Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2008
MS HELEN
GHOSH, MR
BILL STOW
AND MR
STEPHEN PARK
Q260 Paddy Tipping: Some of the delivery
agents have been gainers, the Environment Agency, for example?
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
Q261 Paddy Tipping: Some have been
losers, big losers, Natural England, WRAP, for example, stand
to lose quite a lot. What is the nature of the relationship?
Ms Ghosh: I think those are two
rather different issues. Natural England has only lost in terms
of its spend in terms of the efficiencies that we always anticipated
we would get out of creating a single body. We have created a
single body out of three bodies. We expected, and I am sure Parliament
expected, to get some dividend from that. So, in fact, their budget,
the five million difference, effectively we expect you now to
be producing efficiencies, but, of course, we had those discussions
with Helen Philips, and so on. In the case of WRAP, this was very
much related to a strategic issue for us, which was, given the
relative maturity now of the sort of advice market, whether it
is advice on energy efficiency or resource efficiency, actually
the market out there is quite booming, and the extent to which
Government needed to finance, as it were, individual advice to
individual companies we decided was getting less, so in fact we
consciously took some money out of those sorts of BREW (Business
Resource Efficiency and Waste) money, for example, which Bill
will know more about than I do, we consciously said, "As
a matter of policy we will make some savings there, so that, for
example, we can put some money into the Green Homes Service for
the Energy Savings Trust." So we swapped individual advice
to SMEs into things where we thought we would get more bang for
our buck. So that is WRAP, which is a different situation from
Natural England.
Mr Stow: This is obviously a very
important part of our relationship with our various bodies, but
it is not the only part. We have been working very hard at improving
the whole nature of the relationship and getting it onto a more
mature level, and so there is a lot of work through what we call
our government delivery programme that is aimed at doing that.
We are negotiating individual deals with a number of our agencies
about how we will each behave, for example, so I think that is
also helping the relationships, which I would say now are probably
as good as they have ever been, with our different partners.
Q262 Paddy Tipping: Do the agents
see it as a relationship that is of equals, that their voice counts
and that what they say is being heard?
Ms Ghosh: You would have to ask
them that.
Q263 Paddy Tipping: I have.
Ms Ghosh: And they say?
Q264 Paddy Tipping: It is a mixed
response.
Ms Ghosh: It is a mixed response
at the end of the day. It is the case that NDPBs and obviously
our own executive agencies that are part of the department are
here to deliver in large part the objectives of government, and,
therefore, in some cases, actually the relationship should be
one where we are buying what government or Parliament set them
up to deliver. It is interesting, and I think what is so exciting
about working in Defra is that if you take the Environment Agency
or Natural England, they are also there as statutory advisers,
so, equally, they are there as sort of watchdogs, and certainly
the SDC is a powerful, fierce watchdog. So they are all the time
doing two things, but some of the time it is absolutely clear
that they are there to deliver, efficiently and effectively, and
it is for them to decide in some cases exactly how, what Parliament
and the elected government want them to do, so it is always going
to be a bit mixed.
Q265 Paddy Tipping: I am sure that
is right. It is a circular relationship as well. They then say,
"This is what we are finding to meet the change of policy"?
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
Mr Stow: The programme/project
way of working which we have now very largely adopted in the department
on a lot of our programmes boards, project boards, and so on,
the relevant agencies will actually be there inside the tent working
with us, and that is an absolutely crucial part of the way we
are thinking about how we make effective policy in the department.
Q266 Paddy Tipping: Turning to your
own budget, the main budget as it were, it is a really tight budget.
You have made some pretty hard choices. Can you give us some examples
of things that you are stopping doing because, basically, you
cannot afford to do them?
Ms Ghosh: Do you mean the programme
spend that we have in the department as opposed to hand out?
Q267 Paddy Tipping: Yes.
Ms Ghosh: Bill, you work in the
lead on that.
Mr Stow: Helen has mentioned probably
the main strategic decision we took, which was that we would reduce
the level of funding of advice to individual businesses and help
for individual businesses, so that covered WRAP, it covered the
Carbon Trust and it also covered Food from Britain. So, looking
right across the piece, that was probably, I think, the biggest
thing that we consciously said, "We are going to stop doing
this." There were a number of much smaller things that we
have also either stopped or cut back significantly, but that was
the biggest one.
Q268 Paddy Tipping: All we could
tell was that you could not go ahead with the new Veterinary Surgeons
Act because of financial constraints?
Ms Ghosh: No. I think there is
an issue. A lot of the things we do are actually about people
and about lawyers and the money we have to spend through our admin
budget. If you take the example of legislation, as the committee
is very well aware, we have got quite a lot of legislation on
the stocks at the moment. We have got things like the Marine Bill,
which you will be doing an inquiry into, and that has certainly
required historically quite a lot of legal input, and the Climate
Change Bill. Clearly, even as bills are going through, they require
revision, and so on. We have still got a lot of work to do in
terms of the implementation on the Animal Welfare Act, and so
on, so there is an awful lot of legal work, and the conclusion
that we have reached (and I think Jeff Rooker has said to the
committee), given the other calls on our legal resource, and in
particular because discussions with the veterinary profession
suggest that they are not absolutely sure what they want this
legislation to be about, suggest that it is of relatively low
priority, we will have to (and this is part of the hard choices)
keep prioritising things and say. "If we give money to X,
what are we going to spend less money on?" I have been listening
with interest, for example, to the reports on Farming Today
this week about bees, and obviously we are keeping a very close
interest in the issue around bee health, but the fact is, if we
put more money into research on bees in our tight budget and the
tight fiscal position, the choice is what do you spend less money
on? That is what we will need to be doing.
Q269 Paddy Tipping: Let me ask you
about the Animal Welfare Act, because it is a flagship legislation.
Ms Ghosh: It is.
Q270 Paddy Tipping: There is a lot
to be done by regulation.
Ms Ghosh: Yes.
Q271 Paddy Tipping: And you are not
meeting your timetable to bring forward these regulations.
Ms Ghosh: Jeff and Hilary have
recently been talking to the team about this, and we have agreed
a resource. We have, in fact, agreed some additional people resource
into that team to make sure that we can fulfil our parliamentary
commitments on that. So that is what we are going to do.
Q272 Paddy Tipping: So when I am
told that the animal team has been cut from 30 to 20 and the Animal
Welfare Act Implementation Team from four to one, you are reversing
that trend now?
Ms Ghosh: On our project and programme
basis what we are doing is saying for the purpose of the project,
which is to deliver the regulations, we are putting some more
people in and then they will go away again, which is the beauty
of our project and programme team approach.
Q273 Chairman: I am glad you mentioned
bees, because I have been getting up early in the morning and
listening to the same programme that you have. I think it was
on Tuesday, the assertion was that you had been cutting back on
the amount of inspection at a time when disease in the case of
verroa was now rampant.
Ms Ghosh: I do not think so.
Q274 Chairman: What!
Ms Ghosh: I am sorry, I am not
a technician on this. I do not think that particular disease is
rampant.
Q275 Chairman: What, verroa, in bees,
not rampant! It is endemic in the bee population. There used to
be a wonderful line on the Defra map which every year some hapless
minister would draw and say "this was a verroa-free zone",
and every year the bees ignored that, or at least the mites did,
and they kept crossing the line until, in fact, the whole of the
United Kingdom has become now a zone for verroa disease. It is
endemic.
Ms Ghosh: It is not one of the
diseases on which our bee unit is focusing.
Chairman: No, because it is endemic.
What!
Mr Gray: You cannot be serious. We have
had debates on this in the House of Commons. Verroa bacilli is
by far the biggest threat facing the bee population in the world.
It is a massive problem here in England and you are telling me
that your bee lot are not focusing on verroa. I find that absolutely
astonishing.
Q276 Chairman: I was hoping you were
going to bring clarity to try and address some of the criticisms
that were made in Farming Today about the department's
expenditure to deal with the disease threat to bees because, in
addition to disease, the question of training bee-keepers was
also raised as a key issue and, bearing in mind the central role
of pollination of bees and the well-being of our crops is at stake,
perhaps you could tell us what on earth you are actually doing?
Ms Ghosh: I will certainly do
that. We have not cut either the funding in cash terms or the
number of inspectors. There is exactly the same number of inspectors
now as there was five years ago. As you know, as you will know
from, I am sure, earlier inquiries, we also employ seasonal bee
inspectors; so that is a process that we are ramping up at the
moment. What we are doing (and this was, I know, the subject of
some parliamentary interest) is making sure that just at the moment
we target the bee inspection resource on instances where colonies
appear to have collapsed for some reason. We do not believe, again,
as I know a series of PQs have highlighted, that we have colony
collapse and disorder here, but, nonetheless, we are using our
bee inspectors to go and look. If a bee-keeper reports that it
looks like a collapse, we are going to look at it: that is how
we are targeting our inspection resource. Obviously, if it were
the case that we felt that there was an issue or we needed to
increase the level of inspection, then we would think of diverting
resources into the area, but at the moment I am advised by the
bee unit at our central science laboratory that they have enough
resource, but we are monitoring the position.
Q277 Chairman: Are you rebutting
the lines of criticism in Farming Today, because I am sure
you just did not listen to it on holiday?
Ms Ghosh: What I am saying is
that we have not---. I think the generic criticism in Farming
Today is, "You have cut the number of bee inspectors
and you have cut the amount of money you are putting into bees
in general." We have not cut either. What I am saying is
what we are doing, particularly in the light of the concerns there
have been on part of the bee keeping community on apparently some
colony collapse issues, which may as much be to do with bad weather
and the growth of viruses as the bees all stay in their hives,
we are making sure that the inspection resource we have focuses
on those extreme cases. Jonathan Shaw is our minister on this
and I know he is answering, or about to answer, a series of parliamentary
question on this.
Q278 Lynne Jones: Can I come in?
You said that you had not cut it in cash terms.
Ms Ghosh: No, we have not. What
we have done is kept it steady. It will therefore have gone down
in—
Q279 Lynne Jones: So it is a cut
then?
Ms Ghosh: No. I will say exactly,
as is the case, we have not cut it in cash terms. In real terms
it will have gone down slightly, but we still have exactly the
same number of inspectors.
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