Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
RT HON
KEITH HILL
MP, RT HON
NICK RAYNSFORD
MP, MR JOE
MONTGOMERY AND
MR ANDREW
WELLS
19 OCTOBER 2004
Q300 Mr Betts: That is going to be the
format, is it?
Mr Hill: That is the sort of idea,
yes.
Q301 Mr Betts: I think generally that
will be welcomed. There is some concern that you might not go
as far as that, so I think that will be welcomed by the many people
who have been campaigning on that. Could I go on to the issue
of estate agents. It is something else which the Committee considered
in the past and made recommendations about, the licensing of estate
agents. I understand that at this stage the Government may not
be prepared to go that far, but certainly it is looking for some
form of improved regulation. I wonder if you could tell us where
we have got to with that one?
Mr Hill: Intrinsically, of course,
this is associated with our proposals to bring in the home information
packs and we looked at the other players involved in house purchase
and sale, and quite clearly solicitors and conveyancers have their
own indemnity arrangements. We expect that the home certification
officers will have an indemnity scheme. I know that is an issue
about which you have been particularly concerned in the past.
Because estate agents, as you will know, having served on the
Committee, will play an absolutely central role in the transaction,
it is absolutely vital, in our view, that there should be an indemnity
scheme with which estate agents will be required to register in
order to protect sellers and purchasers in the process. I am very
pleased to say that we have the support of the National Association
of Estate Agents in this regard, the enthusiastic support of the
Consumers' Association too.
Q302 Mr Betts: Will estate agents have
to become members of the National Association?
Mr Hill: That is not my understanding,
but they will be required to sign up to the indemnity scheme.
Q303 Mr Betts: Will there be an independent
disputes resolution procedure?
Mr Hill: I believe that we are
looking at actual or potential ombudsman-like arrangements for
the scheme.
Q304 Mr Betts: Which will not be run
by the industry themselves, these will be independent of the industry,
will they?
Mr Hill: I think that is the idea,
yes.
Q305 Mr Clelland: Those of us who are
called upon from time to time to sit on statutory instrument committees
are finding that it is becoming a more regular practice. Your
own Department has produced something like 77 statutory instruments
so far this year. Would it not be easier on Ministers and on Members
if the work on these could be done in advance and put directly
into the Bills, rather than have all these statutory instruments?
Mr Raynsford: This is always a
tension, as you will know, between a wish to define as much as
possible in primary legislation but the need to make use of the
more flexible framework of secondary legislation, particularly
for subjects where there is likely to be a change over a relatively
short timescale and therefore the process of updating legislation
would become burdensome. We are looking at this and we are keen
to avoid proliferation of statutory instruments. However, one
factor you have got to bear in mind is that we have been responsible
for some quite important legislation, particularly the Local Government
Act, which made a very large number of significant changes to
local authority powers, many of which depended on secondary legislation.
The fact that there has been rather a lot in the last year might
be seen as a good process, because actually it has extended freedoms
and flexibilities to local government through items such as the
prudential borrowing regime and other items like that.
Q306 Mr Clelland: When might we see the
outcome of your deliberations on this issue?
Mr Raynsford: I have not got a
specific date, but we are conscious of the need to avoid the proliferation
of statutory instruments.
Q307 Chairman: It was particularly unfortunate,
was it not, as far as the European elections and the all-postal
ballots were concerned, that the regulations only were published
virtually the day that returning officers had to publish notices
of ballots?
Mr Raynsford: It was, indeed,
and that, of course, was the subject of considerable debate in
Westminster Hall in the debate which you initiated a few weeks
ago. I do not wish to rake over old problems there, but there
was no question but that the way in which the processing of the
legislation through the other place went on far longer than we
had hoped did leave a very tight timetable for the completion
of the secondary legislation.
Q308 Chairman: I understand that with
the Housing Bill as it is at the moment in the House of Lords
you published illustrative statutory instruments for almost all
the things that you are going to do via statutory instruments.
Would it not be logical always to make sure that those illustrative
statutory instruments basically are correct, so that as soon as
the legislation goes through you do not have to set draftsmen
in your Department drafting the new instruments but that actually
you have instruments that more or less you can sign your names
to, as Ministers, straightaway?
Mr Raynsford: My colleagues may
well wish to say something about the Housing Bill, but just in
general if I can make the observation that it has been our policy
to try to ensure that draft statutory instruments or a statement
setting out the precise purpose of those statutory instruments
are available, in committee, by the time the committee comes to
consider the relevant legislation. That is what we have done in
the past and what we intend to continue to do. I have to say,
a lot of these statutory instruments are very complex indeed and
it is not a question of just a few pages, some of them are extremely
lengthy. Therefore, it is almost inevitable that individual glitches
can occur from time to time.
Q309 Chairman: I understand that, and
I welcome very much the fact that the Department is publishing
the illustrative ones. It just worries me that having done all
that work for Parliament at that stage then there seems to be
a time lag between actually publishing the real statutory instrument
as opposed to the illustrative one?
Mr Raynsford: If I can give an
illustration just from the field of my own responsibility, which
is the Business Improvement Districts, that scheme depended on
a statutory instrument to give effect to the primary legislation,
which was the 2003 Local Government Act. We consulted extensively
with interests, both local authority and business interests, who
were particularly keen to ensure that the regulations did enable
the whole BIDs programme to proceed in an efficient and expeditious
way. Out of that consultation came changes, and I think you would
feel that it was wrong of us not to pay heed to the views of the
stakeholders who were engaged in the consultation. That was one
of the explanations of why there were changes in the statutory
instrument compared with the drafts that had been prepared as
illustrations for committee. That process I think is right, though
often it does lead to a lengthier timescale than perhaps some
people would like.
Q310 Chairman: Do you think you have
got enough lawyers in the Department to draw up these instruments?
Mr Raynsford: I would hate to
think we were going to employ more lawyers in the Department.
I am well satisfied that we have a good group of lawyers who do
the work very efficiently for us, and the comments I made earlier
about the need to be efficient and to avoid increasing costs applies
to government departments as much as to local authorities.
Q311 Christine Russell: I would like
to ask some questions about neighbourhood renewal, which will
be to Mr Montgomery. I am sure we all welcome the fact that in
the Spending Review, I think it was, £525 million was rolled
forward for the next three years for neighbourhood renewal. Can
I ask you a series of questions, the first of which is what lessons
have you learned from the existing Neighbourhood Renewal programmes?
Mr Montgomery: Firstly, we have
learned that, through devolving the responsibility for specific
decision-making to local authorities and their partners, we are
able to allow them to be flexible enough to respond to their local
circumstances in ways which are more accurate than would be decided
from the centre. Secondly, we have learned that there are very
powerful ways in which Local Strategic Partnerships have been
able to narrow the gap between the poorest areas and the national
average. In fact we are seeing a consistent narrowing of the gap
on burglary, vehicle crime, education, employment, child pedestrian
accidents and a range of other areas. We have learned also that
it takes some time for the gestation of these partnerships to
run through, and so some LSPs are delivering truly outstanding
performance whilst others are still struggling to make a fist
of this.
Q312 Christine Russell: Is the principal
reason the lack of ability to work together, joined-up working,
is that the principal cause of where there has been slippage of
programmes or partnerships just not working?
Mr Montgomery: I think most problems
of programme slippage have now been overcome. The NRF spend is
coming through, the activity rate has rocketed even as the amount
of money given over to LSPs has increased, so I do not think that
remains a difficulty for LSPs.
Q313 Sir Paul Beresford: Is your area
subject to efficiency savings?
Mr Montgomery: It is subject to
efficiencies in terms of getting more productivity and better
outcomes from an increasing amount of money. What we have seen
in the most recent Spending Review is a sharpened and more demanding
set of floor targets applied to the agreed amounts of resource,
so greater expectations in exchange for greater resource.
Q314 Christine Russell: One of the principles
behind neighbourhood renewal is that once programmes have proved
successful then local authorities should mainstream their services,
that is correct, is it not?
Mr Montgomery: Yes, it is.
Q315 Christine Russell: What are you
going to do if, despite all the evidence that something like,
for instance, a community warden service has been incredibly successful,
a local authority shows no signs of mainstreaming that service?
Mr Montgomery: Firstly, I should
amend my last answer. It does not simply fall solely to local
authorities to take mainstreaming responsibilities, we are equally
demanding of primary care and the police, RDAs and other services.
Q316 Chairman: You have more people to
punish if they do not actually mainstream these activities?
Mr Montgomery: To respond to the
specific question, with the first wave of wardens funding, so
far we have found that upwards of 85% of the schemes in fact have
been taken on either by local authorities or housing associations,
or in fact sometimes even by the police. They have also contributed
to the continuation of these schemes because they have been able
clearly to identify that the costs they would have had to incur
in making good vandalism, graffiti and other problems actually
are outweighed by the savings they make in acting preventatively
through continuing support for wardens schemes. Mainstreaming
there plainly has been effective.
Q317 Christine Russell: How do you see
the Neighbourhood Renewal programme being rolled out over the
next three years? Do you see it focusing more perhaps on extending
the areas and perhaps moving into areas of deprivation which have
not benefited to date, or do you see where you have got the existing
Pathfinders the extent of the programmes they are running perhaps
being broadened? Where do you see the priorities?
Mr Montgomery: Priorities will
be decided upon by Ministers in a way which takes account of the
new Index of Multiple Deprivation, where, of course, some of the
88 local authorities which had been in receipt of NRF have fallen
out of that list of worst authorities, others have come in, so
Ministers will want to take account of that. Ministers will want
to take account also of the fact that there are more detailed,
more refined data sets available to us because we are able to
identify smaller pockets of deprivation even below the level of
ward boundaries. Also they will want to take account of which
LSPs have made best progress against floor targets, and consider
whether you want to reward those that are making a great effort
and doing very well; Ministers will want to take account of that.
Q318 Christine Russell: Are Ministers
going to take up account? When are we going to know what the priorities
are for this £525 million, when are we going to know where
that money is going to be spent?
Mr Montgomery: The LSPs currently
in receipt of Neighbourhood Renewal Fund have their resourcing
clear for the coming financial year, the year 2005-06 is already
settled, so Ministers have well in excess of a year to make the
considerations that I have described previously and give local
authorities clear allocations with more than sufficient time for
them to make their plans.
Q319 Christine Russell: I do not want
you to point the finger particularly, but, as you have made clear,
this is very much a programme which involves many, many partners.
In the experience of all the Pathfinders to date, is there any
government department which is not really putting its full backing
behind neighbourhood renewal? We do not mind if you tell tales.
Mr Montgomery: We have engaged
in some detail with each department and we have found them to
be responsive and they have pressed their local services delivery
agencies to pull their weight at the local level. What we have
seen though is differential results. The most intractable inequalities
are around health, especially with regard to life expectancy,
and we are looking forward to the Public Health White Paper which
the Department of Health will publish specifically to address
some of these issues.
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