Examination of Witness (Questions 140-159)
9 NOVEMBER 2004
LORD HASKINS
Q140 Chairman: Absolutely and that is
a delivery issue.
Lord Haskins: One thing that really
shook me at the beginning of it was that Defra was on the way
with quite a big investment in IT without having worked out what
the policy was behind it that they were going to deliver. They
were designing an IT system before support such as the Entry Level
Scheme had been decided and the computers were being designed
to deliver a scheme which had not been designed itself.
Q141 Chairman: This sounds like a bit
of a recipe for difficulties?
Lord Haskins: Fortunately it is
not my agenda so I would not like to speak with any authority
on that.
Q142 Chairman: I thought I might draw
you a little bit?
Lord Haskins: No, you will not.
Q143 Mr Breed: We touched on this a little
earlier about the separation of policy-making and delivery. Last
week we had representatives from the Centre for Rural Economy
with us and they noted, and I quote from what they said: "Lord
Haskins `had made great play of the need to separate policy from
delivery but it [the CRE] felt that treating policy and delivery
as distinct and separable is a simplification." How would
you respond to that criticism?
Lord Haskins: Because I am always
challenging conventional wisdom, the thing this Government has
talked about is joined-up government and the concept of joined-up
government is you put everybody in a big heap and hope that it
is going to work somehow. My argument is if you put policy-makers,
who inevitably because they are down here, in charge of delivery,
it swallows up the delivery function and delivery issues are not
considered. The delivery problems are part of the policy-making
process, they have to be because if you develop a policy which
is patently non-deliverable you do not have a policy. I go the
other way round. I think the delivery side for the most part should
be the place that initiates policy. They are the ones who are
on the ground saying, "This is what is happening. This is
okay. This is not okay." I think policy should be developed
by that process. I am not separating it in that sense. All I am
saying is I do not want policy-makers to be in charge of the delivery
process because that is fundamentally wrong and it is wrong in
business. Even in the great centralised French system they separate
the policy-making process from the delivery process very carefully
and very clearly. That does not mean that the policy-making people
do not have to consult closely with the delivery people. They
have to because they are dead if they do not.
Q144 Mr Breed: In a sense the people
who are charged with the responsibility on delivery ought to have
pretty good access to the policy-makers to tell them where they
are potentially going wrong.
Lord Haskins: Very much so.
Q145 Mr Breed: There has to be a clear
channel through which advice from those charged with delivery
can affect and help improve policy?
Lord Haskins: Yes.
Q146 Mr Breed: So there is not an absolutely
distinct separation?
Lord Haskins: No, it is just an
organisational thing. In the centre in my business we had a smaller
number of people who made the policy and a very large number of
people who delivered. The people making the policy did not have
a chance if they did not communicate and listen and go out and
talk to the people who were delivering because delivery is 90%
of the policy process. The policy process is quite simple. The
delivery process is the clever part of it.
Q147 Mr Breed: Sometimes it is not only
in this sort of policy area but perhaps in other government policy
areas that the cost of implementing some policy is out of all
proportion to the benefit that it is actually achieving?
Lord Haskins: Very much so. That
is one of the concerns I expressed in the report on the agri-environmental
schemes. The administrative cost of the present brown envelope
into farmers' back pockets is about 6% of the total. The administrative
costs of some of the agri-environmental schemes are up to 30%.
It is understandable because obviously if you are going to try
and deliver environmental good you have to go out on the ground
and look at every individual farm and measure what is being done
but there is a great danger that that is going to kill the
schemes. What worries me about the agri-environmental schemes
is that while I entirely applaud that intention, if they do not,
on the one hand, deliver environmental good, which may be expensive
to do, and, on the other hand, encourage the farmers (which is
where the delivery point comes into it) to participate in the
schemes (because if the farmers do not participate the schemes
are dead anyway so it has got to be worth something for them)
at the end of the day in three or four years' time when the taxpayers
look at the thing and say, "Are we getting value for money
for this?" if the cost for administration is 30 or 40 or
50% then something will have to be done, so there are a lot of
questions.
Q148 Mr Breed: Taking agri-environmental
schemes as an example, how driven is the policy for delivering
that by a desire on behalf of the Civil Service to ensure that
there is no potential criticism, or even penalty, from the EU
in the terms of the way in which it is utilising EU money?
Lord Haskins: I think our civil
servants—again it is a general point—spend far too
much time hiding behind the EU and blaming the EU for problems
which are not of the EU's making. As I went round Europe I found
that other civil services were much more flexible and the EU was
not putting the boot in anything like what our officials say they
do. The one thing officials in Whitehall dread more than anything
else is judicial review or the equivalent of a judicial review
from Brussels. I suspect always the slightly mysterious hand of
the Treasury is behind this too accusing the EU as a way to slow
down expenditure. Mr Jack's lot did the same thing too but he
was in the Treasury and he was quite happy to slow up the process
of EU funds coming into the countryside because it was good Treasury
business.
Mr Jack: I just raised the money; I was
the tax gatherer.
Chairman: Well Mr Tax Gatherer?
Q149 Mr Jack: Right. Before I ask you
a bit about the RDA role I just wanted to pick up one point about
the agri-environment schemes because the Government's proposals
in terms of the new integrated agency make a great deal of play
of reducing 100 schemes down to three but it does not tell us
how this quite amazing traffic jam is going to be achieved. Have
you got any clues as to how it is going to be achieved?
Lord Haskins: No.
Q150 Mr Jack: You do not have to go beyond
that but do if you want to.
Lord Haskins: I do not think it
is quite three schemes. It is three categories of scheme. That
is what they are trying to do. I anticipate they are going to
have trouble—I always anticipate this—because the
DTI tried to do the same thing two or three years ago with limited
success. It sounds very logical and easy and absolutely right
but everybody has got their own little pet scheme and whenever
you touch one pet scheme, either a minister or an official or
a recipient says no, and you do not dare touch that. They are
all politically sensitive. In a way that is going to be the hardest
job of all but we have got to try and do it.
Q151 Mr Jack: You also remarked a few
moments ago on local authorities. I know that you personally attach
a lot to their role in terms of delivering rural services, but
the Government do not agree with you. They have air-brushed out
local authorities altogether from the new architecture in delivery
of rural services. Why do you adhere so much to local authority
involvement? You talked about one or two inspired authorities
who have a good rural record, and you obviously speak with passion
about it, but the Government do not agree with you. Have you got
any clues as to why?
Lord Haskins: This is built into
the whole culture. Until 1945 we had the best form of government
the world could see. We were the envy of the rest of the world
in the way we delivered our public services—education, health,
safe water—going back to the Victorian days, all done through
local authorities, through municipalities. Relative to where we
are now of course the level of literacy in England was higher
in 1890 than it was in 1990 and that was all done through the
local authority structure. So a fateful combination of Nye Bevan
and Mrs Thatcher has successfully undermined local authority over
the last 40 or 50 years. The civil servants here see them as a
threat. It is conventional wisdom to kick them every time you
see them and I think that is fundamentally wrong. We have had
so many local government reorganisations that people do not know
whether they are coming or going. On the other hand, I think the
Local Government Association is now building on confidence and
beginning to create an environment where perhaps people in the
centre realise there are better ways of delivering and that through
the local authorities is the way. We have had some bad examples
of failures of local authorities, of course we have, and the concern
countryside people always have is, if they are in a local authority
which is predominantly urban, then their rural minority position
is not properly appreciated. I agree that is a risk but that should
not be a reason for backing off and saying the answer to it therefore
is to run it all from Whitehall. We have got to make what is on
the ground work better rather than saying bringing it into the
centre is the way to deal with it.
Q152 Mr Jack: Is there not a potential
for conflict because one of the tasks in regenerating rural economies
has now been given to the RDAs, and one of the things which I
think all Members of Parliament have to deal with is planning
issues, and there does seem to be a potential for conflict in,
on the one hand, the RDAs looking for opportunities for new forms
of economic activity in a rural setting and, on the other hand,
local authorities, who are driven by other forces, having to counter
what they might see from their stand point, and indeed central
government's planning guidelines, as inappropriate development.
Do you see in the creation of the new integrated agency any effort
being made by the Government in establishing the policy framework
to resolve that kind of friction and issue?
Lord Haskins: There is a rather
controversial Bill on planning which has gone through, which puts
planning responsibility more towards the regional assemblies which
the local authorities are not too happy about and, you are right,
there is bound to be a tension between environmental protection
and economic development. The RDAs see their role as primarily
one of economic development, perhaps excessively so because the
RDAs also have a remit for sustainable development which some
people say they do not fully take account of. The local authorities
have to deal with the conflict because they want the economic
development and they have to take account by virtue of them being
democratic institutions of the needs that local people have for
preservation. It is a real problem. We know that the biggest problem
in the rural economy, in my view without any question, is affordable
housing and yet if we could put two houses into each of the 10,000
English villages, we would probably crack half the problem. It
does not seem all that big until you go to a particular village
and say let's build two houses there and the roof goes off. These
are big dilemmas. Again my answer to that is to throw the power
back to local people and as much as possible say it is not for
central government to come in from on high to say whether you
are going to have those two houses, it is for you lot together
to agree amongst yourselves, and push the communities together
to come up with the plan. If the communities together come up
with the plan then the local authorities should not get in their
way, certainly the RDAs should not get in their way and, above
all else, central government should not get in their way.
Q153 Mr Jack: Last week in the Commons
at Question Time the Secretary of State was proudly proclaiming
that her Department had given another £21 million of its
expenditure for rural development through the RDAs. When I reflect
on the number of RDAs around the country, I suppose that is about
couple of million pounds extra money (not a huge sum of money
but always to be welcomed) and then I look at the North West RDA,
which is the one I know best, and the many claims on its time
and talents—like how it is going to provide a strategy for
the survival of the aerospace industry in the North West, how
does it carry on with the regeneration of Liverpool and Merseyside
as whole, likewise Manchester, how does it respond to the rest
of the North West that only thinks that Merseyside and Manchester
are getting a fair deal, plus the regeneration of Blackpool, I
could go on—it seems to me that the RDA has already got
a very full agenda of things and, question mark, where is its
expertise in the rural economy? It struggles to deal with all
of these other major, mega economic issues.
Lord Haskins: Well, I think the
main contribution the RDAs can make—and it makes it not
just to the countryside but also to the economy generally—is
in the promotion of small businesses. Remember, the countryside
is, above all else, the place where small businesses thrive and
they are booming. Let's get it clear, the countryside is thriving
as it has never thrived before. Also the amount of entrepreneurial
activity in the countryside is tremendous, but we have the same
problem in the countryside as we have elsewhere. Plenty of new
business start-ups and far too many failures. That is an area
that the RDA through Business Links can strengthen. If you give
the RDAs an overall remit for the regional economy you cannot
then say, "But you can ignore the rural economy," however
small it is. It is again holding them to the remit. If they have
got that remit then they must be made accountable for that remit
and must not ignore it. It is a difficulty in a country which
is overwhelmingly urban, which is as densely populated as ours
is, to get the rural agenda pushed forward, politics being what
it is, compared with Northern Ireland where I was last week or
France. One of the things we have to remind ourselves is if we
were not members of the European Union, politics being the reality,
the rural agenda would sink much further down the agenda than
it is because in Europe the rural agenda is much more important
than it is in Britain. Therefore it behoves us when you have got
those minorities to make sure that those who are responsible for
looking after the minority interests of rural society are held
accountable for it. That is what your job is.
Q154 Mr Jack: Let me finally ask you
this question: you know your own Yorkshire and Humberside RDA
very well, so what strengthening would your RDA require to fulfil
its obligations under the new arrangements? Is it okay now as
configured or does it need some extra resources?
Lord Haskins: I do not think it
needs extra resources. I think RDAs work best through local strategic
partnerships. It is their job to create those local strategic
partnerships. It is their job to go to the people in those local
areas and bring them together, whether it is the local authorities,
whether it is the National Farmers Union, whether it is conservationists.
Their job is to get them together and their secondary job is they
are not deliverers in that sense. They take national policy because
they get money from central government and they adjust and modify
those policies to local need. They then make the arrangements
through local strategic partnerships for the delivery of those
policies. That is their job. It is a middle man job, if you like.
Q155 Chairman: Let's talk money. I think
you say in your report that efficiency savings could be made of
£29 million a year.
Lord Haskins: Yes.
Q156 Chairman: When the Secretary of
State published the Rural Strategy this summer those £29
million did not seem to be in her equation in the Appendix. Are
you confident that savings can be made?
Lord Haskins: I am less sure about
the savings. There are two elements to this. There is the cost
of doing this and the benefits. The cost of doing this I am told
is going to be much less than was in my report, it might be £30
or £40 million less. I thought that was the case, by the
way, but I was not going to get into the trap of guys like you
coming back in three years' time and saying this was fairyland
stuff. The one-off savings are reasonably clear to identify—shutting
down offices and buildings and all that—but the day-to-day
operational costs of the new department was quite difficult to
assess because I found a situation where if I did nothing costs
were going to go up because of the rising agenda I was trying
to compare a line like that with a line that was not going to
go like that but was going to go up less dramatically than it
would otherwise have done. Not a very satisfactory explanation.
I think it is early days yet to measure that but I do know that
the actual cost of implementing this is going to be a lot less,
and in a way that is a cost saving.
Q157 Chairman: Just tell us this, how
do you think we should judge value for money out of the new system?
Let's say we are not going to summons you back in three years'
time but in three years' time if the select committee were to
sit down and have we got value for money out of it, have there
been real changes, what should we be looking for? What would be
the parameters that would be there?
Lord Haskins: Obviously the best
thing to do is to look at the so-called customers and get a whole
lot of them in and ask the farmers if is it better than it was
three or four years, ask the environmentalists is it better than
it was three or four years ago, ask the people who are in the
delivery business, the local authorities, do they think it is
better, and get perceptions from that end, and if those perceptions
look positive then I think you are home and dry. That is always
the way I looked at it in business anyway. Asking the system of
itself whether it is doing better it will always say it is. You
do not get a very satisfactory answer to that but you need to
try and make an evaluation from the receiving end as to whether
people are better off. People being what they are will always
complain that they are not but you would make that great objective
judgment for which you are well renowned to make sure you could
distinguish between what was a moan and what was a constructive
criticism.
Q158 Chairman: Is one of the difficulties
that we are not entirely sure what we are asking all these new
organisations to do? We talked a little bit about CAP reform.
It is a big change agenda there. You referred in passing to the
Water Framework Directive, another big agenda there. I am not
entirely clear that we have set out a vision and a set of priorities
for these new agencies and that makes value for money considerations
quite difficult.
Lord Haskins: I agree with you.
I think some of the PSA, which we mentioned, and are meant to
be the measurements, are a bit airy-fairy for me, in fact far
too airy-fairy when they say they want to get the lower quartile
of the rural economy up to the average. I do not know what that
means. I think one can make measurements on the environment on
what you are trying to achieve and assess those, altogether the
whole agri-environmental schemes are going to be very difficult
to evaluate because you have got to satisfy those three people
I mentioned—the farmers, the environmentalists and the taxpayer.
Defra has a hugely complicated agenda. It is a very complicated
department, too complicated some would argue, and one of the things
I would like to see is its very ambitious remit reduce over time.
If Defra is really successful—and I have said this before
and got into trouble for it but I will say it again—in 10
years' time the only parts of Defra that will remain will be first
one, the Department of the Environment because food should not
be treated as a special case any more, we should see food as part
of the Single Market and food should be regulated like any other
part of industry, and rural affairs should not require the special
treatment that people think it does now. There are aspects of
rural affairs obviously which are special but most of the problems
I see in rural society are reflected in the rest of society—the
poverty and health factors are mainly the same. So a criticism
I would have of Defra and indeed the DTI is maybe they are trying
too hard, maybe they are trying to achieve more than governments
should set out to achieve, but that is political ambition.
Q159 Chairman: Finally a change question.
It is not your bag but you provided the initial report and your
report was published, as I said, a year ago. The Secretary of
State makes an announcement about the way forward in July. We
are told there is a draft Bill being prepared because this requires
primary legislation. We have got to find a spot for Parliamentary
time. We do not know when that is going to be. Yet at the same
time all the people working in these organisations have got to
keep on going. The change period could be, I do not know, four
years.
Lord Haskins: I hope it is less
than that.
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