Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
DAME
SUE STREET
DCB, LIZ NICHOLL
MBE,
MONDAY
6 MARCH 2006
Q160 Chairman: It was signed up between
your Department and UK Sport, was it not? Is it a meaningless
document therefore?
Dame Sue Street: It is certainly
not meaningless, but the glossary in the next funding agreement
will show that we have some lessons to learn. If anything the
ambitions are higher than before. Depending on the resources,
the ultimate goal for UK Sport is now fourth position, but they
are not yet in a position to set—
Q161 Chairman: What is your target
for the Beijing Olympics?
Ms Nicholl: To move towards the
top eight in the medal table in Beijing.
Q162 Chairman: Just to sum up, how
are you going to ensure that we get meaningful information in
future in these hearings?
Dame Sue Street: We are revising
the funding agreement which we are just about to sign and making
sure that the NAO's comments are taken into account. We shall
publish a glossary which will specify exactly what we mean as
between an aim, a goal and a target and I shall obviously scrutinise
these documents myself.
Q163 Chairman: You do understand
that we were presented with rather inconsistent information which
was difficult to understand.
Dame Sue Street: I agree that
it was confusing and I regret that.
Q164 Greg Clark: Ms Nicholl, are
you aware of the purpose of this Committee?
Ms Nicholl: I am aware of the
purpose of the Committee in terms of it being accountable for
public spending.
Q165 Greg Clark: Exactly. Your organisation
already makes about £80 million a year of public spending
and this is the one forum we have in which to hold you to account.
Ms Nicholl: Yes; I understand
that.
Q166 Greg Clark: It is not a sport
to see whether you can get through two hours without giving us
the information we want. There is a serious purpose to this; this
is a serious committee. According to Erskine May we can ask witnesses
to give evidence on oath to this Committee, but if we were to
do so, the oath would require witnesses to tell the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth. It strikes me that here
we have not necessarily had the whole truth. Would you agree with
that?
Ms Nicholl: I am afraid I would
not agree with that at all. I have reviewed my answers to the
questions given at the last hearing and I stand by those answers,
each and every one of them. I do understand why there has been
confusion; I do understand that. I understand why I have been
called back to clarify it. It is around the use of terminology,
as Dame Sue described.
Q167 Greg Clark: Can we just explore
that? I asked you whether you had a medals' target and you said
no—Question 89 for the record. Ms Nicholl I asked you six
times whether you had a target for 2012 and you said no. I have
in front of me the report which the Chairman mentioned, the funding
agreement relating to the period 2003-06. We are in that period
of the funding agreement. It says very clearly "Targets .
. . Summer Olympics GB's place in medal table 2012—fifth".
So you have in the current funding agreement between the DCMS
and UK Sport a target, an extant target to be number five in the
medals' table. So that cannot be the whole truth when you answered
the question no, you did not have a target, can it? There may
be another answer that you are looking to revise that, but the
truth is that at the moment you do have a target and that is in
your funding agreement.
Ms Nicholl: What Dame Sue has
explained is the misuse of the word "target" in that
respect. This funding agreement covers the period from 2003 to
2006. The terminology in point 2.4 of the funding agreement indicates
that we have a longer-term goal for UK Sport to lead the UK to
become one of the world's top five sporting nations. I was asked
at the last hearing whether we had an aspirational target. Yes,
we have an aspirational target to be in the top five in the world.
That was placed in front of the Committee. I answered that question
about whether we have a target for 2012 in the context of whether
we have a set target, a confirmed target. We do not have a set
target; we do not have a confirmed target, because that target
has to be linked to resources available. It would be irresponsible
for us to declare—
Q168 Greg Clark: I did not ask whether
you had a firm target. This is the point. Going back to my original
question on the purpose of this Committee, the public purse has
spent quite a lot of money asking Sir John and his colleagues
to conduct an investigation into UK Sport. They have produced
a very good Report and we have one opportunity to inquire into
it. So when asked a question about targets there are one or two
routes you could take. You could have decided to be helpful to
the Committee and explained that you may not have a confirmed
target, but your funding agreement contains a target and you are
hoping to revise it to go from fifth to fourth. Or you could have
done what you chose to do which was to say flatly no six times
to the question "Do you have a target?". This leads
me to fear that actually you were not being terribly helpful to
the Committee in trying to understand this. Let me explain the
context for this. The reason that this is relevant is that your
whole funding regime for Olympic sport is about setting targets
for particular sports and if a discipline does not have a target
attached to it, it does not get any funding. Yet we have a situation
in which UK Sport seems to be ducking and diving and trying to
avoid committing to a public target itself. Is it not the case
that for athletes who have lost their funding because they did
not have a target it smacks of hypocrisy?
Ms Nicholl: I beg to disagree.
It would be irresponsible for any coach to set a target without
knowing that target is achievable. A target for 2012 is not achievable
unless we have the appropriate resource to go with it. If we go
back to the funding agreement, the funding agreement formally
covers the period 2003-06. The actual table which is referred
to is an extension of the period 2003-06, but in UK Sport's perspective,
the period beyond 2006 was not a formal part of the funding agreement,
it was a table which described our aspiration to move towards
the top five in the world in 2012.
Q169 Greg Clark: It was an annex
to the funding agreement entitled Targets Towards Meeting Overall
Goals for 2012.
Ms Nicholl: It was incorrectly
titled and that is the point we are making.
Q170 Greg Clark: If it was incorrectly
titled, you could have shared that with the Committee and advised
us, yet we have only discovered this after the event. We did not
know about it at the time. You could have helped us with that.
We have discovered from information which has come into the public
domain subsequently that your aim is to increase the target from
fifth, as it has been in the funding agreement, to fourth.
Ms Nicholl: Yes.
Q171 Greg Clark: I should like to
understand the reason for not sharing this with us. You could
have perfectly well told the Committee during the last hearing
that actually you would like to increase it to fourth, but that
depended on resources. I am not sure that Dame Sue needs to give
advice on the answer to this question. You could have said that
you were looking to get extra resources to increase it from fifth
to fourth and that would have been helpful. May an I understand
whether you have been part of any discussions or any talk that
you wanted to save this announcement either for the Budget or
some other announcement?
Ms Nicholl: Absolutely not.
Q172 Greg Clark: There is no suggestion
that this was being held back in order to be presented in some
flamboyant way later on.
Ms Nicholl: No.
Q173 Greg Clark: As far as you knew,
at the time you gave evidence, you had participated in or knew
of no discussion about when this would be announced.
Ms Nicholl: Absolutely and I do
not know today when a decision might be announced which is why
we are unable to say when we shall have a target for 2012 because
it is inextricably linked to a funding decision which is in the
hands of ministers.
Q174 Chairman: Why did you not say
that at the time?
Ms Nicholl: I think I did say
that at the time. If I did not, it was not my intention not to
say it.
Q175 Kitty Ussher: Is it not the
case that this document A Sporting Chance for 2012, which
has proved so controversial is in effect part of an internal conversation
between the Department and the various quangos which you sponsor?
It presents options for your consideration as to how you should
bid for resources to the Treasury. Is that correct?
Dame Sue Street: Yes, that is
correct.
Q176 Kitty Ussher: Therefore the
fact that several options are listed there—and I draw your
attention and other members' to page six "Option One: . .
. 4th in Olympics . . . 1st Paralympics . . . Option Two: . .
. 4th Olympics . . . 1st Paralympics . . . EXCEPT football . .
. Option Three: . . . 4th Olympics . . . 1 Paralympics' and some
qualifications to that "Option Four: . . . 6th in the Olympics
. . . 2nd in Paralympics . . . Option Five: Stand Still . . .
8th in Olympics . . . 2nd in Paralympics" et cetera—proves
that in fact there was no target at the point this document was
written and they were merely options. Do you agree?
Dame Sue Street: Yes, I do. I
hope in a way that we do not have to rely on that document for
proof. We have always tried to assist the Committee in good faith.
There is no firm agreed target, although I understand how the
confusion has arisen. The chronology is exactly as you say. A
funding submission came to the Department and we both regret the
inconsistent use of language. We then engage and are still engaged
in discussion with the Treasury and if you refer to my letter
and to my evidence I sought to give you every clear signal that
that was the position we were in. We were actively discussing
with the Treasury something which matters to the Committee and
to all of us, which is how much resource we can have and what
then might be the interim target subject to review at the time
of the Beijing Olympics.
Q177 Kitty Ussher: I should have
thought that it was quite clear from reading this that the management
of UK Sport would probably have liked you to adopt a target of
fourth, but that was part of an internal conversation and it was
not government policy. Is that correct?
Dame Sue Street: I think that
is very helpful.
Q178 Kitty Ussher: This is pretty
much a report to government, albeit from part of the public sector,
rather than a report of government, of government policy. Is that
correct?
Dame Sue Street: That is correct.
Q179 Mr Bacon: I thought the exchange
with Kitty Ussher was extremely helpful and it elucidated the
position as we now all understand it. When the Chairman said "I
cannot believe that you are being entirely open with us, because
you may not have set targets as a term of art . . . I cannot believe
there have not been discussions at the highest level of what progress
we are intending to make up to 2012 . . . There must have been".
You replied ". . . I am certainly keeping nothing from you".
That is what struck me as so odd. Surely the correct answer should
have been that of course there had been discussions at the highest
level of the progress you were intending to make up to 2012, but
unfortunately you were not yet in a position to share that with
us because these were options which you had put up to ministers;
they had not yet decided and until they had it was not set government
policy in the way you have just explained with Kitty Ussher. That
is the case, is it not? That would have been a more helpful reply.
Dame Sue Street: In retrospect,
I certainly could have been more helpful, but I was not intending
to keep anything from anybody. I was clear that Liz Nicholl had
put the submission and the fact that it existed on the record
and that I was explaining that we were in very active discussion
about the amount of money in order to set a target.
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