Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MR
CHRIS WORMALD,
MS HUNADA
NOUSS, MS
CHRISTINA BIENKOWSKA
AND MR
RICHARD MCCARTHY
22 OCTOBER 2007
Q1 Chair: Can I welcome you to the start
of this session. I am assuming, Mr Housden, that if it is one
of your colleagues who should answer the question you will indicate
which of your colleagues it should be rather than us having to
guess. Can I start off by saying that it was a pleasure that this
year we got the Annual Report on time and we were pleased to see
that many of the criticisms that we made of it in the past have
actually been addressed. I want to start by looking at the two
PSAs relating to community cohesion and gender equality, PSA 10
to start with. The new Secretary of State has made community cohesion
one of her top priorities but there is quite considerable slippage
against every target within PSA 10. Do you think the Department
can actually reverse that trend and, if so, how?
Mr Housden: You are quite right
to say that the data that we reported on cohesion does show slippage.
The third measure on cohesion in high risk areas, the figures
that are coming through quarterly for 2007, show some improvement
but in terms of discrimination in the labour market there is no
improvement to report. On the experience of Black and minority
ethnic people in public service organisations again we have to
show slippage there but it is worth dwelling a moment on the target
because the target is expressed, as you can see, in terms of people
having perceptions that in one or more services they are experiencing
discrimination. Actually those perceptions have improved-people
feel they are being more fairly treated-in seven out of the eight
areas so there is a slightly more mixed picture than the simple
figures indicated. Going forward there is one of the few cross-government
PSAs in the new spending review on cohesion with all the appropriate
measures. As I think the Committee will be aware, under both Ruth
Kelly and Hazel Blears, the Department has taken a big step to
get cohesion on the agenda in localities. You might want to talk
about the Commission for Integration and Cohesion and the work
that has followed that: the announcements that Hazel Blears made
on 5 October, in essence getting local authorities to prioritise
this work as part of their local leadership. I think for me there
are two or three things which are particularly important about
cohesion. The first thing is about bringing communities together-finding
things in a very diverse make-up which many of our towns and cities
and indeed rural areas have now-to find activities that bring
communities together rather than to separate them, to emphasise
the importance of common citizenship, the importance of English
as the language that brings people together, a more prudent policy
on translation. All of these types of issues that the Commission
has now brought into proper public debate and we are confident
that we can develop a programme with local partners that can make
a more effective resolution of this at local level.
Q2 Chair: Can I just pick up two
of the points you made? One is in relation to the targets themselves,
they are all about perceptions of whether people are being discriminated
against. Why has that target been chosen rather than the hard
target of equal access to employment across ethnic groups, for
example, or equal outcomes in education which are much more objective
and not subjective?
Mr Housden: In relation to the
spending review 2004?
Q3 Chair: In relation to measuring
racial equality and cohesion and targets of delivery.
Mr Housden: This is the point
I was making about the spending review and the 2007 targets, we
will have in view both at national level and in terms of the local
area indicator set a good number of hard measures and not just
perceptions. You are right that this target is restricted in that
sense.
Q4 Chair: The second issue is that
you mentioned the ten areas most at risk of disturbances, how
exactly have you identified which those ten areas are?
Mr Housden: On the basis of past
experience in relation particularly to disturbances, anti-social
behaviour which may have a racial or inter-community aspect.
Q5 Chair: You are not including within
any of those areas areas where there may be tensions but they
have not yet led to any riot or disturbance or whatever.
Mr Housden: That is an important
point. Narrowly in relation to this target the answer is no, but
we do of course, through government offices, keep a very close
watch on any indications of community tensions whether it is the
first such instance reported or whether there has been a history
of it, but in terms of this particular target, framed in fairness
now several years ago, it is (a) based on perceptions and (b)
in those cases is looking at areas that have a history or have
had a history of difficulty.
Q6 Mr Olner: It seems to me that
there has been an awful amount of gun crime and knife crime in
communities and I wondered whether, with that happening, it has
made you pay a little more attention to it so that we can get
some true pictures and attack this problem that is affecting many
of our real communities.
Mr Housden: Yes, absolutely. We
have been very keen to support the Prime Minister's initiatives
on "guns and gangs" as the press has called it. The
Home Office is in the lead there but we have a colleague on secondment
working in that team. You will know that there are four pilot
areas that they are working on to understand more closely what
can be effective in terms of this but yes, we do think that is
important. I know that local authorities similarly the length
and breadth of the country will regard that as a key part of this
working with the police.
Q7 Chair: Can I again pick up on
something that you said in that parts of the sub-targets in PSA
10 have been met but some parts have slipped. That I think is
the same reason why the Department has failed to meet PSA 7 on
decent homes, that some of the sub-targets have slipped. Does
this indicate that the targets are too rigidly drawn if you can
actually be meeting quite a few of the sub-targets but just one
lets you down and it appears then that you are failing to deliver
across the whole piece?
Mr Housden: I have two things
to say on that. The rules of combination in terms of what you
have to do to meet the target do vary. As our discussions go on
this afternoon we will come to other areas where there are quite
complicated variations required before you can actually hit a
target. I think from our point of view the important thing is
to keep the big purpose of targets in view which for me is to
do two things. Firstly it is to galvanise action and to focus
attention on the issues and secondly to provide accountability
for them so that the community at large, Parliament particularly,
can see across a range of indicators whether progress is being
made. To some extent the question of whether the definition of
how that combination of things adds up to a target being met is
a second stage question. If you looked at the range of these targets
one through to ten I think you would be able to see some important
progress in all of that and the facts are clear for you and others
to scrutinise where we have got to on this both as a department,
as a government and more broadly.
Q8 Chair: I think that brings me
to the point on PSA 9. I know that has now gone over to another
department but the point there was that the Department originally
said they were on course and then following the NAO looking at
it they decided that the Department was not on course. So there
obviously is not clarity, even for the Department itself, let
alone for anybody else.
Mr Housden: Indeed. We have to
accept responsibility for this one. In the Autumn Performance
Report which comes in November to this Committee and to Parliament
we will certainly be showing this one as slippage. We are not
on track to meet those targets.
Q9 Martin Horwood: I want to talk
to you now about PSA 3. Before I do, I think it is important to
acknowledge that overall on the main target you seem to be ahead
of the curve. However, sub-target 1 shows slippage which is the
average annual fatality rate from accidental fires in the home
being more than 1.25 times the national average. You say with
a five year period to 2006 four out of 47 were above this; for
2005-06 it is actually ten out of 47. First of all, do you think
this is a sensible target? It does seem rather weird that it should
be the variation from the average which presumably means that
if all of them rose to the highest level of fatalities you would
meet the target despite the fact that a lot more people would
be dead, which seems a very strange target to me. Taking it at
face value as well what are you doing to support the fire and
rescue authorities that are going so far above the average?
Mr Housden: My colleague Chris
Wormald who leads on this may want to comment. I think again in
terms of when this element of the target was being framed a few
years ago there were a larger number-eleven-who were more than
one and a quarter times the average. Seeking to bring that down
at that stage was a reasonable way to shape it. As that number
diminishes-it is four now-as the overall numbers of deaths in
this category happily declines it becomes a less and less sensitive
measure. Chris, would you like to say something about what we
have been doing with these four authorities to move that position
forward?
Mr Wormald: Yes, but also on your
"is this a sensible target" question I think our view
would be that it is a target that has largely served its purpose
and the new Departmental Service Obligation (DSO) that we will
have on fire resilience will look at a much broader range of measures
across the performance of fire and rescue authorities. On what
we do with individual authorities that are not meeting targets,
there is no magic to this, it is all about good practice and capacity
building in those authorities, it is about learning from their
peers who have met the target and looking at the underlying factors
in that area that are causing the increased deaths which are mainly,
it has to be said, on the prevention side of the fire agenda rather
than the response of the fire service. In future this work will
be led by Sir Ken Knight who is our new Chief Fire Adviser and
in terms of going forward his unit will be absolutely key in bringing
any under-performing fire authority up to standard.
Q10 Martin Horwood: Can I ask you
about the target then? Would you prefer to move to one that actually
measures the absolute fatality rate and sets a target on that
basis?
Mr Wormald: The new DSO we are
drawing up is going to look at a much broader range of the things
that fire services do rather than simply deaths in domestic fires.
I think that was a perfectly sensible target to have set at the
point that it was set in that it focussed minds particularly on
the prevention agenda of fire.
Q11 Martin Horwood: Sorry to interrupt
but my problem with it was not that it was about the fatality
rate from accidental fires, it was that it was a percentage variation
target rather than an absolute measure. Would you support having
a target related to the actual fatality rate?
Mr Wormald: I think the percentage
variation again at the time that it was set was a useful way of
looking at that target.
Q12 Chair: Can you tell us why it
was sensible?
Mr Wormald: Because it focussed
attention of those authorities that appeared to be away from the
average level.
Q13 Martin Horwood: Are you now in
favour of a target that measures the absolute fatality rate? Yes
or no?
Mr Wormald: Sorry?
Q14 Martin Horwood: Would you like
to move now to a target that measures the absolute fatality rate?
Mr Wormald: We are moving away
from a target that focuses purely on the absolute fatality rate.
Q15 Martin Horwood: So we are going
to have a more complicated target that is even more difficult
to read.
Mr Wormald: I do not think this
one is difficult to read; in some ways this one is very straightforward.
Q16 Martin Horwood: I am sorry for
being thick here, but if fatalities are what you are trying to
reduce surely setting a target relating to the actual fatality
rate as opposed to the variation from the norm must be the right
way to go.
Mr Wormald: That is what the first
part of the target is.
Q17 Chair: What are the other things
that are going to be in the target then? That might help.
Mr Wormald: The other things will
be the other range of what the fire and resilience service does,
things like automobile accident response times et cetera.
Q18 Martin Horwood: The National
Audit Office tells us that the percentage of fires responded to
within five minutes in 2005 was 37 per cent and that that compares
with 46 per cent in 2001. Why is that number going down?
Mr Wormald: What we did in reforming
the Fire and Rescue Service is to move away from national standards
of fire cover that focussed almost exclusively on response times
in particular areas much more towards locally set priorities for
fire and rescue services which were not so much focussed on response
time. One of the results of that was that fire and rescue services
moved quite a lot of resource from response into prevention and
that saves a lot of lives. One of the salutary facts in all this
is that our research shows that somewhere around 80 per cent of
fire deaths have already happened at the point at which the fire
brigade is called. The actual effect of response times on the
death rate is really comparatively small.
Q19 John Cummings: You have got me
absolutely confused. Can Mr Wormald just answer this question,
have we got a worse service now than we used to have in terms
of responses?
Mr Wormald: I am not denying that
the number has gone up, it clearly has. What I am saying is that
that does not equate to a worse service.
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