Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 18 JULY 2007
MS HELEN
GHOSH AND
MR STEPHEN
PARK
Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen, and welcome to this one-off inquiry into Defra's Departmental
Report for 2007. Just one or two points of housekeeping. It is
likely that throughout the session we may be interrupted by divisions
and once the bell goes we will adjourn the meeting and try and
get back within ten minutes of the bell to continue our inquiry.
We will try also to be crisp because I know the Permanent Secretary
has a time deadline this afternoon of five o'clock and we will
do our very best to respect that. Could I formally welcome before
the Committee Helen Ghosh, the Permanent Secretary of Defra, and
Mr Stephen Park, the Interim Finance Director. Can I say at the
outset that I was personally impressed with this year's Annual
Report. I am grateful to the Department for taking on board some
of the criticisms that we put forward last year. The chapter length
is much more manageable and the fact that you have been candid
enough to produce a page at the beginning of each session both
with the highlights and the issues certainly, I think, from interested
readers is a big improvement. Even though perhaps some of the
issues could be improved with even more candour, it is certainly
a big improvement and I welcome the fact that within the body
of each of these sections is a breakdown of more detail on the
funding for the areas which are discussed in the narrative. Before,
the only way in which you got any statistical information about
Defra's expenditure was in vast broad brush tables at the back,
which were not entirely helpful. Having got those nice words out
of the way, the Mr Nasty bit will start when we come back after
the vote. We will adjourn for approximately ten minutes.
The Committee suspended from 3.07 pm to 3.16
pm for a division in the House
Chairman: We will now start on our detailed
questions, beginning with one or two little points on Bovine TB.
Q1 (18.07.07) Mr Drew: If I could
start with what is one of your intractable problems, you have
got to allocate a budget of £90 million a year and rising
to a problem where it is very difficult to see any immediate progress.
How do you handle that as an issue, because potentially you do
not know what the compensation claims are likely to be? You will
be aware that we are conducting another inquiry. I will not say
that I speak for everyone, but some of us around this table feel
that it is about time we cracked this disease and the only way
in which that could possibly be done is if we go for what we have
always looked at as plan B. Some of us would actually put a term
to that now, which is vaccination, but that is only going to be
achieved if there are some serious resources put into the scientific
evidence-based research. Why do you not consider that and at least
give yourself some hope that you can save that £90 million
a year, which would be a significant additional sum to be able
to do things with—fuel poverty, rural access, and all the
other issues you might like to tackle?
Ms Ghosh: To answer the specific
question about how do we predict what compensation we might need
to provide for clearly now that we have moved to a table valuation
approach to compensation, that makes it easier for us to predict,
and we have trends which the Chief Veterinary Officer looks at
and can make some kind of forward projection, but you are absolutely
right. What we are currently in the process of doing in light
of the Independent Scientific Group report is considering our
strategy around Bovine TB. As you say, it has a range of possible
levers we can use. One of them is research on vaccination and
I think the latest advice from our scientific advisers is that—and,
as you say, this is something the Committee will be looking at
in its report—I do not believe putting significant further
money into it is the answer. There are lots of significant scientific
issues which mean that vaccination is not, however much money
we put into it, going to give us a solution in the short-term.
I am very keen that the date at which it becomes a solution does
not keep moving further away, because it has been a long way away
for a long time.
Q2 (18.07.07) Mr Drew: Ten years.
Ms Ghosh: We will certainly be
considering that in thinking about our CSR funding, but what Ministers
clearly need to look at is the right mix of solutions—testing
and improving testing, particularly with more focus on the gamma
Interferon test, the success and the way forward on movement testing,
and then of course they need to look very carefully at the outcome
of the Independent Scientific Group Report, which I know Members
will have looked at in the context of their study.
Q3 (18.07.07) Mr Drew: And will the
Minister actually see the ISG?
Ms Ghosh: Of course Hilary Benn,
the Secretary of State, has only just arrived. He is just getting
initial briefings on Bovine TB—
Q4 (18.07.07) Mr Drew: It would be
helpful if the Minister was to actually see the ISG.
Ms Ghosh: Yes. Jeff Rooker—sorry,
no, I will not take his name in vain—a number of Defra ministers
have historically seen the ISG and I imagine that Hilary will
want to do the same. So we are looking at that, we are looking
at all the aspects and we will obviously take into account the
deliberations of this Committee if they are on an appropriate
timetable, but we are very clear that what the farming community
wants is an early decision.
Q5 (18.07.07) Chairman: Just in case
there has been some strange manifestation on page 80, figure 17,
could you tell me if there is a printing error there?
Ms Ghosh: I think there is a printing
error. I must go back to the team on that. It does not add up
to 100, does it?
Q6 (18.07.07) Chairman: No. I thought
£441 million in one year's compensation was a tad on the
generous side!
Ms Ghosh: It is in fact the total.
Sorry, I was thinking the same thing on the train this morning
and it does not add up to 100 at the bottom, so it must be 44.
I will confirm that with you. I think it is a mistake.
Q7 (18.07.07) Chairman: I just wanted
to make certain this was not some piece of subtle expenditure.
Ms Ghosh: No, and I do not think
it is a gross figure off which we netted anything.
Q8 (18.07.07) Chairman: Right. Let
us move on to the Defra Renew programme, which you kindly gave
a presentation of to the Select Committee. One of the criteria
by which you will have assessed in terms of this renewal programme
was the ability of the Department to ignite passion and pace.
I am not certain quite how you actually do that with your colleagues,
but Defra was not exactly given a commendable performance rating
about its ability to ignite people in this particular approach.
Looking at the other criteria which Renew Defra has got to fulfil,
taking responsibility for leading delivery and change, planning
resource and prioritise and manage performance, that provides
Defra with some serious management challenges as opposed to people
whose life up to now has been very much focused on developing
policy and implementing policy, so how are you arranging the cultural
change which is going to turn your senior officials into managers
of projects, and how on earth are you going to ignite passion
and pace? When are we going to see passionate, pacey people in
Defra?
Ms Ghosh: Let me give you an immediate
example of some passion and pace in the Department, and that was
the speed at which we responded to the farming industry's request
for an amendment to the Single Payment Scheme rules—in response
to farmers saying to Hilary one day at the Great Yorkshire show,
"We can't cope with this. We need to put our tractors on
flooded fields. We need to be able to graze animals on set-aside."
I think the next day, or the day after that, we had got our amendment
in -
Q9 (18.07.07) Chairman: Is that why
it took you 50 per cent longer than you should have done to respond
to our report on the RPA? They had to send a letter of apology.
Ms Ghosh: Let me just say it required
clearance within Whitehall. That was not a problem within Defra.
Defra met its part of the timetable. Passion and pace: I think
I sent in the further information you asked for, the OGC assessment
of the Renew programme as a whole, which actually commended us
for our passion and pace. You would already see, if you came back
with colleagues from the Committee, that a number of the elements
of Renew are in place. There are projects and programmes being
developed. We will have a portfolio which we will take forward
into business planning for next year. As I explained, I have made
some changes on my management board. I have got in the Department—and
again the OGC commented on this—a lot of engagement from
the senior team. So leadership, I think, is the key way in which
we inject passion and pace, set high standards and drive things
forward. I must say we have been very lucky in both our previous
ministers and our current set of Ministers, who want things to
happen, and they are also setting a pace on the policy and delivery
side.
Q10 (18.07.07) Chairman: How do you
actually get the mindset altered, because looking at the document
you kindly sent as an annexe to the written replies, presented
to the Committee, there is a document here called, "Embedding
the Capability Review actions," and it is a bit sparse on
ticks and things that are actually happening and it is quite difficult
to derive from there? You have got an awful lot of project design,
but not a great deal of action and delivery. Most of it is in
the middle of next year.
Ms Ghosh: As I say, actually there
are a number of things. We had a conference with the SCS earlier
this week focusing on things that we have actually done—the
Senior Civil Service, which means in our Department about 180
of us out of the 12,000 total. That is the senior cadre. As I
say, a number of the things that Renew promised to do were to
move to project and programmes, to change the role of the DGs,
to start building more effective processes, for example, through
business planning and other ways. If you came to the Department
and talked to, for example, my food chain team (who are looking
at things like the carbon impact of food production) they would
be talking in what we would call Renew terms. So within the Department
you would see it. Some of those things are cultural. They require
leadership from the top, they require myself and the management
board and the SCS to simply not accept something which is slowly
paced. Some of the systems stuff, however, is simply systems.
In some senses there is a cultural issue. When you have got a
Defra way of doing things you have got to make sure everybody
does it, but actually what we need to do is to work through in
a lot of detail—which Stephen is doing with Bill Stow in
my strategy team—how we put in place a business planning
process for the CSR 07 period which is fit for purpose, that means
at the end of the CSR 07 period we have the same information from
directors covering the right kinds of performance outcomes. That
is work that will take a bit longer because we need to get it
right.
Q11 (18.07.07) Chairman: Does this
mean that we are going to see an end in ministers' statements
of words like "shortly" and "soon", or "autumn"
or "spring", which have always been highly elastic phrases
and which do not sit well with a management style which is focused
on delivery against predetermined timetables, milestones, et cetera?
Ms Ghosh: There will always be,
I think, a balance, as Members of the Committee and you, Chairman,
will know yourself, between getting the right answer and an answer
quickly. Bovine TB has gone on too long, but actually there are
still issues which we need to work through to that end. Again,
if you look at the Department's record over the last year, who
would have thought that from a standing start of zero we would
have got to a draft Climate Change Bill, which the Committee has
looked at, being introduced in the next session from nothing?
That, again, is a wonderful example of pace and leadership. I
think the success we had on the next phase of the EU ETS is because
actually we were pacey and we were responsive. What I am using
in the Department are those examples of what we can do, and what
we can do with clear political leadership and a good strategy,
and I think we are demonstrating that we can do it. Some things
will take a bit longer because we have to get them right.
Q12 (18.07.07) Chairman: How does
the new Renew programme dovetail in with what was the Departmental
Reform Programme? Has that now been finished with? Does Renew
take the place of that?
Ms Ghosh: Yes. The Departmental
Reform Programme, I think even its supporters would say, tailed
off towards the end of its period. Certainly by the time I arrived
in the Department it had done some very good things and some of
the leadership work we are doing with the management board and
the culture around our leadership behaviours were ones which were
well ingrained in the Department as a result of that. Some of
the other stuff, which, for example, the Capability Review picked
up is that we do not have a Defra way of doing things. We do things,
but we do not have a systematic way which is consistent across
the Department of developing policy, implementing EU directives,
doing business planning. That is the stuff we never really got
glued, and that is one of the elements which Renew needs to take
forward.
Q13 (18.07.07) Chairman: So you have
blended into Renew the undone bits of the Reform Programme?
Ms Ghosh: Yes, indeed.
Q14 (18.07.07) Chairman: What about
the staff implications of Renew? Perhaps you can give the Committee
an insight into what it actually means? It is all right talking
about it in, if you like, the management-speak of delivery but
what does it actually mean in the hard nitty-gritty of people
and budget?
Ms Ghosh: In terms of the way
the Department works—and I will come back to the issues
about people and budget—it will mean that we will be needing
to develop and build on (because many of our staff have these
skills already) a more flexible approach to the work they do,
for example, so that they can work in projects and programmes
and be able and feel confident about moving on to another project
when project A is finished and project B begins. We are working
on the skills element there, but we will also always need to maintain
a cadre of people who are specialists, so we will always need
the soil scientist, the climate change scientist, the biodiversity
specialist and the economist, and what we will be doing is making
sure we can develop their professional skills while using them
in a project and programme sort of way. So there is a skills element.
There is then an issue for us in the Department about the shape
we want to be. Traditionally, historically we have been a triangular
department. It varies across the Department, but more administrative
officers than a policy-making and influencing department in theory
needs. If you look at the Treasury, for example, it has very few
junior staff. It has what I call an oval shape, and I think with
the move to devolved delivery to our executive agencies we need
to become more oval. We also need, in order to deliver both the
Gershon savings we are signed up to and CSR 07 five per cent year
on year admin reductions, to be smaller so what we are doing is
using the Renew programme as part of delivering a smaller Department.
As you know, Chairman, one of the things we are doing this year
to achieve our 1400 reduction over the SR O4 period is to use
Renew to reshape teams to encourage staff who, in a sense, do
not want to be part of the new Defra to leave. We have got funding
from the Treasury for up to about 200 voluntary departures.
Q15 (18.07.07) Chairman: So where
will that bite? Whereabouts is it going to bite?
Ms Ghosh: It is a voluntary scheme,
so what we will need to do is to say—which we will be launching
next week—"Here is a scheme. Please come forward. Please
volunteer," and obviously we are hoping, as we have said
to staff, that the majority of the reductions we need to meet
our 1400 will come out of voluntary reductions. What we will then
do is to have a system for redeploying staff across the Department.
As you know from the material we have sent, we are constantly
choosing within our 3,100 core in the Department to move staff
towards the priorities, so the climate change group is expanding,
food and farming is slightly declining, the service transformation
part is declining, and we will want to say, "Okay, these
staff have left. We have retained the people whom we regard as
the national treasures we cannot afford to lose, but these staff
have left and now we will have a process—obviously agreed
with the trade union side—for reallocating people into the
expanded areas from the declining areas". That is how it
will work.
Q16 (18.07.07) Chairman: What is
the staff feedback so far on this process, because your people
have been subjected to a lot of change in the last two, three,
four years. Are you able to now say, "This is the direction
of travel"?
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
Q17 (18.07.07) Chairman: Are they
responding positively?
Ms Ghosh: They are responding
as positively as you would expect in organisations like ours.
There is a lot of very positive response to the career opportunities
which are more flexible, and which project and programme working
gives us. Some people are clearly fearful and we are giving support
both to them and to their line managers so that they can talk
through the opportunities for those who might want to leave and
the opportunities for remaining in the Department. Essentially,
we need to set up, and we are setting up, the right kinds of support
mechanisms for those people. I have to say, as an organisation
we have no problem in attracting people. We can always get good
graduates of all kinds to come and join us, so we are not worried
about the fundamental skills drain.
Q18 (18.07.07) Chairman: I wonder
if on a quarterly basis you would commit to updating the Committee
on the progress you are making, so that we can monitor the pace
and passion with which you are moving to meet your objectives?
Ms Ghosh: Certainly, yes.
Chairman: With that, I will move on to
David Drew.
Q19 (18.07.07) Mr Drew: If we can
look at this really perennial problem which Defra faces, which
is that you have many targets, you have many worthwhile aims,
but you have really a great deal of dependence upon other departments
to deliver many of those aims, and I wonder how you would portray
your relationships with the departments? Let me just give you
two instances, both of which this Committee have looked at recently.
The first one is the Environment Liability Directive. From all
the evidence which Madeline and myself in particular found out,
it would appear that Defra was going to be quite robust in how
this was going to be implemented but the then Department, the
DTI (DBERR as we can now lovingly call it), was looking at really
any restriction on potential competition, business opportunities
as being a dangerous precedent being set?
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
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