recommendations that follow that through to
its logical conclusion there will be fairly profound implications
for bits of the Department, yes.
Q6 Chairman: We will wish to explore
it. Can you just put something to rest really in one word. I have
picked up the feeling that there is still some debate as to which
department should handle energy policy. Is there still a debate
as to that?
Sir Brian Bender: I will not answer
in one word, if I may. The Energy White Paper was a joint White
Paper between Patricia Hewitt and Margaret Beckett. The implementation
of the Energy White Paper is being pursued by a virtual network
based in the DTI but involving people from a number of departments,
including our own, working on a programme management basis across
Government in the same sort of a way as we are pursuing the farming
and food strategy across Government. Ultimately the lead is with
DTI but we have a strong shared interest in following it through
and making it happen and we are very much involved in that.
Q7 Chairman: Finally, in this initial
batch, can I come to one of my little sort of bête noir,
which is these PSA targets, because I do sometimes feel that the
targets are either imposed upon you or agreed with you, which
do make an enormous amount of assumptions, many of which are not
under your control. If we look back to page 57, which is the CSR
target: "Cut the overall cost of the CAP to European Union
(EU) consumers and taxpayers from its current level of 88 billion
ecus (£62 billion) a year." That of course was in the
1998 PSA target and then that has been slightly modulated (or
whatever the fashionable word might be), modernised I suppose
I ought to say when you get to page 73, where it says: "Secure
agreement, by March 2004, to reforms that reduce the cost of the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to consumers and taxpayers."
The only inconvenience of this is that of course it does rather
depend on what fourteen other Member States say, does it not?
Why does the Treasury sort of stick in targets which, quite frankly,
have no realistic sense at all? We all want to reduce the cost
of the CAP but you are no more capable of delivering that unilaterally
than the man in the Moon is capable of delivering it unilaterally.
As far as I know, Mrs Beckett has disappeared to Luxembourg about
a week ago and has not been seen since. She may still be there
for all I know but not much is coming out.
Sir Brian Bender: Well, she is
there, although she did appear in the interim and there was a
new Presidency compromise tabled this morning, which is still
from the United Kingdom's point of view looking encouraging, but
there are hard negotiations still to go.
Q8 Chairman: Are these really useful
tools or, quite frankly, are they simply saying something which
any sane department would do in any case and are they not just
becoming a liability for you?
Sir Brian Bender: I think if you
have got sensible targets and targets and they can actually focus
the mind, a focussed effort, recognising that actually some of
the levers (like this one) are beyond our control but we can still
influence them and sort of try and pull them a bit. I have no
problem with the target providing the Treasury and commentators
recognise that our ability to deliver the result is not entirely
within our control. Nonetheless, if Margaret Beckett comes back
from Luxembourg with an agreement that does not involve some form
of satisfactory CAP reform but is still an agreement then in a
way it does not matter whether there is a target that says it
or not. You and colleagues in Parliament may well criticise the
outcome and the media may. So it is a way of encapsulating what
it is we are trying to achieve. It is a difficult one, but if
you look at the one on waste we have to implement that through
local government, through industry, with other players in Government.
Chairman: Mr Jack, as a reward for having
listened to the Farming programme (and I suspect he was probably
jogging at the time), gets a brief supplementary and then we go
to Mr Wiggin.
Q9 Mr Jack: It is not about that
yet, Chairman, but I just wanted to follow on the point you were
making about the way that this report deals with some of these
PSA targets. I refer you to page 75. Here we see the bold statement
which says: "Achieve a reduction of 10% in the unit cost
of administering CAP payments by March 2004, and 95% electronic
service delivery capability for such payments by March 2004."
A strong, definite target. In the slightly greener box next to
it, it says: "Some slippage. Target has been revised in the
Spending Review 2002," and leaves us with the tantalising
question as to what and to why, so perhaps you could fill in the
missing bits?
Sir Brian Bender: I hope the Committee
received a note that we provided yesterday which actually I think
did answer this question. In this particular case the slippage
was primarily as a result of the diversion of staff, the impact
of Foot and Mouth duties on the people in the Rural Payments Agency
who should have been working on this. So there is about a six
month slippage in the programme. That is why the Spending Review
2002 period has a similar results target, but a slipped timetable
target and we are on track (he said, with fingers crossed) for
achieving that.
Q10 Mr Jack: Just to tantalise me
with the answer, what is the new target?
Mr Burchell: It has moved back
by one year.
Q11 Mr Jack: So it is 10% but one
year later?
Sir Brian Bender: Yes.
Q12 Mr Wiggin: I am sorry you are
not wearing the uniform of your predecessor but it is a hot day!
On 2 May 2003 you launched a strategy called "a more sustainable
future for everyone" but this strategy is not allied to your
PSA objectives so it cannot be regarded as a coherent strategy
for the delivery of PSA targets. I believe the Animal Health and
Welfare strategy is not included either and that is planned for
later on this year. When will the Animal Health and Welfare strategy
be published?
Sir Brian Bender: We hope it will
be published as a basis for further consultation in July, although
that is a matter for our Ministers.
Q13 Mr Wiggin: How are your strategies
integrated with the Department's PSA objectives and targets?
Sir Brian Bender: We published
a document, I think it was the one you referred to, which identified
six strategic priorities, which six of our PSA targets relate
to in one way or another and then there are others that come in
in various ways underneath that. The document I think you are
referring to highlighted the areas where the Ministers in our
Department attach most priority to achieving progress over the
next few years. As I say, all the PSA targets come, one way or
another, under them; some more obviously than others. So the rural
one comes very obviously under the rural issue; the one on sustainable
farming and food comes under what is said there. Some of the ones
on countryside access, on SSSIs and so on, come in in different
ways in relation to what we are trying to do on biodiversity,
for example.
Q14 Mr Wiggin: I believe you are
also undertaking a number of initiatives to improve and develop
the service provided to customers. Who are your customers?
Sir Brian Bender: We have been
debating that quite a lot in the Department. In this context what
we mean are our direct customers, those for whom Defra provides
services directly. So, for example, farmers whom we pay money
to through the Rural Payments Agency, farmers who will have agri-environment
schemes or the fishing industry in relation to the fisheries'
work. They are not customers in the sense that they may necessarily
be satisfied with the policy. So in some respects we are actually
paying to change their behaviours, as we are in agri-environment
schemes. But for these purposes we mean the direct customers.
Many of the issues the Department deals with have 58 million indirect
customers when we are looking at something like air quality. We
are talking about the whole nation and indeed when we are looking
at climate change, it is rather more grandiose than that. But
in this context we are primarily referring to the Department's
direct customers.
Q15 Mr Wiggin: So how do you assess
the requirements of these people?
Sir Brian Bender: Through feedback,
through dialogue with them, through knowing their views and therefore
having a customer feedback process. Some parts of the Department
have got fairly sophisticated arrangements in place. The State
Veterinary Service and the Rural Development Service are only
beginning to have these arrangements in place.
Q16 Mr Lepper: Am I right that the
overall budget of Defra is just under £3 billion?
Mr Burchell: Around £3 billion,
yes.
Q17 Mr Lepper: There is a report
on the 2001-02 resource account, I think, by the Comptroller and
Auditor General's office last year and that was critical of some
areas of Defra's financial management, I believe. It did highlight,
I think, a significant underspend which it was suggested from
some weaknesses in financial management. I think another issue
which was raised in that report was the ability of the Department
to respond quickly and effectively in terms of allocating resources
when changes in public policy or priorities arose. Could you tell
us what has been done over the last year to ensure that there
is greater flexibility in terms of financial and human resources
in the Department?
Sir Brian Bender: Can I first
just comment, if I may, Mr Lepper, on the qualification by the
Comptroller and Auditor General. It was plainly disappointing.
However, our own view in discussion with the National Audit Office
was that, given the previous starting point of the accounts for
the previous year, which were heavily qualified primarily because
of the complications with Foot and Mouth disease, this was a lesser
qualification. It was within the same scope as the previous one
and smaller, and the Comptroller and Auditor General was clear
that the progress being made provided a sound basis for unqualified
accounts in the period ahead and the Comptroller and Auditor General
acknowledged a number of improvements. You can ask me next year
whether we have achieved that. In terms of resource allocation,
the most important exercise we are doing at the moment, which
will not be completed until after the summer, is actually looking
at all our activities—the jargon is an Activity Baseline
Review—and breaking down all our spend so that we are clear
what is being spent on, I think, about 6,000 different activities
and with the help of some experts who have done this in other
organisations trying to allocate that to the outcomes we are trying
to achieve. The purpose of that exercise is to work out with our
Ministers whether we are spending the right sums of money on the
right sorts of things; are there things we should be spending
less on; are there things we should be grouping together in different
ways or stopping. Part of the purpose of that would be to create
headroom to spend money on other priorities. This will also enable
us, knowing exactly where the money is being spent, to have a
greater ease for flexibility. Meanwhile, our internal resource
allocation for the present financial year which was conducted
through last winter had, by its nature, to be a fairly interim
process until that had been done. So we did business planning
for this year on a one year basis reflecting the sorts of priorities
which are in the strategy document and which Ministers had agreed
in principle last summer. Those priorities were recognised in
the way we allocated resources for the current financial year,
but still having business planning on a one year basis is not
satisfactory and we are planning to move through this autumn for
two years through the current Spending Review period.
Q18 Mr Lepper: So what you have just
described to us should increase that flexibility and make the
Department more responsive?
Sir Brian Bender: Correct.
Q19 Mr Lepper: You are inviting us
to expect, we hope, an unqualified report from the Auditor General's
office next year?
Sir Brian Bender: I certainly
expect it and my finance director knows!
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