Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460-479)
27 JANUARY 2004
MS STELLA
MANZIE, CLLR
JOHN MUTTON,
MR DARRA
SING AND
MR MARK
TURNER
Q460 Mr Cummings: I am sure we all agree
that the issues underlying social cohesion are immensely complex,
but what do you consider to be the most crucial areas of public
service policy where action can deliver real progress?
Cllr Mutton: For me, the most
crucial area is to show respect to the people from the various
communities. I think, without doing that, you do not even get
the opportunity to discuss the issues with them. The long-term
situation is quite complex, because most politicians go for the
short-term fix, particularly with elections every four or five
years. People expect us to be able to deliver. One of the difficulties
that I face is with the short-term funding streams. I will give
you a classic example. We have got a Bangladeshi community in
Coventry, where traditionally they are low attainers in education.
A lot of Neighbourhood Renewal funding has gone into that area.
We are not in the position necessarily to mainstream that when
it falls out, so the benefits are not seen long term.
Q461 Mr O'Brien: Can I pursue that question
a little further. Would you accept that there are areas in the
delivery of public services where new statutory duties should
be imposed on local authorities in order to address the question
of social cohesion and public confidence issues on a national
basis?
Cllr Mutton: The short answer
is, no. I said earlier that to get community cohesion it is not
just about a set of policies or a set of instructions, it is having
the heart and soul and believing in what you are doing. I think
already there are too many statutes laid down which force local
councils down certain roads. I think all that would do was increase
the workload without necessarily increasing people's perception
of what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Q462 Mr O'Brien: You did say earlier
that there is the short-term fix, that you are looking over your
shoulder all the time, at elections. Is that good for public services?
Cllr Mutton: No, it is not good.
Chairman: So you are getting rid of elections.
Q463 Mr O'Brien: We need statutory responsibilities
then, do we not?
Cllr Mutton: No, we do not.
Q464 Mr O'Brien: It is one or the other.
You disagree with the short-term fix, because you are not providing
the services then, and you need something to impose it?
Cllr Mutton: I am sorry, it is
not as simple as that. One of the reasons I believe that we have
got good community cohesion in Coventry is because, for the last
60 years, we have welcomed people from all races. I think there
are 105 different languages spoken in Coventry. It is something
which is an educational issue. It is not something you do because
you have to, it is something you do because you believe in it.
I believe that successive leaders and politicians have done that
because we believe it is right.
Q465 Mr O'Brien: Education is something
you have got to do, and so you are saying you have got to continue
with education. You cannot do that on short-term fixes, you have
got to do it. If statutory legislation is not there then it will
have to be introduced?
Mr Singh: From my perspective,
in terms of responding to the initial question, I think the essential
component for good community cohesion, or promoting better community
cohesion, is effective leadership, and this supports my colleague
from Coventry. What I am not clear about is whether or not you
can legislate for effective leadership. What you can do, and I
think what is already in place, is set standards and requirements
through a range of other pieces of legislation around duties in
terms of, for example, promoting educational attainment and looking
at how different communities, or children from different ethnic
backgrounds, for example, perform in schools and ensuring that
in the relationship between central government agencies and local
government there is a focus on those children who are underperforming,
for example. There is a range of other specific duties which are
already in place. There is the Race Relations Act and the Race
Relations (Amendment) Act.
Q466 Mr O'Brien: Are you saying that
a short-term fix is good leadership?
Ms Manzie: No-one is saying that.
Mr Singh: No, I am not saying
that at all.
Q467 Mr O'Brien: We have been told this
morning that the short-term fix applies because of the fact that
politicians are looking over their shoulder at elections?
Ms Manzie: I am sorry, what Cllr
Mutton said was that there was a risk of short-term fixes, but
that, for example, in Coventry, there had been strong political
leadership shown over 60 years, which I am afraid is not what
you were suggesting.
Q468 Mr O'Brien: It was Cllr Mutton who
referred to short-term fixes, and what I am saying is that you
cannot run a local authority efficiently on short-term fixes?
Ms Manzie: We would all agree
with that.
Cllr Mutton: Yes, and that was
the point I was making, on issues like Neighbourhood Renewal funding
over three years, that does not solve the problem.
Q469 Mr O'Brien: So we need something
to put in its place?
Ms Manzie: I think the central
philosophical question that we would challenge, and I suspect
all three of us would challenge, is that local authorities cannot
be trusted to take on board community cohesion. I know there was
some evidence, in some specific areas, that political leadership
had failed, and clearly that does happen, political leadership
does fail, but I think it can be quite dangerous to impose statutory
duties on the basis that political leadership fails in some areas.
I think that may be more a matter for political parties, in terms
of making sure that political leadership is doing its duty, rather
than statutory duties.
Q470 Chris Mole: To give us the confidence
that local authorities can handle this, you have got your own
clear policy on race equality which fits with the community cohesion
agenda, what mechanisms have you put in place to measure progress?
Ms Manzie: If we distinguish between
the race equality scheme and some of the activities on community
cohesion, although they are closely linked, I would be very open
about the fact that we are at an early stage in terms of the development
of indicators in community cohesion. I have to say, I am quite
nervous about some of the national guidance which has been put
in place about indicators. The sorts of indicators we focus on
are very much the ones which my colleague Darra from Luton was
talking about, which are to do with income levels, educational
attainment. On the negative side, and this links to Matt Baggott's
comments earlier, clearly, one can look also for negative indicators,
like lack of incidence of civil disorder related to community
cohesion issues, and so on. You can look at a whole range of issues.
I am disturbed by some of the national guidance, which even some
of the local authority bodies, I am sorry to say, have signed
up to, which suggests that surveys which ask people whether they
have spoken to somebody from another ethnic community recently,
whether they have spoken to somebody from another social class
recently, can be used as an indicator of community cohesion. That
seems to me to be going down an extremely simplistic route. I
think it is very important to focus, on the one hand, on hard
indicators about income and attainment in a whole range of different
communities, and, on the other hand, on some of the softer, qualitative,
diagnostic issues which Matt Baggott raised when he was talking
specifically about crime.
Q471 Chris Mole: That is interesting,
because in there you have developed the notion of contact between
different communities. You referred in your submission to joint
working being promoted through an Indian Community Centre, the
Coventry Bangladesh Centre and the Muslim Resource Centre. Are
these facilities that are proposed for all cultural groups?
Cllr Mutton: We have just entered
into an agreement with some in the Muslim community over a piece
of land, which originally was going to be another Muslim resource
centre. They have recognised now that does not lead to better
relationships with other communities, and instead they are going
to call it the Edgewick Training and Resource Centre.
Q472 Chris Mole: Will that be a joint
resource centre?
Cllr Mutton: Yes. It will still
be organised and paid for by the Muslim community but they will
have an "open door" policy so that all members of the
different communities living in that area will be able to use
the facilities.
Q473 Chairman: Will it be possible, do
you think, to keep the Kashmiri conflict out of some of the discussions
that go on in there?
Cllr Mutton: Very difficult, I
would have thought.
Q474 Christine Russell: Can I focus my
questions at Luton. In your submission you talk about the challenge
posed by the Ofsted Inspection Report relating to monocultural
schools. Can you tell us perhaps what measures you are taking
to reverse the trend and actually what progress you have made
to date?
Mr Singh: The Ofsted Inspection
Report, the thematic report, that you refer to, in terms of what
the Council and the Council's education authority is doing to
promote community cohesion, made a broad range of recommendations.
We found some local difficulty with some of them, one in particular,
which was around the ethnic profile of pupils at school, so, for
example, three out of our 12 secondary schools, over 90% of the
school population is from the visible minority ethnic community,
and in our primary schools there is a greater level of monocultural
schools.
Q475 Christine Russell: Is that because
your communities in Luton are incredibly segregated, or it is
parents exercising choice to send their children to particular
schools?
Mr Singh: Our communities in Luton
are not incredibly segregated. Because it is a very compact town,
I do not know if you know Luton, it is very compact, we do not
have any rural areas, for example, at all, urban, the communities
are mixed, but there is a concentration in two wards in particular
of the Asian community, and in one ward of the black, Afro-Caribbean
community. What drives access into primary schools is parental
choice or catchment area, and, indeed, to a lesser extent, secondary
schools. During a scrutiny review, councillors on scrutiny took
a courageous decision to go out and ask local residents what they
felt about relationships between different communities in Luton
and what could be improved. One of the messages which came back
clearly to councillors and to the Council was actually what was
not required was any form of, as it was referred to, artificial
social re-engineering, that is adjusting catchment areas, cutting
across an important national principle around parental choice
to try to deal with monocultural, mono-ethnic schools. What we
have done is look at this from the other end, which is to say,
given that we have got this pattern and that 43.1% of our school
population is from the minority ethnic community at the moment,
it will rise to 50% by 2010, how do we promote cross-cultural
contacts? We do that by using the curriculum, with curriculum-based
activities, music, art, sport, to encourage contact between different
communities. We have school twinning arrangements, we have got
a new e-learning centre, which draws in people from different
schools.
Q476 Chairman: School twinning arrangements.
Can you tell us how much time children from different backgrounds
spend in contact with each other, as a result of this twinning?
Is it once a term, or once a year?
Mr Singh: It is more frequent
than that, Chairman. I am afraid I have not got a statistic to
hand, but I can let you have a note on that, if you wish, but
it is much more frequent than that. It is a specific priority
for our education department and for schools as well. We have
got a specific group of headteachers working with the local education
authority on community cohesion initiatives as well.
Q477 Christine Russell: On long-term
programmes too, not just to get you through the next three or
four years, but longer-term as well?
Mr Singh: In the longer term,
I mentioned before, the priority for us and part of the vision
for improving public services in Luton and improving outcomes
for local people is to do with educational attainment and improved
achievement. You know better than I do probably the national pattern,
in terms of performance of children from different ethnic backgrounds
at the various Key Stages. That is what we are focusing our resource
on, which is improving services for all children but specifically
trying to improve attainment for those groups of children who
are falling behind.
Q478 Christine Russell: Can we move on
perhaps to housing, and can I ask you again about what your policies
are to try to break down the barriers which divide different cultures
on different housing estates in Luton?
Mr Singh: A range of initiatives.
I think you need to understand that in Luton, out of about 70,000
to 80,000 properties, 9,200 are council, local authority-owned
properties, about 3,000 are housing association, so it is quite
a small sector compared with some other parts of the country.
At the moment we are out to consultation, for example, on our
locations policy, and we have undertaken an equalities impact
assessment as part of our duties under the Race Relations Act,
that we would have done anyway.
Q479 Christine Russell: Why are you doing
that? Do you suspect that your allocations policy is favouring
one particular group?
Mr Singh: No, it is not at all,
and, in fact, the Ofsted thematic inspection looked specifically
at our allocations policy and came up with a view contrary to
the one which you have just expressed in your question. Also,
the Audit Commission Housing Inspectorate looked at our allocations
policy and came to a similar view. Basically, it was time to review
the policy. We have got a reasonable representation of the minority
ethnic communities in local authority housing and they are spread
around the town. The pattern locally is similar to the national
pattern and people from different ethnic backgrounds are found
in different forms of tenure. For example, black households are
more likely to be found in council property than perhaps Indian
households, which is a national picture. Also we are opening up
marketing and information in the different groups. We have set
up a specific black and minority ethnic tenants association as
well, to deal with day-to-day issues, if there are problems, if
there are nuisances or racial harassment issues around day-to-day
management. Those are some of the methods we are adopting.
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