Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-162)
SIR
JOHN BOURN
KCB, COMPTROLLER AND
AUDITOR GENERAL,
NATIONAL AUDIT
OFFICE AND
MR BRIAN
GLICKSMAN CB, TREASURY
OFFICER OF
ACCOUNTS, HM TREASURY.
23 NOVEMBER
2005
Q160 Mr Bacon: Ms Edwards, could you
say that in your opinion getting longer term contracts with more
established organisations on balance achieved better value for
money or would it create on balance a dependency culture which
shut out new, innovative organisations?
Ms Edwards: I think if all the
contracts were with established players for a longer period then
it would have the effective of shutting out new entrants and I
think it might stifle possible innovation. I think one of the
things that you do get from the voluntary sector is the entrepreneurial
spirit, which means that people try out new things and can see
different ways of doing things. There is a balance to be struck.
Q161 Mr Bacon: So you really want a bit
of both, is what you are saying?
Ms Edwards: I do, yes.
Q162 Jon Trickett: I want to hypothesise
the following. There is currently a Public Spending Review going
on and there is some speculation in the media that the flows of
taxation are not what they might have been. I am aware of organisations
both large and small in this sector which are being told by their
funding bodies that money is not going to come, even though it
was promised, until the Spending Review has been completed, some
of which money has already been spent. Are you aware of that?
Secondly, if I were a Permanent Secretary or any budget holder,
as I have been in the past, and I was looking at the prospect
of possible cuts, I would protect my own empire at all costs,
and the first thing I would cut back would be external organisations,
and I think that is happening. Do you think that there is a culture
of that within the Civil Service, that they would want to protect
people they employ first, and in a sense, the third sector is
an easy cut, and secondly, the question I put at the beginning,
are you aware that there are organisations, including some very
big ones, who are being held up really because of this Spending
Review?
Sir John Gieve: On the first point,
yes, I think in any organisation there is a risk that it will
protect itself before its contractors. That is always a risk.
And of course, there are some contractual realities behind that.
It is easier to cut short-term contracts than to get out of long-term
contracts and so on. But as the growth of public spending slows
down, as it must over the next few years, it is the responsibility
of the Government, and one it is very aware of, to create counterweights
to that, and the efficiency programme, which no doubt Anita is
going to be talking to us about, is all about that. It is particularly
starting with headquarters costs and overhead costs in the central
government machine. So yes, of course there is a risk, and it
is something we have to be aware of and is something that the
Treasury, and indeed the top management of Departments has to
fight against. I was not aware about delays on actual payments.
Ms Charlesworth: We are doing
a Spending Review in 2007, so at the moment Government Departments
have budgets to 2007-08. I am not aware of the issue but the only
thing I can think of is that local government will get their allocations
for 2006-07 and 2007-08 imminently, so whether there is something
there, and similarly, schools budgets will go out for those two
years at the same timetable. So it may well be that although Departments
have their budgets, because the next two-year budgets are imminent,
there is something going on there. The other thing I will just
say is that Peter Gershon, when he did the review on efficiency,
was very clear, and the subsequent guidance to Departments was
very clear that arbitrary cuts to VCS services do not count as
efficiency gains.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Trickett. Sir
John, ladies, thank you very much. £5 billion may only be
0.5% of public spending but it is very important for the voluntary
sector and I am sure our report will try and concentrate on how
we can streamline these processes to help the voluntary sector.
Thank you very much.
|
