Appendix 3: Memorandum on the Work of
the Scrutiny Unit
1. The Scrutiny Unit has carried out over 100 tasks
for select committees since it was set up in November 2002 to
assist in the scrutiny of expenditure and draft Bills—following
recommendations from the Liaison, Modernisation and Procedure
Committees. Some of these tasks were short—like one day
for the Transport Committee on the Highways Agency's excess vote—and
some longer—like the 300 days work (to date) by five staff
on the draft Gambling Bill.
2. To begin with, the Unit concentrated on the expenditure
side of the role. By the middle of the year, the publication of
draft Bills brought a shift in emphasis to pre-legislative scrutiny.
Staff provided direct support to four joint committees and additional
assistance to the four departmental committees which considered
draft bills. At the same time, new expenditure tasks were carried
out. Overall, as the chart below shows, a quarter of total time
was spent on expenditure work and well over half on draft Bills.
Other tasks included some work on agencies and on legislation
other than draft Bills.
A snapshot
3. In July 2003 the Scrutiny Unit was working for
committees on five draft Bills and nine departmental annual reports.
In one week that month, ten select committee meetings were based
mainly on briefing material provided by the Unit: three were single
evidence sessions on departmental reports (Work and Pensions,
Home Affairs and Constitutional Affairs) and seven on draft Bills
(ODPM Committee on the draft Housing Bill and six meetings of
Joint Committees on the draft Corruption, Civil Contingencies
and Mental Incapacity Bills).
Staff
4. In January 2004 the Unit reached the complement
authorised by the House of Commons Commission with 10 specialists
and seven core staff. Six specialists are on secondment: three
accountants from the National Audit Office, one Estimates expert
from a government department, a statistician from the Library
and a performance audit adviser from the Audit Commission. Four
others—two lawyers and two economic/social policy experts—are
employed on short-term contracts (as committee specialists). Their
previous employers include McKinseys, Slaughter & May, the
Financial Services Authority and Butterworths. The seven core
staff, who deal mainly with joint committees on draft Bills, comprise
two Clerks, three committee assistants, a team manager and an
office support assistant.
Work for Committees
5. The Scrutiny Unit has assisted most departmental
committees and some other committees. It has also provided full-time
staff support for four ad hoc joint committees on draft bills.
We do not do separate research projects—the aim is only
to produce material for which there is a customer. The chart below[220]
shows the total amount of time spent on work for each committee.
While the largest number of separate tasks was carried out for
the Transport Committee, the ODPM Committee accounted for the
most time because one member of staff worked nearly full time
on one draft Bill and one other major inquiry. The chart does
not show the amount of time spent on draft Bills for joint committees.
6. Work is commissioned from the Unit by committee
clerks specifying a task and a time by which it needs to be done.
The Head of the Unit is responsible for trying to match the available
skills and time to that task. No committee has been refused help,
though some requests have been adjusted or redirected (to the
Library, for instance). The committees for which the Unit has
done most work have generally experienced some staff shortage
during the year. Nonetheless it is hoped that the actual work
done for them was more focused towards the expenditure core task
than if it had been done by the committee's own staff. A wide
variety of tasks has been undertaken—some, like the work
for the Health Committee on deregulation of pharmacies, have needed
relatively little analysis of expenditure but a good understanding
of economics. Another example of a successful task was the combined
effort of an accountant and a lawyer in the Unit advising the
Treasury Committee on the Mapely Steps PFI contract involving
Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise buildings being transferred
to a company based in a tax haven.[221]
Scrutiny of expenditure
7. In this first year, we have focused on supplementary
estimates as the most likely way of identifying for committees
matters of financial interest. Three exercises have been conducted
on publication of the winter supplementaries in 2002 and 2003
and the spring supplementaries in 2003. In each case some committees
have asked the Unit to examine the supplementary estimate and
draw their attention to anything significant. This has led to
a short paper for the committee concerned. In doing this, we have
been mindful of the Liaison Committee's observation in the report,
Shifting the Balance, that "It would be up to individual
committees to decide how to take things forward—the unit
would provide them with ammunition, not write their script".
The number of committees asking for this service has grown from
nine a year ago to 13 for the 2003 winter supplementaries. In
several cases this has led to a further exchange of letters or
questions at evidence sessions with the department. For instance:
- the Scrutiny Unit's review
of the Lord Chancellor's Department's spring supplementary estimate
revealed that the department had run out of money and was facing
severe financial pressures, particularly on legal aid. The Unit's
work provided the focus for a series of questions on expenditure
to the Permanent Secretary when the Constitutional Affairs Select
Committee examined the departmental annual report on 15 July 2003.
- We also highlighted an ambiguous provision in
the Department for Transport's spring supplementary estimate for
"CRTL de-risking grants", which amounted to £940
million. The Transport Select Committee followed the matter up
in detail with the Secretary of State and Permanent Secretary
when it examined the Transport departmental annual report on 28
October 2003.
8. In doing this work, we have also drawn on the
resource accounts and annual performance reports without conducting
a separate exercise on them. The only major work undertaken on
the new resource accounts was for the Northern Ireland Affairs
Committee whose responsibilities in that area have increased while
the Assembly is suspended.
9. Tasks have included advice on the way committees
seek or obtain information from the Departments, such as the content
and layout of the annual report from the Department of Work and
Pensions or the annual public expenditure questionnaire from the
Health Committee. Much of the scrutiny of estimates has focused
on mistakes and poorly drafted requests for resources by departments.
We have provided committees with the means to challenge mistakes
and press for improved presentation. For instance:
- The EFRA Committee's attention
was drawn to the poor layout of the Defra estimate and we advised
on possible improvements.
- In response to the Transport Committee's criticisms
of the Highways Agency's accounts for 2001-02, the department
acknowledged that lessons had been learned, and the department
strengthened and improved its central finance function in respect
of its agencies.
10. The other major area of work in scrutiny of expenditure
has been advising committees on their departmental annual reports.
Ten committees sought such assistance in 2003, of which two had
not examined their departmental reports the previous year. In
most cases we were able to suggest questions which should be asked
of the department, either in writing or in oral evidence sessions.
In several cases this led to the committees publishing reports,
sections of which were drafted by Scrutiny Unit staff. Five other
committees have examined the departmental reports using their
own resources.
11. Since there was no spending review in 2003, the
Unit has done no work on spending plans, although briefing was
produced for the Science & Technology Committee on understanding
the 2003 science budget allocations. We stand ready to meet committees'
requests for assistance in interpreting the spending decisions
to be announced next summer in the Spending Review 2004.
Scrutiny of draft Bills
12. As the Liaison Committee envisaged in its report,
Shifting the Balance, the Scrutiny Unit's work on draft Bills
is twofold: "taking some of the weight off the staff of a
departmental select committee which found itself landed with a
draft Bill in addition to its other commitments; and staffing
ad hoc pre-legislative committees (or providing the Commons contribution
in the case of joint committees)." The Unit provided staff
for four joint committees on draft Bills in 2003 working with
colleagues from the House of Lords, the Commons Library and the
Legal Services Office in joint teams. In one case the Library
provided extra funding to enable a member of staff to work on
the draft Corruption Bill. We also assisted four departmental
committees in their examination of five draft Bills. The whole
of the report for the Welsh Affairs Committee on the draft Public
Audit (Wales) Bill was written by an accountant in the Unit and
half the ODPM Committee's report on the draft Housing Bill was
produced by the Unit's social economic policy expert. Staff of
the Unit also helped the then Lord Chancellor's Department Committee
with the inquiry into the Courts Bill [Lords] and the Quadripartite
Committee in its examination of secondary legislation on export
controls.
13. Work for Joint Committees on draft Bills proved
to be a significant time commitment for Unit staff in the second
half of the year. Unit staff prepared briefing material for 30
evidence sessions of four joint committees and drafted sections
of three reports to very tight timetables. To do this at the same
time as maintaining support for select committees on expenditure
was a challenge.
14. One issue which has arisen is how much effort
should be devoted to following developments on a draft Bill after
the committee has reported. In the case of draft Bills considered
by departmental committees, that is a matter for them. Temporary
joint committees cease to exist when they report on a draft Bill,
but there is a case for staff to brief former committee members
on how the real Bill eventually introduced differs from the draft
and the extent to which the joint committee's recommendations
have been accepted. It is planned to devote some time to this
task in future.
Scrutiny of agencies
15. Fifteen of the tasks carried out for committees
involved work on the annual reports of agencies or non-departmental
public bodies. A typical example was the oral questions prepared
for the Constitutional Affairs Committee for a single evidence
session with the chief executive of the Legal Services Commission.
A similar task for the Education & Skills Committee on Ofsted
required a comparison to be made of measures of effectiveness
of different inspectorates in other departments. Another task
was assessing the Network Rail business plan for the Transport
Committee.
Spreading good practice
16. Drawing both on what we have learnt in the first
year and on the expertise of people who have come from outside
the House to work in the Unit, we have given five talks to other
Committee Office staff on the public expenditure process (twice),
performance targets, scrutiny of annual reports and examination
of draft Bills. These have been well received and, as more new
people join the Committee Office over the coming year, they will
be repeated. Briefings on pre-legislative scrutiny are also being
given to civil servants on draft Bill teams in the current session.
If any Member wanted a similar briefing, this could easily be
arranged.
17. There is scope in the Unit's work to learn, from
a task for one committee, principles which might be applied for
other committees. Thus the work on performance measurement done
for the Public Administration Select Committee has helped inform
the examination of other departmental reports and the targets
contained in them. We attempt to keep abreast of other developments
across Whitehall on such matters as public-private finance, risk
management and policy evaluation but have not devoted much time
to specific research in these areas.
Accessibility
18. The staff of the joint committees on draft Bills
have made full use of available technology, creating websites
for each draft Bill, publishing evidence on them as it is received
and accepting as much evidence as possible by e-mail. In the case
of the draft Mental Incapacity Bill, an "easy read"
version of the report was produced at additional cost to make
it more accessible to people with learning difficulties. A similar
approach will be taken with the draft Disability Discrimination
Bill. One committee assistant has been trained on e-consultation,
should a committee on a draft Bill decide to conduct such an exercise.
19. We have also looked at ways of presenting information
more effectively to committees. The changes to funding flows for
foundation hospitals were set out in diagrammatic form for the
Health Committee. Our statistician (on secondment from the Library)
has been showing how information can be presented in ways which
are both valid and accessible --- including some work on the way
committee statistics are presented in the sessional return. Several
staff have developed their skills in PowerPoint presentations.
Staff management
20. Preparations are already being made for the replacement
of some of the seconded staff whose time with the Unit will come
to an end in 2004. The Unit has conducted joint recruitment exercises
with select committees, thus ensuring that we are recruiting people
of comparable ability to those working directly with committees
and reducing the costs of recruitment. In addition, the Unit has
benefited from an arrangement with the Economic and Social Research
Council under which a post graduate student has been working for
six months on various tasks for the International Development
Committee and the Joint Committee on the draft Mental Incapacity
Bill.
21. On the basis of experience working in outside
organisations and in view of the change of sitting patterns of
the House, staff of the Unit are encouraged to work flexible hours
and/or from home. Arrangements have also been developed to ensure
that the needs of committees are met, while ensuring staff receive
adequate leave. To ensure the quality of work is maintained, practices
have been copied from other organisations on peer review and constructive
criticism.
The future
22. There are three apparent risks for the future:
that the number of draft Bills published will vary widely between
sessions, that select committees will take less interest in the
core task on scrutiny of expenditure and that the expansion of
committee staffs will reduce demand for the services of the Unit.
While the number of draft Bills for the coming year matches that
for the past year, it is clearly a possibility, as the general
election approaches, that less work will be needed in this area
in the following year. The signs are that select committees are
taking more and more interest in the expenditure core task and
there is no reason to suppose this will change. The effect of
the expansion of committee staffs will not be apparent until later
in 2004 and it would be possible to reduce the number of staff
in the Unit if necessary by not replacing those who have completed
the period of their secondment or appointment.
23. An informal review of the work of the Scrutiny
Unit has been carried out by the new Deputy Head who joined in
July. She has consulted committee clerks who use our services
to ensure that we build on what has gone well and identify areas
where we can improve. We are particularly interested in ways of
measuring effectiveness—not so much of the Scrutiny Unit
alone but of its contribution to the impact of select committees
on scrutiny of government.
Andrew Kennon
Head of the Scrutiny Unit
January 2004
220 The table is reproduced in the main Report at page
37. Back
221
Fourth Report from the Treasury Committee 2002-03 HC 184 Back
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