Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
MR ANDREW
COGAN, MS
JENNY KARTUPELIS
AND MR
RICHARD BOYD
27 MARCH 2006
Q240 Mr Betts: Welcome to the Committee.
As I said previously, the Chair apologises. Phyllis Starkey MP
is actually in her constituency on important business today. Thank
you for coming anyway and could you introduce yourselves, for
our records, please?
Mr Cogan: I am Andrew Cogan. I
am from the Community and Voluntary Forum for the Eastern Region.
Ms Kartupelis: Jenny Kartupelis,
from the East of England Faiths Council.
Mr Boyd: Richard Boyd, from the
Disability East Consortium.
Mr Betts: Thank you for that.
Q241 John Cummings: The Committee
understands that your representatives sit on the East of England
Assembly as nominees, rather than elected representatives; are
you comfortable with this particular arrangement?
Mr Cogan: No. We have to be there.
Q242 John Cummings: When you say
you have to be, where do you find the failings, the shortcomings,
in that particular arrangement?
Mr Cogan: The stakeholder model
has got a democratic deficit. People do not have a direct connection
with the Assembly, it is filtered through nominating bodies. In
our case the politicians are nominated by local authorities, we
nominate four or five voluntary sector representatives, other
bodies nominate environmental interests, business interests, and
so on.
Q243 John Cummings: If you had to
reorganise it, what would you do?
Mr Cogan: We quite like directly-elected
assemblies, rather than regional assemblies.
Q244 John Cummings: You are in favour
of directly-elected regional assemblies?
Mr Cogan: We have mixed views.
As a sector, we have a range of views.
Anne Main: Can we hear your views?
Q245 John Cummings: We are here at
this inquiry, you see, talking about regional governance?
Ms Kartupelis: We do not all have
to be in agreement, do we?
Q246 John Cummings: No.
Mr Cogan: We have diverse voices
and interests.
Ms Kartupelis: Thank you.
Mr Betts: Even we disagree.
Q247 Martin Horwood: You can give
us your personal views?
Ms Kartupelis: I will give you
my personal view, if you wish, because, I am sorry to say, although
Andy and I agree on many things, possibly it is not that one.
I am not the Member of our Regional Assembly but I assist our
nominee, who does sit on the Assembly, and my experience is that
the political members of the Assembly find the community stakeholders
grouping, as we call it in our region, to be very valuable, for
a number of reasons. One is that they ameliorate, if one may say
so to the people here, some of the fighting that can occur between
political parties and bring to bear on it an experience that is
somewhat different and they bring an apolitical viewpoint. If
we were to have an elected assembly, such as that in London, I
understand that the community stakeholders group would no longer
be part of the assembly but would be an advisory group, sort of
to the side of it. I think that our Assembly would lose something
thereby. I believe the politicians think that as well. I would
agree that there is a democratic deficit, insofar as people have
got onto a body with some influence and power without having been
elected.
Q248 Mr Olner: It is like the House
of Lords then?
Ms Kartupelis: Perhaps we will
be drawn on that. Some people might think, as well, that House
offers a range of experience which might not be found elsewhere,
I guess.
Mr Boyd: Being typical, I sit
firmly between both points of view. The view that my consortium
takes is that we are where we are and if there is a structure
where influence can be brought to bear for the benefit of our
membership and disabled people in general we will use that method
to the best of our ability. It is ironic that we are part of a
consortium of shareholder, if you like, stakeholder reps appointed
within the COVER consortium and we are watching the members and
officers trying to remove that away and delegate that to themselves
to pick which stakeholder they see fit to represent which equality.
That said, as the structure exists, we contribute positively to
try to make it work better for the benefit of the people we represent,
and we believe that we are not a silo, disability is not a silo,
just as age is not a silo, and that we are trying to get involved
in all levels and share it amongst the five of us. For instance,
where age and disability have a shared interest, we will share
that agenda among us and cascade that down to our system.
Q249 John Cummings: Recognising that
you do contribute to the social, environmental and economic issues
which are debated within your Assembly, what would need to change
to make your representation more effective?
Mr Boyd: I do not have an instant
answer. Sometimes I wonder what local MPs could contribute to
a regional agenda, they are aware of this coal-face, just as we
are. Sometimes I wonder what county councils do, having been formerly
a leader of one, in the sense that sometimes the words are there
but the actions are different and one will not do what the other
has agreed to do. An example is—if you are keen on examples—the
voluntary sector in the East of England provides an information
service for disabled people by `phone and website, except now
that Hertfordshire is proposing to take that away from the voluntary
service and integrate it back into the County Council structure.
I have difficulty with that; so the words are there but the actions
are not.
Q250 Anne Main: I shall be pursuing
Hertfordshire then, since I am a Hertfordshire Member of Parliament;
that is interesting. Can you give an example of how you influence
the work of the Assembly; do you feel you are listened to? You
say you are unhappy with that. I do not know whether you have
got any other issues where you feel you are listened to; are you
able to comment on the experience of social partners in the other
regions, are they treated like you are, do you think?
Mr Cogan: I think we have some
influence. Our region has a social strategy and it is a very fine,
social justice document, in terms of it is going to improve the
quality of life, improve social and economic inclusion, environment
inclusion and do great things; the problem is the follow-through.
I do not think it is tied up with the local delivery vehicles.
It was written before Local Area Agreements, for instance, and
that bringing together of commissioning and joint action alignment.
I was looking only this morning at our health and social inclusion
partnership of the Assembly and it is clear that the social policy
of the region was at variance with what was happening on the ground
locally, there was a huge gap between what the region was trying
to do and what was happening on the ground.
Q251 Anne Main: Which should you
do; what the region wants to do?
Mr Cogan: I think, try to bring
them together, from a regional perspective, try to work with local
agencies and local partnerships.
Q252 Anne Main: Why is there this
variance then? Why do you think there is that variance between
what the region is trying to do, or wants to do, and what the
people on the ground are trying to do and want to do?
Mr Cogan: I think a lot of it
is down to government initiatives. There are so many government
initiatives, everything sub-regional is up for grabs at the moment,
in terms of health structures, political structures, new Local
Area Agreements, LSPs, all sorts of things; they are in a mess.
There so many things happening, it is very hard to get hold of
anything.
Q253 Anne Main: A government-created
mess, is that what you have just described?
Mr Cogan: I think it is.
Q254 Alison Seabeck: Part of the
question I was going to ask is around the welter of government
initiatives you describe in your paper. What is your experience
of dealing with the Government Office, to start with, generally;
what are the relationships like?
Mr Cogan: Good and bad.
Q255 Alison Seabeck: In what sense;
when it is bad, why is it bad?
Mr Cogan: I think the words are
fine. Sometimes I think it is to do with their capacity, the numbers
of people they have. Last week, they issued a notice to all their
staff that there would be a 33% cull of staff, which makes it
very hard to talk to people when they are worried about whether
they will have a job next month, next year, and the rest of it.
For instance, we run the Community Champions Fund for the region
and our personnel managers had to deal with four different civil
servants in 12 months as their contact. There is a mixture. There
are lots of good intentions, but, in practice, in a way, it is
quite hard to make it work.
Q256 Alison Seabeck: Those four civil
servants, are they there representing different government departments
with the Government Office?
Mr Cogan: They were all in the
same department; there was a merry-go-round of the organisation,
some people were moving on and moving on and moving on.
Q257 Alison Seabeck: Nonetheless,
at times that is complicated further by the fact that you have
these different government departments within Government Offices.
What is your experience of how they interrelate, those government
departments, within Government Offices, or are they both silo-bound?
Mr Cogan: They are trying to make
links across departments. We have got a sort of regional compact,
trying to work across the various government departments; it is
the early stages, it was signed just before Christmas. We are
trying to work to get that across the range, but it is slow stuff.
Q258 Alison Seabeck: Coming back
to the communication problem, which you described, about local
and regional, you are feeding in information to Government Office
in the region, which, in turn, they should be feeding up to national
government in order to help inform policy there. Do you feel that
is happening or do you feel you get to Government Office and basically
you might just as well be talking direct to Government?
Mr Cogan: I think the feeding
really does go up. I think the balance of power is downwards rather
than upwards, in terms of flow of communications.
Q259 Martin Horwood: This is on a
similar point really. We have seen stakeholder research, not specific
to your region, which suggests and basically it asks stakeholders
in the regional government process more broadly to whom they thought
various bodies listened. They found the most influence on the
three regional bodies was from central government and after that
it was each other, so there was a lot of self-reference going
on, and I think public opinion came bottom, after the voluntary
sector and various others. The first question is, is that your
experience, and the second question really is about who is doing
the listening and are the officers in these assemblies more influential
than you would expect in a democratic body?
Ms Kartupelis: I think there is
a lack of continuity, in various ways, and what you have just
phrased is an aspect of that. There is the one that Andy has mentioned,
in terms of changes of personnel but also there is lack of continuity
in terms of policy, because it seems to me that, at least with
Government Office and now RDA, they are having to interpret to
us the central government policy, rather than adapt it in any
way to the needs of our particular region. If there is a new initiative
then they are reflecting that initiative and we are having to
adapt to it. Within the voluntary sector, perhaps surprisingly,
there seems to be a greater degree of continuity than actually
there is in governance, and certainly in the part of the voluntary
sector that I represent I would say that is the case.
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