Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
2 DECEMBER 2003
Tessa Jowell, Ms Sue Street, and Mr Keith Smith,
examined.
Q60 Ms Shipley: With respect, CABE has
been excellent but if you look at the health ministers trying
to deliver this agenda frankly they cannot, they have not and
they cannot. The health minister has not delivered. CABE is able
to advise, and so on and so forth, on schools, on hospitals, and
so forth but the health ministers have actually demonstrated in
writing that they cannot.
Tessa Jowell: This is not really
anything to do with my area of responsibility.
Q61 Ms Shipley: It is, it is page 46.
Tessa Jowell: The point I am making
is that I do know that health ministers have taken very seriously
the importance of good design in the many new hospitals that we
are building.
Q62 Ms Shipley: Okay. Can we move on
to the BBC and on page 53, "The BBC is central to our public
service broadcasting system. DCMS is increasingly required to
ensure that the boundaries between its activities and over commercial
broadcasters are respectively established and maintained."
Today's headlines, "BBC is making Coke Top of the Pops"
I am sure you have had this drawn to your attention. If you have
not there are plenty of other examples where the BBC has strayed
over the last year into commercial products being placed in various
ways or commercial link-up with children's television in particular
and its characters being used in products, that sort of thing.
When the BBC was in front of us they said that they would look
into it and they thought there may be a problem here, but then
we have this, "BBC is making Coke Top of the Pops".
This sort of thing is not included in your Annual Report. The
problems that you have in generalised terms are not included at
all.
Tessa Jowell: This is making a
slightly different point. Perhaps I can take your question in
two points.
Q63 Ms Shipley: You can just take the
general point.
Tessa Jowell: The point that is
being made here is about the distinctiveness of the BBC and what
it offers, funded by the licence fee, as compared to what is offered
by the commercial public service broadcasters or commercial broadcasters
more generally.
Q64 Ms Shipley: Absolutely, and I think
it does that very well. Where there have been problems with the
BBC, where you should have stepped in or have stepped in that
is not included here.
Tessa Jowell: Where who should
have stepped in?
Q65 Ms Shipley: Where you should have
stepped in.
Tessa Jowell: Where should I have
stepped in?
Q66 Ms Shipley: With examples like Coca-Cola
and Top of the Pops, that link.
Tessa Jowell: I am not the Regulator
for the BBC.
Q67 Ms Shipley: No, but do you not think
if you had any responsibility for the BBC at all—and as
you have put it in your Annual Report you do have some responsibility,
otherwise it would not be in here—you have a responsibility
to refer things to the Regulator?
Tessa Jowell: The BBC is regulated
by the governors. It is very important to disentangle the two
points that are being made here. There is one distinct set of
issues about the extent to which the BBC through the programming
that it offers and the activities that it engages in, funded by
the licence fee, impinge on similar areas of activity which are
undertaken by commercial broadcasters. We have always argued with
the BBC that its distinctiveness and maintaining its distinctiveness
is part of its core purpose. Just to illustrate that point, when
I gave approval to the four new digital channels one of the issues
I considered was the market impact, in other words would I by
licensing these new services, which as Secretary of State I do,
be in some way impeding investment by other potential investors
in what is a broadly equivalent part of the market. It was a particularly
important issue in relation to the BBC and the Youth Channel,
because that is the BBC entering what is already a very crowded
market place. Is that a right and proper role for the BBC? That
is one set of issues. The second issue is product placement. There
is a code that the Regulator, either the ITC—Ofcom after
the end of the year—or the BBC governors should comply with
in ensuring that the programmes do not become advertorial. A decision
by the BBC to have any product sponsor one of its programmes is
a matter for the BBC. They are accountable and will be accountable
to Ofcom for the conduct of their commercial activities.
Q68 Ms Shipley: On your first point,
its distinctiveness, do you think its distinctiveness is being
eroded—you are responsible for its distinctiveness, as you
just demonstrated in your point one—by product placement,
by link ups with things Coke and Top of the Pops?
Tessa Jowell: It is very difficult
to generalise. Distinctiveness is born of content. You can have
distinctive content regardless of sponsorship. I think that the
answer is, no, not necessarily. I do not think that distinctiveness
is necessarily affected by having a commercial sponsor.
Q69 Ms Shipley: Can I go back to something
that you said on sports, I hope I am wrong in quoting you, so
put me right on this one, the PE two hours is not core curriculum,
so it could be after school stuff or lunchtime stuff which is
included in the monitoring of that two hours?
Tessa Jowell: It is not necessarily
part of the core curriculum. Some schools do offer it in curriculum
time but they do not all offer it in curriculum time. There is
no requirement on them to offer it in curriculum time.
Q70 Ms Shipley: If there are no parents
and no teachers and nobody else round that wants to offer lunchtime
stuff and after school stuff then there is no requirement on the
school to offer PE?
Tessa Jowell: That is the point
of having this organisational structure.
Q71 Ms Shipley: Which I know in detail
because you told us, do not go through it again because I have
that one.
Tessa Jowell: Increasingly what
you will see will be coaches that will be offering basketball
at lunchtime or hockey before school, or whatever it is, because
the purpose of this investment is to make sure that children are
taught by people who have themselves been properly trained rather
than, as has been so often the case in the past, teachers doubling
up the function.
Q72 Ms Shipley: I agree with you, the
coaching, the experience, your last statement I agree with. Surely
delivering them between yourself and the Department of Education
there has to be some way of telling schools that they are required,
actually required—use the word "required"—to
deliver sport or physical activity to all children, otherwise
we will get into a situation, which we are in, that two thirds
of young children do not have any physical activity at all—that
is from Sport England. Although you have good practice going in
to some things two thirds of children are not getting this physical
activity. Surely you and the Department of Education have to tell
schools that they are required to deliver and you have to spell
it out, you have to deliver it, the way you deliver it can be
variable, agreed, but you have to deliver it and you have to demonstrate
it. Also between you, the two departments, you have to monitor
that delivery. I put it to you in schools not far from here there
are in the day two slots where it appears that children are doing
PE and I can tell you they are not, they are getting changed for
PE, they are doing 10 or 15 minutes, maybe, and then they are
getting dressed again. You have two slots of that but those slots
also get cancelled for nativity plays, and all sorts. If you did
it over the whole year you would find those children, even the
third that are appearing to have PE, are actually having very
little, but this is not being monitored.
Tessa Jowell: First of all it
is precisely because of the previous way of measuring this, including
changing time, travelling time and so forth that the time actually
spent running round or jumping up and down was so limited that
we moved the target from the previous PSA target to the one that
we now have. The PSA target sets an obligation to deliver, and
schools are expected to do this. I would also say that as schools
fall within the ambit of the School Sport Partnerships all the
evidence is that schools want to take part, they are queuing up
to become part of School Sport Partnerships because they see the
benefits to their children of making sport more available to them.
The obligation derives from the PSA target but this is actually
offering something that they want to take up.
Q73 Ms Shipley: You used the word "expected"
you did not use the word "required". Would you like
to change your answer to, are required to deliver it?
Tessa Jowell: I do not want to
mislead you, the fact is in all of the Schools Sport Partnerships
the target is being delivered and the achievement of the target,
two hours a week net of changing, travelling and all of the rest
of it is monitored and the delivery of that achievement is monitored
at the moment by the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. Yes, if you
become part of a School Sport Partnership part of the terms of
signing up is you are required to cooperate in that way, in return
you get a considerable number of facilities, not least of which
is freed-up time.
Q74 Ms Shipley: What will you do about
those that do not sign up? Those that sign up are good but those
that do not—two thirds of children are not getting it at
the moment.
Tessa Jowell: I know they are
not that is because this is a programme that was always intended
to be implemented over a number of years. We simply do not have
the capacity to implement it all at once, if we did we would be
back at the situation there would be no problem monitoring the
quality of what children were getting. In order to make this work
we are training 3,000 part-time, mostly part-time, coaches to
work in schools. This is a programme that will take from the moment
of its inception, which was about 2001, until probably about 2006
to complete.
Q75 Ms Shipley: The raising of the quality
of the coaching is excellent and to be applauded, the medium-term
goal of that is excellent. We have a position now, today, when
two-thirds of young children are not receiving any physical education,
one-third are and two-thirds are not, surely we should be requiring
children to have the opportunity to do this? The schools should
be required to deliver. It really does not have to be high level
coaching to get them physically active, being physically active
without high level coaching is better than not being physically
active at all, surely?
Tessa Jowell: I think you will
find that over and above the two hours of sport and physical activity
there are activities that go on in schools which make children
active, they do not make them active at the level that we think
is necessary. In a sense you need Charles Clarke here to answer
these questions about the scale of obligation that they at DfES
are prepared to place on schools.
Ms Shipley: We have you and you are part
of joined-up Government.
Q76 Chairman: We are going to have to
move on.
Tessa Jowell: I have set out for
you the way in which this programme will be implemented. It is
a programme that if we are not to sacrifice quality that can be
done in one year or two years.
Q77 Ms Shipley: We are going for high
quality, which is an excellent aim which we should have, over
a medium-term but we are not going to go for making those children
get active now because it is so vitally important?
Tessa Jowell: We are going for
quality, sustainability and progressive universality.
Q78 Ms Shipley: Which leaves out two
thirds of children in the immediate future.
Tessa Jowell: Those children and
those families will make other arrangements until they are part
of the School Sport Partnership.
Ms Shipley: Two thirds of children—
Q79 Chairman: We do have to move on.
Tessa Jowell: With great respect
I think that line of questioning runs the risk of misrepresenting
first of all what children are doing in school outside this programme
and secondly the intentions of this programme.
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