Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2005
MS HELEN
GHOSH, MR
BILL STOW
AND MR
ANDREW BURCHELL
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies
and gentlemen. Welcome to our annual inquiry into the Defra Departmental
Report, in this case the Report for 2005, and we give a special
welcome to Helen Ghosh, the new Permanent Secretary of the Department.
I think, in my case, you are the fourth holder of the office that
I have dealt with, in one way or another, but nonetheless you
are very welcome to your new post and, as always, we hope that
you will be very happy in the Department. You are supported today
by Bill Stow, Director-General of Environment, and Andrew Burchell,
the Chief Operating Officer. I gather you want to say a few words
by way of introduction before we subject you to our questions,
is that right? Perhaps you would like to open our proceedings?
Ms Ghosh: Thank you very much,
Chairman. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude for
the fact that, since this is only my day ten in the Department,
I understand in anticipation you are going to allow me a bit more
flexibility to turn to my colleagues for the answers to your questions.
Just to say, in introduction, a little bit about my approach to
this job and the impressions I have had in the first ten days.
First of all, I am absolutely delighted to have come to Defra,
not only because of the importance of strategic challenges which
the Department has but also because of the programme that is going
on within the Department for reform and improvement which is well
under way. Looking back on where the Department has come from
since 2001, I think it is a real success story and I would like
to pay tribute particularly to Brian Bender, my predecessor, and
of course the Secretary of State, for where it is today and my
main aim will be to build on that for the future. I have spent
my first ten days getting out and about, getting to know the business,
and I think getting to know the business will be very much my
priority focus for the next few weeks and months. Not only have
I been visiting policy divisions in the Defra core and learning,
I hope, a reasonable amount about the policy side of the Department,
also I have already visited three agencies of the Defra family.
Yesterday I was at Poole, at the Marine Fisheries Agency. I went
to the Rural Payments Agency on my second day and I have visited
the State Veterinary Service at Chelmsford, so I have begun to
introduce myself to some of the delivery challenges we have, which
I am sure we will come back to later on. I think my abiding impression,
not only when I was applying for the job and reading the Five
Year Strategy but also reinforced through my first ten days, is
the key challenge we have as a Department, which is delivering
our strategic objectives when we have what are effectively rather
rubbery levers to do so. Again I know this is something that the
Committee is very interested in. I see my role as building the
capacity of the Department to achieve its objectives through the
kind of influencing, negotiation and networking it has to use.
It does not have direct power over many of either the deliveries
or the people who can help us achieve our objectives. Four areas
I think I want to focus on. One is, deriving from that, ensuring
that we build the best possible relationships, not only within
our own Defra family but more widely within Whitehall, within
the EU and the other, in many cases, international organisations
on which we rely to achieve our objectives. I think key to effective
influencing across our stakeholders is having absolutely first-class
staff within the Department, identifying talent, developing the
skills we need in the Department, particularly using the Professional
Skills for Government agenda. To take an example, in the forthcoming
energy review, and indeed the review currently on climate change,
we need to have absolutely first-class scientists, policy-makers,
economists, to ensure that we are punching at our weight in Whitehall
and I think that issue of skills and developing talent is my second
priority. I know that lots of good stuff has gone on in the Department
on leadership over the past few years. I think we need to take
that perhaps a step further and identify the different kinds of
change we have to lead, some of it is very quick, it is project,
it is tomorrow, it is a few months and some of it is over what
one might describe as generations of time. To identify what kind
of change we are dealing with, what kind of influencing we need
to do and what kind of leadership we need is fantastically important.
Using the various strategies, and again I think this is something
we are going to discuss later, the different nature of the change
we have to achieve I think is reflected in the number of strategies
we have set out to achieve that. The last thing I want to focus
on is the issue of customers, do we really have a customer focus,
who are our customers, what do our customers want, how do we influence
the behaviour of our customers, and I know that some preliminary
work has been done on that. I know, for example, of course, we
have an excellent evidence-based programme on the scientific and
economic side. Perhaps we need to do a bit more on social research,
on that kind of behaviour, so that we can really engage with customers
and get them to do what we want them to do to achieve our overall
objectives. There is lots of good news. When I joined the Department,
as I say, lots of excellent stuff going on in terms of the departmental
reform programme and improving our skills around leadership and
management. I was delighted that I have inherited a Department
where a lot of the indicators in terms of staff survey are good.
I think 60% of people are proud to work for the Department; it
would be great if that were 100 but that may be unachievable.
Lots of people willing to challenge, which again I think is an
excellent and healthy sign, 61% of our staff feel they can challenge
the way we do things and if we are going to get continuous improvement
we need plenty of our staff challenging the way we do things.
I think there are still some issues for us, some challenges, around
diversity, which again I am sure we will come on to, and management,
management of performance, and some behavioural issues. In terms
of immediate challenges, we have, of course, delivery challenges,
which I am sure we will discuss, single payment, and some environmental
schemes. We have got the very high profile policy issues which
we are in the middle of, climate change, trade, the energy review
coming up next year, and then the most immediate, animal health
issues, that you were talking to Ben Bradshaw about yesterday,
so a big agenda. I just want to end by saying that certainly I
see this Committee as one of the key partners and stakeholders
in what we achieve and look forward to working with you over the
coming months and years.
Q2 Chairman: Very good. You have
covered a lot of ground in ten days of being in the post and I
congratulate you on your bravery in coming before us after such
a short time in office. I was very pleased to hear that you had
applied for the job, that you were not drafted in and told "Get
down to Defra," but you thought it was a good place to go
to, so that is a very good, positive start. To ask you a couple
of points of detail. You laid emphasis, on a number of occasions
in your remarks, to the climate change review and also the energy
review. Can you help the Committee by giving us some indication
of the likely timings for the conclusions of those two exercises?
Ms Ghosh: I know you were exploring
these issues fairly recently with the Secretary of State. As you
know, and this is discussed in the press too, the climate change
review is currently under way and debates are going on within
Government on that. On the energy review, the Prime Minister I
think announced the principle of a review at the Party Conference,
details of the review, the terms of reference, are still to emerge.
I do not know whether Bill has anything to add on that.
Mr Stow: On the Climate Change
Programme review, Mrs Beckett gave you the current position, I
think. As Helen says, we are engaged with other government departments
in finalising the package. The package may not emerge now until
December, or perhaps January, and, as she told you, that depends
a bit on her own movements. On the energy review, the formal announcement
of that is likely to follow the Climate Change Programme review,
but the timing of the review will be then to take it forward in
the course of next year.
Q3 Chairman: In the course of next
year; that is very helpful. You also mentioned in your opening
comments matters connected with the structure and the restructure
of the Department. Do you feel, from the time you have had in
the Department, that some of the silos that were there when Defra
was first created have been broken down and there is now a shared
ethos and approach across the whole of the Department?
Ms Ghosh: I think we are a long
way to that objective, but perhaps we need to do a bit more tweaking.
When I go round talking to staff at senior levels I think undoubtedly
it is achieved and I know, for example, that Brian Bender had
a very positive policy to make sure that at the SCS level and
at key Grade 7 levels there is plenty of interchange across the
Department and the figures support that. When I talk to more junior
staff and ask that very question, the anecdotal response one sometimes
gets is, "Well, you know, you can still tell that some people
are MAFF people and some people are DETR people." I think
three things will help us with this. I think the merger of Ursula
Brennan's and Andrew Lebrecht's Director-Generalships early in
April-ish next year, bringing together the rural affairs and natural
environment and the sustainable farming and food sides into a
single DG will help enormously to make people think holistically.
I think we are already beginning to put in place what are effectively
matrix structures. For example, there is a cross-departmental
virtual team working on our response to the Kate Barker review
on housing. I was talking yesterday, or the day before, to some
of Andrew's team about how they are pulling together, for example,
the impact of agricultural activity on the wider environment,
so even within what looks like silos we are encouraging people
to think more widely. I think there is more to be done. I think
the policy review that Ursula was leading will enable us really
to think about whether we want a step change, without throwing
the organisation up in the air and making it land differently,
and how we do virtual and matrix activity and really join up.
Q4 Chairman: You mentioned the customers.
I got an anguished letter this week from the Tenant Farmers Association,
crying out for the appointment of what they described as a Minister
of Agriculture. In other words, what they are saying is "We
think we're being lost in this blending together of the different
aspects of the Department." In the inevitability of bringing
together environment and land use, for example, with the sustainability
and environmental agenda, how are you going to communicate to
the different communities of interest for which Defra has a responsibility
that they remain important focuses for the Department's work?
Ms Ghosh: I think we can reassure
people, in the sense that, as you know much better than I, we
have in fact very good networks and structures for communication
with what I might regard as our traditional customers, the farming
group, for example. I was very impressed on day two, I think,
I sat in on one of Don Curry's Implementation Group meetings,
which obviously has been enormously powerful, both in sending
a message to the farming community about how we are trying to
support them in moving to a new market-based approach, sustainable
farming policy, and they will be thinking about how we carry that
forward in the future. My current perception, in many ways, is
that we are structured more to face our traditional customers
than we are other customers. I have heard from the Department
the criticism that we spend a great deal of time with traditional,
what we might call, old MAFF customers and less time thinking
about, for example, the recreational users of the countryside,
and less time with the big membership organisations, like RSPB
and National Trust. I think the key, and I could have said more
in my introductory remarks, is this communications one. It is
about persuading the farming community that actually their interests
and the wider sustainability of the farming, food and rural economy
policy in fact is in all our interests, so I think first-rate
communications is the key there.
Q5 Mr Drew: When the new Ministry
was formed, there was a dispute between those civil servants who
were MAFF compared with DETR. Have all those disputes been completely
settled now, because there were issues to do with differential
payments, and some of us found that quite difficult to understand,
in the gradings of the Civil Service, but has all that been taken
on and overcome?
Ms Ghosh: I will ask Andrew to
pick up the details, which he understands more than I do. In terms
of the core Department, yes, that is the case. I think we have
now unwound all the differences in terms of the different pay
levels on which the ex-DETR and ex-MAFF staff joined into the
new Department. As you will be aware, there is an ongoing issue,
which in a sense is the sort of unravelling of that when we move
into our new policy and delivery structures. The outstanding issue
now is the issue of coherence around the wider Defra family and
that is an area where the ongoing pay settlements, which will
be agreed and decided upon in the coming six months or so, will
make a difference to the relationship between the pay and conditions
in some of our family and in the core Defra. In terms of the core
Defra, I think that is settled.
Mr Burchell: Yes. In relation
to the pay differentials that were referred to, in 2002 we secured
Treasury funding for a four-year, multi-year pay deal, which effectively
has brought about convergence between those two groups, and this
year is the last year of that deal. Helen referred to the fact
that there has been quite a lot of movement within the Department.
If you look at the composition of directorates-general at the
moment, there has been a lot of cross-movement within DGs, and
Bill may want to say something about the experience of the Environment
group, where a large proportion of his staff are either from the
former directorates within MAFF or from outside. Before Brian
left, for example, when he used to ask people if they were ex-MAFF
or ex-DETR, they said, "No, actually we're Defra. I joined
to come to Defra." If you look at the amount of new staff
over a four-year period and the amount of churn, a lot of those
issues which were around in 2001, formed largely from the fact
that there were significant pay differentials, have gone.
Mr Stow: More than half of my
total team, which is about 800 people, are Defra, they were not
part of either of the two parent departments, and that includes
me and around half of my Senior Civil Service team, so there has
been a lot of movement.
Q6 Mr Drew: Can I follow up with
another question which relates directly to that and that is the
status now of individual Defra officers, and clearly there are
many. Do they all fit with the regional government, in all but
name, status or Government Offices in the different regions? This
has always been quite difficult, because the old MAFF offices,
in particular, did not fit very easily necessarily into the regions
of the country. Have they now all been brought under the regional
roof, so to speak?
Mr Stow: The answer is yes, within
the Government Offices. Each Government Office now is organised
in slightly different ways but, broadly speaking, there is a Defra
team within each Government Office dealing with most of our business.
Some will deal also with planning, so they are not our creatures
and they are not necessarily our people but they are working on
our issues in each Government Office, and they are called variously
Rural Director, or Director for Sustainable Development, in each
of the Government Offices.
Mr Burchell: In relation to our
operations in respect of animal health in England and the Rural
Development Service, they map to Government Offices. The one exception
would be the Environment Agency, which is organised on a river
catchment basis. That would be the one part of Defra which probably
does not map onto the Government Office regional boundaries core,
for those natural resource management reasons.
Ms Ghosh: I think also the MFA,
just because I happen to have been there yesterday, has just north
and south regions, that is for genuine delivery reasons rather
than anything else.
Q7 Daniel Kawczynski: I would like
to welcome you to this meeting. I was gently admonished by Mrs
Beckett for referring to her as the Secretary of State for Agriculture.
I wish she were, because I feel very passionately that there should
be a Secretary of State for Agriculture because I represent a
very agricultural, rural community, in Shrewsbury. As the Permanent
Secretary, do you have any particular interests within this vast
Department that you represent? What are your interests in farming
and how do you juggle that? I would like to probe a little further
on what the Chairman said on that point?
Ms Ghosh: I should say, primarily,
of course, what I have to focus on is what ministers want me to
focus on, in terms of policy issues, and I am here, among other
things, to support the Secretary of State in what she wants to
do, so her priorities are my priorities. In a personal sense,
I do not know whether you have seen my CV, I started in the old
Department of the Environment and spent an immensely enjoyable
time. I did two jobs there. One was, very much Bill's side, on
the environmental side of that Department and then, in a later
job, local environmental issues. The areas of the Department's
activity, in a sense, which I know most about are undoubtedly
Bill's side of the Department, and actually local environment
is yours as well, I guess, those issues particularly around local
urban regeneration, which are picked up in some of the, what are
called, Better Environmental Communities type programmes. More
personally than that, for example, I am a lifetime member of the
National Trust. I live in Oxfordshire, which although I live in
the City of Oxford is very much an agricultural county, though
taken over by the celebrities in recent years. I have two children.
I try to lead a life which supports the principles of sustainable
development, I try to make the children turn off the lights. I
do not use an official car to get to work, I cycle to the station
and use public transport. I am happy to say that Oxford City Council
and Oxfordshire have very good recycling and rubbish collection
systems, so we use those to the maximum. The one thing I do not
think I can promise the Committee is that I can get my teenage
children to turn off the lights, but I work very hard at that.
However, one of my first invites was from the Deputy Chairman
of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, who has a farm in
southern Oxfordshire, she has asked me to come on a farm walk
and I am certainly going to take her up on that. What I am hoping
to do, in this programme of getting out and about, is get out
and about and meet plenty of farmers and learn more about the
agricultural side of the Department.
Q8 Chairman: Can I pick you up on
just one little thing you said, "My priorities are the Secretary
of State's priorities." If you felt that the Secretary of
State had got a priority wrong, would you tell her?
Ms Ghosh: Yes. I think that is
my job too.
Q9 Chairman: Good. I was just checking
that the critical faculty was in full operation. You kindly supplied
us with details of the umpteen reports, initiatives, inquiries
and other activities which your Department is doing and it illustrates
the breadth of activity but the management challenge as to how
you keep all these proverbial balls in the air but, as the person
at the top of the office, keep an eye on them and make certain
that things are progressed. Sometimes you get the impression that,
if Defra finds something quite difficult, "Good idea. Let's
issue a paper, let's have a consultation, let's park it somewhere
for a while." What is your management approach to ensure
that all the things you have started will be properly progressed
against their stated timetables and the areas of inquiry concluded
with a view to developing the Department's policies?
Ms Ghosh: What a lot of that comes
back to is, I think, excellent, I am going to use the term, management
information, but I am using this in its broadest sense, in terms
of ensuring that the Management Board, and the Management Board
with ministers, has the tools available to make sure that we are
not losing sight of things. Two things I would highlight there,
for which I take no credit at all but which the Department has
progressed in recent months. First of all, how we keep an eye
on projects, the progress of particular, big delivery projects,
and ensure, with increasing sophistication, that we can deliver.
Secondly, something about which I know very little, except in
outline, which is a Balanced Scorecard approach to keeping an
eye on our performance and our programme. Here I will turn to
Andrew, who knows much more about these two things than I do.
Mr Burchell: Essentially, the
Balanced Scorecard is something we discussed before the Committee
I think last year and indeed the year before.
Q10 Chairman: Just refresh our collective
memory as to what this Balanced Scorecard looks like?
Mr Burchell: Effectively, it has
got a front sheet which has four quadrants on it. The first is
in terms of the strategic outcomes we are trying to achieve, largely
relating to the PSA targets and our SDA target on floods and then
supported by further information on the Mission Critical projects.
The other quadrants effectively relate to the enablers, a people
section, to ensure we have got the right people in the right jobs
with the right skills, what our processes are like, are we good
at financial management, something you might want to turn to later
on in this session, what is our success at influencing other government
departments, and so on. Effectively, lying behind that is quite
a lot of management information at different levels which links
the enablers with the outcomes. It is a fairly well-tried tool
in the private sector and increasingly in the public sector. Essentially,
the idea is to anticipate the problems before they arise.
Chairman: There we are. Our scorecard
requires us to achieve the objective of voting by moving ourselves
to the Commons.
The Committee suspended from 3.38 pm to 4.01
pm for a division in the House. Q11 Chairman:
Mr Burchell, I think you were entertaining us with a little description
of the Balanced Scorecard and I rushed back, salivating at the
thought of further explanation on this matter. Would you like
to start where you finished and conclude your thoughts?
Mr Burchell: I will try not to
disappoint then. There are two things, really. Helen referred
to effectively the quality of management information and I referred
to a Balanced Scorecard. Just to recap, it has got four quadrants,
results, processes, customers, stakeholders, people, knowledge
and culture, effectively our results, plus the key enablers. The
intention, of course, is to anticipate problems rather than react
when they occur, therefore there are links between our key enablers
and processes and our results. We can certainly let the Committee
have the latest version of the measures which we review every
three months in a small group chaired by a member of the Management
Board.[12]
Then we have a quarterly discussion at the Management Board of
the key issues emerging from that. Also we review the results
section every six months. The Management Board also has visibility
of the performance on our Mission Critical projects and our PSA
performance. I think it is important not only to rely on management
information but also to recognise that, whilst you posed the question
to Helen in terms of how she makes sure that all of these things
are delivered, actually it is important for members of the senior
leadership team in a department to take personal responsibility
for delivering these projects. Each of our Mission Critical projects,
PSA targets and the like have senior responsible owners, either
members of the Management Board or their directors, and the management
information which flows through up to the Management Board is
also a means by which we seek to hold the senior responsible owners
to account. It is not just about having information it is also
the leadership team taking personal responsibility.
Q12 Chairman: That sounds wonderful.
Will this piece of information that you are going to send to us
also include a little list of the hoped for timetable or deadlines
and, under all the strategies that are listed under your list
of current strategies, when you expect them to see the light of
day?
Ms Ghosh: Certainly. Yes, we will
be delighted to do that.
Chairman: What we would like is particularly
the original date, just in case by any chance you slip back a
bit; we would like to keep track. If you are using the Balanced
Scorecard to keep such a close eye on them, we too would like
to share in that experience, so we look forward to that information
on date and timetable.[13]
Sir Peter Soulsby: I would like to take
you to one of the most challenging elements which no doubt features
on a scorecard somewhere.
Chairman: Can I just say to you that
"challenging" is the word that we always use when it
is difficult and that your predecessor always used when he could
not quite give us a straight answer but said it was "challenging,"
so it is a very important word.
Q13 Sir Peter Soulsby: I certainly
chose my words wisely in this context. I was going to take you
to the figures of efficiency savings that you have to achieve
in the 2004 Spending Review, right at the beginning of the Departmental
Report; you identify just over £600 million that they have
to achieve overall. The largest element in that is almost half
of it which you are anticipating will come from savings from local
government. I want to explore that with you, because obviously
the Department does not have any direct power over local government
so, in those circumstances, how are you sure you can achieve that
figure and how are you going to measure it?
Ms Ghosh: Although I had an excellent
explanation of this from Bill's team last week, I do not think
I could repeat it here, so I am very happy to hand over to Bill.
Mr Stow: Yes, you are right, it
is indeed challenging. What makes it more challenging, I think,
is to get a handle on, first of all, how we measure these savings,
because local government does not necessarily measure them in
the same way and other departments are responsible for delivering
Gershon efficiency savings which dwarf those expected from waste
in local government. Having said that, as a result of the work
on the waste strategy, we had already set up our Waste Implementation
Programme team, the so-called WIP team, with a lot of people in
it from outside Government, from the private sector and from local
authorities. Part of their role is to engage directly with local
authorities, particularly those which are performing less well,
to help them, to help with issues like procurement, and so on,
and we have a programme of direct consultancy aid for local authorities
which is both to help them meet the Landfill Directive targets
and PSA in this area but also, through doing so, to improve their
efficiency performance. When we have talked to the Local Government
Association about this they see this programme actually as being
something of a model for other parts of government. It is quite
resource-consuming, of course, to engage with all of the local
authorities involved in waste collection and disposal and so we
do not, we try to prioritise, as I say, on the worst performers.
That is at the heart of how we are trying to deliver the efficiency
savings and, so far, it looks as if we are well on track to meet
that figure, which I have always found suspiciously precise, of
£299 million that we are meant to be delivering in efficiency
savings in this area.
Q14 Sir Peter Soulsby: I am still
struggling to understand how you will know, or how they will know
that you know that you have actually achieved it?
Mr Burchell: Recently we made
available to local authorities a measurement tool, which allows
them to track expenditure on waste collection management and disposal
and adjusting that for things like volumes, changes in contract,
and so on, so that actually you can measure, track over time,
true efficiencies. That is a web-based tool which we made available
earlier this year and that is going to be the main monitoring
device. Based on the information we have received to date, efficiency
savings so far, certainly last year, in 2004-05, were £52
million.
Q15 Sir Peter Soulsby: I am still
struggling a little bit. I am just wondering what this tool looks
like.
Ms Ghosh: Could we offer a demonstration?
Mr Burchell: Yes. The easiest
thing is to send a copy of the guidance note.[14]
Q16 Chairman: Before we get too hung
up with planning how to save money in local authorities and our
offices, let me just explore the line that Peter was moving along
with you there. You say that you, or local authorities, have identified
£52 million. Surely what you are talking about is reducing
your expenditure to local authorities, yes?
Mr Burchell: No.
Q17 Chairman: How are you posting
£300 million worth of savings if it is not going to be £300
million less that Defra is handing out?
Mr Burchell: Actually Defra does
not hand out most of the money to support waste. Effectively,
it is part of the Environmental and Cultural Services part of
the Revenue Support Grant.
Q18 Chairman: It comes out of your
post total, does it not?
Mr Burchell: No, it does not;
it comes off ODPM's.
Q19 Chairman: How come you are scoring
£300 million if it is not your money?
Mr Burchell: We take the policy
lead on waste and ODPM provides the funding through the Revenue
Support Grant.. Therefore, in the Spending Review 2004, the savings
which the Treasury are expecting in respect of waste were allocated
to us, even though those savings are not part of our departmental
expenditure efficiencies.
Ms Ghosh: They have not taken
it out of our line for the final year, no.
12 Ev 48 Back
13
Ev 51 Back
14
Ev 48 Back
|
