UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 45-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER:
HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE
Social cohesion
Tuesday 27 January 2004
MR NICK CARTER and MR KEVIN JOHNSON
MR MATTHEW BAGGOTT
MS STELLA MANZIE, CLLR JOHN MUTTON,
MR DARRA SINGH and MR MARK TURNER
MR GARETH DANIEL and MS JOYCE MARKHAM
Evidence heard in Public Questions 402 - 508
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:
Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee
on Tuesday 27 January 2004
Members present
Andrew Bennett, in the Chair
Mr Clive Betts
Mr David Clelland
Mr John Cummings
Chris Mole
Mr Bill O'Brien
Christine Russell
________________
Memoranda submitted by Leicester Mercury and Carlton Television
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Nick Carter, Editor-in-Chief, Leicester Mercury; and Mr Kevin Johnson, Head of Regional Programmes, Carlton Television; examined.
Q402 Chairman: Good morning. Can I welcome you to the Committee, to our fourth session on Social Cohesion, and can I ask you to introduce yourselves, for the record, please?
Mr Johnson: Kevin Johnson. I am responsible for Public and Regional Affairs at Carlton Television, in the Midlands.
Mr Carter: Nick Carter. I am the Editor-in-Chief, and a director of the Western Mercury Group.
Q403 Chairman: Thank you very much. We will give you the opportunity, if you want, to say a few words, but, if not, are you happy to go straight to questions?
Mr Carter: I am perfectly happy to go straight to questions.
Mr Johnson: Likewise.
Q404 Mr O'Brien: Can I put a question to both of you. Many newspaper reporters and television reporters defend their independence to respond freely to any whims or prejudices of their audiences. In your case, your organisations are seeking to play a more proactive and responsible role in the communities. Could you explain why you adopt that attitude?
Mr Johnson: I think there are two reasons, and the first is economic. I do not think we should be ashamed or feel any guilt in making the economic case. As we all know, and I am sure members of this Committee know, the population trends are that we will have a significantly increasing number of minority ethnic people in our populations, particularly in the areas which Nick and I represent, in the Midlands, Birmingham, Leicester and elsewhere. If we do not do something about the make-up of our workforces, if we do not do something about the way in which we portray people from all communities, in all aspects of society and all sections of society, the number of people watching our programmes, in our case, will go down. If the number of people goes down, the number of advertisers wanting to advertise their products and brands on our station also will go down. That is the very simple, economic argument and one I am not afraid to mention. Also, however, there is a social and moral case, that television and indeed all the media have a responsibility to reflect society as it is, and indeed to promote the good things in society as well as the bad things. Most people working in journalism and other aspects of television have a pretty solid social duty and their own sense of social responsibility to do that. I think, on the moral, social and economics cases, it is a strong one, to make sure we reflect all parts of society, and we know, and we shall not back away from the fact, that up until certainly recent years we have not been doing that as we might.
Mr Carter: It is the right thing to do. Also, there is a very sound business case, which for newspapers goes along these lines. It may be easy to sell newspapers in the wake of trouble within communities, but that is a very short-term benefit, if I can put it that way. Fragmented communities contain people who are less likely to want to get involved in what is happening in those communities, they are full of suspicion and apprehension. In that environment, fewer people are likely to be interested in what is going on around them, and since we are the main provider of news and information about those communities we are less likely to have people turning to us for information. A cohesive community is a community which feels comfortable with itself, its people are involved in what is happening in those communities. They take a more active interest in what is happening, and therefore they are more likely to turn to their local newspaper and to other sources of local information to find out what is happening. On top of that, of course, as our communities change, we need to reflect also the changing make-up of those communities in the sort of coverage that we provide.
Q405 Mr O'Brien: What you are saying then is if the communities which you serve were predominantly white then the attitudes would change?
Mr Carter: I do not think my attitude would change. I think inevitably the tenor of coverage would change because it would reflect more the make-up of those communities. My attitude, that I would not willingly seek to publish something which would damage community relations or community cohesion, would apply whatever the make-up of the community.
Mr Johnson: Yes, I would agree with that. On top of that, for television, again, Members will know, television is still a fairly highly regulated industry, and under the way in which our licences are granted, under the Communications Act, under the new regulator Ofcom, we are duty bound to make sure that our coverage is fair and impartial. Whatever the make-up of the population, we have to be fair and impartial and reflect that as accurately as we can. As Mick touched upon, you are more likely to get the support and active engagement, both in terms of viewing and the corporation, in making programmes, from the communities you are broadcasting to if you are part of those communities, if you have an active dialogue and relationship with those communities. The facts of the matter are that we have not got a very minimal minority ethnic population, we have increasing parts of that population, and that is what we have got to respond to and speed the pace of change and response up to that.
Q406 Mr O'Brien: Do the police have any influence in your decisions?
Mr Carter: We have a close working relationship with the Leicestershire Constabulary, as we have with all of the major organisations that are players, in one way or another, in our communities. We have formal and informal contacts which keep us in the picture about what is happening and make us aware in advance of issues coming up. It is part of the network that we use to help ourselves discharge our responsibilities.
Mr Johnson: Likewise. Let me add, just for the record, as it were, that indeed Leicestershire Constabulary's own Diversity Adviser sits as an adviser on our Diversity Panel looking at these issues and trying to bring the experience of the public sector into our sector. I think it is fair to say, in some parts, not all, of the public sector, they have been ahead of the game with putting practice into motion.
Q407 Chris Mole: Good morning, gentlemen. You have set out in your submission a long list of what the media should be doing, and you are shining examples yourselves, and you have suggested everything from editors becoming proactive and getting involved with the communities through to looking at the impact of individual stories on communities. How should the Government ensure that other editors and producers follow this guidance?
Mr Carter: I think this is the central matter, really, is it not, around this whole issue of how you persuade the media to act in a more responsible way. Certainly you do not legislate, in my view. I think an essential ingredient of a free society is a free media. The minute you start telling editors like me what to write then you have opened the door to all kinds of issues, and where do you stop, who makes those kinds of decisions? Also, you remove the credibility that is so vital to the good that responsibly managed newspapers can achieve. If my readers know that I am instructed to act in certain ways, they will pay that much less attention to what I write and what is produced in the whole newspaper. I think there has to be a multi-pronged approach to this, which is about raising awareness, it is about creating the right climate within which responsible editors can operate more effectively, it is about looking at the existing self-regulation regime, and the Code of Practice is being reviewed. I hope that there would be some acknowledgement of the importance of the newspaper and the media role in social cohesion being included, both in the Code itself and in the guide book which is attached to it. It is about encouraging local authorities, in particular, to be proactive in talking to the local media as well, because without local authority involvement our role is that much more difficult.
Mr Johnson: I would agree. I do not think legislation or regulation is the way forward and, as Nick says, this is the current debate. The Home Office Advisory Group, on which both Nick and I sit, is itself having this very debate and there are those round that table who think that stronger regulation or legislation is the way forward. Really, I do not. I think the reasons why we have made the improvements that we have over the last two years, in representing better the people who make up our communities, and increasing the number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds into our workforce, is because we have sold the argument to our staff and the staff share in that argument now, particularly in programme-making areas but in other areas of the business as well. I do not believe they would have responded as professionally as they have done to that if it had been imposed by statute or by some form of regulation. We are moving away, I think, in television, from the heavy-handed regulation, we hope, under the auspices of Ofcom, and to reverse that in any way I think would be wrong. We have already signed up all the broadcasters, all the broadcasting trade organisations, including the ITC, I am sure, now Ofcom, have signed up to the cultural diversity network, which is about sharing best practice and identifying trends and identifying new ways to respond to these issues. I think the best way forward perhaps for those areas of the media that you might be inferring, which have not yet responded in the same way that both Nick's and my organisations have, is by the likes of Nick and I and many others sharing our best practice and making the same kinds of arguments that we have debated in our own chambers, as it were. Taking those out to those other media organisations and using whatever tactics, be it embarrassment, strong argument, whatever, to make those media organisations take on the same kinds of practices that we have. Regulation and legislation is not the answer.
Q408 Chris Mole: You are both members of the Home Office's Media Practitioners Group. How is it preparing its good practice guide and how should it be implemented?
Mr Carter: It is in the process of drafting its conclusions and its advice, and it falls into four areas of activity. I have mentioned this revision and guidance of the Code of Conduct and representations and discussions are underway in that respect. It is looking at draft guidance for local authorities on how they can interact more effectively with local media. It is talking with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on training and employment issues. Then the handbook for the industry, which will identify examples of effective reporting, so looking at case studies of how newspapers have approached particular issues, examples of damaging reporting where newspapers have got it wrong and where other media have got it wrong. Highlighting good practice and restating the business case that we both mentioned at the beginning. They are the sorts of broad areas that it is looking at. It is collating examples of good practice from various sources, because obviously there are lots of examples of good practice, although they tend to centre round comparatively small areas of the country.
Q409 Chris Mole: Do you think that guidance has very much discouraged newspapers from having anonymous letters pages?
Mr Carter: I would not publish a letter if I did not know from whom it had come. If I believe that there is an acceptable reason for the person's identity to remain anonymous in the newspaper then I will put "Name and address supplied." Personally, I think that should be standard practice. There has to be a good reason.
Q410 Chairman: On this Code of Practice, how does it sort out the questions of the adjectives that you use after an individual, whether you mention their race or their colour?
Mr Carter: The Code of Practice, at present, contains a clause which basically controls discrimination, so newspapers should not publish material that is likely to be discriminatory.
Q411 Chairman: Come on, explain that to me?
Mr Carter: In a sense, it is much as the law of the land stands currently. It is using racial characteristics in a pejorative way, it is singling people out, mentioning racial characteristics when they are not relevant to the particular story, or seeking them to insert them into a story to imply that there is some racial application to it.
Q412 Chairman: If you are looking at certain crimes, like a hold-up of a post office, or something like that, putting in a piece of racial information may well help identify the people involved, may it not?
Mr Carter: Absolutely.
Q413 Chairman: In other circumstances, putting in that information has no way of helping to solve the crime. Are there clear guidelines, or is it left to an individual reporter as to whether they think it is appropriate or not?
Mr Carter: At the moment, in the Code of Practice, there is no clear guideline on that. That is one of the areas which the Code Committee undoubtedly would be looking at.
Q414 Chairman: What do you do, as far as your paper is concerned?
Mr Carter: As far as our paper is concerned, if the racial characteristics or ethnic origin of the people involved in a suspected crime are relevant to the police investigation, or if the police issue a description, we would use it; other than that, we would not.
Q415 Mr O'Brien: In my previous question, Mr Carter, when I asked about the co-operation from the police, you did say that there was this co-operation you had from the police but there have to be other organisations, like the local authorities, and in the community, if you are going to make progress. What is the situation with the support from the local authority in Leicester?
Mr Carter: As I mentioned in my submission, a few years ago we set up a group which is now called the Multicultural Advisory Group, which brought together around a table a number of the different organisations and community groups involved in the city, and that acts now as a sounding-board and a discussion group around the issues of multiculturalism, diversity and cohesion in the city. That is apart from the ongoing relationships that we have. If you take any newspaper, any local media organisation, it has to have good relationships with all the different organisations. Our objective is to achieve a state in those relationships where there is the maximum flow of information in advance, to allow us to put information in front of our readers in a proper and informed way, but also understanding that there will be occasions when the emphasis we place on that information may cause disagreement, and that, notwithstanding those disagreements, we should still be able to have a dialogue, that basically they do not run the wagons into a circle if we disagree. So far, those relationships have proceeded pretty well. Leicester City Council has a very good track record of support for community cohesion. It has a new administration in now which has a different view, the relationship still exists and we are talking about those issues. It will be an interesting test of the relationship, I think.
Q416 Mr O'Brien: The new administration is the Liberal/Conservative group and they are committed to cut £2 million out of the current budget towards community groups. Is that going to have an impact upon the relationship with the new authority?
Mr Carter: There is considerable concern at the effect that those cuts will have in the communities. My newspaper has called for the issue to be reviewed. We have expressed concern about what we perceive to be the lack of strategy in the approach to community cohesion in the city by this new administration. I have had private discussions with the administration and they will continue. Yes, it is an alarming situation at the moment for us.
Q417 Christine Russell: Can I move on and talk about the communications put out by local authorities. In your opinion, do you feel that sometimes the lack of communication or poor communication by local authorities does contribute to fuelling resentment, and how can you, as media people, perhaps help local authorities to communicate a bit better?
Mr Johnson: Obviously, we are dealing with a much larger number of local authorities, and indeed other public organisations, as is Nick in his area. We are a big region. It is fair to say that the quality of communication varies quite considerably, I think, between some of those local authorities. I think some of their understanding of how to deal with media relations issues, particularly around sensitive areas like this, and trying to promote something which is about the better good and a better representation of society and a better connection between different communities, is a difficult thing for any organisation to get its head round and I think there are difficulties there. Probably elsewhere in the country, outside of both Nick's and my regions, there are greater difficulties than the ones we are facing. I think that kind of active engagement, which Nick touched on, in terms of the group that he set up, and we have a similar group and similar relationships with community groups and local authorities, and so on, and understanding of how our organisation works, how our newsroom works, leads to a better quality of communication from those local authorities and other bodies. I think one of the things that we can do, and, again, Nick touched on this when talking about the Home Office group, is lay down some of that best practice, lay down some of the best ways in which to deal with our respective newsrooms, and go round and sell that into local authorities to modernise their media relations and PR practices. I can think of one particular example, where a protocol, or some such way of defining it, was established by Birmingham City Council to try to sign up all the media organisations in the City of Birmingham to a particular way of going about representing our large ethnic communities. I think it was ill-conceived. Actually the best way of going about these things is not by slapping down a piece of paper that everybody just signs up to, with some rather bland descriptions, but actually by engaging, by having a real relationship with the editor or the managing director and with other staff. I think that is what we have got to move towards.
Q418 Christine Russell: How can you be more helpful perhaps and help local authorities to stop some of the rumour-mongering that tends to go around in some communities?
Mr Johnson: I think one of the issues, and the Chairman touched on it a moment ago, is that of language and descriptions, and that seems to be one of the issues which comes out, the way we describe people, and indeed whether we need to put a racial description on them in any way. Often it is a problem of language, about the way these groups are identified, the way that individuals are identified and the way in which they are described, and the subtleties of it do come down to language, in the end, in many ways, as well as a deeper understanding. I think, often, in local authorities and elsewhere, many of the media relations operators probably have not stepped into a newspaper newsroom or a television newsroom and do not understand the crisis which goes by, in terms of decision-making in news, in the way that piece of news is either presented in a paper or produced on a television programme. I think we have got to get better training of those individuals and a better understanding from the top of those organisations about the way in which we work, and the very fast decisions which Nick and his colleagues and my journalist colleagues have to make in a day. Clearly, in some of those decisions mistakes can happen or we can rush to very quick judgments. It is about a better understanding being the way forward, I think.
Q419 Christine Russell: You have just mentioned training. How important do you believe it is for journalists, whether working in television or for the local media, how important is their awareness and their knowledge of the communities of the area that they are covering?
Mr Johnson: I think it is essential.
Mr Carter: This is an essential part of the whole process of establishing the right sorts of relationships, both with organisations and communities. We run various training programmes.
Q420 Christine Russell: Do you include in them a particular module on community cohesion, for instance?
Mr Carter: Yes. We have an intranet, that is an induction programme which introduces all new journalists coming into the company to the diversity of the communities in our area, the key elements about them, basic stuff like how names are constructed, particular tenets of the faith, particular issues which might arise from that, and we seek to keep that awareness going at all times. We have particular journalists charged with pursuing contacts with new groups that are coming in and new communities that are starting up. The Somali community in Leicester is a comparatively recent arrival, a growing community of 9,000 or 10,000 people, and we are starting to develop much better links with that community, which will lead, I think, to some quite interesting developments, but it has to be a constant process.
Q421 Christine Russell: How widespread do you think those training practices are, from your experience of other newspapers?
Mr Carter: I would not have thought they are hugely widespread, but then there are not that many newspapers which have the particular diversity of community that the Leicester Mercury enjoys.
Q422 Chairman: In a sense, is that not most important, because quite often most offence is given by reporting from another area where perhaps ethnic minority understanding is much worse?
Mr Carter: Yes, and, I think, in areas where the ethnic minority communities are much, much smaller by comparison, if anything, there is a greater need for the local media to have an understanding of that community, because otherwise it can very easily feel marginalised by the coverage.
Q423 Mr Clelland: The composition of the ethnic communities is never static, of course, there will be fluctuations from time to time. What sorts of systems do you have in place to monitor these changes, to make sure that they are continually reflecting fairly the changes in their composition?
Mr Carter: We receive information from our own ongoing market research, which obviously we do on a regular basis to determine the make-up of the readership of the newspaper and how long people spend reading it and what they are interested in, that kind of standard market research information. Also, of course, through our contacts with Leicester City Council and other organisations, we are able to keep track of the population shift, and even the make-up within individual parts of the city. We have an arrangement, which is not at all unusual, where individual reporters are assigned to particular patches within the city area, and their task is to get to know the issues on that patch and have contact with organisations and groups and have an understanding of what is going on in those areas. They are supported in that by people like my Community News editor, who is a key worker in our relations with ethnic minority groups, who can provide support and information when necessary, and they know where to come for that. Yes, we can keep on top of what is happening.
Mr Johnson: If I may, Chairman, I want to make a sort of answer to both that and the last question, in a sense. The most important thing we can do, I think, is make sure our workforces represent better the communities to which we are broadcasting. We have got to get our workforces up to the same kind of population balance as we see outside of our own doors. I think that is one way in which the journalism training is added to, because if you have got more people in your newsroom who have come from different backgrounds, different cultures, different races, different religions, then the understanding of everybody in that newsroom and everybody in that organisation increases. Certainly that has been the case with us, where the number of black and particularly Asian journalists in our newsrooms has increased in the last few years, so the understanding of the issues around those communities has increased amongst the newsroom in a wider sphere. I think only by having people from every walk of life and every background in our newsrooms and elsewhere will we begin to both represent the news and make the kinds of programmes that the people out there want to watch. Journalism training is a very big issue, but actually bringing through people from all backgrounds into our employment is the most important issue. Also, I think it is the most difficult issue to deal with, because people from particularly black as well as Asian backgrounds are not coming forward in anywhere like the kinds of numbers that we would wish to see. Therefore, we have to go that one step further to encourage them earlier on in their potential careers, i.e. during the education process. That is going to be the single most important, biggest challenge we will see in any of our organisations, if we get the workforces properly representative.
Q424 Mr Clelland: Do you have any examples of the changes you have made as a result of the monitoring that you do?
Mr Carter: The biggest single change we have made over the last five years was to move the newspaper to a position where we said "We will play a more proactive role in the cohesion of our communities and, rather than stand on the edge of the road and comment on what is going on, we will become a player in that." This puts us in a much more complex position, because it obliges us to consider everything that we do, everything that we publish, in that light. We know that what we publish can affect people's perceptions, therefore we have to review everything, and all policy decisions are made on that basis. Clearly, that was because of the growing awareness of the significance of the ethnic minority population of Leicester, its aspirations for itself and for the city. That is the great potential and the great excitement of Leicester, what is going to happen, what kind of a society are we going to produce in the future, will it remain a cause of separate communities, with mixing around the edges, will there be a much greater coming together, and how will our newspaper be able to lead people through that in a constructive way? There are plans for a new cultural quarter in the city. The intention is that will be looked at as buying a sheet of paper into which different social groups, cultural groups, can come together, and who knows what will be produced from that, and I want to make sure that we are in a position to tackle that.
Mr Johnson: One can lay before you all manner of statistics, and we can do that until the cows come home, if you like, but actually the single most important result is the feedback you get, from viewers, from community and business leaders and whether they are prepared to discuss with you, engage with you, co-operate with you, on growing and making other areas of your business. I think, increasingly, in our area, both throughout the whole of the Midlands and I am sure particularly for Nick in Leicester that is the case. Perhaps, and I know this is obviously the work of the Committee, that is not the case elsewhere in the UK, and that is because that active dialogue and that sense of responsibility and trust maybe are not there.
Q425 Mr Clelland: You mentioned statistics and you mentioned also the social mix of your workforce. What are the statistics in both cases, in terms of employees from the minority backgrounds?
Mr Carter: In the editorial department of the Leicester Mercury, we have four, I think, minority journalists, out of a staff of just over 100, which obviously is not enough. We suffer from probably an even greater issue, because we are not seen as quite as sexy as television.
Mr Johnson: It is not true, by the way.
Mr Carter: There is a lack of diversity of applicants into all areas of the business and into post-graduate courses, direct-entry courses. That is forcing us, in our search for a greater diversity of applicants, to look at where we recruit from. For the last round of trainees we cast a wider net and had a slightly better diversity in there. We are part of a Pathfinder project, which has recruited some 20 young people from different communities in the city, that is underway now, to work for a year in the (civic ?) eyes and ears project, while they are still at school or at college. I am hoping that will start to demystify the process and hopefully will persuade them that this is an attractive profession to come into.
Mr Johnson: Simply, the answer to your question is that in our region 8.7 per cent of the population is non-white, and we are employing about six per cent of non-white people in our workforce, which, clearly, is not enough, and about seven per cent in programme-making areas, which, to be honest, you can rectify quicker than you can in other areas because of the nature of freelance and contract work. Again, as Nick touched on and I said a few moments ago, the real key here is not recruitment, at the moment. In a sense, although we have to do something about that, it is about going much, much further back and doing something about the kinds of people who are leaving school, leaving college, going to university courses, going on to post-grad. journalism courses. The numbers are not coming through. Indeed, there are studies, about to be commissioned, which will start to look into this, particularly at black males and why they are not going into journalism in the kinds of numbers that they should, if it were done on an economic, kind of proportional basis in the preparation. We have got to do something about that, we have got to do something actively as well, as we are both doing, to encourage more people to come through, and really in those kinds of things with our post-graduate bursaries.
Q426 Chairman: Mr Carter, what competition is the Mercury under? Is it from other papers in the area, or is it from papers published in various ethnic languages?
Mr Carter: No. Our greatest competitor, I am afraid, is time, the amount of time people have to read us. Obviously, there are other sources of news and information which can be found about our area but none which provide the comprehensive service we provide. Our greatest competitor is the changing habits of the population of this country, and people have more choice, more money to spend on the choices and less time to spend on any particular thing, and we are trying to carve out our slot in their daily routine.
Q427 Chairman: Mr Johnson, as far as television is concerned, 20 years ago there was a choice, was there not, there were two channels and it produced a certain cohesion, because whoever you were talking to tended to have watched those programmes? Now, with the availability of satellite, and everything else, there is a huge diversity of where you can get your information on television from. Does that actually encourage segmentation of society into the programmes they want? There are a fair number of programmes which are put out now in languages from the Indian sub-continent.
Mr Johnson: Indeed. If you were going to ask me the same question as you asked Nick, obviously, it would be it better to advance and do the Simpsons, which kind of sums up really where we are. Which is, as you touched on, multi-channel competition, Channel Four coming on 20-odd years ago, Channel Five, etc? Multi-channel can take around up to 25 per cent in peak time, nine, ten o'clock, Channel Five in the Midlands can take about 20 per cent. This gives you an idea of the scale of competition that we are under. Are they going off to what you might call either segmented or news channels, well, people are, to some degree, but the ITV point is that it is a broad, popular channel which has a mix of programmes in it. What we have got to do, we believe, is make sure that all our programmes, as best they can, represent the population as it is, society as it is, and have a modern and professional way of portraying the things that it portrays either in fact or fiction in best programming. That is what will keep people from all backgrounds, all socio-economic backgrounds, all cultural backgrounds, all ages, all social classes, watching our programmes. Our programmes and our business rely on the mass market, mass viewing, and therefore we have got to make sure that those programmes reflect society as it is. It is not up to ITV, I think, to go chasing particular niche audiences at particular parts of the schedule and time of the day. That will not work. Other channels are doing that very well. There are some absolutely fantastic channels serving particular areas of the population on the Sky platform and they should continue to do so. Ours is to get the right mix and make sure all our programmes are representative and proper and professional.
Chairman: On that note, can I thank you both very much for your evidence.
Memorandum submitted by Association of Chief Police Officers
Examination of Witness
Witness: Mr Matthew Baggott, Chief Constable, Leicestershire Constabulary, and Head of Race and Diversity, ACPO, examined.
Q428 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the Committee, to the second session this morning. Can I ask you to introduce yourself, for the record, please?
Mr Baggott: Thank you very much, Chairman. I am Matthew Baggott. I am the Chief Constable of Leicestershire Constabulary and I chair the Association of Chief Police Officers' Race and Diversity committee.
Q429 Chairman: We give witnesses the chance to make a statement, if they want to, at the beginning, or to go straight to questions. Which would you prefer?
Mr Baggott: I wish to say thank you very much for the invitation, Sir. It is a great opportunity to outline some of the progress that has been made, and I thank you for that. I will let you ask the questions, I think, at this point. Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q430 Mr O'Brien: The paper which you submitted to the Committee stipulates a wide range of proposals for enhancing the ability of the police to perform their role in the overall social cohesion and public confidence agenda. Could you identify to the Committee the crucial areas which can and should be tackled first?
Mr Baggott: I think, for me, probably there are two key areas. The first would be under the summary of mainstreaming, what I consider to be a really critical role for policing, in supporting building relationships and capacity-building within communities. I think that role is utterly critical to long-term crime reduction, it is utterly critical to long-term peace and tranquillity and I think it needs to be mainstreamed. The mainstreaming runs from the role of policing right through to the way we do business, and I think that is absolutely critical. The second area for me would be the development of what I think are much more comprehensive partnership arrangements, but also really getting into prioritising social cohesion and community approaches. We may talk about that later, but at the moment I think partnerships are very much localised within what I call crime type approaches, tackling robbery, burglary, drugs, as discreet entities. If you look at, for example, their priorities, very few actually choose social cohesion or priority neighbourhoods as critical to their agenda, because they are very localised. I think the development of much more comprehensive partnerships, structures and approaches which deliver real change in some of our most deprived neighbourhoods is utterly critical.
Q431 Mr O'Brien: When it comes to crime prevention and security of communities, the police play a major part. How do the police identify that major part, or how do they occupy the high ground in the communities?
Mr Baggott: I think there are two ways of doing that. The first is to be much more flexible in terms of how we police. Current models of policing tend to be either very reactive, in other words, we answer the 999 calls and are very crisis-driven, or they tend to be based on community theory, where we have separate police officers who do investigations, separate cadres who do reactive work, or a separate cadre of community police officers who are the community bobbies, as people call them. I think they need to be much more flexible. Demand has grown so much that those traditional divides no longer apply. We have the means to do it. We have the means with the National Intelligence model, which is the way in which we discern our priorities and our operational imperatives, where actually there could be a way of positioning the need to look at and identify critical neighbourhoods, critical areas, as mainstream policing. That is the first one. The second one is the role of policing. I think there is a very interesting debate at the moment about what actually the Police Service is for. Is it what I call simply about social control, in other words, reacting to crisis, keeping the lid on, doing those things, or is there a role for the police officer, named, local, known to his, or her, community, in the right numbers, with actually much more of a critical role there in terms of confidence-building, capacity-building and understanding what is really going on? My personal belief is that the second issue is the big agenda which needs to be explored.
Q432 Mr O'Brien: In your paper you argue also that the mechanisms for measuring police performance, together with conflicting structures, could distract police activity away from its role in social cohesion. How has this affected your force and the social cohesion in Leicester?
Mr Baggott: I take a very strong, personal view that I am prepared to wait and explain and take some short-term performance steps, for the long-term benefit of communities. There is no doubt that some of the targets which have been set, which stretch back four or five years, are very much about delivering against crime types rather than community need. I do not argue against an accountability regime, neither do I argue against having measurement against those crime types, but underneath the reasons why crime rises or falls are often very deep-seated reasons around where communities are, their needs and their particular concerns. I am concerned that perhaps there has been an overemphasis on specific crimes rather than on community needs. My second concern is that I think some of the measurement which has been put in place relies upon short-term success. For example, when I was in the West Midlands, I spent four years putting about 800 police officers into the 80 most deprived neighbourhoods. When you do that it is a huge strategic risk, but I believed that was the right thing to do for capacity-building. However, I know, because when suddenly you introduce police officers into communities you become more accessible, confidence grows, suddenly you will get a rise in crime-recording, so for 18 months your crime levels rise, particularly burglary, anti-social behaviour, racist crime, all those crime categories will rise. If you are being measured, however, in terms of three to six months, it does not show 'good' on your radar. Therefore, you have to have much more of a diagnostic approach which says, "Why is this? What are you doing? Can you explain it? What will be the eventual outcome?" I saw success in the West Midlands coming after three to four years, in terms of community confidence, an absence of disorder, and a rise in many crime types once the plateau of recording had been reached. I think there are some issues about the balance between the episodes of individual crime types, as if they are committed by separate people and separate communities, followed by the short-term versus long-term diagnostic approach.
Q433 Chairman: If we take the West Midlands, it has got a reputation now for things having improved very considerably, but it is almost impossible to measure that, is it not? It may be that you, and officers who succeeded you, were just good at the PR?
Mr Baggott: I think people see through PR, Chairman, very quickly. You can look at success, if that is the word to use, across a range of measures. I think you can look at success in terms of where crime is reducing and you can look at success in terms of the absence of disorder, or fragmentation. You can look at success in terms of the way in which officers are received and spoken to and how much information they are given. You can look at success in terms of general survey work. If you take a round view of performance, I do believe that the social cohesion agenda becomes much more mainstreamed.
Q434 Chairman: So you think it can be measured?
Mr Baggott: It can be measured in a number of areas. It can be measured certainly locally, in term of incidents, disorder, public perception, a whole range of both hard data and what I would call probably qualitative, softer feedback from communities, absolutely right. I get feedback frequently from individuals advising the community, from formal bodies of advisers and from council advice. I get personal feedback from a range of people, including Nick Carter, who gave evidence before me. The Mercury gives me feedback too. I do believe that sense of well-being and that sense of community, a good feeling, is critical, as well as the hard data.
Q435 Chairman: Do you think it is easy to convince the Home Office about your hard data and your soft data?
Mr Baggott: I think this is a very exciting and encouraging year coming ahead. I think the National Policing Plan, which is set by the Home Office for policing, actually gives us the remit to get into social cohesion in a way we have not been able to before. I have argued long and strong for Neighbourhood Renewal to be linked to the policing agenda. To do that and make policing part of that, the agenda for policing is set with the National Policing Plan, if the National Policing Plan is out of sync with the Neighbourhood Renewal agenda then you will get conflicting priorities. What we are seeing this year, and I have taken one line out of the National Policing Plan, part of my mandate from the Home Secretary is to ensure the level of security and order in neighbourhoods, enabling them to have the confidence and capacity to be part of the solution. Basically, that means I have got to look at vulnerability as a criterion for where I put my colleagues and my officers. I think there is a lot of sign-up taking place now between the Home Office agenda and the Neighbourhood Renewal agenda, and that is very encouraging for me.
Q436 Christine Russell: Can I just follow on from that, because what you are saying is quite interesting. How confident are you that the Home Office really is working with ODPM now, they are working from the same hymn-sheet, if you like?
Mr Baggott: I think there is much more collaboration. I see much more collaboration between those departments, so let me say that. I think actually formalising that may well need the formation of something like a National Community Safety Plan, because certainly individual chief officers have taken cognisance of the new commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal, it is absolutely right to do that, but our drivers and our measurements do fit slightly aside from that. I think what I am seeing now is a coming together of the two agendas, but, clearly, the National Policing Plan has to be positioned right at the heart of new commitment and Neighbourhood Renewal.
Q437 Christine Russell: Do you feel that ODPM is clearly involved in developing that National Policing Plan?
Mr Baggott: I think the chief officers themselves have to create their own agendas. It is not just about saying "Do this" to us, actually I think we have a responsibility to do this ourselves, and there is some encouraging work taking place now. The gap, for me, is about the drivers of what makes change happen. I think probably there has been an historical lack of understanding within ODPM about, if you want the Police Service to do something, do not target just within the contact of Neighbourhood Renewal, because that does not drive police activity. What drives police activity is the National Policing Plan, the Policing Performance Assessment Framework, local police authority plans and the range of incentives and funding schemes that we follow. If the Neighbourhood Renewal agenda is to be professed in full, it has to be positioned in there. There was even a target, I think, a couple of years ago, that no area was to have a burglary rate more than three times the national average. It did not feature in terms of the National Policing Plan. Therefore, it was an interesting one, but in terms of driving main activity there was a slight separation there.
Q438 Christine Russell: Can you give us some actual examples of your own Policing Plan which relate quite clearly to addressing the social cohesion agenda, from your own force?
Mr Baggott: Absolutely. Our whole policing strategy and what we are doing is based upon the philosophy of being able to problem-solve from street corner right to force level. Every one of my police officers owns their own micro-beat. That means that every one has their own geographic area for which they are personally accountable, and should they seek promotion or a specialist department, or should they seek a bonus payment under the new payment schemes, they will have to give account of their own personal influence on that geographic area. The size and density of those areas is determined by the problems and vulnerability of the neighbourhood, so we have 20 micro-beats in one street, we may have one covering six villages, it depends on the vulnerability of the area. On top of that, we have very clearly mapped out our deprived neighbourhoods, and those neighbourhoods which are more vulnerable, more exposed to fragmentation, are receiving much more intensive policing support by dedicated teams of officers who are ring-fenced, they police only those neighbourhoods and nowhere else, as I did in the West Midlands. I do believe that long-term capacity-building and their role is about community cohesion.
Q439 Christine Russell: How do you convince those living in the leafy suburbs or the rural areas that the policy which you are pursuing is the right one?
Mr Baggott: Three things, really. Honesty. I think I have done 11 District and City Council evening sessions in the last two months. Honesty, in terms of the "Why?" Secondly, I do not take anything away from those communities, they still have beat officers, they have their own community beat officer, they have minimum standards of response to 999 and crisis, the same investigative effort applies across the piece. What they do not need necessarily, because, the numbers of offenders living there, the crime they are suffering, I have to put resource where it is going to have maximum benefit, and although, and this is a slightly controversial subject, putting those officers in intensive neighbourhoods does produce real value for the communities, when you look at where crime comes from, often it is exported from those neighbourhoods. I think we have got a little bit hung up on mistaken notions of fairness. If I spread out my officers equally across the whole of Leicestershire, I will not reduce crime and I will not make communities cohesive, I will end up doing nothing very well. Concentrating resource in key neighbourhoods by mapping out where the problems are brings benefit to everybody and not simply those communities themselves.
Q440 Christine Russell: Obviously, you have the lead in ACPO for the social cohesion agenda. What are you doing to spread good practice throughout all the 43 forces in the land?
Mr Baggott: The critical thing for me has been four to five years of evidence learning. I think often we take philosophies and apply them and when they do not deliver it becomes rather difficult. What we have now is five years, through the social exclusion work with which I have been involved, through the priority policing area work, which is led by the Home Office, these are intensive policing neighbourhoods, and through a four-year evaluation in the West Midlands, and elsewhere, we can evidence now the effect of mapping properly where there are different crime densities, where offenders live, where there is community breakdown, and then you see the areas which are really suffering or exporting crime. What we have now is four to five years of real evidence of what actually worked, which we have not had before, and I think that is where the critical difference will be made. I see the work coming together this year through the new National Centre for Policing Excellence, where we have a team working with nine forces developing this new way of geographic policing, which I think in time will be vastly different from what we have seen before but much more powerful, in terms of its impact.
Q441 Mr Clelland: Would you outline for the Committee your concerns about the existing partnership arrangements and the changes you would like to see?
Mr Baggott: I think there are two sets of partnerships at the moment. One is the Crime and Disorder Partnership, which is very localised, driven very much by three-year, bottom-up plans, heavy in terms of community consultation, but, to some degree, somewhat restricted by that. For example, if you look at one neighbourhood, they are not going to vote for resource to go into another neighbourhood, so they are somewhat restricted by the way in which the plans are put together. Having said that, they do have, and can have, a great impact at the very local level, but above that there is a need for a Strategic Partnership, which I think looks at things which the Crime and Disorder Partnership cannot do on their own. For example, in Leicestershire, I have brought the seven together and we meet strategically. What I am asking them to do is give up some resource at a higher level to do things like where are our priority neighbourhoods across Leicestershire, where are the dozen geographic areas which, if we get right, will bring enormous benefit in terms of resource cost, sorting out crime and a whole range of issues? We cannot do that at the local level. The second issue is, if you look at some of the main disrupting factors in neighbourhoods, some of that, for example, involves people coming out of prison. At the moment, people coming out of prison are tracked and supervised only if they have served a fairly substantial sentence. The vast majority come out and within weeks will be back into a crime cycle. What we are trying to do is design a system where everybody in Leicestershire is mapped, met on the day they come out of prison by a local police officer, given a package of support, Benefits Agency, primary care, local Jobcentre, all mapped out at the local level but done to a standard which applies across Leicestershire itself. I cannot do that seven ways with seven Crime and Disorder Partnerships. Another issue might be the way that I use my powers to accredit community support officers and others to deliver real benefit, again in neighbourhoods. Again, I cannot negotiate that seven ways, there needs to be consistency. A fourth area might be young people. There are lots of great interventions for young people, but I have 500 persistent offenders in Leicestershire alone, that is actually 500 young people who have grown up to be 500 persistent offenders. If we can put better support for those 500 in place when they are four, five or six years old then we might reap some significant benefit in ten years' time. Again, Crime and Disorder Partnerships are far too small to do that and far too localised, so we need a partnership above that which looks at the really critical interventions. I had hoped to have some potential for Local Strategic Partnerships with the ODPM to do that. I do not think their remit has been clear enough around their need to tackle criminality and reassurance issues in the longer term. I think at the moment they are too economically focused and the policing element of that and the social cohesion element get a little bit lost, I think. There may be some work to do with Local Strategic Partnerships, there may be some work to do around redesigning what a Strategic Partnership might look like, and I see some great potential for that.
Q442 Chris Mole: I think you will be familiar with the term patch policing, and you have described to us the work which you have done in Birmingham and Leicestershire. Do we need you to go everywhere to make this happen in all forces, or is it happening elsewhere?
Mr Baggott: I think most forces have some degree of what I would call neighbourhood or patch policing. Undoubtedly, most forces you go to will have something like it. It could be sector policing, geographic policing, they have different names depending on the model that they use. I think the makings are there. I think what has happened though is that the reactive demands on policing have grown so much that we have become too crisis-driven and inflexible, and we need to be thinking about new ways of deploying. To give you an example, Melton, for example, is a rural community in Leicestershire. You would say traditional policing might work well in Melton, except that it has eight beats, and 70 per cent of the problems come from just one beat. Traditional policing would have eight beat officers on each of those eight beats. It might be only 20 police officers on one beat and one covering the other seven. That is, I think, the flexible thinking where we go with patch policing. I am a great, passionate believer that all communities, all neighbourhoods, should have locally-named police officers with whom they could have a relationship. I call it 'whites of your eyes' policing, Dixon with attitude, these sorts of things, but it is about providing somebody who has the tools and the confidence to do something special. What I am arguing is that I do not think one PC working on a North Peckham estate will have any impact, you might need 30 or 40. It is the tight lines we draw on the map which need to be challenged, I think, rather than the style of policing.
Q443 Chris Mole: You are fairly confident that this sort of approach is happening generally. The Government do not need to do anything more to encourage you to cross the country?
Mr Baggott: I think there is a developing understanding that we have to look much more at vulnerability and reassurance and be much more businesslike in understanding where problems are coming from, rather than relying on traditional theory. I do think that the Police Reform Act has introduced codes of practice, guidance, with a much tighter sense of prescription to it, and if that guidance is right, and we are working on that this year, then I can see far greater consistency coming in terms of the way policing is carried out. I think the National Centre for Policing Excellence and reform programme have introduced a mechanism to do that. The challenge will be getting the guidance right and actually understood as a way of delivering real change.
Q444 Chris Mole: Coming back then to the 'whites of their eyes' policing, two points. One, do not talented police officers want to move on to do perhaps more exciting things than community policing, they want to get into detective work, or traffic work, or whatever? I do not know. Is there not an issue for you there in retaining people who are actually doing the patch work?
Mr Baggott: I think there is, and I think probably there is one key thing we can do, and are doing, to try to challenge that. One is actual local leadership. I think many police officers, when they experience patch policing in its truest form, when they actually have the ability not just to set up Neighbourhood Watches and talk to people but, how can I put it, kick the balls in on drug-dealers, lead things on behalf of communities, actually be crime-fighters, who are true guardians of the community, I have seen tremendous sign-up for that role. We put people in roles and then restrict what they can do, and that is a great challenge. In Leicestershire, just to give you an example, I have taken the opportunity, or made the opportunity, to bring our own probationer training back in house. I want our police officers in Leicestershire trained, first of all, in being at the heart of communities, as guardians, listening, relationship-building, problem-solving, these are the critical skills which will be core to the role, not filling in forms and the power of arrest but actually what they were there for in the first place. If you get that role right, from day one, with some very distinctive psychological weapons, done by any (person in the community ?) who looks at this, if you get the role right and the leadership right then actually the sign-up for this becomes significantly more.
Q445 Chris Mole: Has there not been a tendency in the past for the Police Service perhaps not to want people to be in one place for too long, because they get too close to the community and perhaps cannot see where the lines are sometimes?
Mr Baggott: I think there are some dangers attached to that, but I do believe that we have an accountability now which is far stronger, and I do not think that is such a problem as it was in the past.
Q446 Mr Cummings: If the police are to have regular and effective contact with all members of local communities, will it not have to tailor its approaches to the particular cultural expectations of the different groups, recognising that it will require greater acceptance and greater respect for their cultural practices? Can you tell the Committee how far you see this is practical and how it can be achieved?
Mr Baggott: I do not believe it is achieved by two-day training courses.
Q447 Chairman: The cynic in you says "Make it three days"?
Mr Baggott: Or maybe a year. I think this starts from the very day someone joins the Police Service. Actually, again, what we are training people in is respect and relationship-building. The traditional approaches to race relations training have been very much classroom-driven, with people saying, "This is what this faith believes in, this is what this religion does." I think it is much better to have a philosophy of policing where actually you ask people. When you own a patch, for example, with a mosque, to go into the mosque and say, "I don't really understand your faith. I don't want to offend anybody but I want to be here to support you. Can you talk me through how I can do that?" There are very different sets of training and skills than being given a lecture in a classroom about the Muslim faith. I think the critical thing for us is to encourage skills that are about listening and asking, rather than being told what to do. I think that starts very much from day one in the training school and continues with someone's progression.
Q448 Mr Cummings: Having said that, do you have any plans for the police to employ more women officers to relate to Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women?
Mr Baggott: I think one of the big gaps that we have at the moment, in terms of recruitment, certainly this year, 19 per cent of my colleagues are female and about five per cent of my colleagues are from ethnic minority backgrounds. We have a big challenge ahead, particularly to recruit ladies of talent from different backgrounds. At the moment, there is some very innovative work being done, under the Dismantling Boroughs campaign, led by the Home Office. Actually, in my force, I launched this yesterday, it is my own colleagues, my own female, black colleagues, who put themselves forward to appear on billboards, they are at the end of telephones, answering calls from people wanting to join the Service. I think the great ambassadors for this will come from within the Service rather than from outside. That is going to be the great progress that we make in the next couple of years.
Q449 Mr Cummings: What is your opinion of the development of arrangements whereby local representatives and opinion-formers would help the police to relate to minority communities, as proposed in the Ted Cantle report?
Mr Baggott: I think there is a great need for what I would say is formal consultative structures, which exist almost as safety valves and they are always there, so you can have people coming to those consultative groups, other mechanisms, neighbourhood committees, whatever they want, I think that is absolutely right. Underneath that, I think we have to be much more flexible about how we listen to people, and I will give you an example. When I was running Peckham, in South London, I was told that I did not have a Nigerian community, because they were invisible, except that, very rapidly, through a local church, I found myself being invited to meetings at nine o'clock at night, in a disused fire-station, with 500 Nigerian people. Where did they come from? They were always there. The fact is we need much more flexible ways of listening and consulting and being much more proactive. That is why I am so much in favour of every police officer owning their own beat, even if they cannot be there all the time, because you cannot do it except by having people and structures actually to invite people to speak to you.
Q450 Christine Russell: Can we move on to drugs. A number of your colleagues have often said, "If we could tackle the drug problem we would halve the country's crime statistics." In your experience, how much does drug-dealing, perhaps, rather than drug-taking, drug-dealing, contribute to poor social cohesion?
Mr Baggott: Significantly, I think is the very short answer to that, and that is why I am particularly anxious that in the social cohesion work and the National Policing Plan we do not deal with it just as a race issue. It is very much an issue of why communities fragment. Last autumn we saw the fulfilment of a number of long-term undercover operations on some of our inner-city estates in Leicestershire. When we arrested the drug-dealers, and we have doubled our arrests in the last year for drug supply, people were on the street cheering, literally. The impact of particularly Class A drugs sales on inner-city estates is quite significant. The greatest challenge I have in Leicester at the moment is a doubling of the entertainments industry in the city, which has fuelled a drug market which is being exploited on inner-city estates by people who are normally excluded from normal life opportunity. When you combine that with a significant rise in the heroin price, because of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have a profit margin, organised crime capacity and a ready-made market. It is a significant influence on inner-city estates. That is why I think the agenda in terms of social cohesion needs to take into account the whole issue of inter-ethnic conflict and race, but it is a much more complex issue which needs the mapping out of where crime densities, problems, actually are coming from. It is much more complicated than that.
Q451 Christine Russell: Does ACPO, as such, have any specific advice, I suppose, that it gives to forces regarding tackling drug-dealing in areas with a high percentage of people who are either black or from ethnic minority communities?
Mr Baggott: I would not say any, in terms of tackling drugs specifically; drugs in the context of inner-city communities, yes. There has been an awful lot of learning, for example, through the Priority Policing Area Initiative in the last two years, which has shown that it is no use simply having dedicated neighbourhood teams of police officers if your drug supply route comes from Gatwick. You have to be able to draw down and deal with the supply route into that neighbourhood as well as the neighbourhood itself. It is very compelling. In fact, I may have mentioned in the submission, the work on our inner-city estates in Leicester last year has relied heavily on a regional arrangement, where we brought in specialist officers to work with those neighbourhood teams for a prolonged period of time tackling the drug networks. I think this comes back to the whole essence of community policing. If you have a view of community policing that is based simply on their beat bobby, it is always doomed to failure. If you have a notion of community policing which is putting trusted and respected officers, in the right numbers, in the right place, backed up by sophisticated policing methods and specialists, if needed, then you can start changing the hearts of communities. What historically both Government and policing have done is say, "Community policing is over there. CID policing is over there. Regeneration is over here." In fact, what we need to be saying is "Where is the neighbourhood? What are the problems? Let's look at how we need to resolve those."
Chairman: On that note, can I thank you very much indeed for your evidence. You have given us a lot to think about. Thank you.
Memoranda submitted by Coventry City Council and Luton Borough Council
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Stella Manzie, Chief Executive, and Cllr John Mutton, Leader of the Council, Coventry City Council; and Mr Darra Singh, Chief Executive, and Mr Mark Turner, Chair of the Officers' Steering Group on Community Cohesion, Luton Borough Council; examined.
Q452 Chairman: Can I welcome you all to the Committee. Can I ask you to identify yourselves, for the record, please?
Ms Manzie: Stella Manzie, Chief Executive of Coventry City Council.
Cllr Mutton: I am Councillor John Mutton, Leader of Coventry City Council.
Mr Singh: Darra Singh, Chief Executive of Luton Borough Council.
Mr Turner: Mark Turner, Chair of the Officers' Steering Group on Community Cohesion, Equalities, Diversity and Social Inclusion at Luton Borough Council.
Q453 Chairman: Thank you very much. We often let witnesses make an opening statement, if you want, or are you happy for us to go straight to questions?
Ms Manzie: We are very happy to go straight to questions.
Q454 Mr Cummings: The Committee have been told that there is a wide, and some people would say confusing, range of programmes designed to benefit social cohesion promulgation, both at central government level and local authority level. How should initiatives be rationalised in order to create the basis for a more considered and consistent national approach?
Cllr Mutton: If I start, by saying there is not one answer, there is not one set of policies. Community cohesion does not just happen and it does not develop necessarily through sets of policies, it takes hard work and, more importantly, commitment. Coventry have been working at it for the best part of 60 years now, so I do not think I can answer your question with the type of answer that you may be looking for. I think it is far wider, far broader than any one simple answer.
Q455 Mr Cummings: I think what we are saying is, are there too many initiatives, is there a possibility of the initiatives being rationalised?
Ms Manzie: In the sense of the funding initiatives which central government provide, I think the answer has got to be a balance. Certainly local government in general would say that some of the issues which the previous witness was talking about, which is the knowledge of local neighbourhoods, mean that the most useful thing that could happen to local authorities is that they had sufficient resource within their mainstream funding to be able to deploy their local knowledge to enable that funding to be invested in the way in which they thought fit in local neighbourhoods. In some neighbourhoods that would mean additional investment and additional mainstream services to combat poverty gaps, which are sometimes, but not always, linked to community cohesion issues. However, I think there is a case for some specific initiatives and I do not think there is anybody who would deny that, on occasion, it is important that there are specific criteria which enable both central government and local government to direct funding to specific neighbourhoods. I think all of us would agree that, at the moment, and certainly over the past five years or so, there has been a very wide diversity of funding which has been difficult to explain to local people and that certainly rationalisation of that funding would help. I think that process has already started and the Government have taken cognisance of that, and certainly initiatives like Neighbourhood Renewal funding have been helpful to that process of rationalisation.
Mr Singh: I do agree. I think there is a balance to be maintained between funding mainstream services and looking at outcomes from a community cohesion perspective from a range of those services, so, for example, around educational attainment and what we are doing on behalf of local children. Secondly, there is a role also for specific initiatives. I think the issue is perhaps how we can accelerate the progress which has been made and the commitment which has been given at a national level to look at the relationship between different specific initiatives, to try to iron out any conflict in terms of rules, timescales, target groups in specific geographical areas in which initiatives are focused. To use perhaps a Home Office team as well as a Regional Co-ordination Unit within the ODPM actually to undertake that kind of analysis, to streamline and make sure there is a better fit between programmes.
Q456 Mr Cummings: Who would do this?
Mr Singh: In my view, I think it needs to be done nationally and locally.
Q457 Mr Cummings: Are there any mechanisms in place to assist towards that objective?
Mr Singh: Some I can think of immediately are, for example, the commitment to use the Home Office Community Cohesion Unit to review new programmes and look at where there may well be conflicts or a bit of friction in terms of criteria. I think there needs to be a commitment from the range of government departments. The Regional Co-ordination Unit in the ODPM, which actually was very helpful in producing some recent guidance on Area-Based Initiatives, is also an important vehicle to help do that.
Q458 Chairman: Do not some of the Area-Based Initiatives simply set one community against another?
Ms Manzie: My view is, no. If the local authority area and the local partners handle it properly, there is no reason why specific funding initiatives for one area as against another should lead to community conflict. Here I have some differences, with great respect to Ted, with some of the elements within the Cantle Report. That is because, in Coventry, for example, where we have benefited from a very large number of external initiatives, we have taken great care in the way in which, first, those initiatives have been brought into the city, and, second, the way in which both politicians and executive officers have explained those initiatives to local people. For example, there are three major areas of deprivation in Coventry, Hillfields, Foleshill and the north east, sometimes characterised by Wood End, which some people may remember for riots in the past. Wood End, and the surrounding area, is predominantly a white community. Hillfields and Foleshill both have large concentrations of different minority ethnic groups. The way in which the city has handled the funding input into the city is that the north east, with Wood End in it, has benefited from New Deal for Communities. Foleshill benefited significantly from Single Regeneration Budget, and Hillfields and Foleshill have benefited from a wide range of initiatives.
Q459 Chairman: Wait a minute. You are telling me that, but if I went into any of those three neighbourhoods would the people in those three neighbourhoods be able to tell me the same message?
Ms Manzie: I think it is not so much the issue in those three neighbourhoods. What I was about to say was, in addition to that, what the city has not done is made certain that all the funding goes into those three very deprived areas. Also we have looked at, particularly through Neighbourhood Renewal funding and a whole range of other funding initiatives, trying to pick out groups who are not concentrated necessarily in one single area, for example, the African/Caribbean community, which is relatively small in Coventry. Indeed, we have tried to pick out areas which are much smaller areas of deprivation and make it clear to the rest of the community that there are good reasons why those communities are receiving funding. Also what we are doing is looking at the funding in mainstream services which are delivered to the whole city.
Mr Singh: I agree with a lot of what my colleague has said. I think the approach in Luton is to ensure that we target resources at the greatest need but, in order to do that, to assess actually where that need is and look at intelligence and data, not just at a ward level but at a neighbourhood level, and how programmes are impacting on different communities. For example, in terms of a range of funding to support Early Years programmes and improve achievement of younger children, we have ensured that we use Government funding as well as local resources to ensure that a broader range of primary schools get the benefit of those programmes. Communication and transparency are two things which go hand in hand, I think, in terms of allocating or making decisions about where resources should be focused. We do our utmost to ensure that we communicate rules and reasons for decisions, and so on. I think, if you came into Luton and went into some neighbourhoods, probably you would find still the perception among some groups that actually they are not getting access to enough resources compared with other neighbourhoods. That was certainly what was discovered, as you know, during the Cantle review.
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 community cohesion. 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 per cent 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 per cent of our school population is from the minority ethnic community at the moment, it will rise to 50 per cent 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, 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.
Q480 Christine Russell: In your opinion, you have just mentioned Indian groups, why do Indian groups not consider council housing as a viable option for them?
Mr Singh: You have stumped me there, I am afraid. I think that is a very good question. It is perhaps to do with levels of aspiration and background, I am not sure, and also to do with opportunities through performance in the education system to be able to access income and then access owner-occupation, rather than relying on social rented housing. Those are some of the factors, but that is not a particularly precise answer to your question.
Q481 Mr O'Brien: In earlier questioning you referred to deprivation and allocation of regeneration funding. What mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that the allocation of regeneration funding is targeted in such a way as to avoid allegations of inequity in the authority?
Ms Manzie: Certainly the way in which funding has operated in recent years has been that we have had the very close involvement obviously not just within the Council but of partners outside the Council. For example, now, in terms of our discussions with the Coventry Partnership, which is our Local Strategic Partnership which has all the major players in the city involved, including health and housing, and so on, those agencies have a very major level of involvement, in either any bidding mechanism we are going for or Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy, or whatever it happens to be. The other people who are involved very closely are the voluntary sector and community sector, through various representative mechanisms, and they are also involved. Clearly it is something as well that all councillors are conscious of, because councillors represent a whole range of wards within the city, some of whom naturally tend to benefit from this kind of regeneration money and others who do not. That comes back to the point made in my previous answer about ensuring that, where possible, if there are fragmented groups or communities who fall into the category of being deprived, for one reason or another, even though it is on a relatively small area basis, we have tried to focus that regeneration strategy money very carefully in those areas and not just en bloc in very obvious areas. For example, in Coventry, much as in many other areas, we have identified 31 priority neighbourhoods, but the key is, and I think Darra referred to it in a previous answer, one cannot take one's eye off the ball, as a council, off mainstream services. You have to ensure that you are trying to performance-improve mainstream services right across the city, in order to be able to justify to all the community the additional funding that is going into those specific deprived areas.
Mr O'Brien: In December last, a few weeks ago, the Home Office published guidance on how social cohesion should be addressed in Area-Based Initiatives. How should the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister take this forward, have you any views on that?
Q482 Chairman: Come on, give a thumbs up or thumbs down, fairly quickly?
Mr Singh: Thumbs up.
Ms Manzie: Yes, definitely thumbs up.
Mr Singh: I think the trick is going to be to see how that can be rolled out through implementation at a national level and indeed at a local level.
Q483 Mr O'Brien: How are you trying to address those recommendations?
Mr Singh: The big point on that is actually to start off from discussions with communities about understanding the solutions and working up solutions with local community organisations and then using funding to tackle deprivation. That is one of the measures that we have taken. Just one example, in Dallow, one of the wards in Luton, a local group of different communities got together and set up a learning trust, and accessed SRB funding plus Objective 2 European funding and have developed a multi-purpose learning centre, which they run themselves now as a group. That is capacity-building put into that group to enable them to understand and organise themselves and access resources and use those effectively, as well as actually running a centre which is really very positive for local people.
Q484 Mr O'Brien: Coventry referred to a comprehensive look at the authority and their mainstream services being applied in all areas. What is Luton doing about that?
Mr Singh: I touched on mainstream services earlier on. Our starting-point is to look at how we perform, as a council, and how we ensure we design services which are relevant to all local people from a variety of different communities, and we encapsulate that in our vision, in our long-term strategy. That gets translated into annual plans, in which we look at the community cohesion issues as well as other issues, social inclusion, tackling deprivation. We work with our partners through our Local Strategic Partnership, the Luton Forum, which has 11 members elected from the Luton Strategic Assembly, which is a group of 600 voluntary community organisations, working across the town, from a range of different backgrounds and dealing with a range of different communities and needs.
Q485 Chris Mole: What percentage of your Council's workforce is from the BME communities and how does this affect the make-up of the local community?
Mr Singh: In Luton, our assessment is that the economically active minority ethnic community stands at around 25 per cent. Our workforce, the percentage from minority ethnic communities is 16.6 per cent. Of equal importance is looking at the grade at which people find themselves, the level within the organisation. Of the top five per cent of earners at the Council, eight per cent are from visible minority ethnic communities. Our target was to get to 15 per cent, so we have exceeded that by 1.6 per cent. We have now set ourselves a target of 20 per cent and we are driving towards that.
Q486 Chris Mole: Within how long?
Mr Singh: Within the next three years.
Q487 Chairman: What is stopping you getting there, or doing better, is it the difficulty in recruiting people, and is that just that there are not enough people with those qualifications in the country?
Mr Singh: There are recruitment shortages, staffing shortages, across the range of services that we suffer from, which I know is echoed in other local authorities in other parts of the country, so whether it is occupational therapists or social workers or planners, or whatever, there is a range of challenges for us. I think there is an issue about local government being seen to be attractive as an occupation and as a profession, and I think we do need to do more on that. I think some work that the LGA are looking at, and the IDA, in terms of graduate recruitment, for example, is important. We have got an advantage in that we have got a local university, Luton University, which is quite a strong local access university, particularly to young Asian women, whose parents may not be as keen for them to move away to get a higher education, or further education, and that is a benefit, and we are tapping into that, in terms of working closely with them, to help.
Q488 Chris Mole: What is the basic situation in Coventry?
Ms Manzie: We have got a very similar situation. We are not doing well at senior levels of the organisation, in terms of reflecting black and minority ethnic groups. It is better at lower levels of the organisation but still does not reflect the economically active level of the population. It is one of the things that we are taking on board as a priority for the forthcoming year. Certainly we believe that some of it is, one of the points Darra made, about making the Council generally attractive to apply for posts there. We think it is about targeting advertising in a much more sensitive and intelligent way than we have done, and also getting people to go out from the Council to talk more to a whole range of communities about the opportunities that there are available. If you took any cross-section of people, young people or older people, and asked them about what councils do, people are pretty hazy about that anyway, a lot of the time, and it is a question of getting those messages over to a much larger group of people. Much like Luton, we are very fortunate in that we have two universities, one of which, Coventry University, is very much focused on taking a lot of local people, from a whole range of communities, particularly in the inner-city. That is certainly proving helpful in terms of upping the number of graduates, particularly in areas like social work, that is assessing us considerably, where we have managed to increase the numbers of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in that particular area.
Q489 Chris Mole: It is positive action rather than positive discrimination, and how do you ensure that you do not end up as a Daily Mail horror story?
Mr Singh: By recruiting, essentially, on merit. That is the short answer. I apologise if I sounded glib, I did not intend to, if that was what came across. One point I would come back to you on, if I may, Chairman, is that, in terms of teachers and the school-based workforce, but particularly in terms of teachers, there is an issue where there is a lower level of representation of minority ethnic teachers. That is below ten per cent, which is an issue for us, given the school profile, in terms of visible minority ethnic communities, at 43 per cent of teachers, it is just under ten per cent.
Chairman: At that point I have to stop you, so can I thank you very much for your evidence.
Witnesses: Mr Gareth Daniel, Chief Executive, London Borough of Brent, and Ms Joyce Markham, Chief Executive, London Borough of Harrow, West London Alliance, examined.
Q490 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the last session this morning. Can I ask you to identify yourselves, for the record, please?
Ms Markham: Joyce Markham, Chief Executive of London Borough of Harrow, and Co-Chair of the West London Community Cohesion Pathfinder.
Mr Daniel: I am Gareth Daniel, Chief Executive, London Borough of Brent.
Q491 Chairman: Do either of you want to say anything, by way of introduction, or are you happy for us to go straight to questions?
Mr Daniel: To questions, Chairman.
Q492 Christine Russell: Many of the West London boroughs could have experienced the same riots and anti-social behaviour as occurred in Burnley and Bradford and Oldham, but it did not happen in West London. Why do you think it did not?
Mr Daniel: Perhaps if I could start by trying to answer that question. I think the history in West London has been very different. London itself is a different sort of racial mix from some of the northern cities, where some of those tensions did arise, and although I do not think any of us would ever be so complacent as to suggest that riots could never take place in areas like West London, I think the history and the context are very different. West London has a long history, going back decades, of absorbing new immigrant groupings and assimilating them into the community, and that goes back well into the 19th century. Over the years different decades have presented different challenges, and currently we are facing the challenge of large numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers coming into the area, for example. Over the years West London, like the city as a whole, has become an amazing hotchpotch of races and cultures, mostly living side by side with one another. There is not the same degree of residential segregation in London generally, certainly it is the case in West London, as you find in those northern cities. The borough that I work for, for example, has an ethnic majority population, we are not talking about a small, beleaguered minority of Asian residents in one particular section of town. In London you can go through any street, and in West London, and you will find probably dozens of different nationalities, languages and religions, cultures and lifestyles living side by side with one another. It is very much more of a racial mix, and that applies certainly in all six of the boroughs which the West London Alliance was set up to represent.
Q493 Christine Russell: What about the contribution that local authorities themselves have made, what lessons based on your experience do you think you could give to some of the northern authorities and authorities in the West Midlands?
Mr Daniel: There are a few issues there which I think are particularly important, and I know Joyce can add to this. One is the issue about political representation. I think in most of our local authorities the actual council representation reflects, pretty broadly, the sort of racial mix of the population. There are some groups which are clearly less well represented than others, but in most of our local authorities the black and minority ethnic community have got engaged with the political parties.
Q494 Christine Russell: Do you credit the political parties with that happening, or the offices of the local authorities?
Mr Daniel: I think probably they are driven by the need to win votes from the black and minority ethnic population. Nevertheless, whatever the motivation, I think they deserve their share of credit for being sensitive to the needs of a multi-racial community. In my own local authority, there are black and minority ethnic councillors in all three of the political parties who serve on Brent Council. I think the other issue which has been really important is that the community leadership which the West London authorities have shown has been absolutely crucial. We celebrate diversity in West London, we are not frightened by it, we are not scared of it, we celebrate it, and it is one of the strengths of the area. When you are trying to market what is a successful and relatively buoyant economy in West London, the fact that West London has a very multinational workforce, major headquarters of international companies based there, the very cosmopolitan nature of the workforce is itself quite a compelling factor driving inward investment in the area, and we think that is a strength. Also we celebrate one another's religions and cultures. In Brent, for example, we celebrate the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, we celebrate the Muslim festivals of Eid, everybody celebrates Diwali, whatever their religion, in West London. There is a sense in which we own one another's cultures and we have actively provided opportunities for engagement between communities, and that has been done actively, it has not happened by default. I think the political parties of all persuasions deserve some recognition for the leadership they have shown in that.
Ms Markham: I think, as someone who has worked in West London only recently, I have been here for only two years, other issues have struck me, outside the political domain. I think the councils are very well organised, in terms of a fairly old-fashioned expression, which is community development. They have capacity within them to go out and work in their communities, listen to their communities and help communities become established, as they move into the area, and link them into other networks. I think also we have some really good issues in terms of the Education Service, in terms of putting attainment very high on the agenda of our schools and also putting celebration of cultural diversity very high on the agenda, so that all children have the opportunity to participate in a huge variety of events which represent all the communities that we have. I know that one of the events planned for Harrow a little later in the year is a multicultural celebration of St George's Day, which is an issue. I am quite looking forward to seeing how people come to grips with that. There is also, I think, a wide range of co-operative working amongst the authorities. We have common access to housing, we have common rules about accessibility to housing, we have a common allocations policy, you can come to one borough and be allocated housing in any of the six boroughs. I think the boroughs are very well organised.
Q495 Chairman: You are telling us a lot of good news, but, this sub-regional alliance, was it logical or was it a fiddle to get some money?
Mr Daniel: Certainly, it was logical. It was driven I think by a perception that the needs of West London were going to be overlooked, with the emphasis which is now being placed on the needs of East London and the Thames Gateway, so I suppose it was a sub-regional response to protect local self-interest. Although West London is predominantly quite a prosperous community, I know self-interest is something which is not well understood in political circles, but I know, in West London, there is a perception that, although it is a very buoyant economy, we all represent areas of very substantial deprivation and disadvantage as well. There are a number of wards in the London Borough of Brent which are in the top ten per cent for deprivation anywhere in the country, so we have this curious amalgam of relative affluence but also deep pockets of poverty in the area. I think there was a feeling that, in the sharing out of the national resource cake, unless we actually got together as a grouping to articulate the needs of West London, the more widespread levels of deprivation that you find in East London would probably gain greater precedence. If you are deprived in Brent, or if you are deprived in Harrow, I can assure you, you are just as deprived as you are in the East End of London.
Q496 Chairman: Would you recommend to other parts of the country that these sub-regional alliances are a good thing?
Ms Markham: I think the sub-regional alliances are an amazingly powerful tool for, one, sharing good practice within an area, as well as working jointly as an area to resolve problems, and projecting an image to an area. We are certainly working on that, for example, with the Greater London Assembly at the moment, in terms of an economic regeneration strategy for the sub-region, which is the most advanced piece of work of its kind in London at the moment. I think there are very positive benefits and I would encourage anyone to move forward in that way.
Q497 Mr Cummings: The Pathfinder programme was funded for only two years and really that was to develop community cohesion within your mainstream services. Can you tell the Committee what you have achieved so far?
Mr Daniel: The Pathfinder was a short-term programme, you are right, but the national programme I think runs for 18 months. The current Pathfinder in West London comes to an end in September of this year. In a sense, we felt strongly compelled to put a bid for Pathfinder status forward because we felt there was a very distinct West London story to be told, that the experience in West London was not the same as in some of the northern cities. There are some similarities but also there are very important differences. We did not discover community cohesion when the Home Office announced the Pathfinder programme, most of us had been doing community cohesion for decades. We might use different terminology, we might call it state renewal or urban development or job creation or equal opportunities, or whatever. The Pathfinder programme has not been principally about introducing the notion of community cohesion to an area which did not previously engage with it, it has been about trying to ensure that we work more closely together with agencies, like the voluntary sector. We work very closely with the police and the Primary Care Trusts and other agencies, Learning and Skills Councils, to make sure that they are engaged also. We are using the Pathfinder as a vehicle to support individual projects, certainly, but the most important part of the Pathfinder, to my mind, is raising the issue of community cohesion on the agendas of organisations which spend hundreds of millions of pounds a year. The most important bits of community cohesion that I am involved with are not the relatively, I have to say, relatively, modest sums of money being made available by the Home Office for the Pathfinder, and we are talking about less than a million pounds in West London, that is six authorities, with a population of one and a half million people. The most important bits of community cohesion are how we spend our mainstream education programmes, regeneration programmes, housing programmes and the community cohesion, for example, which takes place in our schools and the mixing of cultures and the celebration of cultural diversity and the emphasis on educational attainment to which Joyce has just referred. That is probably the most useful thing that we can do, by making sure that we mainstream local authority programmes. The Pathfinder gives us a bit of an opportunity to try different things, to engage with different partners and to do a little bit of experimentation, but it is not the main thrust of the community cohesion activity which is taking place.
Q498 Mr Cummings: Could you perhaps tell the Committee how mainstream services in your boroughs are responding to projects being developed by the Pathfinder?
Ms Markham: I think they have responded extremely well. First of all, it has enabled the mainstream services to refresh their thinking about the things they are doing and to put a degree of challenge into the things that they are doing, to say "How does this fit in with the objectives of what we are signed up to as a Pathfinder?" I think that has been extremely helpful. I think also it has enabled us to open up a new agenda, in talking to our Local Strategic Partnership, particularly partners in the private sector, about a different range of issues which are touching on the skills agenda and skills shortages that they are experiencing and finding some new ways into discussing issues. I think it is an expression which brings a very positive permission to talk about some issues which on other occasions we have not been able to talk about.
Q499 Mr O'Brien: In both of your communities you have a large group of Hindu and Muslim people, and each group, I would imagine, will want their own community centres and means of identifying their group. What are you doing to stave that off and create community-based centres, etc?
Mr Daniel: I think that is an issue which is very difficult in London, because, the sheer variety of communities, if everybody insisted on having their own community centre I think the local authority would be bankrupt pretty quickly. As everybody knows, the Hindu communities and the Muslim communities will know, there are factions and differences within those communities as well as between those and other religious groupings. On the whole, that is not a road that we have gone down, in Brent, because we simply do not have the resources to fund that. What we try to do is make sure that the mainstream provision, the mainstream services that we provide to the totality of the community reflect those needs. Investing in bricks and mortar for community organisations, on the whole, they do that pretty well themselves, and we have got some very famous ones. There is the big Neasden temple, the Swami Naryan Hindu temple in Neasden, which is one of the most wonderful Hindu temples outside of India. That was funded by the community themselves, not by the local authority.
Q500 Mr O'Brien: What about community centres provided by the local authority?
Mr Daniel: The local authority funds community centres, which are accessible to all groups in the community, and they are promoted to all groups in the community, but they are not the property or the possession of any one particular group.
Ms Markham: I have to say, that mirrors the situation in Harrow as well. We do not have the funds to provide centres for all the groups that want them, but we do promote, through the use of our own premises, whether it is libraries or schools, a comprehensive letting process which enables all communities to share the facilities and maximise the facilities that are there. I would add also that, in Harrow, just before Christmas, our Hindu and Muslim communities signed a friendship protocol about joint work they wanted to do to benefit their communities and share facilities. I think there is a huge amount of positive work going on between those communities, some of which comes from the communities themselves, and all we do is provide them with some facilities so they can formalise that.
Q501 Chris Mole: Has the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 made any difference to the way the councils in your part of the ship treat race issues?
Ms Markham: I have to say, I think not. Because of the complexion of our communities, it is an issue which has to be at the front of our minds all the time, and, whilst we have done a lot of work ourselves, with our local CRE, and nationally with the CRE, to use the legislation to check our forward procedures and policies, in terms of the way we interact with communities, I do not think there will be any discernible difference. If I may say so, what is a little more concerning to us is, whilst there are many good things happening now, particularly between ODPM and Home Office, in a joined-up approach, there is still a lot of split language used. Very recently, the Home Office have used social cohesion, community cohesion, civic renewal, there is a whole variety of language there, I think, which is making some of these issues very difficult to deal with practically.
Q502 Chris Mole: What is your view of the hypothesis that councils are still focused on the equal opportunities agenda rather than the community cohesion agenda?
Ms Markham: That paints a picture of local authorities as they were 20 years ago, but every local authority that I have worked in, in that period, has moved well into the diversity agenda, and a lot of them now are embracing community cohesion wholeheartedly, so I do not recognise the picture, I am afraid.
Q503 Christine Russell: How serious do you think the problem is that people do not really understand what community cohesion is all about? Is that a real problem? You seem to be hinting that it is. If it is, what are you doing to improve the understanding, particularly perhaps with young people, and what more do you think the Government should be doing?
Ms Markham: I think it is a piece of language which has not been helpful to us with our Pathfinder, quite frankly. At the very early stage, we got signed up a definition and a vision of community cohesion, but most people at least nod and say, "Yes, we can see this," but then we have moved people into saying "This is more about a concept and a series of commissions to move into things," which is where we started to get some enthusiasm going. I am afraid we recognised we had a problem and we parcelled it up and slightly pushed it to one side, because it is an incredibly complex issue for people to get their minds round, and frankly we did not want people worrying about that. I did not want people worrying about that in our Local Strategic Partnership. Last night, they signed up very readily, as part of their work programme for next year, to needing a community cohesion reference group to check out some of the work that is happening through that. I was very pleased that 12 months' plugging away, thinking about community cohesion and its issues, did not flag up the question on what is that now, because I had forgotten. At least I think some of the concepts in it are starting to embed, but I think it is a very difficult issue, but we should not shy away from difficult issues, I think.
Mr Daniel: In terms of your question about what more the Government could do, could I just add, the issue about the language and the terminology is an important one, but I do not think it should distract us from the bottom line, that what we are trying to do is build successful, prosperous and harmonious multi-racial communities. If you have all of those things in place then you will get community cohesion. I think sometimes the language is a barrier to popular understanding of what it is we are trying to achieve. We are trying to ensure that all members of the community, regardless of their race, gender, religion, background, sexual orientation, or whatever, feel fully engaged in the community of which they are a part and in which, for the most part, they are taxpayers and council taxpayers. In terms of Government initiatives, I think we welcome the fact that the Home Office and the ODPM and others are putting an emphasis on community cohesion. Probably what we do not need is too many more 18-month, bolt-on programmes which tackle issues in a rather sort of short-term way. Most of what local authorities do all of the time is about community cohesion. I work in a borough where there is an ethnic majority population and we are the only local authority in the country which has an ethnic majority workforce. I think that is contributing as much to community cohesion in the borough as any nationally-driven programmes. I think we could always do with a little bit of extra money as well.
Q504 Mr O'Brien: Further to the previous question about social cohesion in your boroughs, how are you measuring what you do in terms of promoting social cohesion? The Home Office issued some directive on this. How are you doing that?
Ms Markham: I think there are three aspects to this. In terms of the local indicators that the local authorities are using, we have started to put some emphasis on looking at different communities and their attainment levels in schools and their take-up of particular programmes, and whatever, I think as described by the delegation from Coventry. We have been working on that. If you have only some short-term issues to deal with, in terms of the Pathfinder itself, in achieving the objectives of the Pathfinder, in our case these are linked very strongly to the communications theme and to embedding things in a sustainable way into mainstream work. The third area is, and I think this has been touched on by other evidence you have heard this morning, this is a long-haul issue and it is about a lot of very small steps. As a previous witness feared, I have a lot of reservations about the Home Office guidance on collecting information about community cohesion.
Q505 Chairman: Alright. The Home Office have got it wrong, what will be the alternative?
Ms Markham: I think we need a far more sophisticated series of measures about different communities' access to services, funding, their attainment, about how local authorities are going out and talking to communities.
Q506 Chairman: That is about them getting equality of service, which obviously is important, but I thought the idea was to see how cohesive a community is, so surely that must be the interaction between those communities?
Ms Markham: I agree. It is about the interaction of those communities, but I think you can get a lot of sense of these indicators from looking at the pattern of school admissions, school selection procedures, selection procedures in a whole series of other things, if you want to try to collect hard information. As other witnesses have said, I think some of the key indicators here are some of the soft indicators about what is happening out in communities and listening to those communities.
Q507 Chairman: Briefly, regeneration. Plus or minus for social cohesion?
Mr Daniel: It is a very definite positive. Over the years, I think, all the West London authorities have accessed every conceivable competitive funding regime which has ever been invented by the United Kingdom Government or the European Commission. We are experts at putting together these perverse beauty contests, where we try to demonstrate how really awful it is living in our communities, in order to access the money that we need. Because we do not have the residential segregation, there is not in West London generally, I think, an issue that some communities feel left out and other people are benefiting. Because we have very mixed communities anyway, that means that poor people live side by side with poor people of different colours and races, as well as affluent people living side by side with people of different backgrounds. There is not the same competitive edge, I think, that you have identified, and which Ted Cantle's Report identified in some northern communities, where there was a feeling that some people were being left out. There is a real issue though, and this is where the community cohesion agenda is particularly important, about recognising the needs of disaffected black communities, particularly on some of the more marginalised, more peripheral council estates, where I think there is a real issue about ensuring the community cohesion initiatives tackle the entire needs of the community and not just the perceived disadvantaged minority.
Q508 Chairman: All these special funds, is that much better than giving local authorities a bit more to start with?
Mr Daniel: We would prefer the money through our main programmes, thank you very much.
Chairman: On that note, can I thank you very much for your evidence. Thank you.
