Examination of Witness (Questions 240-259)
7 JULY 2004
RT HON
CHARLES CLARKE
MP
Q240 Chairman: Absolutely. If you have
interpreted it in that way—do any of my colleagues think
we asked them to drop the Bill?
Mr Clarke: I read the report very
carefully last night because I was very interested in what you
had to say, not actually from the point of view of preparation
for this session this morning because I did not anticipate we
would be giving great attention to this this morning, but because
I am in a dilemma as to what to do about the School Transport
Bill. To be frank, local government has said it wants it, the
opposition parties in Parliament nationally have said they are
going to vote against it because they do not think it is the right
thing to do, and they are ready to go to the most scurrilous degrees
to whip up concerns about it which are entirely unfounded, which
I said across the Floor of the House directly. So I have a choice
to make as to how to proceed. I think—and the Transport
Select Committee and, to an extent, your Select Committee thinks—that
we should be going down this course in a general way, but it is
so qualified around that it leads me to think: "Is it really
worth going down that path?" I am trying to come to a view.
It is significant, Chairman, that I had read your report as being
of the view "Just don't do it", and in fact the news-reporting
this morning of your report implies that we should drop it as
well. If that is not the case I am grateful to hear it, and we
will see where to go, but it will be a very sharp debate because
I agree with everything you have just said about walking (we tried
to focus on that), about healthy schools, about sustainability,
about the position of the children, but that requires, in my view,
us to go down the course of giving local authorities the right
to innovate in the way that we have tried to do in the draft Bill.
When people say that we are not going fast enough, or whatever,
I can accept that view; that was partly the view of the Transport
Select Committee as well. OK, but then I am being told by all
the other political parties than my own that they are going to
try and kill this Bill by whatever means possible and to campaign
in the most scurrilous way about it.
Q241 Chairman: Let us get the record
straight: this Committee unanimously wrote and agreed that report.
We believe that the pre-leg inquiry is an excellent way to improve
legislation. All our contributions are to improve the Bill—not
to scrap it. Yes, you can take more notice of health and the obesity
issue, which really has arisen since the Bill was published—that
very high profile and excellent report from the Health Select
Committee. We also think it is a real opportunity to make children
and parents aware of the environmental issues and what can be
done to improve the environment in these pilots. We also said,
"More power; let us have the 26 with the special ability
to charge". We understand the legislation is needed for that
but we believe that you could liberate—you are not giving
them any money—all the other education authorities to a
different kind of innovative vote over a much shorter timescale
than 2011. We have to say, if you read it again—you were
probably tired last night—we believe it is a good Bill that
can be improved.
Mr Clarke: Can I say, Chairman,
I cannot tell you—and I mean this most genuinely—how
delighted I am for the clarification, in which you have corrected
my reading of the document in a very helpful way. I very much
appreciate the exchange.
Q242 Paul Holmes: Just not to let you
off the hook too much, there are two things we do say in the report.
You said the Local Government Association are in support of the
Bill, and they are, but what they said to us when they were sat
where you are now is that unless the Government provides some
money to get this going it is a dead duck. That was one of the
things you might need to re-think in redrafting the Bill. The
other one was, going back to what the Chairman was just talking
about, the confusion of purpose. If you are going to improve or
redraft the Bill (and, also, in all the issues of choice that
we have been talking about) you have really got to decide: are
you aiming to do what you said to the Transport Committee and
get more people going to local neighbourhood schools, or are you
aiming to get lots of people travelling in every which direction
to a faith school here, a specialist school there or an academy
there?
Mr Clarke: That is very helpful
because it allows me to address the question, Chairman, you first
put to me before that exchange. I absolutely believe very profoundly
and very strongly that our aim as a Government ought to be to
ensure that every family has a first-class school in their locality
to which they can send their children. That is a practice which
I encourage, it is a practice I follow myself and I believe it
is absolutely the right way to go. I believe there many localities
where a choice can be enhanced by a range of different specialist
schools. For example, in my constituency there are places where
people can live within walking distance of three or four different
secondary schools and in which they can have some element of choice
as to where they go. I quite acknowledge, as Mr Holmes was saying,
that there are other parts of the country where that patently
is not possible, essentially for geographical reasons, in which
case I say that what we have to try and do is to enhance choice
within those schools to ensure that they can better meet the needs
of the people in those particular localities. So it is not part
of our policy to increase the average amount of travelling between
a home and a school by new education policies. That is not what
we are about, and I do not believe that is a consequence of the
choice agenda; I think that need not and should not be the way
that we proceed. In fact, I think the reason for having an innovatory
approach by local authorities is to enable those issues to be
addressed in a very particular way. I will make one very serious
point, in addition, Chairman, which is I do not believe that the
genie of parental choice can be put back in the bottle. There
are people in the school transport debate, and I have discussed
it with them, who argue that somehow we should require people
to go to a particular school based on criteria around transport
rather than any other question. Firstly, I believe that is undesirable,
but even if I did not believe it is undesirable I think it is
absolutely impossible to get to a state of affairs where that
goes and carries it through. So my answer on the transport issue
is not to say "Let us reverse decades of recent educational
history and require people to go to a particular school";
I do not think that is a reasonable solution, nor do I think it
is a desirable solution. My answer is to try to achieve a situation
where, firstly, people have got a genuine choice of good quality
schools as near to them as can be achieved and, secondly, we have
ranges of transport arrangements which maximise what you are describing:
walking, health and so on, rather than people driving around.
Q243 Chairman: Valerie Davey, you have
been very patient but I have one quick response on that, which
is that we understand the genie of parental choice cannot be put
back in the bottle, but we would extend that and say that we still
continue to say to parents and to say to the broader public that
you can push up the whole notion of parental choice to a degree
which gives people an unrealistic expectation of how much choice
is out there for a very high percentage of people whose one choice
is to go to the local school. That is the truth of it. Sometimes,
raising the expectations can be very damaging because people become
very disillusioned. If you peddle parental choice and actually
it does not exist for many people, it is dangerous.
Mr Clarke: I agree, but only up
to a point. Firstly, I do not think anybody is "peddling"
parental choice in that way. The reason why I have tried to emphasise
in this discussion here the question of choice within the school,
as well as choice between schools, is I think that it is choice
within the school which will be a major motivator in this area.
I think that is what we should try and do. The idea that people
will shop around a range of different schools and travel journeys
of miles and miles and miles is not realistic. I think most parents
want to be able to send their child to their local school. I think
that is what their desire is and I think it should be my purpose
as Secretary of State for Education and Skills to encourage that
and to make that go. The only way to encourage it, in my view,
is by really going for quality in that local school so that people
feel they have got a real choice that is there for them. That
is the area where, bluntly, we have failed in too many parts of
our education system, at the moment, where parents feel that they
have not got a good option for them locally.
Q244 Chairman: There is a myth and a
reality there, is there not, Secretary of State? I am not a London
MP but looking at London the evidence suggests to me that London
schools are improving faster than the national average, but you
have, in The Evening Standard, a kind of hysteria amongst
many parents in London that bears no relation to the truth of
what is going on out there.
Mr Clarke: That is true and false,
Chairman. I agree about the hysteria. When I used to live in London
there were dinner party conversations (as you can see, I used
to go to dinner parties rather than reading Select Committee reports)—and
"hysteria" is too strong a word—and there was
certainly a huge anxiety for many people in some parts of London
as to whether they really could get the school they wanted for
themselves in the way they operate. I answer that (and I have
discussed this with The Evening Standard, since you mentioned
The Standard), by saying that we are really focusing, through
the London Challenge, through the five boroughs we have identified
and through the schools we have identified, on driving up standards
of education in those schools because the choice has not been
there.
Q245 Chairman: Would you agree with Professor
Tim Brighouse that achievement in London schools is above the
national average?
Mr Clarke: Yes, I would, and I
am proud of the fact that we are beginning, for the first time,
to see an improvement which is moving ahead of the national average,
so the choices will become better. Now, it will take time to get
there and all I can say is that when I moved with my family to
Norwich the level of discussion and—in your words—hysteria
about this was infinitely lower than was the situation in London;
people were much more relaxed about the choices they had to make,
and I suspect that is true of a large number of out-of-London
places.
Chairman: Val, you have been very patient.
Q246 Valerie Davey: I would like to refocus
back on the department and use the analogies which we had earlier
to ask you whether you describe the financial management section
and the risk assessment section in your department as ramshackle
or offering a plaster in certain policy areas?
Mr Clarke: I do not, actually.
I think what happened on finances was that we did not have, for
too long a period, as strong a relationship with local education
authorities as we should have done. One of our responses to the
school funding issue when it came around before was to establish
a much stronger set of relationships between senior officials
in my department and the local education authorities with which
they were working to discuss what the financial situation was
and how we could help with what was happening, and so on, to get
a better level of understanding in the way we operated as a department
and what local authorities were doing, hopefully, to get a better
understanding from local authorities of what they could and could
not do. I think there had been too much of a tendency, particularly
across government actually, for edicts to go out in whatever form
and people not quite to understand where they stood. I am working
very hard, and I think we have done very well, in fact, since
a year or so ago, on improving the quality of that relationship.
I think if you were to talk to the average education officer of
a local authority they would say that they have a much stronger
relationship with us on the financial front than they had had
previously. I may be being complacent in saying that, but I do
not think so. I think we have developed a much stronger set of
relationships which has enabled us to address, for example, the
point Mr Ennis raised about schools of deficits in a much more
constructive way than was the case. So I think we have made significant
progress in those areas.
Q247 Valerie Davey: I am glad to hear
you say that and I hope it is true, but this Committee has also
looked at the ILA situation and we have also looked, more recently,
at the e-university situation. Certainly Mr Normington told the
Public Accounts Committee that there was going to be a risk assessment
review throughout the department, top to bottom. Could you tell
us what reviews have taken place? Let us focus, if you like, on
the local authority school situation. What has happened since
then within the department to change things?
Mr Clarke: A tremendous amount.
What has happened is that we have a group of senior officials
in the department who, both on advice to myself and the Minister
of State, Mr Miliband, are working very closely in establishing
what the financial situation of schools is likely to be and what
the financial situation of local education authorities has been.
The activities that they undertake in this are, firstly, dialogue
with the individual LEAs, secondly, dialogue with groups of school
and, thirdly, a training programme which we put in place with
a major consultancy to provide proper training to schools and
LEAs on how they manage their financial budgets, and a much more
serious risk assessment programme that is there. You mentioned
one or two other areas of the department's work but I am more
proud of what has been achieved in relation to schools finance
and LEA finance than I am of any other single area that we have
achieved. We have made a significant step forward in the quality
of our management arrangements. The test will be—as I was
being asked earlier on—whether that carries through successfully
into 2005-06, as I hope it will. I receive, personally, a report
every week on the latest state of affairs of what is coming through,
for the obvious reason, Ms Davey, which is that politically I
felt vulnerable on the whole question of school funding and I
wanted to make sure we had it working completely in a better way.
I think we have made progress for that reason.
Q248 Valerie Davey: What about the remodelling
of other policies? For example, are you confident that now you
have got the consent for the HE Bill you will be able to do the
phasing from the present Student Loans Company to the future plans
of deferred payment?
Mr Clarke: Yes. We work very hard
in the higher education area. The Student Loans company itself
has gone through a major process of trying to transform what it
itself is doing to be able to deal with those questions properly.
You ask am I confident. Yes, I am confident; I feel very confident
that we have worked through and risk assessed carefully the implications
of the changes that we are talking about, which are, as you say,
significant. I believe that we will be able to demonstrate, once
the new system is up and running, the truth of what I am saying.
Q249 Valerie Davey: I understand from
questions that we asked David Normington while he was here that
during the process of the Bill, in fact, you had to bring in additional
staffing, and I can understand that—it was very detailed
financial work. Can you tell us who is responsible now for the
loans company?
Mr Clarke: The loans company is
responsible for it.
Q250 Valerie Davey: Which company runs
the loan company, as it were?
Mr Clarke: It is The Student Loans
Company, which Keith Bedell-Pearce is the chairman of, based in
Glasgow. It is a company which is there as a non-departmental
public body and, actually, that is a very impressive new approach.
I have been up there and listened, and it is very interesting
to see how they are dealing with individual inquiries in a very
modern and up-to-date world which would be a good comparison with
any modern financial company that operates.
Q251 Valerie Davey: Are they going to
take on the work of the EMAs?
Mr Clarke: That is not currently
intended. It is the local authorities which do the EMAs. We think
that it would be wrong to give the Student Loans Company additional,
extra responsibilities at this point when we have got the change
you describe coming round the corner. I could imagine a time in
the future where that could happen. At the moment there is an
issue because all local authorities have a higher education grant
system as well and it is a question of whether it is right to
have that side-by-side with the Student Loans Company operation.
The question of whether we should be trying to do better in co-operation
there is something that we are considering, but the first priority
for the Student Loans Company is to get itself bedded-in following
the HE reforms in a way that means when I next come in front of
this Committee you will not be able to say to me "You were
wrong in your confidence".
Q252 Valerie Davey: Can I just underline
the aspirations that we have raised in terms of EMAs now that
it is being rolled out this September. Again, you intimated that
this was partly LEA's responsibility, are you confident that is
going to be delivering for those young people who are really in
my area confident, and in huge expectation of what it is going
to do for them, that they will not be disappointed?
Mr Clarke: I am very, very confident
indeed. It is, again, a major reform of which I am very proud.
I think it will make a major difference. Ms Davey we only did
it after quite careful consideration because we piloted it and
there was a doubt about whether the extra financial incentive
would make a difference and the "deadweight cost" would
simply come through with the getting expenditure for little result.
That was a question we asked ourselves through the pilot regime.
There was secondly a doubt—a doubt to which you have referred—as
to whether it would be efficiently run and the various criteria
would be properly operating. We satisfied ourselves looking at
the pilot on both of those questions and it was on that basis
that we decided then to roll the programme out nationally, and
that is where we stand.
Valerie Davey: Could you just confirm
or deny what we had understood which was that Capita was running
EMAs?
Q253 Chairman: Or is that just the computer
system?
Mr Clarke: I think it is just
the computers but I will need to write to you on it. I do not
think that is right. If you are asking me to confirm or deny—
Q254 Valerie Davey: No, I am asking a
genuine question, I do not know the answer.
Mr Clarke: My immediate inclination
would have been simply to deny but because I am aware that I am
in front of you I need to be careful what I say. Could I offer
you a qualified denial, subject to what I then write to you.[2] Q255
Chairman: The Permanent Secretary said they were but whether
it is the computer system or the whole thing?
Mr Clarke: What you have is the
local thing which operates where the LEAs are in fact running
it and carrying it forward. You have a national computer system
which went out to tender and I think it is right that Capita is
doing that. Is that what is meant by running it? I think what
I had better do, Chairman, not to confuse myself, further is to
write you a letter which I will do in the next 24 hours just to
go through and set out exactly what the arrangements are. [3]
Valerie Davey: Thank you very much indeed.
Given how busy you are I accept that as a very generous offer.
Q256 Chairman: Secretary of State, that
the student loan company, we would like to know some time, and
in some detail, whether this is all outsourced and who it is outsourced
to?
Mr Clarke: The student loan company?
Q257 Chairman: The student loan company,
if it is doing it itself in house, that is one question, if it
is being outsourced we would quite like to know because we are
getting some feedback that there are problems.
Mr Clarke: Yes. There have been
student loan companies who, with the software they have established
in some local authorities, have had problems and talked to us
about particular problems there have been. We believe those problems
have been solved and in fact Wandsworth, for example, had a concern
the other day, which when we followed up it turned out was not
in fact right. I think the best thing I can do, Chairman, is to
write you two separate letters, one on the points raised by Ms
Davey about the operation of the EMA scheme and which companies
and organisations are involved in that and one on the question
that you have raised with me about the student loan company's
outsourcing and its arrangements for what it is doing there. If
I write both of those separately I hope that will answer the question.
Q258 Chairman: You realise our anxiety,
Secretary of State. We are not going to have time today to dwell
too much on the e-university but to have another flagship project—even
though it is rather at arm's length—that one of your predecessors
launched go belly-up after the ILA is disturbing.
Mr Clarke: To be quite candid,
Chairman, when I was appointed to this office I was just at the
end of the ILA issue.
Q259 Chairman: I know.
Mr Clarke: I am exceptionally
concerned—and the Permanent Secretary, Mr Normington, as
you implied, is—to make sure both, firstly, that we run
things extremely efficiently and effectively and, secondly, that
we are perceived to run things efficiently and effectively. Both
of those are important parts of our responsibility. As we have
looked at the EMA system, as we have looked at the student finance
system, as we have looked at the school funding system last year,
we were acutely aware that we needed to do that right in order
to give the confidence which the Committee looks for. I think
we are doing that in ways I was trying to refer to in talking
to Ms Davey. I will write to you with the additional information.
Chairman: David wants to ask you how
you are going to do all this in a much slimmed down department.
2 Ev 49
Back
3
Ev 49
Back
|
