2 The Department and the Committee
6. While we were pleased at the positive response
from Ministers and officials in terms of attendance at Committee
hearings, we were disappointed by the quality of some responses
received when we sought specific information. This was particularly
the case in relation to questions on the Winter Supplementary
Estimates memorandum—intended to inform not only our deliberations
but also the House's consideration of the Estimates—and
progress made towards equal opportunities targets in appointments
to public bodies, on which none of the four officials present
was apparently able to provide any information. While both points
were detailed, the apparent unawareness among senior officials
of the existence of documents provided to us by their own Department
and of stated departmental policies led us publicly to suggest
that they were under-prepared to meet us.[2]
When this point was put to them, the Permanent Secretary, Mr Housden,
said that the officials would use their post-session debrief process
to consider the comments made. We
note with some concern that senior departmental officials sometimes
gave the appearance of being under-prepared for detailed scrutiny.
We understand that they intended to discuss this at their post-meeting
debriefing session and look forward to seeing what impact that
discussion has on future evidence sessions.
7. More generally, we were on occasion disappointed
with the information the Department provided to Parliament. Two
examples—the Winter Supplementary Estimate memorandum once
again and a number of answers to Written Questions—illustrate
the point.
8. The memorandum supplied on the Department's Winter
Supplementary Estimate should have explained additional Estimates
and reallocations totalling £1.35 billion. The complexity
of the Estimate was such that it contained no fewer than 36 sub-heads,
of which 28 were affected by the Winter Supplementary Estimate.
More than 100 separate transfers were listed in the memorandum
supplied. The quality and clarity of similar memoranda had previously
attracted criticism from the Committee: indeed, ODPM as it then
was went through precisely the same process of submitting an inadequate
memorandum for the Winter Supplementary Estimate in 2004, apologising,
and providing a revised memorandum. The Committee Office Scrutiny
Unit supplied a best practice example to the Department in November
2005. The Treasury has also given guidance on the provision of
explanatory memoranda since 2004, and the Liaison Committee recommended
in October 2006 that all Departments should follow the Scrutiny
Unit's guidance to provide clearer and more informative memoranda.[3]
In spite of all that advice, guidance and assistance, the memorandum
supplied this year was opaque, confusing and uninformative. Officials
seemed unaware of all previous concerns about the clarity and
usefulness of the information provided and of the cross-governmental
agreement to provide the information in a format approved by the
Treasury.[4] To their credit,
when we expressed our exasperation at going over this point again
the officials ensured that the Department provided a much clearer
revised memorandum within a matter of days. None the less, the
effort required to produce a revision so quickly could have been
avoided simply by heeding the lessons to be learnt from our original
requests. The failure to do so left Members just three days to
digest the new, improved memorandum in advance of the 7 December
Estimates Day debate.
9. The Secretary of State herself expressed "disappointment"
that we had been left feeling insufficiently informed and said:
"It is extremely important that Parliament is
properly informed as it scrutinises the work of DCLG […]
I shall take a personal interest in future in the information
that is provided to Parliament, make sure that it is as full as
possible […] I am very grateful to the Committee for having
raised this issue [the Winter Supplementary Estimate memorandum]
so that I shall have a chance to make sure that it does not happen
again".[5]
In addition to the provision of a new memorandum,
the Department has since taken further steps to rectify the situation,
including discussions with the Committee secretariat and the Scrutiny
Unit on the future provision of documents. We
welcome the Departments' active response to our criticisms regarding
the clarity and usefulness of its explanatory memorandum on the
Winter Supplementary Estimates, although it is unacceptable that
this occurred only after repeated requests for clearer information.
We are grateful for the Secretary of State's personal commitment
to ensure that Parliament is kept as fully informed as possible.
We expect to see more suitable, informative and comprehensible
explanatory memoranda for all future Estimates, and we shall return
to this matter should they prove unsatisfactory.
10. The DCLG has also appeared at times not to give
full answers to straightforward parliamentary questions relating
to its predecessor, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
A number of questions seeking information for the period before
May 2006 have received answers stating baldly that the DCLG was
created in May 2006 and providing no information on the ODPM.
For example, Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP asked how many redundancies
there had been in the Department since 1997 and was told "Information
prior to the creation of the Department for Communities and Local
Government […] on 5 May 2006 is not readily available".[6]
On another occasion, Mr Mark Prisk MP asked six questions relating
to IT projects since 2001. Each reply stated: "The Department
for Communities and Local Government was created in May 2006."
No information was given for the years 2001-2006.[7]
Other examples of such answers have been passed on to the Department.
11. Although the DCLG and the former ODPM are not
analogous, the correspondence between the two is substantial,
and there should be no question of the new Department failing
to provide easily accessible information relating to the old.
In response to our concerns regarding Mr Clifton-Brown's question
about redundancies, for example, the Permanent Secretary accepted
that the Department's human resources section had not changed.
The Director-General for Corporate Delivery, Mr Unwin, agreed
that the DCLG should experience no problems in obtaining such
information about the former ODPM.[8]
12. A week after we raised the matter with officials,
the Secretary of State told us that she had personally reviewed
the parliamentary questions and answers that we had identified
and had instructed her private office to issue new guidance making
explicit the presumption that easily accessible information should
be provided:
"The Committee is right to expect that and I
should like to clarify that there is absolutely no prohibition
on providing information in relation to the former Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister […] We are reviewing guidance to make
the presumption that information should be provided if it is readily
available […] Most HR information is readily available and
should be provided".[9]
13. Since we drew the Secretary of State's comments
to the attention of those Members whose questions had not been
answered adequately, the Department has sent us a copy of the
guidance and placed a further copy in the House of Commons Library.
It begins by rehearsing the terms of the resolution of the House
of 19 March 1997:
"Ministers should be as open as possible with
Parliament, refusing to provide information only when disclosure
would not be in the public interest".[10]
It is then closely modelled on what the Secretary
of State told us:
"there is no prohibition on providing information
relating to the former ODPM […] there should be a presumption
that any of the requested information which is readily available
should be provided—including for the former ODPM".[11]
While it may be merely a semantic distinction, we
note for future reference the subtle difference in tone between
the terms of the resolution of the House that there should be
a presumption in favour of providing information and those of
the Secretary of State, repeated in the new guidance, that there
is "no prohibition" on providing such information. We
are concerned that the Department for a time gave, perhaps inadvertently,
the impression that it was unwilling to answer parliamentary questions
relating to its predecessor, the former Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister. We are pleased that the Secretary of State moved immediately
to issue new guidance when we drew the issue to her attention.
2 Q105 Back
3
Liaison Committee, Third Report of Session 2005-06, Estimates
Memoranda, HC 1685, para 3 Back
4
Liaison Committee, First Report of Session 2004-05, Annual
Report for 2004, HC 419, para 28 Back
5
Q106 Back
6
HC Deb, 3 October 2006, col 40W Back
7
HC Deb, 6 November 2006, cols 887-88W Back
8
QQ53, 56 Back
9
QQ117, 118, 120 Back
10
HC Deb, 19 March 1997, col 1047. The new DCLG guidance inserts
the words "and the public" between "Parliament"
and "refusing". Back
11
Ev 110-11 Back
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