Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING,
MR DAVID
CAIRNS AND
DR JIM
WILDGOOSE
19 OCTOBER 2005
Q20 David Mundell: Yes, but I do
not want to get diverted into the Railways Bill, which in fact
you did support. What happened there was that the Scottish Parliament
adjusted its timetable and timescale to fit in with your timescale
that you were running here at Westminster and that was possible
within an environment where that was supported politically. It
would not have been possible had the political support procedurally
allowed that to happen. What concerns me is that where you do
have a situation where you had different governments that you
would not get that same level of cooperation and if you have no
process for dealing with that how will those sorts of situations
be managed?
Mr Darling: There are two things.
Firstly, the Scotland Act was passed and the powers devolved in
a way which would suit whatever administration the electorate
in Scotland happened to return and if there was an administration
formed by different political parties they would be at liberty,
if they have got the democratic mandate and the majority of the
Scottish Parliament, to follow whatever their programme is. If
that came into conflict with a different administration at Westminster,
then they are quite entitled to say, "No, we are not going
to implement this in Scotland because we do not think it is a
good thing." Just as if the administration in Westminster
changed, there may be occasions when it would say, "Well,
we've got to do something completely different," or, "If
the Scottish Parliament wants to do one thing, that's up to it."
That is what democracy is all about. I am not sure what further
procedures you could get that would help that. Where you have
got a better point is that if you had administration north and
south of the border of a different political colour then I suspect
there would probably be more political time spent between individual
ministers sorting out a modus operandi where there was
that sort of conflict and it could be that you just say, "Okay,
we'll do it differently," and that seems to me entirely in
the spirit of devolution. There are occasions when administrations,
whatever the political colour, do need to cooperate. To take an
obvious example, security matters, I cannot believe you would
ever have a situation where even if you had administrations of
diametrically opposite political beliefs in the United Kingdom
they would not cooperate on a thing like that, although they may
have differences as to exactly how you cooperate.
Q21 Mr MacNeil: Secretary of State,
devolution has been in place for a number of years, and you have
given examples of further devolution that you have been involved
with, namely in the railways, to the Scottish Executive. In your
experience, what do you think are the next powers to be devolved
from Westminster to Holyrood?
Mr Darling: I think there may
be adjustments from time to time, but I do not anticipate any
major change. We have made it clear we do not anticipate opening
up the Scotland Act. Nothing is for ever, but I just do not anticipate
doing it. The only qualification, for the sake of completeness,
and no doubt you are going to come on to this, is the Arbuthnot
Commission, [4]which
is probably also not talked about in every pub and club in Scotland—
Q22 Mr MacNeil: You would be surprised.
Mr Darling: I would actually!
It will report to me about the turn of the year, probably the
beginning of January and depending on what they come up with,
if they recommended changes in the electoral system that is something
that obviously we would need to contemplate, but in terms of devolved
powers I do not envisage opening up the Scotland Act. I know you
lot take a different view, but most normal people take the view
that they do not want to open that up.
Q23 Mr Wallace: Secretary of State,
I just want to return to the point you made about the administrations
between obviously the Scottish Executive and yourself and the
wonder of the devolution settlement was that if eventually the
Scottish Parliament decided it did not want to do something, that
is where you would let it do things its way and get on with it.
However, when you get examples of a UK legislation or initiative
but it is administered at the local level or at the devolved level,
that is not as easy. The ID card, which just scraped through yesterday,
is a good example of that where I think the Scottish Executive
and also the Welsh Assembly has already expressed its view that
it was not prepared to make the provision of public services a
condition, which is, of course, part of the enabling legislation
and bill that went through last night. How do you envisage dealing
with those sorts of issues? Obviously we will come on later to
the energy issue, but certainly on an ID card—and you have
talked about how with terrorism people work together—there
is an example of where it needs, perhaps, a more robust protocol
or something in case these situations arise?
Mr Darling: No, I do not think
so. It is quite possible that the UK Government could say that
access to the benefit system would depend on your being able to
establish your identity through an ID card. That is a reserved
matter. It is equally acceptable that the Scottish Executive say,
"But you do not need an ID card when you go to hospital or
go and see your GP," because that is devolved. That actually,
by happy coincidence, is the position which exists because you
rightly say the Scottish Executive has said that at the moment
that is their position. It may change in the future, I do not
know. So the two things can exist quite happily, and indeed it
is the very nature of the devolution settlement we have got in
this country that we have devolved many things. There are other
things that are reserved and by and large I do not see why they
should not live quite happily together. Nobody would ever say,
"Nothing will ever change," but I do not envisage the
problems that you postulate.
Q24 Mr Wallace: You could get into
the ridiculous position, Secretary of State, where the enabling
legislation went through yesterday and you have got secondary
legislation where your own ministers have said that compulsion
is on the cards, certainly compulsion to have and compulsion to
produce, whereas you could have a Scottish citizen, a Scottish
resident, where by secondary legislation the Scottish Parliament
has decided that compulsion to produce is not something they want
to do, they do not want to go down that road and when he/she crosses
into England or to Carlisle and turn up looking for access to
the healthcare service in Carlisle, for example, they are told,
"I'm terribly sorry, you don't have your ID card, therefore
you are not eligible to it," and the answer will be, "Well,
I'm a Scottish citizen, I'm a member of the United Kingdom and
I don't have to produce it." What are you going to say to
that?
Mr Darling: Firstly, on the question
of compulsion, as you know the Government has made it clear that
if we were to go down that road there would have to be a vote
in Parliament to do that and, as you rightly say, the bill is
enabling, it does not impose that level of compulsion. If the
Department of Health, for example, said, "If you present
yourself at Carlisle Hospital and you have to identify yourself,"
then you have to identify yourself. I suppose the corollary of
what you are saying is that if someone in Carlisle went up the
road to Dumfries and presented themselves in the hospital there
and the Scottish Executive said, "You don't need to identify
yourself and you will get treated anyway," then presumably
that person would get treated anyway and that is a consequence
of devolution. The Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament
are responsible for the things that are devolved to them. We in
the UK Government are responsible for the policy that is reserved
to us. Yes, there will be occasions when different rules will
apply, but it is not so very different from the fact that at the
moment the legal systems are different. In fact the administration
of public services is different. The student grants regime is
different.
Chairman: Can we move on to the Scotland
Office targets.
Q25 Danny Alexander: Secretary of
State, looking at the Department's Annual Report, there is quite
a noticeable gap between the objectives of the Department and
the performance targets that are measured. For example, Objective
1 is to maintain the stability of the devolution settlement, whereas
the first performance target is to reply to ministerial correspondence
within 15 days. So the performance targets tell us very little
about what the Department is doing to meet its overall objectives.
Do you think it is time for the Department to review its performance
indicators, and do you see any barriers to having performance
indicators that actually measure how the Department is doing to
meet its objectives rather than these other things, which interestingly
do not actually measure the central point?
Mr Darling: I see the point you
are getting at and it is a perfectly good point to look at, I
think. If you take the first Objective, which is to promote and
maintain the devolution settlement, I think it would actually
be very difficult to put targets on that. What would the target
be, that you have got to have so many meetings, or you have got
to avoid so many disasters or something like that? I think it
could be difficult and we would probably fail miserably on all
of them, whereas any department needs something like answering
correspondence within a set period of time. It occurred to me
at the beginning of this year, and if it had not been for the
fact that there was a General Election when we all had other matters
on our minds I might have done something about it, that this might
be a time, five years on, to look at our objectives generally.
If you have got advice on that or your thoughts on that we will
certainly take it into account, subject only to bearing in mind
what our policy and manifesto said, which we are not proposing
to change. In relation to the alignment, I think some of our objectives
are not easily translated into targets, which is why you get that
disconnection that I think you were referring to. Jim, since you
lot have to implement them, and you have not spoken yet, would
you like to add to that?
Dr Wildgoose: Yes. The points
are essentially the same, just reinforcing the figures. Some of
the business of coordination simply requires a couple of phone
calls and that is things sorted out. Others will require a lot
more than that in terms of phone calls, meetings et cetera. At
the end of the day the likelihood is that the coordination will
lead to something sorted out. Still others are simply bilateral
exchanges between UK departments and the executive. So it is extremely
difficult to find something that says, "Look, you will have
something that says you have to have 20 of such-and-such throughout
the year, or 200 of such-and-such throughout the year", but
again we have been thinking about this to see how we might look
at this, but it is extremely difficult, as I say, to identify
things which are sensibly measurable here. That is not to say
that the Objective itself is unimportant, it is extremely important
in terms of the coordination, but it is finding something sensible
to measure it by that is the difficulty.
Q26 Danny Alexander: But obviously
you see the problem. Is that something you are going to go away
and look at further, to try and develop, if you can, performance
targets which might more adequately reflect your objectives?
Mr Darling: No, I cannot guarantee
that will happen because whatever else we have as an objective,
one of them will be to maintain good relations between Westminster
and Holyrood and I was saying and Jim is saying that I
am not sure that easily renders itself to a corresponding target
in that I just think it would be difficult to do that. There may
be a case for revising our objectives, and they will not be vastly
different, from what they have been since devolution since 1999,
but I cannot guarantee that if we have generalised aims they will
necessarily translate into quantifiable targets.
Q27 Danny Alexander: I accept that
is a very difficult thing to do, and perhaps one should not suggest
this to a new Labour minister, but a lot of these targets are
about perceptions, so it may be that some measurement of perception
could be undertaken to see whether in particular Objective 1,
contributing to inform public discussion, might be something worth
looking at?
Mr Darling: I think the last time
there was a measurement of perception was in May this year. You
may disagree—
Q28 Danny Alexander: I certainly
do.
Mr Darling: Most people, I think,
are generally happy with the settlement. There are all sorts of
things you can do. I do not want to get into a situation that
in order to align your performance target with an objective, you
go through such hoops that the whole thing becomes completely
ridiculous.
Q29 Mr Davidson: I think there is
possibly an urge there to make more use of focus groups, which
is a very interesting proposal. I appreciate that it is difficult
to make indicators on soft objectives. Can I ask to what extent
the Scotland Office have agreed what happens in some other departments
of government which face equivalent difficulties, and I am thinking
particularly of the MOD. In that regard do you not think the dismissal
in point 4 of the written response, about the idea of formal surveys
of key stakeholders was a bit Sir Humphry-ish? You say, "This
type of activity is not readily susceptible to formal surveys
...", blah-blah-blah, "The Office constantly seeks feed-back
from the Executive and Whitehall departments on an informal base."
That smacks a bit of "You're doing fine, am I doing fine?"
It could be better structured than that, to have surveys on a
regular basis as to how liaison was working and that would give
you a much greater feed-back if the intention was to engage stakeholders
to get their observations on how well the Scotland Office is doing
in the circumstances.
Mr Darling: Basically that was
not Sir Humphrey; it was the Minister, in fact, who dismissed
that outright. Just instinctively, I could see us ending up spending
a lot of money on consultants and surveys, and I am not sure how
much further you would get. I have made the point before that
of course we can do things better and of course we can improve
things but as at the moment we are not inundated with complaints
between the people you are referring to, I am not sure how much
would be gained by sending somebody around Whitehall with a clipboard
finding out whether or not that was the case. I am trying reasonably
successfully to reduce the amount of people we employ and reduce
the amount of money we spend, and as my other responsibilities
in another Department spend rather more on consultancy than I
would like, I am not terribly enthusiastic about employing any
more. That was the Minister's reply, has Sir Humphrey got anything
to do add it that?
Dr Wildgoose: Not really. I think
it is something that requires continuing thought, as such, in
terms of how we might move forward with it, but there is a basic
difficulty with adequate measurement. I do not think I have anything
further to add.
Mr Darling: Having considered
the matter, if you think there are things we are not doing properly
or there are areas where other departments do it better, then
part of your examination of the Annual Report and us is to precisely
to enable you to do that. I would not go to the wall on a thing
like this, it is just that I do not like spending money.
Dr Wildgoose: Can I add one thing,
quite a lot of the issues that we have got that deal with co-ordination
are very, very detailed and relatively few people understand them
in terms of the detail of them, and that is another element in
terms of the actual measure in finding the right people you might
speak to. That is actually quite a difficult process.
Q30 Mr Davidson: So to clarify, most
people would be too stupid then to understand whether or not they
had been adequately co-ordinated by yourself?
Dr Wildgoose: No, we are talking
about very detailed parts of Bills and extremely detailed arcane
issues in many instances, and therefore it is quite difficult
actually to find a grouping of people who it would be easy to
inform about that and get views back that would be sensible.
Q31 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you may remember performance against target one was discussed
in the oral evidence session in July 2004 and at that time you
said, "I think we need to do better than that". At that
stage performance was 81% and now it is judged at 79%. Why has
performance dropped?
Mr Darling: I think it is partly
my fault—it is all my fault as I am Secretary of State.
I am notorious for drafting and redrafting replies because I think
it is more important a Member gets the right reply than a reply.
Although the response is not as good as it was last year, I think
it is something where we as ministers, and officials for that
matter, need to do better. Jim, is there anything you want to
add to that?
Dr Wildgoose: Just to say that
we have, and will shortly institute, a management system for correspondence
which we hope will improve the system, with tracking where there
might be problems, and that will be introduced in fact from Monday.
The second thing to say is that what tends to happen with correspondence
is that you get bunching of correspondence in particular areas.
You have relatively small numbers of people working in these areas
and suddenly you accrue large amounts of correspondence and managing
that itself can create difficulties, but we are hopeful these
new arrangements will help to identify that early and address
these particular issues.
Q32 Mr Walker: But you received no
complaints, I notice?
Dr Wildgoose: No.
Q33 Mr Walker: No complaints at all
received?
Dr Wildgoose: I am not aware of
any complaints.
Q34 Mr Davidson: Can I come back
to this question of communications? I have been following in the
press with interest the utterances of Scottish Executive Ministers
about the question of asylum seekers, seizures and so on. Is not
the fact they are going to the press an indication that communications
through what could be described as normal channels have broken
down, because otherwise they would be able to resolve these things
diplomatically through this wonderful communications mechanism
that cannot be assessed, that is working fine and so on?
Mr Darling: No, politicians do
go to the press. I would no more argue that relations between
you and me had broken down if you do not write to me than when
you appear on Good Morning Scotland or on the Today
Programme denouncing Government policy.
Q35 Mr Davidson: That is business,
to be fair.
Mr Darling: That is what you do,
and there are lots of other times, Ian, since this is a public
meeting, when you do things and write to ministers and do all
sorts of other things as well. Let us be grown up about it, politicians
do say things, sometimes directly to newspapers, on other occasions
their friends speak to newspapers, but generally speaking I think
you can take it if relations between Westminster and Holyrood
were bad, you would see a hell of a lot more of it in the papers
than you do at the moment. People obviously have to state their
position from time to time and that is just the way of politics,
but generally speaking the relations on that subject as well as
ours are pretty good.
Chairman: We move on to the effective
resource management of the Scotland Office.
Q36 Gordon Banks: Secretary of State,
your Department's annual review stated, "...we contribute
to and benefit from DCA policy on Civil Service reform and improvement.
This is now an important element of our forward strategy and we
shall be working with the DCA to strengthen our processes and
procedures in order to follow Best Practice procedures as agreed
with the DCA".[5]
Bearing that in mind, could you provide the Committee today with
examples of how the Scotland Office has benefited from Civil Service
reform and improvements in the DCA?
Mr Darling: I think I will ask
Jim to talk about this because it is about staffing.
Dr Wildgoose: Can I clarify one
point to start with. The staff we now have within the Office,
a complement of some 57, we have around 50 in post at the moment,
two-thirds of them are on loan from the Scottish Executive and
a third are on DCA terms and conditions and that was the preference
exercise that was done towards the end of 2004 and into 2005.
Both the Scottish Executive and the DCA have got programmes that
operate to address these issues in terms of Civil Service reform
and they tend to be in separate waves of activity that come forward
and there are four that I could mention. The first one which has
been taken forward is the whole process of improving leadership
capacity particularly within the Senior Civil Service, and that
has been done separately through separate arrangements in the
Executive and in the DCA but basically achieving the same results
as to identify what kind of leadership potential there exists
within people within the senior Civil Service and what kind of
activity is required to fill gaps that might exist. A second area
which is much more recent is the whole area of professional skills
for government where a much wider range of skills are identified:
people management, financial management, project and programme
management, analysis and use of information and evidence, communications
in marketing, strategic thinking, client care. These are the kind
of issues that are identified as core skills. A bit like the leadership
arrangements, how that is working is that the performance management
process, that is the reporting on how well staff are doing, will
actually incorporate these skills activities both under the DCA
arrangements and the Scottish Executive arrangements. That process
was started within the Scotland Office. It is still to be fully
implemented in terms of the DCA activities; there is some preliminary
activity going on with that at the moment. The idea then is that
through the performance management to identify jobs and the skills
they require and to match people to those skills and to provide
training opportunities and other opportunities to bridge gaps
where that is required. A lot of the resource both in the DCA
and the Executive is going into that process and the Scotland
Office staff are latched into that process. That is very much
in terms of how staff management operates. We are a bit in the
early days, as I say, of introducing this. It will take a year
or two to bed in. From what we have seen already from the activity
of that, it looks as though it will be a step forward in terms
of the general objective here of producing a Civil Service that
is professional and produces the advice and activity that is required.
I suppose the other thing just to mention about that is that the
Professional Skills for Government does identify different types
of jobs, policy type jobs, corporate service type jobs and delivery
type jobs and identifies how the skills are required to achieve
the best practice in each of these areas. One of the implications
is that in staff that are moving through to go into the senior
Civil Service they would expect to have experience in more than
one of these areas. Again, it is kind of early days for that to
develop but it looks as though it is moving forward. Other areas
that we would look at are the whole question of delivery focus
and being clear, in terms of delivering services to the public,
that there is a focus on delivering for those who benefit from
that service. Now, while we subscribe obviously to those kinds
of provisions the Scotland Office is not a delivery operation,
it does not have a delivery operation to the public. Lastly, I
would mention delivering policy in a way that seeks to serve,
in other words evidence-based policy et cetera, again the Scotland
Office itself is not specifically a policy type organisation,
it is not responsible for large areas of work. There are some
small areas that we are responsible for but most of the activity
is co-ordination as such, so again while we subscribe to these
kinds of provisions they are slightly less relevant to us in terms
of how they work out. There is a range of things there that the
whole question of Civil Service reform is addressing and we feel
we will benefit from in terms of the staffing.
Q37 Gordon Banks: I could give you
two further quotes from the Annual Report "From 2004/2005,
the DCA has provided internal audit services and facilities management
services and work is underway to achieve closer and more efficient
integration of other support services."[6]
"Although the Office is a separate entity within the DCA
they work closely together and share a range of common services
on matters such as finance, IT, accommodation and human resources".[7]
Bearing that in mind, can you give us a comment as to why planned
expenditure and staffing levels in the Scotland Office remain
relatively static over the next few years given the potential
for shared services with the DCA?
Dr Wildgoose: Can I just say that
there has been a huge advantage in having access to the DCA arrangements
for these facilities, particularly for security, finance and IT
services as such. When it comes to staffing levels and how that
might operate, we take very careful note of what staffing levels
we require fairly regularly, through monthly meetings of the management
group that we have and also through an audit group that meets
quarterly in fact with this. The projections that you have for
expenditure are based upon a fixed set of assumptions about complement,
which is 60 staff. We will be looking carefully at that position
as we move forward. I cannot anticipate what exactly our views
will be, but we will look carefully from the turn of the year
in fact at what our plan should be for the following year, and
I suspect that figure will change. Currently we have a complement
of 57 and that changed fairly recently. We have 50 staff in post
at the moment although we are actively recruiting to get the balance
of those staff. We will look carefully at the priorities we need
to look at for the following years. It is very difficult for projection
purposes to simply choose a figure different from the one that
represented the complement at the time that the report was looked
at, but we will look very carefully at that as time goes on and
we are not bound by exactly those figures that are there but we
do look carefully at that.
Q38 Gordon Banks: So it is something
under constant scrutiny? Is it scrutinised every month?
Mr Darling: Remember the staffing
has come down from over 100.
Dr Wildgoose: No, it was 95 and
it came down to 65 immediately after the review in late 2003.
The latest complement that has gone into this report is 60—
Mr Darling: We actually employ
50 people.
Dr Wildgoose: —we have adjusted
that to 57. We now have 50 people, although there is some recruitment,
as I say, and we are constantly looking at that because there
are changing priorities in terms of how we see the co-ordination
being required.
Chairman: Right. Now we move on to Scotland
Office expenditure.
Q39 Mr MacNeil: Secretary of State,
I am perhaps concerned you might be picking up some bad habits
from the likes of DCA or wherever. The expenditure on travel over
the last five years is around about £1.168 million, how do
you in the Department firstly make sure you have effective value
for money and, secondly, how much of that is spent on travel between
Scotland and London?
Mr Darling: The expenditure on
travel has been coming down since the first full year, which was
2000-2001, when the total travel expenditure was £360,000,
just over that, and the Scotland Office element of that last year
was £163,000, but on top of that was the Office of the Advocate-General
which would be £112,000, which is a total of £275,000.
The amount has been coming down against a background that there
are fewer ministers—travel costs have gone up in some cases.
How much travel between London and Edinburgh? I cannot give you
the exact figure off the top of my head. It is difficult to quantify
because, as you will be aware, if ministers fly as ministers,
it is charged to the Scotland Office whereas flying as Members
of Parliament is not. So it is not a terribly good measure of
activity, if you like. Are you in any position to say what percentage
is—?
Dr Wildgoose: I do not have figures.
Mr Darling: The staff costs will
be the lion's share of this. Most of the staff, generally speaking,
do not spend much time commuting between London or Edinburgh,
they are either based in London or Edinburgh. The costs have come
down over the last five years, and not many departments can say
that, I suspect.
4 Arbuthnot Commission inquiry into Boundaries, Voting
and Representation in Scotland. Back
5
Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General for Scotland
Annual Report 2005 page 30, para 4.4 Back
6
Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General for Scotland
Annual Report 2005 page 30, para 4.5 Back
7
Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General for Scotland
Annual Report 2005 page 2, para 1.5 Back
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