Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
2 DECEMBER 2003
Tessa Jowell, Ms Sue Street, and Mr Keith Smith,
examined.
Q20 Chairman: Before we proceed, Secretary
of State, could I apologise? We have, as you can see, a good attendance
by the Committee today, particularly taking into account that
we are one short of our membership, but unfortunately, because
of the conflict of work on the floor of the House, we are losing
two Members now and we shall perhaps lose another later on. No
discourtesy to you is intended. At some point, we are going to
have to rectify this in some way.
Tessa Jowell: I fully understand
that. That is something which is not my department's responsibility
though.
Q21 Michael Fabricant: With joined up
government I am sure you will have a word with the leader of the
House. Firstly, can I congratulate you on this report? I will
not accuse it of being an Enron report or anything similar. I
think it is very well presented and very readable. Also, I wish
to congratulate you on meeting most of the public service agreement
targets but, like all targets, they are fairly blunt. They are
not set by you although they are done in agreement with you. The
first area where you appear to have done particularly well is
on PSA target one and that was getting the Internet into libraries.
You have managed to get it into 99%, 3,100 of all UK libraries.
I do not know if you are directly responsible but, if you are,
well done you. How many of the 99%, as a percentage, are broadband?
Tessa Jowell: 89% of public libraries
provide broadband, two megabyte and over, Internet access.
Q22 Michael Fabricant: It is not just
broadband because broadband is often quite narrow, in my opinion.
It is two megabytes and over, so that is very fast indeed.
Tessa Jowell: The remaining 11%
are libraries that are almost exclusively in rural areas which
have obviously not yet been reached by broadband.
Q23 Michael Fabricant: That presumably
will be increasing. What sort of analysis has been made about
the number of terminals for any given population? I would imagine
in some rural areas, whether it is broadband or not, you might
have quite a high ratio of terminals for the surrounding population.
What is it like in other areas? How patchy is that?
Tessa Jowell: I have looked at
this question. I am not sure I can give you a precise answer to
the question about numbers of terminals but I have looked at the
question of use, charging and take-up. There is no point in putting
£100 million of investment in if people are not using it.
All the signs are that this is a facility which is used very extensively
and that 75% of our libraries make no charge at all.
Q24 Michael Fabricant: Eighty per cent
according to your book. You under-estimate yourself.
Tessa Jowell: I am confusing free
access and take-up. Eighty per cent free access; 75% take-up.
Seventy five per cent of the sessions are on a regular basis taken
up, which means that there is still some capacity. What would
be interesting to look at is the extent to which that additional
25% capacity at any given time is more in rural areas where the
connections are slower than the broadband connections that we
have.
Q25 Michael Fabricant: Are you sure you
meant that? I would have thought, when you said "take-up",
you were talking about the amount of time someone is at the terminal.
Tessa Jowell: The amount of time
that a terminal is being used, the proportion of available time
that a terminal is being used.
Q26 Michael Fabricant: When you have
25% of the time when it is not being used, which might be odd
times of the day, does that mean that you have a long queue of
people waiting at other times, which would still imply that there
are not enough terminals in some of the libraries?
Tessa Jowell: In my visits to
libraries I see the terminals there. I was recently in the Bournemouth
library which has 20 terminals and they deal with the whole challenge
of variable levels of use by enabling people to book not more
than an hour at a time. They run classes at times during the day
when, say, elderly people are more likely to be available. They
have their silver surfers' clubs. Those are the ways in which
libraries are, on an individual, library by library basis, managing
this.
Ms Street: I have not personally
counted but as far as I know the metropolitan libraries have around
ten terminals. That is the average although obviously flagship
libraries like Bournemouth will have as many as 20. In the county
libraries you are more likely to get about seven on average. I
think we should put on record all credit to Resource who have
driven this very successfully. We have not been made aware of
either massive regional variations or massive queues. As the Secretary
of State says, wherever I have been I have seen that the authorities
are managing the lunch times and the peak hours differently from
the slower times.
Q27 Michael Fabricant: I do not want
to pursue this because it is rather anal but it does seem that
this is more apocryphal, "When I visited a library"
and so on, rather than it being deep research into it. I know
this is not directly the responsibility of your department because
it is a Treasury run thing but although I think it is very good
that the Treasury sets public service agreement targets do you
not think that they are, by their very nature, rather crude?
Tessa Jowell: No. Back in 1997
that was almost certainly the case.
Q28 Michael Fabricant: But not now?
Tessa Jowell: No. I think we are
refining our targets and we are using them in different ways.
First of all, if you take a department like mine which famously
covers everything from the Tote to the Tate, what is it that my
department is centrally about? My department is about enriching
people's lives and particularly enriching the lives of young people
who may well be shut out from those opportunities by virtue of
deprivation and other lack of opportunity. That sits right at
the centre. I want PSA targets that are going to capture our performance
against the things which are central to what my department does.
We have four strategic priorities that focus on young people,
on communities, on our support for the economy through productivity
growth and tourism, creative industries and media and a fourth
strategic priority which is focused on improving the delivery,
our performance as a department and in turn the performance of
our non-departmental public bodies. What the PSA targets do is
to try to give turbo charge and focus to those strategic priorities.
We are now just at the beginning of the next spending round and
we are about to begin discussions with the Treasury about how
we refine our present PSA targets to do two things. First of all,
to make sure that we continue to build and consolidate. There
is no point in setting about getting children playing sport at
school and becoming more active if you then do it for three years
and stop doing it, because doing it relies on having the delivery
structure in every school in the country. That will take us probably
up to eight years to achieve. Similarly in relation to creativity
and so forth. We will adapt and develop these targets, but where
they work well they drive the most important areas.
Q29 Michael Fabricant: When you negotiate
these things, I think you need perhaps to be a little more critical.
It is generally accepted that targets which were originally set
by Conservatives, then by Labour for the Department of Health,
distorted health delivery. If you are not careful, every government
department will find itself distorted if they do not set the right
targets, the right measures and also do the right sort of research
behind them to ensure those targets are being met. One of the
targets you mentioned was in childcare.
Tessa Jowell: We do not have a
childcare target.
Q30 Michael Fabricant: I move us on to
PSA target three. Things do not seem to be working out quite as
well as you have just suggested, do they?
Tessa Jowell: Why?
Q31 Michael Fabricant: Because it states
that the target for the amount of physical activity by those aged
5-16 has not been met and the average time has decreased. At a
time when there is growing obesity, that is not very good news.
Tessa Jowell: You have PSA three
which sought to raise significantly, year on year, the average
time spent on sport and physical activity by young people aged
5 to 16. That has now been replaced by a new PSA target which
will be in place until 2006, which is to ensure that 75% of 5
to 16 year olds spend at least two hours a week on high quality
PE and school sport. That is a better target than the target that
preceded it, for a number of reasons. First of all, this target
included a whole number of things that were not specifically focused
on sport and physical activity and drove no structure for the
delivery of their quality. This was a target that included changing
time and travelling time to the sport the children might play.
The new target, which is currently owned between my department
and DfES, and monitored by the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit,
has a major, new structure underneath it through the creation
of school sport partnerships. If I can focus on the new target
rather than the old target, it is the new target which is now
driving the joint work between my department and Charles's department.
We are now, as of this moment, at about the 30% point, where 30%
of children in primary and secondary schools are spending at least
two hours a week on quality sport or physical activity, quality
because it is being delivered under the direction of somebody
who is properly trained, a professional in physical education;
properly delivered because, as our coach education programme comes
on stream, coaches will be going into schools to work with young
people. It is coherent because it works on a pyramidal structure
where you have a specialist sports college which acts as the hub.
You then have about four to eight secondary schools and anything
between 25 and 45 primary schools with time being released within
each school for teachers to engage their children in sport. A
lot of it is being done after school, before school and at lunch
time. It is not only being done in core curriculum time. That
does not matter. The important thing is that the rate at which
young people are taking part in high quality PE and school sport
is increasing and will continue to do so until we meet the target
at the end of this spending round.
Q32 Ms Shipley: I find what you say makes
the document we are looking at rather misleading. Hidden under
PSA target three is the fact that half of all children do not
receive two hours of PE a week. If you take out the seven to nine
year olds, we are down to only one third of children who receive
physical activity in a week. The report itself is misleading because,
by generalising across a ten year bracket, the pronounced differential
across the age groups is masked. I am rather disappointed in that
because if we are going to tackle it we really need to know what
the base lines are. I would be very interested to know, with your
75% target, what exactly is the base line that you are working
from now, because it is a new one, and also how do you define
high quality?
Tessa Jowell: We now have a base
line. The Prime Minister's Delivery Unit has helped us to establish
a base line. The figure that I give you as of now is about one
in three because this is a programme that will only get us to
three out of four by 2006.
Q33 Ms Shipley: You are saying 33% is
your base line?
Tessa Jowell: No. Thirty-three
per cent is the level which we have now reached through the implementation
of school support sport partnerships.
Ms Shipley: The report shows it is removed
from 33 to 49% already so it makes the target a bit easy.
Q34 Michael Fabricant: While you were
talking about the integrated system and how it would come down
from sports colleges and you point out in your annual report,
page 32, that eventually there will be 400 sports colleges, it
seems to me that it is predicated on a number of different factors
all being met, some of which are not within your department anyway.
It is the Department for Education and Skills. There is the whole
question whether or not, if you cannot reach those targets, you
will set other targets. Tell me why I am wrong. I suppose what
I am really saying is it all seems like woolly wish lists, rather
than that which can be achieved and measured.
Tessa Jowell: No, it is absolutely
not. You have just made a very good case for the importance of
a PSA target. This is a PSA target which is jointly owned by me
and the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. The oversight
of the target until Christmas is with the Prime Minister's Delivery
Unit. After that stage, it will revert to the responsibility of
the Treasury. Why? Because the PMDU is reducing the number of
targets that it takes responsibility for. It might help if I gave
the Committee what is our planned progression in the roll out
of school sport partnerships, but it is a consistent, sustained
and funded roll out to 75% between now and 2006. We will then
have the challenge, post 2006, dependent on the next spending
round. We will then have to close the gap between 75% and universal
cover, but as of now the priority, as you would expect, is that
the schools in the early stages are schools in the most deprived
areas, who are also the beneficiaries of the new opportunities
for PE and sport programme. Not only are these schools becoming
part of the school sport partnership with everything that brings,
but also these are the schools that are the beneficiaries of the
new sports facilities that are being funded by the NOF programme.
Q35 Michael Fabricant: Time will tell.
Tessa Jowell: I really wish you
would not say that.
Q36 Michael Fabricant: No? Time will
not tell?
Tessa Jowell: At one level it
will but if I may say so, with great respect, your scepticism
which can very easily tip into cynicism is not justified. The
money is here. We have a delivery mechanism. This is working.
It is already working in a third of the country and we intend
with the resources available to us that this benefit will be extended
to children in 75% of the country. That is our absolute intention.
I am confident that we have the means, both in terms of organisational
design, skill and money, to do that.
Q37 Michael Fabricant: I think your sensitivity
is interesting and time will be the judge. I am pretty sure you
will be proved right.
Tessa Jowell: Thank you.
Q38 Derek Wyatt: Can I go back to Michael's
questions about the libraries? If we have this phenomenal take-up,
which is truly wonderful, where are the experiments in opening
the libraries in the evenings where working class children, who
do not have access to broadband at home and do not have computers,
could come to libraries which tend to close at 5 or 5.30? In your
PSA targets for the next three years, what are we going to do
to open up libraries not just in the evening but also on Sundays,
when they are closed, when again children with real needs need
access because they do not have it at home?
Tessa Jowell: I share your frustration
at this. This is an area where my department has the responsibility
for setting national library standards, but the implementation
of library standards is a matter for local authorities. To go
back to my visit to the Bournemouth Library, I did ask the librarian
about Sunday opening and it is very clearly an ambition that they
have. They have extended evening opening hours and so forth. The
problem is funding it. That is the obstacle. Of course libraries
should be open on Sundays. Of course they should be open in the
evenings. In some parts of the country we should look to 24-hour
libraries where kids who would otherwise be getting up to no good
out on the streets can at least go and sit at the computers and
so forth. The very best libraries are undoubtedly the libraries
that, when you walk into them, you do not know whether you are
walking into a job centre, an Internet café, a juice bar
or a library. Tower Hamlets, which I think has shown enormous
imagination in the development of their library service, is developing
libraries along those lines. Where you see these innovative, state
of the art, imaginative libraries, they repay the confidence of
the investment. I share your frustration that they are not yet
universal or anywhere near it.
Q39 Derek Wyatt: Your predecessor was
very strong on making sure, when we raised questions about libraries,
that when libraries were going to close the authority had to come
to him to ask permission. Is there nothing in your powers? I know
it goes through the local authority but is there nothing in your
powers to bring forward evening and weekend openings as a priority?
Do you have those powers to ask that?
Tessa Jowell: No. We can ask it
but we have no powers to require libraries to do that because
to do so, particularly in a context where the Government is seeking
to reduce the number of obligations on local government and create
more flexibility, we would not have any part of enforcement, in
part because they do not exist in statute but also because, quite
rightly, the libraries would come to us and say, "If you
want us to open at the weekends, then fund us to open at the weekends"
and we are not in a position to do that.
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