Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2007
MRS HELEN
GHOSH
Q180 David Lepper: Can you give an
indication of what kinds might be considered as to the programmes.
Mrs Ghosh: If the clerk to the
Committee could have a look at our annual report; that would reveal
what things go into the small programmes. Then there are some
small programmes which clearly do have a priority.
Q181 David Lepper: David Taylor just
gave one example, I think.
Mrs Ghosh: Yes, the Rural Community
Councils would be an example. Clearly that is precisely the kind
of issue where ministers would want to take a view on an appropriate
level of spending and how it fitted with strategic outcomes.
Q182 Mr Drew: As you are aware this
Committee did a detailed analysis of the end of year cuts and
the impact on BW. That idea that we are going back again to ask
BW to make further cuts is just unreal. It has caused huge upset
and consternation; it has completely changed the nature of what
the Government has been doing with waterways, but just park that
and let us take the issue of the Rural Community Councils. When
I was left with the situation in my own constituency where effectively
because there was a budgetary problem prior to the setting up
of Natural England, and Natural England had certain nature reserves
which they were unable to fund, the Rural Community Council in
Gloucestershire subsidised Natural England. We are talking about
the impact on some of these small voluntary bodies. That has a
huge ramification in rural areas; these are voluntary bodies that
rely on clear funding streams and actually cost, in terms of value
for money, next to nothing because the alternative is that these
schemes cannot be delivered. If you go and look at those schemes
and headline those schemes it is unfair, unrealistic and, I have
to say, in terms of the reputation of Defra in the countryside,
will be absolutely and utterly disastrous.
Mrs Ghosh: That is exactly the
kind of consideration that ministers will want to take into account
in reaching final decisions.
Q183 Mr Drew: Why are you looking
at it in the first place?
Mrs Ghosh: As part of this exercise
we have to look—as any good organisation would—at
everything we spend money on. We may well look at an item of spend
and say that that is obviously highly strategically focussed,
excellent value for money and gets a tick, but we do need to go
through the process, not least because I want to appear in front
of this Committee at the end of this financial year and say that
we have a sustainable budget focussed on our strategic outcomes,
PSAs, DSOs, through the CSR07 period, therefore we have to do
an exercise that looks like this to say how we allocate our spend
to achieve those objectives.
Q184 Chairman: When you came before
us in the summer you made it very clear that your planning assumption
was level cash.
Mrs Ghosh: Indeed.
Q185 Chairman: That obviously means
that in real terms Defra was going to go down over a three year
period.
Mrs Ghosh: Indeed.
Q186 Chairman: Then everybody got
terribly excited when the actual figure that came out was not
level cash, it was plus 1.4 per cent.
Mrs Ghosh: Yes.
Q187 Lynne Jones: Is that in real
terms?
Mrs Ghosh: Yes, that is in real
terms; that is a real terms increase.
Q188 Chairman: So you have suddenly
gone from level cash, so a real terms decrease, to a 1.4 per cent
real terms increase.
Mrs Ghosh: If you look at the
programme as a whole. You would take out the additional funding
that you have been given which, as you know, was given for very
specific things—some of them capital, although that is irrelevant—and
you would just say to everybody else, "Okay guys, we will
just carry on doing exactly what we are doing at the moment".
Along come other things that people want to do. We have a new
settlement and they say, "Right, what are our political priorities
for the next three years?" and they have some new ones. Those
are the things I described—the green homes that the Prime
Minister announced, putting more money into the RDPE—and
all those things mean that in a flat cash budget for the rest
of the department some things have to be looked at. If we are
doing our job responsibly we need to look at everything and decide
then what is going to happen.
Q189 Chairman: I think we have got
the message of the sum total of the pain financially, that people
who are not in the priority areas are going to have to suffer
as you come to live within the overall envelope of your departmental
expenditure limit is £270 million.
Mrs Ghosh: As you know and I will
say this again, you describe it as pain but that is negative;
it is re-prioritising against a new set of priorities and an overall
increase.
Chairman: That is a very fancy term.
Q190 Mr Cox: It is painful for those
who receive a cut.
Mrs Ghosh: Of course it is. One
of the great strengths of Defra is that we have wonderfully active
NGOs and public interest in what we do. Nobody wants to see the
thing they do with less money spent on it.
Q191 Mr Cox: Did you warn ministers
when they redefined their priorities that there would be some
existing and very worthy programmes that would be likely to feel
the pain with the cuts?
Mrs Ghosh: Absolutely. As I recall,
when Hilary Benn came and talked to you he said that we have an
excellent outcome in a number of areas, we have some new priorities,
this will mean tough choices. He said this to you when he came
to speak to you and that is the process that we are working closely
with him on.
Chairman: I think we now have the order
of magnitude. I want to move from the overall programme field
and you are quite right that it would be unfair of us to probe
too far in terms of the detail when obviously you have presented
your thoughts to ministers and the ministers have to make their
minds up. However, I think you have not denied the fact that there
could be a radical options package as part of the £270 million
which equals £240 million. Let us move to the admin side.
Lynne Jones: Before we move on I have
some questions I would like to ask.
Chairman: I do apologise. We will defer
my admin foray for a moment.
Q192 Lynne Jones: In terms of the
new priorities over and above those which were mentioned in the
CSR, are these priorities that have come from within Defra and
within your own ministers? Are they your priorities or have then
been imposed by others?
Mrs Ghosh: No, they are our priorities.
Q193 Lynne Jones: You mentioned the
announcement of the Prime Minister on the £100 million for
greener homes; could you tell us what that is because the Low
Carbon Building programme comes under BERR?
Mrs Ghosh: This is an advice package.
Again I am very happy to give the Committee more information on
this. It is essentially a service that will be provided through
the Energy Savings Trust; it is an Energy Savings Trust activity,
it is not the Low Carbon Homes initiative that DCLG are responsible
for.
Q194 Lynne Jones: So this is a sort
of green doctor type thing?
Mrs Ghosh: Yes, and, as the Prime
Minister described, providing a service to people so that it is
easier to green their homes in a targeted kind of way.
Q195 Lynne Jones: This is revenue
for the advice?
Mrs Ghosh: Yes, this is the advice
element of that.
Q196 Lynne Jones: There is no point
in giving people advice if they cannot actually afford to implement
the advice so how does that work?
Mrs Ghosh: This is definitely
an advice service. Clearly there are other schemes that are in
existence: the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target administered
through the suppliers; Warm Front is another that targets, as
it were, capital help (I am using that work loosely) on, for example,
putting in central heating, putting in lagging and so on. There
is obviously an element of the advice system which is to say that
this will save money and obviously have a greener impact. I think
the £100 million is essentially the advice service but I
am very happy to let you have details of that.
Q197 Lynne Jones: One of the problems
with the Low Carbon Building programme is that it is now likely
to be underspent because of the low portion of grant that is now
available so people might well be advised, for example, to put
in solar, thermal or other initiatives and yet the grants are
too low. Is this something that is being looked at, that the grants
may not be there at a sufficient level to enable people to act
on the advice?
Mrs Ghosh: I think this goes back
to the point I made to the Chairman earlier, what we need to do
as part of this process is make sure that what we are doing joins
up very effectively with what DCLG are doing and what BERR are
doing because in a lot of these areas there is potential synergy
and indeed potential overlap. That is one of the things we are
doing and Hilary, I think, made that point when he came to see
you about making sure we get the leverage right across all government
programmes. That is the kind of thing we are looking at.
Q198 Lynne Jones: So that is work
in progress.
Mrs Ghosh: Yes.
Q199 Mr Cox: One thing that has occurred
to me is that the problem seems to go back to this question of
the redefinition of priorities by ministers. I have two questions
really. The first is: when did you become aware of the priorities
that ministers are now laying down to you? The way you speak it
would almost be as if one or two of them have parachuted from
a very high distance and have not been long in gestation. When
do you first become aware of them?
Mrs Ghosh: If we consider the
set of priorities that we are trying to deliver through the CSR07
process the origin of this lies in an exercise that we did in
fact under David Miliband's leadership in the first instance but
very much embraced by Hilary called Strategy Refresh. David Miliband
came in and asked what is Defra for, what do we do, are we sure
that the things we are doing and our activities are actually focussed
on the things there are to do?
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