Examination of Witness (Questions 260-279)
7 JULY 2004
RT HON
CHARLES CLARKE
MP
Q260 Mr Chaytor: Secretary of State,
your Department spends a quarter of a billion pounds on administration
and employs 4,500 people. How many are you going to get rid of
in the next four years?
Mr Clarke: What we have announced
is a 31% reduction in staff over the period to 2008. We are phasing
that and there are a series of different stages of that approach
which we are going through.
Q261 Mr Chaytor: That is about a thousand?
Mr Clarke: It is of that order.
Q262 Mr Chaytor: In the report it says
you are getting rid of 1,460, is that exactly 31%?
Mr Clarke: I do not know.
Q263 Mr Chaytor: You are the mathematician,
Secretary of State.
Mr Clarke: One of the things I
learnt in mathematics was not to try any clever immediate tricks
on numbers. I have enough problems doing this job when television
interviewers shove the microphone in your mouth and ask for a
particular mathematical sum to be solved, and I am not going to
do it. It is of the order of 31%.
Q264 Mr Chaytor: In your report the text
did say it will be 800 by the year 2006 but in the total it says
only 400 by the year 2006. It would be very helpful if you could
write to us to clarify exactly what the scale of the numbers is.
Mr Clarke: I am very happy to
do that.[4]
We have had a very substantial process in the Department, including
consultation with trade unions and colleagues, to establish the
best way of going through this. We have taken a number of decisions
so far about where we are going. If it would be helpful to the
Committee I would be happy to set out very fully what the exact
process is since the report was published.
Q265 Mr Chaytor: Of the savings that
accrue as a result of the reduction in staff by 2006 and by 2008,
will all of that saving go into front line services in education?
Mr Clarke: Yes, but with one important
qualification which is the total amount of resource that we spent
on our administration is a very small percentage indeed of the
total amount of resource that is spent on education because the
overwhelming bulk of what we spend goes to schools, colleges,
universities and so on very directly.
Q266 Mr Chaytor: The staffing savings
will be ring fenced to education?
Mr Clarke: Absolutely.
Q267 Mr Chaytor: Given that you are taking
on huge new responsibilities for children's services then presumably
the bulk of that ring fencing will be allocated to finance the
expansion of children's services?
Mr Clarke: Yes, but I emphasise
the point again that the actual saving that we make from the efficiencies
that we achieve by 2008 is a pretty small number compared with
the amount of money we are spending on children's services or
schools or whatever it may happen to be.
Q268 Mr Chaytor: As part of the Chancellor's
guidance to departments to reduce their staffing, he wants to
see devolution from London to the regions. Do you have any plans
to further devolved staffing to the regions?
Mr Clarke: Yes, following the
Lyons Committee we have been discussing precisely what we should
do and where we should do it. We have been discussing, also, how
we can work more closely with the Government Offices in terms
of education services and how we can do that. We are developing
approaches on that as we speak. We have not taken final decisions
on it and it is part of the overall process that we are describing.
Q269 Mr Chaytor: Broadly, what kind of
functions will be devolved to regions?
Mr Clarke: At the moment we are
amongst the most devolved departments of Government. I am speaking
off the cuff so please do not hold me to this figure but I think
I am right in saying that 70% of our staff work outside London
already in this position. The question what then further is devolved
is a matter that we are discussing particularly but the central
organising principle is that policy based staff should mainly
be based in London and administrative staff based outside London.
Q270 Mr Chaytor: If it was the case that
following the referenda on regional assemblies in the three Northern
regions regional assemblies were established and those assemblies
wanted to have a strong involvement in the skills sector or even
the post-14 sector, how would that change the work of the Department
down here? Would you be supportive of the greater responsibilities
for elected regional assemblies in the 14-plus sector?
Mr Clarke: They are two different
questions, I will take the second first. We have agreed a concordat
with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Regional Development
Agencies, including those regions, and the Learning and Skills
Council as to how we should divide the responsibility for the
skills between those agencies. The Secretary of State for Trade
and Industry and myself had a meeting with all the chairs of the
RDAs about six weeks ago, something of that kind, to clarify exactly
where we were going and how we were dealing with it. I think we
have got a satisfactory solution which everybody is satisfied
with and feels we have right. We will implement that, as it were,
in all circumstances. That should be implemented in any circumstance
whether you have an elected regional assembly or not in a given
area. An elected regional assembly would give a bit more of a
pull towards that, if I can put it like that, but we think that
the regional aspect of the skills agenda should in any case be
delivered in the regions through the regional skills partnerships
whether or not there is a regional assembly. What we are ready
to do, and I have discussed with colleagues in Government who
are making proposals in this area, is if there is an elected regional
assembly giving the elected regional assembly certain rights in
relation to the delivery structures in those regions which at
the moment are held by the RDA's Government Office or LSC in terms
of nomination, for example, and so on, to get a better relationship
as to what takes place. We feel we have a good structure, as I
say we have called it the concordat, between the main agencies
to work together. What is the implication of all that for the
DfES? Not a great deal because a very large amount of DfES work
on skills is handled by the Learning and Skills Council itself
in its own structure and DfES staff in this is a relatively small
number.
Q271 Mr Chaytor: Finally, what are the
implications for the role of the Secretary of State itself with
all this slimming down and decentralisation and devolution? Do
you see your role or your successor's role as changing significantly?
Will you no longer be held responsible and accountable for any
operational measures? Will you be able to come to this Committee
and say it is purely broad strategy and policy?
Mr Clarke: It is a happier life
for me because I believe that one of the consequences of reducing
what we do is to reduce a lot of interactions that take place
which do not necessarily need to take place which are often called
bureaucracy. I think that getting the DfES into a strategic role
in the way that we are doing will make the life of the Secretary
of State easier in terms of being more strategic and carrying
things through. Will it reduce operational responsibility for
any aspect of what is happening? No, I think it will increase
it because it will make it much more transparent what we are doing
and we will get greater clarity. The biggest intellectual problem
we have to achieve in going down the course that you have asked
me about is how do we limit our ambitions to fill the space available?
There is a tendency to say "Well, we have got a project,
we will have an initiative, we will have a unit, off we go".
We have to say that the reduction in numbers of people is not
about making them work harder but about us being more candid about
what we can do and what we cannot do and sharing our responsibilities
with others more effectively. So, for example, with a particular
non departmental public body, do we have the non departmental
public body there and then also, side by side, have a group of
officials who are watching what the non departmental public body
is doing? Actually that is a crazy way to proceed. You have to
get to a state of affairs where you give the body the responsibility
and you get the clarity but what happens, that can lead to political
issues as people say: "We did not realise the non departmental
public body was going to do this, that or the other" whether
it is a HEFCE, QCA, Learning and Skills Council or CAFCASS or
whatever it may happen to be, and that is a big challenge for
us.
Q272 Chairman: Secretary of State, that
is one of the concerns and worries, is it not? I am not accusing
you of kidding or misleading this Committee at all but the fact
is there are certain elements in what we presume the Prime Minister
will be saying today, and you may be saying tomorrow, which enlarges
the Department's responsibilities, or might potentially, and certainly
in terms of the Children's Act there will be a very big responsibility
added to the Department. It is not a big department compared with
other departments, what bits of activity that you do now are you
not going to do in the future?
Mr Clarke: Second guessing of
the kind I mentioned to Mr Chaytor, some aspects of our analytical
work we do not need to do in quite the same degree but the main
point here is we only operate in partnership with a range of other
bodies, non departmental public bodies, local authorities and
so on. One of the issues for us—which is why I reject entirely
the idea that we were talking about earlier that I am trying to
devalue the role of local government—we have to work in
much better partnership with local authorities on children's trusts
and so on and to do the various issues that go through and I think
it would be a better situation where the responsibility is more
clearly defined across the system within a framework which is
a clearer one.
Q273 Chairman: Secretary of State, no-one
is going to be fooled, are they, if at the same time as you have
got a Department that you say you are cutting by 1,400 people—first
of all we would be very concerned if that meant a poorer service,
and just having a 31% cut does not really impress us if that reduces
the efficiency of the Department because that is a Treasury view,
is it not—on the other hand, if it is all back office, none
of us is fooled by the fact that HEFCE is out there, it is not
part of the Department, the Learning and Skills Council is not
a part of the Department, and Ofsted, growing exponentially will
be bigger than your Department the way we are going, will it not?
Mr Clarke: No, I do not think
so.
Q274 Chairman: It is 3,000 and growing,
the last figures that we have.
Mr Clarke: We will see how it
goes.
Q275 Chairman: You are 4,500 and shrinking.
Ofsted will pass you.
Mr Clarke: On inspection itself,
we have a review of inspection, as you know, which we have carried
through and come to conclusions, a new inspection regime and so
on which we think will be more efficient all ways round and better
for schools and other people who are inspected by Ofsted, some
of whom have complained about the overall process. It is true
I have not studied the relative size of the organisations though
it is true, certainly, that many of the organisations we are talking
about are larger than the Department.
Q276 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Clarke: That is true not just
of Ofsted but of other agencies too. Is that a good thing or a
bad thing? I do not think it is a bad thing at all.
Q277 Chairman: Our role is scrutiny of
the Executive and sometimes when your responsibilities have spun
off to these quangoes or non departmental public bodies it makes
it slightly more difficult. Take the e-university, the inspiration
of David Blunkett, it is set up under the auspices of HEFCE so
when HEFCE arrives here I have not got the ability to say to you
"It is your responsibility". You can say: "Well
that was HEFCE, they were in charge, that is an arm's length authority".
That can go on and on. Our parliamentary responsibility of scrutiny
becomes more difficult, does it not?
Mr Clarke: This is an absolutely
fundamental issue which I think I need to join with you on. The
issue of accountability and parliamentary accountability—which
is central to the way we run the country—does that create
a system where we have a direct line of command from a Secretary
of State to every aspect of the delivery of education in Britain?
Do we say what happens, for example, in a given school on school
uniforms is the responsibility of the Secretary of State in every
respect and, therefore, we create a mechanism that happens. Now
this is not a million miles from reality because if you look at
health, for example, the model of health has traditionally been
on that kind of direct accountability model in precisely that
kind of way. Education has never been in that way, it has been
a partnership between local government and national government
in the way that schools are run. In the case of universities,
the idea that I am accountable for what an individual university
does, despite the fact that most of the money is provided by the
Government, is again not an issue that has been at the core of
where we are for the reason that academic freedom and all the
rest of it means you have a whole set of bodies at an arm's length
distance. I do not accept the proposition that accountability
means I run everything.
Q278 Chairman: No, that is right.
Mr Clarke: I think if we were
to go down that path we would be on a very dangerous course.
Q279 Chairman: You are right, Secretary
of State, I could not agree with you more but sometimes we have
had discussions about how accountable these other organisations
are to Parliament through this Committee.
Mr Clarke: Quite so.
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