1 The Committee and
the Department
1. We commented last year on the extent to which
the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) was "uniquely
dependent upon other Government departments to support the delivery
of much of its agenda".[1]
One could equally well point to the Department's dependence on
local government for delivery of other elements of its responsibilities.
This is particularly true in relation to sustainable communities—that
"powerful blender…of disparate policy areas"
which, as one Minister put it, is "the defining
idea of the department".[2]
This remains the case for the ODPM's successor department, the
Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). We have
noted previously the challenges this presents to the Department
in terms of delivery: that it also poses challenges in terms of
scrutiny has become increasingly apparent since our appointment
in July 2005. Examining the Department in almost any of its major
policy areas through a narrow analysis of its own activities is
frequently insufficient to reach an accurate and well rounded
assessment of the quality of its performance. Over the course
of the session, we have had to develop strong and productive relationships
with a range of Government departments and other partners and
this has been reflected in the shape of many of the inquiries
we have undertaken. It is telling that between October 2005 and
December 2006 we have taken oral evidence from Ministers representing
five different Government departments (Ministers from other Departments
appearing on two occasions alongside a DCLG Minister), examined
officials from two further departments (the Department of Transport
and the Department of Work and Pensions), and examined public
bodies falling within the jurisdiction of the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport, the Department for the Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, the Department for Education and Skills and the
Department of Trade and Industry as well as the Department for
Communities and Local Government. In June 2006 the Report on Electoral
Registration made by the Committee in the last Parliament
jointly with the Constitutional Affairs Committee was tagged as
relevant to a debate in the House.[3]
In November 2006 we held a joint evidence session with the Select
Committee on International Development during which we examined
the Government's involvement with UN-Habitat, the delegation to
its third conference having been led by Baroness Andrews in her
capacity as a DCLG Minister. Our sources for written evidence
have ranged even more broadly across Whitehall.
2. Such an integrated approach to scrutiny, necessitated
by the nature of DCLG's responsibilities, has been an essential
element in discharging our duties to the House. We are pleased
to report, not least because we are conscious that other Committees
in the past have not always encountered such willing co-operation,
that we have met no resistance from any Minister, Government Department,
agency or associated public body to responding to our requests
for evidence, be it oral or written, on the grounds that it would
be more appropriate for such evidence to be given to the Select
Committee more directly associated with their activities. DCLG
itself has also co-operated fully. We are also grateful to colleagues
serving on other Select Committees who have enabled our broad-ranging
approach.
3. We have also been pleased with the positive (consistent
but for one instance) response from DCLG itself to our requests
for evidence and for the attendance of Ministers and officials
although we have at times been disappointed with the quality of
information received. When we reported on the ODPM's Annual Report
for 2005 we commented on specific instances where we detected
reluctance on the part of the Department to disclose information—in
relation to the timetable for Sir Michael Lyons' work on local
government finance and on the costs associated with housing-related
infrastructure for instance. The then new Permanent Secretary,
Peter Housden, agreed that the Department should respond to requests
fully, swiftly and in a manner helpful to the Committee—an
assurance which naturally we welcomed. It was therefore particularly
disappointing that when we examined officials in November 2006,
this time concerning the DCLG's Annual Report for 2006, some of
those representing the Department appeared not so much unwilling
as unable to respond adequately to a range of admittedly detailed
and challenging questions put to them.
4. Departments have been required to provide explanatory
memoranda to support main and supplementary Estimates since the
Winter Supplementary Estimates for 2004-05. With the valuable
assistance of the Scrutiny Unit, we have worked with the Department
to improve the quality of its Estimates memoranda. Nevertheless
the most recent explanatory memorandum, produced in support of
the Winter Supplementary Estimates for 2006-07, was still largely
an unhelpful, turgid document that did little to elucidate the
Estimate. DCLG's supplementary Estimate requested additional resources
and transfers between existing budgets totalling £1.3 billion
(£1.2 billion after taking into account the machinery of
Government changes). Despite the large sums involved, the explanatory
memorandum did not include sufficient information on the reasoning
behind these transfers or requests for additional resources. Instead
it contained lists of numbers, many of which repeated information
contained in the Written Statement or within the Estimate itself.
Having secured a debate in the House on the Estimate insofar as
it related to affordable housing, and given the size of the request
for resources, we felt it was essential that an adequately informative
explanatory memorandum was available to the Committee and indeed
to all Members, before the House debated and voted on the Estimate.
We therefore requested that a revised, more informative, version
of the memorandum be produced in short order.
5. The Department co-operated fully in this endeavour
and, with guidance from the Scrutiny Unit, an improved memorandum
was made available to all Members, and to the public, two days
ahead of the debate. The Department also offered briefings to
accompany future Estimates. We appreciate this offer—indeed
we may take it up on some occasions— however, such informal
briefings do not negate the need for helpful and informative explanatory
memoranda to accompany the Department's spending plans which can
be made available to all Members of the House and the public:
and in principle we prefer to conduct detailed scrutiny of departmental
estimates in public and on the record.
6. The poor quality of information emanating from
the Department can be detected more broadly than just in the evidence
we have received: it can also be seen, for instance, in a failure
to respond fully to parliamentary questions and in the timing,
presentation and quality of its Annual Report. We comment more
extensively on this in our forthcoming Report on the Department's
Annual Report for 2006 but there are two points arising from this
state of affairs that are particularly relevant here. The first
is that the Department's failure to provide consistently complete
and timely information in a helpful manner makes our job much
harder. Secondly, it leads us to conclude that the weaknesses
we have identified are not deliberately aimed at us as an attempt
to frustrate scrutiny but are generic and symptomatic of a wider
malaise. It is often held that one of the purposes of scrutiny
is to improve the performance of its subject: to the extent that
that is true, the Department is undermining its own ambitions
when it imposes barriers—either deliberately or unwittingly—to
effective scrutiny.
1 ODPM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the
Regions Committee, First Report, ODPM Annual Report and Accounts
2005, Session 2005-06, HC 559, summary, page 3. Back
2
ODPM Annual Report and Accounts 2005, QQ 2, 11, 131. Back
3
First Joint Report from the Committees on Committees on Constitutional
Affairs and on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Housing,
Planning, Local Government and the Regions, Electoral Registration,
Session 2004-05, HC 243. Back
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