Use of numbers
106. A large amount of numbers illustrating costs,
funding and performance are included within the main text of the
Departmental Report. Some of these could be better presented through
simple tables or pie charts. For instance, the following information
on 'Expenditure on production linked CAP [Common Agricultural
Policy] market support schemes' is given on page 122:
Expenditure on production linked CAP market support
schemes is forecast to total £339 million in 2005-06. Of
this, £178 million is expected to be spent on sugar and starch
schemes, £102 million on dairy schemes, £29 million
on fruit and vegetable schemes, £16 million on processed
goods and the remainder on other schemes.
This could easily have been presented as a pie chart
or in tabular form, which would have made the numbers and their
relative proportions much clearer.
107. Embedding numbers into long blocks of text
makes them difficult to assimilate easily. Numbers are generally
better presented in charts, graphs, tables or bullet-pointed lists.
We recommend that the Departmental Report make more use of these
kinds of devices in order to help the reader identify and understand
key statistics. We also recommend that comparative statistical
data be incorporated in the Report to enable the reader to establish
a clear view about the trends encapsulated by the published numbers.
Cross-referencing
108. The Departmental Report suffers from a lack
of good cross-referencing. For example, page 21 states that more
information on Defra's work on sustainable consumption can be
found "in Chapter 3". Chapter 3, however, is 117 pages
long: the reference is therefore not particularly helpful. The
Permanent Secretary acknowledged that the Department perhaps needed
to "think again about how we do … signposting"
in its Departmental Reports.[164]
The Report's index—in common with those of departmental
reports from most other departments—is also less than helpful.
For instance, a reader trying to find out from the index what
the Report says about the CAP is given simply an undifferentiated
list of the 24 occasions in which the CAP is mentioned in the
Report.[165]
109. We recommend that cross-referencing in the
Departmental Report be improved by making references more specific,
directing readers to a specific page number. Cross-referencing
would also be improved if sections or paragraphs were numbered.
The report would also benefit from an index which differentiates
between passing references and significant data or discussion.
153 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee,
Fourth Report of Session 2005-06, The Departmental Annual Report
2005, HC 693-I, para 6 Back
154
For example, p 79 -80 Back
155
Q 5 Back
156
Defra, Departmental Report 2006, pp. 158-159 Back
157
Defra, Departmental Report 2006, p 124 Back
158
Q 39 Back
159
Q 39 Back
160
Defra, Resource Accounts 2005-06, November 2006, HC 1643,
pp 35-36 Back
161
Defra, Departmental Report 2005, Cm 6537, June 2005 Back
162
2006 Departmental Reports by the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth
Office are 135 pages and 167 pages long respectively (CM 6818;
Cm 6823). Back
163
The Home Office's Departmental Report 2006 (Cm 6818) is 135 pages
long. Back
164
Q 5 Back
165
Defra, Departmental Report 2006, p 279 Back
