UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 49 - v

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

PUBLIC administration SELECT COMMITTEE

 

 

CHOICE, VOICE AND PUBLIC SERVICES

 

 

THURSday 27 JANUARY 2005

MR STEPHEN TWIGG MP and RT HON NICK RAYNSFORD MP

Evidence heard in Public Questions 479 - 541

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Public Administration Select Committee

on Thursday 27 January 2005

Members present

Tony Wright, in the Chair

Mrs Anne Campbell

Mr David Heyes

Mr Kelvin Hopkins

Mr Gordon Prentice

________________

Memoranda submitted by Department for Education and Skills

and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Stephen Twigg a Member of the House, Minister of State, Department for Education and Skills, and the Rt Hon Nick Raynsford a Member of the House, Minister of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, examined.

Q479 Chairman: I welcome our witnesses this morning and call the Committee to order. This is the last evidence session in our inquiry into what we have been calling Choice and Voice in Public Services so we like to think that by now we know some of these issues. We wanted very much to hear from Ministers in key departments that have an interest in choice and voice issues; so it is appropriate that we should end with Nick Raynsford, Minister of State, ODPM, and Stephen Twigg, Minister of State at DfES. Thank you for coming along and the memoranda. Nick, can I ask you to start, to get a way in to thinking about choice and voice and the relationship between them. You are the Minister for Local Government. The old theory of voice goes that local government provides services; if people are not happy about them, they remove the people who provide them and put someone else in. That does not work in practice, does it - or does it?

Mr Raynsford: It works to a degree, but we have appreciated that the voice alone is probably not sufficient if you want to achieve really responsive public services. Let me give an illustration. The ability to vote out councillors if you are not satisfied with them has not been a motor to transform services such as the lettings service for council housing, which, probably for several decades, continued on an assumption that it was possible to operate an administrative system that would achieve fairness and would therefore meet the main objectives for which the council felt it was responsible. In reality, it created a framework where the public felt alienated. They did not understand the process and felt that they were largely left at the mercy of bureaucrats or others who would take decisions that they did not understand; and you and most other MPs will have had lots of experience of constituents coming to your surgery - and they certainly come to mine - expressing deep unhappiness about the way that system operated. It seemed to me, when I was Minister for Housing, that the logical answer was to try and work towards a system where individual applicants had more say in the process and were able to exercise a degree of choice, and in doing so would come to understand the constraints that inevitably apply in this kind of process. The experience of choice-based lettings is that it has made a remarkable change in the relationship both between applicants and the council and the council staff. It has helped improve the workings of the lettings system. In places like Newham we have seen the letting time halve since they have brought a choice-based system in, because people are more committed to properties if they have a say in the process, and are less likely to refuse an unpopular one if they know they might be there for only a short period of time because they can then exercise a further choice. There are all sorts of benefits that have come as a result of introducing a choice element, which did not come through the traditional process. I am not saying that it would not eventually have come, but I believe that simply relying on voice alone is not enough.

Q480 Chairman: I am sure we will come to examples as we go along, but I am trying to tease out what it is about the way in which we have accountability for services now which make them not very responsive to these performance factors. You have done some work on it, have you not, with the comprehensive performance assessment system that has been introduced, trying to make some connection between what happens when people vote and the published performance of local authorities? What does that reveal?

Mr Raynsford: The comprehensive performance assessment has been an attempt to provide detailed and objective evidence about the performance of local authorities, both their corporate performance - how they run their affairs and manage their finances, and how their resource management decisions are taken - and also looking at the performance of individual services. Together, from an aggregate of those assessments, an overall judgment is formed as to the performance of that local authority; but that is also used to drive improvement, whether in terms of corporate performance or individual services. This has informed decision-making, and it is noticeable that in some cases authorities that have been significantly worse than average, or those that are significantly better than average, have tended to buck the trend at elections. In 2003, for example, at the local elections, the Conservatives were generally doing well and getting significant gains in most parts of the country, but I take the south-west as an illustration. Two particular councils spectacularly bucked the trend. Plymouth went from Conservative to Labour control; and Torbay went from Conservative to Liberal Democrat control. I do not think it is coincidental that both of those councils received poor ratings in the comprehensive performance assessment, and there were clear problems associated with the authority. I believe that the assessment has helped - not everywhere, because it will not happen everywhere - but it has helped to inform the public, and that may give added force to the voice element.

Q481 Chairman: Therefore, would you urge a sensible consumer of local public services to vote for an authority in terms of their performance, as opposed to any existing political predilection?

Mr Raynsford: It is an interesting and difficult question for anyone who stands on a party ticket, but let me just say that I do not think local government has been well served in the past by a tendency to vote the party ticket irrespective of performance. It has been particularly depressing for councillors who have run their council well to find that they have been voted out of office because their party has been unpopular at a national level. I think it is right that people should be able to differentiate more, and processes like the comprehensive performance assessment do give information that enable the public to differentiate more.

Q482 Chairman: I am sorry to press you, but are you saying, as the Minister, "vote for performance not the party ticket"?

Mr Raynsford: Of course, it would be difficult to say that overtly for reasons you will fully understand, but you heard me say, and I will repeat it, that it is right that the electorate should be informed about performance and it is right that they should be able to form a judgment on performance.

Mr Twigg: For many local authorities education will be their biggest area of spend, and it is fair to say that it would be highly unusual for education performance, the performance of local schools or indeed the performance of the LEA to be the main, or even a major issue in a local election campaign. That demonstrates that that voice element which consists of the election of the local education authority can only be one of the ways in which we can secure improvement in schools.

Q483 Chairman: One of the things that everyone agrees on in the conversation about choice is that unless we have substantial capacity in systems, then choice in all kinds of ways will not exist, or at least it would be severely limited; and yet is it not the case that in relation to both social housing, which is your responsibility, Nick, and schools, this is precisely the problem? There is too little supply of the commodity that people want and too much demand for that commodity; so unless we do something pretty dramatic on the capacity side in these areas, we are not going to get hold of choice in a way that is going to bite, are we?

Mr Raynsford: Capacity is important, but it is not a block to the use of choice. Let me give two illustrations of that. When I was developing the idea of choice-based lettings, an awful lot of people said to me, "you are wasting your time; this is simply a non-starter, and in areas of high demand there is no way that you can have a choice-based system because the demand is far greater than the supply". I persevered, and I am pleased to say that one of the first successful pilots was in Camden, an area of very high demand. It revealed that there are certain efficiencies that come from a choice-based system, because if you can speed up lettings because there is a greater degree of willingness to move in to a property if you are committed to it - which is the case with a choice-based scheme, as against a traditional allocation scheme - then that in turn will help to tackle the problem of supply. While it will not overcome the problems, it will help. The other thing is that if you begin to look more widely than the immediate area and give people opportunities to consider options elsewhere that they may previously not have considered, then that too can help to relieve the pressure, because not everyone automatically feels they want to live in Camden. Very many people will, but there may be some who are willing to consider options elsewhere if there are opportunities to move, and particularly if they can get help with finding employment in the other area and so on. Information about a wider choice may help to achieve efficiency gains and make better use of the resources; and that is particularly relevant in a country where we have a mismatch between very high demand in relation to supply in the south, and quite low demand in relation to available supply in other parts of the country. Making better use of unused resources as part of a choice-based can improve the overall supply/demand equation. I accept that capacity is an issue, but I do not accept that it is a block to a choice-based system.

Q484 Chairman: We heard from the Director of Housing in Newham, who told us for example that popular properties might receive over 400 bids. Does that not make the case acutely that unless we get the supply side right, we can tell people how we have moved over to a choice system, but for them their chance of getting the properties they want does not seem better than it was before.

Mr Raynsford: But there are two other aspects to it. I have talked about greater efficiency. He may or may not have given you the evidence, but we certainly have the figures, that the average void time between lettings in Newham has fallen from 50 to 25 days as a result of the introduction of a choice-based letting scheme, so that is creating greater efficiency. The second point is that when people realise that the most popular properties have a very, very long waiting time, they may well themselves decide, rather than hanging on in the hope they might get that, to go for a second-best option where they can have a prospect of getting it sooner. In a situation where they have made that choice themselves, they may be a lot happier to go into it than if they are simply told, "you are not going to get the property of your choice; this is all we can offer you" in a traditional letting system. It can help both to extend the public's understanding of constraints and it can also help achieve efficiency gains along the lines I have described.

Q485 Chairman: This looks sometimes as though we are saying, "we cannot give you the choice that you want, but we are going to interest you in a different kind of choice that you do not particularly want but which we would like you to have". The DfES website advising parents says, "you should not risk wasting your first choice by choosing a school where you stand little chance of getting a place". We know that the volume of admissions appeals has gone up enormously in the last ten years. We are saying, "while we talk about choice, we cannot actually give you your choice, but be sensible and choose something else".

Mr Twigg: For choice to be a reality for parents, it is important that they have got information. Our website, along with a number of other vehicles, is a vital way of achieving that. Clearly, capacity is a constraint in terms of school choice, although I would make the point that at the moment we have about 700,000 surplus school places, so this is a picture that varies enormously from one part of the country to another. We allow therefore those schools that are successful and popular and want to expand, to expand. Another way is to put a lot of emphasis on our programmes on improving the other schools so that they can attract genuine support and can become first-choice schools. The other thing is to use the opportunity of the falling rolls that we have in many parts of the country to say that when an area is facing those falling rolls we do not necessarily want to see schools close down; it may be an opportunity to provide a wider range of choices in that area.

Q486 Chairman: We have asked this of other people, so let us take our town with two secondary schools. One is at the rough end of town, which people are not terribly keen to go to and does not perform very well, and one at the well-heeled end of town, which does very well and is top of the league tables, which everyone wants to go to and is over-subscribed. If I am in the rough end of town and hear about choice, and I think that it is a good idea and want to exercise choice, I would want to go to the other school. However, I apply and am told that I am outside the catchment area. How does choice connect with people in circumstances like that?

Mr Twigg: Let me say two things about that, Tony. Choice on its own, clearly, is not a sufficient mechanism to secure improvement in the school that is not doing as well, and that is why we have programmes like Excellence in Cities, the Academies Programme, et cetera, to focus on those schools. The other is to say that it will depend on what is decided locally should be the admissions criteria. Typically, the policy will be one that says it is siblings and then distance from school, but there are admissions policies that are allowable under our code that might well mean the person who lives at the rough end of town can still get in to the other school - for example the banding system that is still used in a number of London boroughs to ensure a comprehensive intake into schools. As we said in our evidence, most people live within a reasonable range of more than two secondary schools. We live in a very urban country, and whilst there is a set of issues for rural schools, which of course we need to face, from memory 70 per cent of secondary schools are within two miles of two other secondary schools; in other words, for most people they are within two miles of three different secondary schools, so choice is not necessarily the kind of relevance it is presented as being, even in those areas.

Chairman: I am sure we will want to explore some of those ideas shortly.

Q487 Mrs Campbell: Stephen, to follow up on that, one of the problems with choice is, is it not, that schools that are over-subscribed are able to select pupils, and they often select those pupils who are the least difficult, leaving the schools that people do not choose with the pupils that nobody wants. How are you going to overcome that problem?

Mr Twigg: We want to do all that we can to prevent schools from doing what you have described, and in particular undertaking covert forms of social and academic selection. That is why over the years we have made a number of changes to the code of practice under which school selection operates. My experience of these things is that they vary enormously from one locality to another. It depends on the relationships that exist between schools, between schools and the local education authority, as well as depending on the particular admissions policy that is adopted in that local area.

Q488 Mrs Campbell: That is all very well, but over a period of time that choice mechanism can lead to some schools doing extremely well and other schools doing worse than they would otherwise do. I have that situation in my own constituency of an increasingly diverse secondary sector. In addition, we observed that in Birmingham there is a multiplicity of choice - grammar schools, faith schools, specialist schools, single-sex schools, and academies coming along - but in reality a lot of parents do not have a choice because if their child does not pass the 11-plus or happens to be the wrong sex or of the wrong faith, then they are allocated to a school that does not have particularly good exam results. How do you overcome that? I thought that the system in Birmingham was a total mess, quite frankly.

Mr Twigg: What I would say about that is that we want to have admissions policies that are objective and fair. Those are the two key tests for any admissions policy. The typical policy will be one that is based on a sibling, special needs, and then distance from the school. That is the typical policy for pretty good reasons; there is something in terms of objectivity and also fairness that can be well justified with respect to those policies. The reason that we do not impose a national approach but allow these things to be determined locally is that what may be right for Birmingham may well not be right for rural Northumberland or for an inner or outer London borough. That is why we allow different practices to develop in different areas. I come back to the point that whilst choice is important in itself and can be a lever for improvement, on its own it is not enough. The school that you and Tony have described which languishes will often need extra support, be that in resources, be that a change of status or be that a change of leadership. Some of our most impressive programmes that have worked have been ones that recognise that alongside choice, and if they succeed they become schools that a lot of parents want to send their children to.

Q489 Mrs Campbell: Professor Brighouse suggested to us that difficult pupils should have a 300 per cent funding allocation awarded to them. Have you considered those kinds of schemes? Perhaps I can explain the other problem that I have first. In my area the schools that do well are the ones in middle-class areas, where there is a premium on the house prices in order to get your child into a particular school. It looks like a very fair and balanced admissions system, but because they are taking children from around the school what is happening is that parents who have sufficient money are paying a premium on their house prices in order to get their child into a particular school. That does not seem to me to be very fair; it is giving choice to those who are well off and not those who are not.

Mr Twigg: Let me address both points. I read Harry Brighouse's written evidence and his oral evidence here in the Committee. Actually, I took a look earlier on at the different per-pupil funding for different authorities. Whilst there is certainly not a 300 per cent uplift, there is a very significant difference between the per-pupil funding of Tower Hamlets, in the deprived East End of London, which has the highest per-pupil funding in the country, and per-pupil funding in some parts of the country. It is almost double, if you compare Tower Hamlets with other parts of the country. We therefore do already, within the funding system we have, recognise that pupils from deprived backgrounds and pupils where in the early years English is an additional language, for example, should carry a greater cost because that is something the school will require in order to educate them properly.

Q490 Mrs Campbell: Can I stop you there because actually people do not choose a local authority; they choose a school within a local authority. Therefore you have to have a system of allocation within local authorities that allocates more money to those pupils that have a deprived background or some special need.

Mr Twigg: You raise a really interesting issue about the balance of the responsibility of central government and local government with respect to funding of schools. As you will be aware, Anne, we have taken greater control centrally about the amount that has to be spent on schools at the local level, but the local authority still has the decision on the formula for dividing that money up. There is some evidence from IPPR which was published 18 months ago that whilst our formula is pretty re-distributive, the local formula often reverses the re‑distributive effect of the national formula, so that sometimes the better-off school is being funded just as well as the school in the poorer part of the area. We do have a responsibility in our discussions, as a department, with local authorities to correct that so that the needy school within the authority is benefiting, not just the local authority as a whole. On your second point about the impact of good schools on property prices and therefore who can afford to live near good schools, I have exactly the same experience in my own constituency with higher property prices close to popular schools. It is undeniably a feature of the system. There is clearly a range of different options to deal with that. One option, which is not exclusive but an option that we are pursuing, is to do everything we can to improve the other schools. You can have an impact in that way. However, in terms of a policy to deal with that, there are two different routes we can take. I mentioned banding, which is the system that the Inner London Education Authority used to use, and which quite a lot of London boroughs kept after ILEA was abolished, which says "we want X number of children in each ability band". The result of that is that if a school happens to be located in a very prosperous area, nevertheless children from further afield who may be in lower bands and in poorer areas of that borough or a neighbouring borough can get in. That is one policy that is adopted in some places. The other one, which I know the Committee has considered and discussed with Harry Brighouse and others, is to have a lottery to determine the over-subscribed places. Actually, there is nothing in our law or even in our code that says you cannot have a lottery. There is a school in Burnley that operates a lottery. It was challenged in the courts about ten years ago successfully, so it is still in place. One of the new academies in London, the Lewisham Academy, which brings together the Haberdasher's CTC with Mallory School, a struggling school, will have a policy where 50 per cent of its places on over-subscription are allocated by lottery within a wide catchment area. A lottery is a possible option within the code and law as it stands.

Q491 Mrs Campbell: I accept that it may be a possible option; I do not accept that there is any real incentive at the moment for particularly a good school, an over-subscribed school, to adopt a lottery system because the school will want to select its pupils as far as it can, and in handing it over to a lottery the school is then relinquishing control over the pupils it accepts. From the point of view of the parents who are trying to get their children into the school that they want, a lottery would be a much better system than the one we have at the moment.

Mr Twigg: There are some strengths in a lottery, but there are some very serious drawbacks as well, which Philip Hunter, when he gave evidence, set out very clearly, in terms of predictability for parents when they are applying. In some respects, clearly, a lottery system could be said to be fair because it removes covert selection or biases and discrimination within the system. On the other hand, a family that lives opposite a school that does not get its child into that school, and the family four miles away does, would probably not feel that it is a very fair system. There are arguments in terms of justice and fairness on both sides.

Mr Raynsford: Can I broaden this, because education is obviously not my field but there are wider philosophic issues here that are terribly important. The strength of feeling that leads so many parents to go to such extraordinary lengths, including moving house, in order to get the school of their choice, is a pretty clear indication of the importance that many members of the public attach to a degree of choice in that service, and that of course applies in others. Philosophically, we have to decide whether we are going to work with the grain of those instincts and find ways as far as possible to meet them while at the same time meeting other principles of equity, which are hugely important to us, or whether we try and stop any expression of that wish for choice. My own view, very strongly, is that you will always fail if you try to stop the process, because the wish for a degree of choice is so powerful that people will try and find other ways of achieving it. It is much better to try and work with the grain and find ways in which people can exercise a degree of choice, but at the same time combine it with safeguards but prevent it from producing the undesirable and inequitable outcomes that you have rightly highlighted.

Q492 Chairman: Surely, lotteries go with the grain? People love lotteries.

Mr Raynsford: I do not think there is any question of a lottery going with the grain in terms of school places because the reason people move their home is to get into a specific school, not in order to be in exactly the same position as anyone else.

Q493 Mr Prentice: What about where the exercise of choice conflicts with other public policy objectives? A couple of weeks ago we had the case of the Muslim girls' school in Bradford with the greatest added value of any secondary school in the United Kingdom. Should we be explicitly encouraging the establishment of single-sex Muslim schools?

Mr Twigg: There is a very important principle here about equity. For decades we have had publicly-funded Christian schools. They form a very substantial proportion of the schools in our country, and I do not think we could possibly say to the Muslim community or Sikh, Jewish or other communities, that what is okay for Christians is not okay for them. Absolutely in terms of equity, we need to give those schools that support.

Q494 Mr Prentice: We have had all these reports talking about community cohesion.

Mr Twigg: Absolutely.

Q495 Mr Prentice: We do not want a balkanised school system where children of a particular faith and a particular race are isolated from their peers of a different religion. Do we really want to go down that road?

Mr Twigg: No, we do not want to go down that road. What is quite interesting, looking at those reports - and my understanding of the situation in some of the northern towns where there were disturbances - is that typically the major factors that resulted in segregation were to do with housing policy rather than education policy. These were not necessarily places that had Muslim schools, certainly not state Muslim schools. I think we should respect the fact that many parents want faith-based education, but at the same time place responsibilities on all schools, including faith schools, to promote race equality, community cohesion and inter-faith dialogue. I am very keen not to say "no" to the Muslim girls' school being a state school, but to say to them, "yes, you can be a state school, but we want you working with the local Catholic school, the local non-faith school". I think that is more realistic and fairer. We have to remember there is always the choice of going private, and many of these state Muslim schools that have grown up in recent years are not newly created from kids that previously went to secular state schools; they were previously private Muslim schools. I would much rather have those schools in the state system and part of the local family of schools, with regulation and having to teach the National Curriculum, than existing independently of the state system.

Q496 Mr Prentice: I understand that, but the Government is actively promoting faith schools. Given that we are talking about a choice agenda, should the Government be encouraging Muslim parents to exercise that choice?

Mr Twigg: I need to be clear that we are not saying that there is the active promotion by Government of new faith schools; that is not the policy. We are saying that we recognise that there is the desire in some places either for existing independent faith schools, particularly in the Muslim community, to come into the state system, or in some cases for new schools, and we want to ensure that those communities have a level playing-field and access to resources so that they can create those schools. I do not go out into communities I visit and say, "why do you not think about setting up a new school" or "why does your independent school not become a state school?" It very much depends on local circumstances and local discussion and the desire for that to happen.

Q497 Mr Heyes: Stephen has talked about secondary school segregation deriving from housing policy. I can give you a very powerful example of where I think you are wrong about that. My home town is Oldham and there are two secondary schools within a quarter of a mile or less, very close to the town centre, in fact one on each side of where the riots took place. One school is almost an exclusively white Church of England school, and the other school is 98 per cent Bangladeshi/Asian. Those schools are surrounded by mixes and pockets of population, but they derive from choice. It is selection masquerading as choice through the existing system. The hands-off approach, or encouragement of further choice is digging those community tensions in even deeper. The inquiry we had into Oldham talked about the need to generate community cohesion through breaking down those educational divides. What Government policy currently does is replicate and reinforce that segregation. Nothing has been done to address that core problem. The root of the problems in Oldham persists and nothing has been done about it.

Mr Twigg: What we say to those who wish to set up and provide a new faith school is that we want to see what their plans are with respect to race equality and community cohesion, which was not said before but which was part of our response to the Cantle report and other reports. I would have to look into the specific instance of the two schools in Oldham, but in my broader experience the Church of England has been willing to consider a number of places being open to those not of the Anglican faith.

Q498 Mr Heyes: There is some tokenism.

Mr Twigg: That is important if we are going to have the potential to open those schools up to people from different faiths. In other parts of the country, there is not necessarily that relationship between the faith and the ethnic origin. Many London Anglican and Catholic schools are hugely multi-faith because a lot of black kids get in because they are Catholic or Anglican.

Q499 Chairman: Does this not test the whole faith school issue and the issue of individual choice against what you might call collective choice? A group or individual may want a single-faith education for their child, but collectively we may want our children to grow up in a society where faiths connect and there is no segregation in the school system. You have two objectives here that are incompatible. Somebody has to decide where to cut this. One way would be to say that we are stuck with faith schools because we have always had them and it would be unfair to deny them to other groups, but we could at least make sure that they could only take a certain percentage of people from that faith, and therefore they had to become multi-faith schools.

Mr Twigg: Our task is to balance those two objectives. I accept that there can be a tension between the two objectives. Clearly, the vast bulk of faith schools are those provided by the Catholic church and the Anglican Church, both of which have shown themselves amenable to taking sometimes significant number of children who are not from that faith. I do not think it is necessarily tokenism on their part. It would be very difficult to say to new schools, whether they be Muslim or Jewish schools, "we expect you to set up a new school and then require that the majority of places do not go to children from your faith." I do not think that would be seen as us taking seriously the desire in those communities to have faith-based education.

Q500 Chairman: You could change the rules for all faith schools so that a faith can set up a school, as any provider can set up a school. We want all kinds of groups to set up schools, but we could say that because we want to be a certain kind of society, you have to take a certain percentage of people who are not from your faith. Would that not be a way of getting the balance better?

Mr Twigg: I think that would be very difficult in practice to implement, and a much better way of achieving what you have described, with which I agree as an objective, is to say that we want schools to work together. We want to break down barriers between schools and promote opportunities for joint activity between schools. The whole area of 14-19 educational reform gives us an incredible opportunity to do this. That, by the way, is another element of choice. A lot of the discussion about choice is choice between institutions. There is also, just as importantly, choice within education for the learner.

Q501 Mr Hopkins: Britain is characterised by deep social divisions, in contrast with several other continental European countries; and these are most marked in education. Is that not the result of the fact that we have had choice in education for a long time? We have had a fragmented, disparate, hierarchical education system, with some private, some public, some independent and some not, and we have allowed this system to develop, and the social divisions that have gone along with it. Society has effectively allowed the middle-class, who are very energetic about schools, to have what they want, and said "the Devil take the hindmost". Society has said, "we do not really care much about the bottom 30 per cent."

Mr Twigg: I do not think it is primarily. I agree that clearly our education system has a major role to play in bringing about a more just society and has played a part in the injustice you have rightly described, but the factors that lead to the wide gap in terms of outcomes between the richest and the poorest are far more deep-rooted and widespread than simply being about education itself. One of your other witnesses went into this very eloquently - it might have been Harry Brighouse - and put a very powerful case about child poverty and the impact that has before kids are even at school. What is striking, and I suppose quite depressing, is that some of these social divisions have been there, whether we had the 11+ or comprehensives, whether we had kids going to their local school or the kind of open enrolment and choice that we have had over the last 20-25 years. That says to me that we have to have a focused government approach locally and nationally to those schools that are failing. That is why Excellence in Cities, the Academy Programme, and support for schools facing challenging circumstances and the funding policies matter. I do not think choice undermines that, but I accept that choice on its own will not deliver the improvements in schools in inner-city Manchester or inner-city London that is needed; we need those other programmes as well.

Q502 Mr Hopkins: I am pleased to say that precisely that approach, taking failing schools, giving them extra resources and boosting them has worked in my constituency. Poor schools out of special measures are doing well. However, that is an entirely different approach. That is a planning approach; it is the Government deciding what needs to be done and doing it to help the least well-off. It is not simply a market in education. It is not, as some people suggest, allowing the effective schools to grow and the other schools to close. It is the opposite of the market; it is intervening in the market place to even things up.

Mr Twigg: I certainly do not favour a free market in the schools system. I do not think that that would be a sensible policy approach to take at all. I do think that you can combine elements of a market approach with the kind of planned approach that you have described, Kelvin. That is what we are seeking to do. If we succeed, as you think we are on track in doing in your constituency, then we get to the position where far more parents have a real choice and far more parents have faith in the local school. That, for me, is what all of these different policy programmes seek to achieve. Choice can be a position lever for achieving that, or it can be neutral. I do not think that choice itself undermines the achievement of good quality schools in every neighbourhood.

Q503 Mr Hopkins: In relation to faith schools, in my constituency there is a large Catholic school but there are more Catholics than can possibly go to that school and effectively that becomes selective. The pressure on that school is also to perform well at GCSE and A-Level, and therefore the temptation to exclude less able pupils at 11 and to take in middle-class pupils is very great; and the faith schools effectively become selective schools. If you had banding as well, insisting there was a balanced population in those schools, it would be very different, but that is not what the faith schools want.

Mr Twigg: To be fair to the Catholic Education Service and the Anglican Church, when we discussed this a couple of years ago, they were very supportive of the ways in which we have strengthened the code under which Catholic, Anglican and other schools have to operate; so that for example the practice of interviewing that was used by a very small number of schools, was outlawed in the code, with the support of the Catholic Education Service and the Anglican Church. I do not in any sense deny that what you have described to happen. To be fair, it does not only happen in faith schools, but it can happen with others as well. What we have sought to do through the code of practice we operate is to remove those sorts of practices so that the over-subscription criteria are genuinely fair and sound.

Q504 Mr Hopkins: If, instead of pursuing the choice agenda, a combination of banding, which I think is a good idea in urban areas, plus the intervention to bring failing schools and guaranteeing there is equal performance and equal provision in every school, that would stop the middle class panicking that their children are going to go to a poor school, and the thing would settle down and one could have genuinely good performance throughout the system.

Mr Twigg: I do not disagree with the different elements you have described. In some areas there is a case for banding, and that is allowed within the code and the law as it stands. What I think, though, is that there is a danger that if you take choice out of the system, then there will be a loss of faith in that system. There then is always a choice for those who can afford it, which is to go private. Some of the work I have been involved in in the Department over the last two years is working specifically with London secondary schools. There is a particular set of issues in London, with a larger number of secondary aged children going to private schools, and a much higher level of parental dissatisfaction with the schools system. If we were to say that in London - but this would apply elsewhere - we are going to remove choice and go to the system that still operates in much of America, where you are simply told to go to school, then we will see even more parents sending their kids to private schools. It is not only affluent middle-class parents in London who do this; a lot of struggling parents will put all their savings into escaping the state system in London. We have to change that. How you change it is with a variety of things, including some of those that you have mentioned; but choice has an important part to play in bringing about that change.

Q505 Mr Hopkins: I think it is admirable that our new Secretary of State has said she will send her children to state schools in her borough of London. On housing, Nick seems to be suggesting that what we are really doing is managing expectations downwards for those who cannot afford owner-occupation and saying, "if you cannot get into owner-occupation, do not expect society to provide decent housing any more; we are going to wind down your expectations, and we are going to do it under these kinds of choice". It will be like the lottery. The chances of winning the lottery are very, very small, but if you hold out that hope it gives people a little buzz every week to see if they have made it to the best house on the block; but it will not happen for most people. Managing down expectations contrasts with the post-war Labour government, which decided to build decent homes for ordinary people. I remember fifty years ago, when I was a schoolboy, I lived in owner-occupation - one of the few - but they were housed in decent homes with three bedrooms and gardens, which now sell for a third of a million pounds in the Borough of Barnet; but they are no longer available for ordinary families. Is that not what we are doing, managing down?

Mr Raynsford: No, it is not, and I think what you do not recognise is the extraordinary change in society since that period. The response in the immediate post-war period, when there was a serious shortage of housing as a result of bomb damage and lack of investment over the war years, plus the legacy of inherited slum housing from the 19^th century, required an enormous programme. At that stage the assumption was that people would be living in mono-tenure estates, all tenants in the estate with no variety at all, and people would accept very little choice. The stories were rife about how doors were all painted the same colour and so forth. Society has changed since then. At that time, most people on modest means did not have very much choice in most aspects of their lives. On the whole, they had little choice over where they worked, and in many communities it was almost inevitable, if you grew up in a particular community, you would work in the industry that dominated that communicated, whether it was an agricultural community or an urban one. You did not have very much choice about your housing. If the council did not offer you a house, you would probably have little or no other alternatives, and choice was not a major player in people's lives. It is now; people expect to have far greater say over an enormous number of things. To assume that somehow the public sector can operate in a parallel universe where choice does not apply seems to me to be delusional. People expect to choose where they work, and if they do not like the job they will move to another one. People expect to choose where they go on holiday and do not expect to be regimented and told there is only one option - "you can go to one particular holiday resort and that is the only choice open to you". People do expect choice in every other aspect of your lives, and to say you will not have a choice in housing is entirely fallacious. Of course, the growth in owner-occupation has reflected the aspirations of people who wanted a different option. What we now see is the mistake of having many estates with only people of one economic grouping living in the same area. There are obvious advantages in having mixed communities, where you can have options for people to rent and to buy side by side. Our overall housing policy is the creation of sustainable communities through mixed developments, giving greater choice in purchase as against renting, and crucially opportunities for low-cost home ownership for those people who aspire to buy but do not have the means to buy outright, which is why a great deal of focus currently is being put on key-worker housing and other low-cost home ownership initiatives. As part of that process we believe very strongly that people should be able to exercise a degree of choice about where they live, rather than depending on a bureaucrat to tell them "this is the house we have decided you ought to live in". That is, frankly, not compatible with the aspirations of today's society.

Q506 Mr Hopkins: You said that choice depends on having surplus. If one compares Luton, where I live, and which I represent now, with its enormous waiting list and many people living in inadequate circumstances, with the 1970s when I was vice-chair of the housing committee, we built hundreds of council houses every year and brought the housing waiting list right down so that one could choose one's estate and one could almost choose the road and choose to live near one's relatives and friends. That was real choice because there was plenty of housing. Now the houses have been sold on, house-building has stopped and there are plans to get rid of a lot of it into other sectors, where the local authority will have less control over what happens, and that choice will go. My impression from what you said earlier still is that what you are doing is reducing people's expectations, saying "you are not an owner-occupier; do not expect too much".

Mr Raynsford: It is quite the opposite, as I stressed. We are trying to promote mixed developments where people will have an opportunity to rent or to buy and there would be mixed tenure options for part ownership for those who cannot afford outright a house purchase. Do let us remember that people are not condemned to a particular economic status throughout their lives. People's economic circumstances change, and people who may for a period of time have been renting a home may well, as their circumstances improve want to move into owner-occupation. We should give them that choice. We should not say, "you will always live in one particular tenure". Conversely, older people may well require a lot more support and assistance, and it may be entirely appropriate for them to move out of outright owner-occupation using some of the equity in their home perhaps to purchase services, which is far better arranged through some kind of intermediate tenure, shared-ownership tenure.

Q507 Mr Hopkins: You are not suggesting an alternative to what I am suggesting, I am suggesting that mine should be as well. You are suggesting that having varied estates and not having mono-designed houses, but we can do all that in a planned way. Local authorities can be given their head, and with a bit of inspiration and guidance from Government could do that. They could do all the things you say, and it is absolutely right; but there are still not enough decent homes for people. They do not have space and gardens, and there are families with children in tower blocks who cannot go out because it is not safe. That is what we are moving towards, and instead of building the houses that people really want, which are houses with gardens, or low-rise flats or whatever.

Mr Raynsford: I would agree with you that there is still a real problem of shortage in many parts of the country; and that is why we are addressing the needs particularly of the growth areas in the south-east to ensure that there is an additional supply of housing; but that has to be a range of different housing types and tenures and sizes to deal with people's needs, and it has to allow flexibility. In my view it would be a great mistake to say that the council should determine outcomes because, frankly, we now know that about 70 per cent are currently living in owner-occupation nationally, and the aspirations of about 80 per cent of the public are to be owner-occupiers. It would be quite wrong to say the whole housing process should be driven by local authority housing, which will represent only 15-20 per cent of the total broadly nationally. I know in some areas it will be different. That is why a strategic view of overall housing need, recognising the different roles that different providers can play, and ensuring that there is a wider choice for people between different types of housing and different tenures, must be part of the pattern in the future.

Q508 Mr Hopkins: This very year, because of the increase in house prices, we have had the lowest level of first-time buyers for generations, because they cannot afford to get into owner-occupation. They need decent homes to live in. The private market cannot provide it. Private renting is expensive and may not be appropriate. Is it not really the case that some day government has to think about providing decent homes, perhaps with a national housing initiative, rather than a local initiative, for those for whom owner-occupation and decent housing cannot be provided in any other way?

Mr Raynsford: I agree with you that government has responsibility to ensure that the framework is in place for the supply of an appropriate range of housing, but I do not believe that it is right that government should be providing all this, or local government. We live in a pluralist society. The private sector provides for about 75 per cent of people's housing needs and will continue to play a major role. It would be delusional to pretend that is not part of the scene, so we need to work with the private sector on mixed developments to ensure that there are opportunities for low-cost home ownership; and as far as your illustrations of key-workers and others wanting to buy and not being able to do so because of adverse market circumstances, that is precisely why we are developing our new schemes for low-cost home ownership options and key-worker housing.

The Committee suspended from 3.29 pm to 3.42 pm for a Division in the House of Commons

 

Chairman: Apologies to everyone for the interruption. We shall move into the last period of our session. I think we had reached a natural break point when we stopped. I think we had completed your answer. Let me bring in David Heyes to continue the questioning.

Q509 Mr Heyes: Can I ask you about housing stock transfer. You knew you were going to get that at some point. Is it right that the present cohorted tenant should be making decisions about the future of large tranches of public housing in the way that has been happening all over the country?

Mr Raynsford: It is right that tenants should have a degree of choice about their future, and it is difficult to see how you can avoid, if you are giving people a choice, having consequences in the longer term; because if their choice is to vote for a stock transfer, then that transfer takes place and that is the new reality. The important thing is that tenants should have an opportunity to assess the implications to reach a decision and, above all, that we should be operating in a more pluralist framework than in the past when the number of choices was very limited indeed and we essentially had a single monolithic local authority dominated public sector and owner occupation was the only alternative. What we are moving towards is a much more pluralist framework where we have not just outright owner occupation but opportunities for low‑cost home ownership and where the rented sector is made up of a range of different bodies, including registered social landlords, local authority directly run properties, local authorities operating through arms' length management organisations (ALMOs) and tenant cooperatives, which, sadly, never really expanded in the way that I know a number of us would have hoped, but they still play a significant role in some areas.

Q510 Mr Heyes: We had evidence from a housing director from Newham. My question really is why give the present cohorted tenants that crucial decision about where this large stock of publicly owned housing goes, how it should be owned and run, how it should be managed in the future? If that is government policy, if that is what the decision is, why not just do it? Why not make the decision and announce it?

Mr Raynsford: Of course, in the past there was no choice. The previous cohorts were simply told, "You either stay in slum housing or you move into council housing." Those were the options. I think it is much better that there is degree of choice.

Q511 Mr Heyes: Except we are in a different age. People's housing needs have changed, expectations have changed. We are in a different world.

Mr Raynsford: I agree, and that is why I believe that people should have a choice, but it is difficult, going back to your first question, to see how that choice can be exercised without having long‑term consequences. If the property does transfer, then there is a new landlord and you cannot simply unscramble that because the next generation wants to take a different view.

Q512 Mr Heyes: Forgive me, that does not really address my point. Why give that choice to the people who currently happen to occupy that block of public sector housing if the Government decide that public policy is that it should no longer be managed to run in that way? Why give the decision away to the people who currently live there? As you said yourself, there should be much more flexibility in the housing market. People can move in and out of the rented sector, in and out of the unoccupied sector?

Mr Raynsford: The Government policy is to give greater choice, and that is exactly why we are doing this, and, as part of that, what we are doing is helping to develop a more pluralist framework where in future there will be a greater range and variety of providers. I think that will help to drive up standards, and I think it will satisfy the aspirations of the public to have a greater choice about tenures available to them.

Q513 Mr Heyes: The pluralist framework that excludes local authority ownership?

Mr Raynsford: Do remember that there has been a very significant transfer from local authority ownership into owner occupation over the last 20 years as a result of the right to buy. That has had one very beneficial effect in terms of creating more diverse estates instead of single tenure estates. You now have owner occupiers living side by side the tenants. It has had a disadvantageous impact in that throughout the lifetime of the previous Government local authorities were not free to reinvest the proceeds in the provision of new housing. As I said earlier in response to Kelvin's question, we do recognise the need for more housing, but we want that to be provided in a more pluralist way rather than the creation of single tenure estates in the future.

Q514 Mr Heyes: The people at Birmingham that we spoke to, the housing professionals, but, more particularly and more relevantly, the representatives of the tenants, felt that they had been denied a real choice in that they had made their decision through a popular ballot and overwhelmingly their preference was not to go for any of the new directions for managing public sector stock but to stay with the local authority. If a single reason came out of that from them, and we pressed them for their thinking on it, it was about trust, trust in the way that the local authority had done it, and they understood arguments about less available resources as a result of that choice, but they said nonetheless, "We want to stay with the local authority. We trust them." They also went on to say, "We now feel we are being denied the ability to carry through that decision that we made through our collective popular choice."

Mr Raynsford: Bearing mind it is one of the largest local authority housing stocks in the country, if not the largest, inevitably you will have a greater variety of opinion within that number of tenants. My understanding is that the current approach in Birmingham, which is very consistent with its local authority policy to devolve power to 11 area committees, is to work with the tenants' groups in the different areas exploring the best options for improving the standard of homes in those areas. That, I suspect, may well lead to a more diverse outcome in that there may be support for stock transfer in some parts of Birmingham, but not others, and, if I think by back to my own area, there has been a stock transfer of approximately 1,300 properties in one part of Greenwich, and the tenants are generally very satisfied with that - it has led to a considerable improvement in the physical conditions - but the vast majority of 25,000 or so other properties in the local authority's ownership remain in council ownership. That kind of more pluralist pattern, I suspect, we may see more of in the future.

Q515 Mr Prentice: Why do you not just be up front about it and say the Government really wants to remove council house ownership completely?

Mr Raynsford: We do not. We believe very strongly in a pluralist framework in which the public has a choice between a range of providers, local authorities are no longer the monopoly providers of housing; because I think there are problems with that monopoly position. We can explore that if you would like, but you as well as I have had experience of some of the practical difficulties of insensitive management in the past from local authority monopoly landlords who did not face any challenge. I think there are clear benefits in that, and there are also advantages in that a more diverse framework allows us not just to invest in local authority stock but to lever in additional private finance through RSLs which make it easier for us to meet our Decent Homes Standard.

Q516 Mr Prentice: I understand that, but people would say (and forgive me for using the cliché) that there is not a level playing field here. We had people from Defend Council Housing and we spoke to people up in Birmingham who told us that everything is stacked against those tenants who want to stay with the local authority in terms of funding, and so on; but you would reject that, would you not?

Mr Raynsford: I would indeed. I think that the ALMO initiative has been an extraordinarily successful one which has provided a framework under which a lot of extra finance has gone into local authority housing with a clear incentive to improve standards, and that, we think, is important. It remains in local authority ownership and the tenant's satisfaction ratings are substantially higher. It is a real success story.

Q517 Mr Prentice: What happened to the fourth option? The Deputy Prime Minister, I think, mentioned the fourth option at the Labour Party Conference last year and the largest affiliate to the Labour Party, Unison, has sent out briefing materials saying, "What has happened to the fourth option?" The fourth option is allowing local authorities the capital (the finance) to invest in their own housing stock. What happened to the fourth option?

Mr Raynsford: There never was a fourth option. Of course, when you describe it in those terms, it highlights why there is not: because local authorities are public bodies and it is simply not possible for public bodies to have free access to private borrowing without that affecting the public sector borrowing requirement. That is why we have always said that there must be controls over public levels of borrowing. We have relaxed them with the prudential regime - there is no question about that - though we have kept some safeguards in relation to the national finances. We cannot simply allow unlimited borrowing by local authorities. We therefore provided a framework whereby authorities that meet the performance standards can secure additional funding for an ALMO, which enables the property to remain within local authority ownership but with a more focused management to deliver the higher standards that we want to see. Those authorities that want to remain purely traditional landlords in the old style are free to do so. They have to work within the existing framework of finance for local government. Those who opt for a stock transfer, the housing association will be able to lever in additional private finance, and that will probably mean that they can achieve a faster rate of improvement of the housing stock. There are differences ‑ I accept that entirely ‑ but it is not the case in any way that the playing field is stacked against local authorities.

Q518 Mr Prentice: Except we get evidence from all sorts of people who say that over the years the Treasury has creamed off money, the rents paid by tenants, and if there was any equity then that money which has been creamed off by the Treasury over the years would go back into improving local authority housing stock. We got that from Defend Council Housing and their allies.

Mr Raynsford: Defend Council Housing have a parti pris, as you know. They do not always have a thorough grasp on economics, I have to say, but I can tell you that the Treasury has been very supportive of our initiatives to invest additional funding, substantial additional funding, in the improvement of the council housing stock. A million council homes have been brought up already to the Decent Homes Standard. That has been a transformation of conditions for a very large number of council tenants. We have the target, obviously, to extend this throughout the remaining million. There is substantial investment going into council housing from the Treasury. If I can pursue this level playing field a little further, when I talk to tenants I hear different arguments. I hear the argument that housing association rents are too high and they have not been given enough subsidy to keep their rent levels down in line with council rent levels. Whichever side of the field you are on it always looks a bit greener on the other side.

Q519 Mr Prentice: I understand that. The way to resolve these issues typically is to have a vote. The issues crystalise, people think about the issues and they vote and that lays the matter to rest. The tenants in Birmingham had a vote in 2002, and I think they voted 75 per cent to 25 per cent, or something like that, to stay with the council. Now you are telling us ‑ and we heard this when we were up in Birmingham ‑ that there are new formulations emerging, that perhaps part of the council's housing stock could transfer and other parts could not. No matter how hard they try, if they make a decision, the Government is going to be snapping at their heels saying, "Think again." That is the reality?

Mr Raynsford: If I can take your figures, and I have not been Housing Minister since 2001 so I do not have the figures immediately to hand, but I do have some understanding of the subject.

Q520 Mr Prentice: I know you do.

Mr Raynsford: If I take your figures, a city the size of Birmingham with a huge population, the largest housing stock in the country, if 25 per cent of tenants voted in favour of transfer is it wrong that there should be an option whereby a proportion of the housing stock should transfer? That is all that has been explored at the moment.

Mr Prentice: That is in an interesting concept, is it not?

Chairman: Proportional representation!

Q521 Mr Prentice: Yes. The other interesting thing that we found when we were talking to Birmingham tenants was that, even though they had rejected housing stock transfer, they were more involved than ever before in determining housing policy. They had a say in the cleaning contracts that were awarded and they had a say even in matters like appointing staff. Is it not possible to improve public services, in this case council housing, rather than go down the institutional road, housing associations? Why do we not just open it up and empower (to use the jargon) tenants to take control and change council housing?

Mr Raynsford: Absolutely. We very strongly supported that and we are going on supporting that. There are lots of examples, particularly the neighbourhood renewal areas that we strongly support and finance, where tenants are actively involved in the housing management, where there is considerable evidence of improvement. It is not just in neighbourhood renewal areas, but those are ones which we particularly keep a watch on because they are funded directly by our department. We see it there, we encourage it elsewhere, but I have to say, if you take my initial overall analysis that you will tend to have a better outcome in a pluralist framework where there are a range of providers, there is nothing wrong in having a mixture of initiatives designed like the ones you have described, the bottom up approaches, tenant participation to drive up standards, but also the option of a transfer if people want that.

Q522 Mr Prentice: I understand that. There is a problem in politics, is there not, that very often people make impossible demands?

Mr Raynsford: Yes.

Q523 Mr Prentice: We, the politicians, have got to find clever ways of telling them that what they want is unachievable. In answer to Kelvin, I think, talking about choice‑based lettings, I jotted down when you were speaking in your introductory remarks that one of the advantages of this is that people would understand the constraints. Is that not very useful from the Government's point of view if you construct systems where people understand the constraints, learn the constraints and do not make these demands? Forget about this public sector borrowing requirement, for God's sake. Let us put more money directly into council housing.

Mr Raynsford: We have put a very substantial additional amount of money into council housing - it is hugely increased - but, to come down to your point, what we are trying to do is to give people more choice, and choice does mean looking realistically at the options and deciding which are the best. If someone is thinking of buying a house, they cannot go and seek to buy a property which they have no means of paying for. That is a constraint they have to be aware of. In the case of council housing, because the rent profiles on the whole do not differentiate very much between the most attractive and the least attractive stock, that kind of constraint is not there to the same degree. It is often the case that people do hold out for the most attractive properties, understandably. If they are not aware of the implications of that, they may well stay on the waiting list for a long period of time hoping that they are going to get their most desirable property and not take a second‑best option which might be available much more quickly to them. This is not about depressing expectations, it is about telling people realistically what the prospects are. The other huge advantage, and it is a huge advantage, is that under the old system, the old allocation framework, people were very reluctant to take less desirable properties - you must have come across this frequently - because people feared that, once they had gone into it and accepted it, they would be stuck there for life because of the rigidities in the letting system - unless they could prove exceptional needs, they would be condemned to live there for ever, so they would not accept a slightly sub‑optimal option - whereas if there was a choice‑based system and people can accept, even temporarily, knowing that they have then got the option of looking for somewhere else, they are much more likely to do so. You can cynically say this is depressing expectations. I do not think it is that at all. I think it is helping people to make realistic choices and giving them a greater opportunity to get something that more satisfies their needs.

Q524 Mr Prentice: I understand all that. We have touched on the experience in Newham a number of times, and when the Director of Housing came before us he told us (and Tony referred to this earlier) that in the popular areas of Newham the waiting time can be eight or nine years. Who are the people who opt for the most popular areas if they have to wait eight or nine years?

Mr Raynsford: That may well be one of the consequences of the past, that people still hanker after some of the most popular properties even though the chance of them getting it is going to be terribly limited. What I can say to you in response is the more you widen up options and choice, the more it is known to people, to tenants in Newham, that if they opt for either a slightly less popular area of Newham or if they have the option or looking beyond Newham, to Waltham Forest or possibly even outside London where there might be much shorter waiting times, they can meet their housing needs far more quickly and as a result be a happier tenant.

Q525 Mr Prentice: Why does not the Government just roll this out nationwide?

Mr Raynsford: We are.

Q526 Mr Prentice: Bringing legislation so that all local authorities, where the stock is not transferred, will be obliged to adopt this choice‑based letting scheme?

Mr Raynsford: We have a programme to extend choice‑based lettings across the country.

Q527 Mr Prentice: This is not a housing committee, so I can confess ignorance.

Mr Raynsford: There is a programme to extend choice‑based lettings across the country by 2010, but not just for local authorities, because it should embrace registered social landlords and, if possible, in certain circumstances, the private sector as well, because that is just extending options and making it possible for people to weigh up different choices.

Q528 Mr Prentice: This will apply to all local authorities?

Mr Raynsford: Our policy is to extend choice‑based lettings across the country, yes.

Q529 Mr Hopkins: I cannot get away from the thought that you really are saying we are managing down expectations.

Mr Raynsford: No, we are not.

Q530 Mr Hopkins: That is the impression I have. I say this, because in the 1970s, compared with now, in my own local authority we had a transfer list, as we do now, but in those days it was easy to transfer because we were building new houses all the time. You talked about the most attractive properties. If there was a demand for extra nice houses with gardens, we built nice houses with gardens. We built hundreds of them every year, with a nice Labour Government being very supportive, and it worked. Thousands of people were rehoused, the waiting list came right down and there was not a problem; everybody cheered?

Mr Raynsford: My recollection of the 1970s is very different. I was working for a shelter agency in the 1970s and there were acute problems, serious problems, so much so that we had to press for legislation to ensure greater protection for homeless people and there were serious problems of housing shortage. Therefore I do not accept that rosy view of life in the seventies. I will say, however, that we are not about depressing expectations at all; we are about widening choices and options, but we are also about making it practicable for people to assess the different options available to them. Going back to the point I made in response to one of Gordon's questions, if people are nervous about accepting second‑best because they think they may be trapped there for life, they will hold out for something that is every desirable, even though it may be a long time before they will get there, simply because the number of very desirable properties are limited in whatever framework you have.

Chairman: Before we are all tempted to give our recollection of the 1970s, are we going to move on to something else?

Mr Prentice: I hope so?

Chairman: Let us move on briefly to something else.

Mr Hopkins: I have laboured the point.

Chairman: We have had a good go at it, and, as Gordon reminded us, we are not the ODPM Committee, or, indeed, the education committee, so we can feign innocence on all fronts.

Mr Prentice: I am interested in what should happen to those under‑performing corners of the public sector in this new era of greater choice. I was reading Alan Milburn's speech, Power to the People (December 8), and he talks about greater choice and he talks about the Government's reforms to extend choice should be driven forward in education and housing as well as hospitals and surgeries. We had John Hutton in front of us, was it last week, and he had the look of a true believer. He told us that if there were under‑performing areas of the National Health Service, and he cited a dermatology department, and no‑one was going to this dermatology department, it would be closed down and it would be like putting 20,000 volts through the National Health Service and all the dermatologists out there would freak out and improve their game.

Chairman: Gordon is now paraphrasing. I have read the transcript and I think it was you that used the words "freak out" and not John! Anyway, you have the gist of it.

Q531 Mr Prentice: Take the case of schools. If a school is under‑performing in this brave new world, should it be closed down?

Mr Twigg: Possibly, and we have closed schools and local authorities have closed schools. I think school closure is the ultimate threat. It is the ultimate lever. It is clearly not ideal to close down a school unless it is for reasons of falling rolls. What we want to do is to see schools improve rather than be closed down. For example, we are trying all sorts of different methods where schools cluster together, form federations. I gave an example earlier in the discussion about lotteries of a new academy in Lewisham that is combining Haberdashers, which is a city technology college, with Mallory, which was seen as a struggling local school. One option might have been to close Mallory down. That would not have worked in terms of the demography of the local area - the need for school places - so instead a new school combining the two schools is being created, and there is a very strong sense of optimism locally about what that can achieve. So, yes, we can close schools, yes, we do close schools. Some of the academies are new schools that are built in place of existing schools that have closed down, but that is our ultimate weapon. We have lots other levers we can use to bring about the school improvement that we want to see.

Q532 Mr Prentice: What about in housing?

Mr Raynsford: It is not the case of closing down a failing housing department, it is a question of taking action to improve that department, but it is right, in our view, that tenants should have the option of transferring to another landlord if they believe that this would deliver them a better service, and that is why the stock transfer programme provides that option. Interestingly, in the course of the last 12 months there have been 17 ballots on stock transfer. One has voted, "No", but 16 have voted, "Yes", and that is an indication that that is quite a powerful route available for tenants who are not satisfied with the performance of their local authority landlord.

Mr Twigg: I answered your question, Gordon, in term of schools. Of course, in terms over local education authorities, we did take powers to intervene where things were breaking down, and I could cite a number of very positive examples, notably here in London, where education authorities were failing, intervention has contributed to the success of schools in those areas to the point in which, in fact, the LEA is able to be restored, and that has happened already in a couple of places.

Q533 Mr Prentice: I am wondering the extent to which the choice agenda is just being imposed by the Government rather than any great demand bubbling up from down below demanding greater choice. Sticking with schools for a second, I wonder how many people out there were clamouring for more specialist schools. I wonder how schools decided on the specialisms. We visited a dance and drama school up in Birmingham. Were the parents clamouring for a dance and drama specialist school? Is this something that was decided by the education professionals?

Mr Twigg: It certainly is not something that is just decided by the education professionals, and it must not be. The Specialist Schools Programme is a very interesting programme in terms of school improvement, because it has gone from being something introduced by the previous government aimed at a small number of schools, in a sense arguably quite an elitist programme, to one we have taken over and have taken in a different direction, so that now we are saying every secondary school that wants to should have the opportunity to be a specialist school. That means there can be an element of local community planning between schools, involving parents as well as education professionals, so you have a mix of specialisms in an area that can benefit the system as a whole.

Q534 Mr Prentice: Has there been a single case where parents have been balloted on the nature of the specialism?

Mr Twigg: I am not aware of that, but certainly schools will have very detailed discussions within their school governing body about which specialism to go for, and parents are typically very well represented on school governing bodies. I am a governor myself of a school in my constituency. I remember when we decided to go for science and there was a real engagement; it was not just the head deciding or even the LEA or DfES deciding.

Q535 Mr Prentice: Given what Alan has said about "Power to the People", is this something that should rest with parents and not the school governing body? It is a big thing, is it not, if the local school is a language school or a sports academy or dance and drama, engineering, business, whatever they are. Why as part of the choice agenda has the Government not said this is something that it would be quite proper to consult parents on?

Mr Twigg: Philosophically I have no disagreement with what you have suggested at all, and I would have to look into the history of the programme and how it was decided to do it in the particular way that we did, and possibly a helpful note is coming. Parents are, of course, the largest group on school governing bodies. I think you would need to look at the practicalities of ways in which different people can be engaged. You have rightly referred to parents. The others, of course, are the pupils themselves. I think finding ways in which pupils, students, can be more engaged in some of these discussions within our schools is something we have started to do but where I feel we need to do a great deal more, and, in particular, with the announcements that we will be making in the next few weeks about reform of 14‑19 education, a key element of that is about choice, but it is about choice of programmes, not necessarily choice of institutions. I made this point briefly at the beginning. In education, yes, it is about choosing at different stages which school or college you go to, but it is crucially also having more choice about what you study, where you study it and how it is studied, and I think that is vital if we are going to have more young people staying in education beyond the age of 16, 17.

Mr Raynsford: I was going say, there is a wider slightly more philosophical point about the extension of choice, why we are supportive of it, because it does help to concentrate the focus on the user rather than the provider of the service. One of the traditional weaknesses in public services in the UK has been a very provider perspective which sometimes has been resistant to changes, but will meet people's needs more effectively. Whether it is the kind of example you gave of tenants' associations and other initiatives in which tenants themselves can have more of an influence over the control of services through existing providers, or whether it is through the kind of initiative that allows people to have a vote on whether or not they want to stay with one provider or move to another, that does help to give a greater focus on the user, and I think that is a good thing.

Q536 Mr Prentice: The consumer is King or Queen?

Mr Raynsford: Not always. There are always constraints. We talked about some of those in relation to equity earlier in the discussion, but we have veered too much in the past towards, I think, the producer/provider interest rather than the user interest, and I think there is a need to adjust the balance there.

Q537 Chairman: Just as we end, and we are in the last two or three minutes, in the two areas that you are responsible for we have mentioned some instances where these mechanisms work. Can you tell us in a nutshell, either on the choice side or the voice side, are there new initiatives in the pipeline? Are there new, I was going to say wheezes, but that is not the right word to use. Are there any new initiatives coming along to take forward the choice or the voice agenda either in education or the local government field?

Mr Raynsford: If I can quickly say in relation to local government, I am not at liberty to say it now because the document will not be published until next week, but as part of our consultation on the future of local government we will be putting out a paper on neighbourhood engagement which will say a great deal about the voice side of this, about how people can more effectively engage with local government and other institutions through their local neighbourhood. So, yes, we are addressing this energetically and we are looking very much at the voice side as well as the choice. On the choice side, one aspect we have not touched on, which we attach huge importance to, is how people access public services. The idea that you have got to go a council office between nine o'clock and five o'clock in order to get a response or telephone within those hours is simply a reflection of past patterns. If I get home at ten o'clock at night (or eleven o'clock at night after our vote last night) on a Tuesday evening and find that my dustbin has not been emptied, I ought to be able to contact the council at that point in time by internet, or whatever, to leave a message so that it can be dealt with, rather than having to wait until the following morning to ring up and say, "My dustbin was not emptied." It is this kind of wider choice of access which is just as important in terms of improving users' experience of public service.

Mr Twigg: I think in education we have two big things coming up in the next month or so. One I have referred to a couple of times in this afternoon session: the 14‑19 proposals in response to the Tomlinson Report. I think that has huge relevance both to the choices that are available through that crucial phase of education but also to how we can give a bigger voice to young people in their communities and in their education. Secondly, we are publishing a Green Paper on youth that is about some of the issues to do with advice and guidance for young people, which informs the choices they make but is also about the kind of facilities that are available, places for young people to go, I think giving a voice to young people about what goes on in communities is an important challenge that goes way beyond DfES. It is about the whole of government and Parliament.

Q538 Chairman: Can I ask you, by the way, what happened to the bit of the bill that we passed in 1998 (The Schools Standards and Frameworks Act) that was going to put a requirement on all governing bodies to set up a standard complaints system for schools? Having announced it, we then dropped it and said it was going to be introduced later on. I ask only because, taking up Nick's point about the standard you should have in relation to public services, and it has become standard to think there ought to be a complaint system for users of public services, there is not one for schools, as it happens.

Mr Twigg: I am told it has been in force since 2003.

Q539 Chairman: It is in force. There we are. That is the answer to the question?

Mr Twigg: I have learned something today as well as the committee.

Q540 Chairman: One general final question. As I say, we are at the end of our inquiry now. The evidence that we have had from government, and it came out very strongly, I think, in John Hutton's evidence to us last week, touched on this question of whether we are to talk about voice and choice together as part of a common strategy for empowering people more in relation to public services or whether there is really some conflict between these approaches. We thought that these things were going to be complementary, but the Government's evidence to us is pretty dismissive about voice. It talks about it being a clumsy instrument and goes on to tell us about all the difficulties with it and is only really interested in talking about the choice agenda. John Hutton was really conceding this last week when we asked him about putting members of patient groups on to the boards of foundation hospitals. He indicated this was kind of yesterday's agenda; we had now moved on to the heavy high ground of choice. I wonder really whether you think there is some kind of battle for the soul of the Government going on here between individual choice mechanisms or instruments of collective empowerment, whether those things are genuinely complementary in the areas you know about?

Mr Raynsford: I think they are genuinely complementary, but there are potential conflicts between them, because there are occasions where an overall vote can result in a majority taking a view which is quite radically different to the aspirations of a significant minority within that area. We all know about this problem in relation to democracy, and there will always be questions about whether you allow minority groups a greater discretion and scope to pursue their aspirations or whether you constrain them as a result of a majority decision. It is not the case that the two are always perfectly complementary, but I am, as I hope I have made clear from the evidence, quite convinced that there is a role for both choice and voice in driving up standards of public service and that we need to progress on both fronts while recognising that there will be times when they may come into conflict with each other.

Mr Twigg: I absolutely agree with that. I was certainly very keen in the additional evidence that we provided from the Department that we gave you good examples of choice mechanisms, because I think they are vital, but, equally, we were able to provide some strong examples of some of the voice mechanisms as well, including the one we have just found out about but also to do with governing bodies, pupil participation. I think there can be conflicts between the two - there are times when choice is more effective than voice - but I certainly believe that voice is important and by and largely complementary to choice.

Q541 Chairman: Thank you for that. The great advantage of having you along is to give a concrete feel to some of these general issues that we are grappling with. You have done that admirably. I am sorry for asking you questions outside our territory, but it is important to our thinking. Thank you very much.

Mr Twigg: Thank you.