Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460-479)
MR PAT
MCFADDEN
MP AND MR
IAN WATMORE
10 MAY 2007
Q460 Paul Flynn: That is not an answer.
If there are 500 a year, give me one where the Government's position
changed. I think there are occasions where consultations by the
Prime Minister of his cabinet has changed his policy and there
is not a lot of that going on. I believe we have had policy that
is dictated from top. Before it is presented as plausible and
acceptable to the electorate we go through this whole farce of
consultation knowing that no notice will be taken of it whatsoever.
Is the thrust of this that we should stop consulting? Prove to
me where it has worked, where consultation, which is very expensive,
has actually resulted in a change of government policy. I am open
to be convinced.
Pat McFadden: I think among the
500 there will be many examples. I think you should ask the departments
concerned.
Q461 Paul Flynn: If there was one
of these petitions on the Downing Street website on bringing back
hanging it is very likely there would be huge numbers of people—possibly
a majority—but the Government would not take any notice
of that, would they? They would not be influenced in any way.
Pat McFadden: Does that mean that
you should no provide the capacity for people to express their
view?
Q462 Paul Flynn: You should not give
them the illusion that they are taking part and taking the trouble
to be consulted on something and lead them to believe it will
make a difference when it will not.
Pat McFadden: I think there is
an important point here. These e-petitions which you are referring
to are not formal government consultations. These petitions are
the capacity for the public to petition government through e-mail
and the Internet in a way that they have always been able to petition
Parliament and I presume we are not proposing to stop paper petitions
to Parliament. Or are paper ones okay but when they do it electronically
it is bad? That would seem to me to be an odd logic.
Q463 Paul Flynn: Take a formal consultation
where the Government went to its own consultation body on the
question of more nuclear power stations, there was also a final
report by the select committee of this House, the Environmental
Audit Committee, and virtually every prestigious and knowledgeable
group in the energy field were opposed to nuclear power being
restarted on the grounds of cost and safety.[10]
However, there is no way that the Government will ever change
their minds but they felt they had to go through this rigmarole
as a PR exercise.
Pat McFadden: We have been over
the nuclear power thing and, as I say, what was found to be flawed
in that consultation was not the idea that the Government was
consulting on something where it had a view, but it had promised
the fullest consultation and that it did not give the information
in some respects for the fullest—a lot rests on that word
"fullest"—consultation to happen. Let me take
another example. The Turner Report on pensions was widely consulted
around.[11]
There appeared to be wide views that we had an ageing population,
that we had a problem in our pension system and I think consultation
informed that policy quite well. There are examples where we go
to the public and there is an important dialogue that takes place
there. This has to be part of the process of government. What
I am trying to say throughout this discussion is that it is not
a sham provided that you are clear about what you are asking and
what you have decided and what you have not decided. You have
also got to be clear in the end that government will make the
decisions. I think we can perhaps create more of a sense of a
sham if we say that just because a government is asking the views
of people they are automatically going to follow them. Government
does not work like that. In the end the ministers responsible
for these decisions must take these decisions.
Q464 Chairman: If you are able to I think
it would be helpful for the Committee and the report we are going
to do if you could perhaps just drop a note giving some examples
of where consultation has actually made a difference.
Pat McFadden: I can do that.[12]
There is another one which we have engaged in quite a lot recently
was Ed Miliband's consultation around the third sector which is
extremely important and he has been actively engaged in recent
times.
Chairman: If you could do that for us
it would give a more concrete sense to it.
Paul Flynn: I made that exact point about
the Turner Report which was made to us when we visited the Civil
Service college, one of the best pieces of evidence based legislation
on pensions since 1975. I accept that point.
Q465 Julie Morgan: Paul has covered
some of the things I was going to ask, but I just want to ask
you about consultations at a very local level on very emotive
subjects such as hospital closures or changes in what a hospital
provides. These consultations are used by all the political parties
in a way that is often very emotional and the public get a very
distorted view. Can you give me your views on those sorts of local
consultations and any way they could be improved?
Pat McFadden: I think you are
right, when you are doing something like closing a unit here or
concentrating services in a particular hospital which might be
great for area B but area A is not happy about it, that is very
difficult. In some ways I think it is quite a good example because
if you have a view where your health system should be based on
two strands, one is care closer to home for those who can receive
care closer to home and the other is real specialist units which
may be bigger than the traditional, local general hospital that
always tries to have a specialism in everything, then inevitably
that is going to mean the transfer of some things from the local
hospital to the bigger units. That is extremely difficult. I do
not know how you can avoid people who want to make the most noise
about that doing so. Again let me give you a local example I am
quite familiar with. In Wolverhampton we used to have a separate
eye infirmary which was very dear to the city and had a good reputation
and so on. The decision was taken to move that from an old building
to the main general hospital in the city. There was a big petition,
it was very emotive. The local MPs took the view that we would
not oppose that shift provided certain conditions could be met.
We recently visited the new eye infirmary. You could say that
the strategic health authority should have obeyed the petition
and not gone ahead with the move because there were X amount of
signatures. Or you could say that that was a difficult period,
we completely understand why that was held so dearly in the heart
of the city, but when you walk around the new facility and you
can see the changes and you can talk to the staff, most people
say that this is going to work. That has been my experience visiting
it recently. I am not sure there is a magic answer as to how to
get from point A to point B in a process like that. I think you
will always have people who will say that this change must not
happen, it will be very damaging for one reason or another. In
the end you have to make the judgment as to whether you think
what you are doing is the right thing. Sometimes that is how change
will work and it often looks different after it has happened.
Q466 Julie Morgan: It does seem that
it is extremely difficult to get any sort of medical arguments
over in a consultation period over such an issue. I think in some
countries there are sort of truces between political parties over
these issues because they know it is so difficult to get progress
in this sort of field because of local feelings. I have had these
sorts of experiences in my own constituency and I just feel that
the consultation process is sometimes distorted.
Pat McFadden: I am sure you are
right and I am not sure that there is a magic answer to that because
it is open to people, and health is, as we know, a particularly
difficult area. I do not know what you would do to stop that.
It can make a great story in the local paper, the campaign to
save whatever unit. The IPPR did produce a report earlier this
year or last year saying that if we just froze things—to
take this health reconfiguration for example—more people
would die every year than if we press ahead with this because
they will be treated in places where you do not have the critical
mass of consultants' expertise and so on that will make the difference.[13]
If one of us had a heart attack or needed heart treatment and
we were being driven past hospital A to go to 10 miles down the
road or however many miles it is to hospital B that seems an odd
thing to do, yet medically it can be the most sensible thing to
do if, in location B, you have a critical mass of consultants
who have real expertise in emergency heart treatment and so on.
To go back to my eye infirmary example, one of the questions I
asked one of the lead clinicians there was, "Are there medical
advantages to being in a general hospital that were not there
when you were on a separate site?" He said that there are
in some cases because examining the eye can actually highlight
other critical problems which you may not otherwise have got and
when that happens they can be taken straight in for treatment
all on the one site. I think you are absolutely right, there are
good medical arguments which are about the care of patients for
reorganising health services sometimes, but they can also be lost
in the heat of a local campaign to save one unit or to not do
it. I think the only place to rest in an argument like that is
to do the right thing, to do what you think is right and then
you have to answer for it in the future.
Q467 Mr Walker: Near me in Chase Farm,
Enfield there is huge concern over the proposed closure of Chase
Farm Hospital. There was a meeting yesterday hosted by a gentleman
called Professor Alberti. He has been brought in by the Government
to oversee a consultation. Unfortunately I could not make it because
I had work connected with my involvement with the Mental Health
Standing Committee. However, there is concern amongst local residents
both in Hertfordshire and in Enfield that whereas this may be
a consultation, are these consultations genuine or are they too
often simply paper exercises so we can say that we have listened
to people but actually we are going to plough ahead and do what
we were already going to do. On occasions would it not be better
perhaps for politicians and decision makers to be brave and say,
"Listen, this is what we are going to do. We are not going
to waste your time with a consultation because actually we have
already made our minds up." I am not meaning this to be a
hostile question but are there occasions when it would be better
for all concerned if we were just honest with the electorate and
the population and say, "We've got to do this. We know there
are concerns but we believe it is in the best interests."
Pat McFadden: At the risk of repeating
myself, I think if you are clear about what you are consulting
about—what has been decided, what is open and what has not
already been decided about—then the consultation is a good
thing to do. I do not think we should just decide not to do this.
I think the key thing is to be clear about what is open for decision
and what is not. If you do that then consultation is a good and
necessary thing to do in those circumstances.
Q468 David Heyes: This is a question
for Ian I think: has the volume of complaints about public services
increased in recent years?
Mr Watmore: I do not know the
answer to that.
Pat McFadden: I think it would
depend on particular services. You have had witnesses in this
inquiry from HMRC and from the DWP and obviously if you take the
tax credit example with HMRC there has been an increase in complaints
about that over the years.[14]
It has been well documented. It would depend on the particular
service on whether that would be true or not.
Q469 David Heyes: Perhaps I have the
wrong understanding of the role of the Cabinet Office. Complaints
are a major way of testing public satisfaction with services and
quality of service delivery. I rather expected that the Cabinet
Office might have some overview on this, that you would have some
statistics at your finger tips that would show this key information.
Pat McFadden: We have a certain
role in this around advice and handling complaints. They should
be taken seriously, they should be responded to in a decent amount
of time.
Q470 David Heyes: That advice you
have just referred to is actually gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.
Is that right?
Pat McFadden: No, it is not. We
have been working with the Ombudsman on the principles of good
administration which involve advice on complaints handling. What
we do not do is to go round all the departments and do some extra
reporting exercises to report into us on the overall number of
complaints.
Q471 David Heyes: What about your
role in terms of Capability Reviews?
Mr Watmore: Capability Reviews
are reviews of the Civil Service capability at the centre of the
Whitehall departments. What we are looking at is all of the particularly
board level capability and leadership capability of the Civil
Service departments. We have published 12 of the 17 reviews; we
have three more before the summer which will take us through 80
to 90 % of all Civil Service departments that we will have been
reviewed. There are large numbers of pieces of evidence that we
draw on when we are doing those Capability Reviews.
Q472 David Heyes: But not complaints?
Mr Watmore: When some of those
departments provide service, for example the DWP, that will have
been taken into account. In many of the departments they do not
directly provide a service, they are provided through third party
organisations so we look more at the relationship between the
department and those third party organisations. What we have found
through those review programmes has been published. I would not
want to paraphrase all of the reports but I would be happy to
take any questions.
Q473 David Heyes: Have you considered
whether or not to assess the quantity of complaints from government
departments and decided that that is not an important statistic.
Mr Watmore: I did not say that,
I do not think. What I said was that when we are looking at the
capability of the department to discharge all of its obligations,
we look at a large number of forms of evidence. We look at stakeholder
surveys, we look at staff surveys, we go and interview people,
we go and visit, we make front line visits. When we did overseas
departments our reviewers went overseas to see action on the ground.
We take formal published statistics. We look at PSA[15]
targets and there is a large body of evidence that we collect
to assess the capability of the department. Some departments,
like DWP, directly provide front line customer service to people
through job centres and the like; others do not and they are either
policy driven departments or they operate through third and fourth
layers or organisations.
Q474 David Heyes: When the National Audit
Office looked at this they were critical of complaint handling
by government departments and they recommended that departments
should collect information on complaints in a regular and systematic
way. Surely the Cabinet Office should have a role in overseeing
this, ensuring that that NAO recommendation is implemented. I
am getting the feeling that you are just saying that it is up
to departments and they should just be left to it.
Pat McFadden: We worked with the
Ombudsman on our principles of good administration which include
guidance on this, which was published a couple of months ago.
To go back to the NAO report, they had a very specific recommendation
that we should somehow centralise this process. The view that
we have taken is that we should not do that because actually it
is the correct port of call for someone to go to the organisation
that they are complaining about first and then if they do not
get satisfaction there they could go up the scale to the Ombudsman.
That is the basic system that we have at the moment. What we did
not want to do was to create another central point in addition
to the Ombudsman because we think that most of these things should
be sorted out by the organisation doing them. There is, if you
like, almost a devolution point about this. Can we or should we
in the Cabinet Office create an overarching central complaints
role? I think the Ombudsman, when she appeared before you, talked
about some of the difficulties you might have in doing that.[16]
You would have to have such a range of expertise across the board
with big resource implications and you would end up going back
down the line in quite a lot of the cases to the organisation
that was dealing with it in the first place. I do not know if
you are a football fan but I can give you a football analogy to
this. If we were playing a match and you wanted to appeal for
off-side, you would appeal to the person who was refereeing the
match and not to Sepp Blatter, so I think it is important when
you are dealing with complaints you go to the person who should
be on the ground, with the knowledge, who is close to the situation
to deal with it first. There is a Cabinet Office role but we should
be wary of creating too centralised a process.
Q475 David Heyes: Let me try to get at
what that Cabinet Office role is. Your last answer was taking
an incorrect inference from my question really. I am saying that
maybe there is an important role for the Cabinet Office just simply
in counting complaints and identifying trends and integrating
that with the process of Capability Review. That is not duplicating
or replicating any detailed complaints procedure. That is what
I was suggesting; is there a response to that?
Pat McFadden: I think where we
can have a role is if we think there is particularly good practice
in one area, encourage it in the other and set out central principles
for this. Departments themselves should be monitoring how many
complaints they have. I think a lot of them do. I think the evidence
you have had so far in the inquiry, particularly from those big
departments of HMRC and DWP, has shown quite a close attention
to monitoring the number of complaints. I am not sure what would
be added to that by us doing it as well as them doing it.
Q476 David Heyes: Let me pick up
whether or not you have a legitimate role in this. Certainly you
seemed to think you did in the past as the Cabinet Office because
in the guide of how to deal with complaints you took that responsibility
as a Cabinet Office initiative. I cruelly described that as gathering
dust on the shelf but in fact it has been archived, has it not,
on the website so it is no longer available. It appears that you
have drawn back from that role that was acknowledged in the past
as a Cabinet Office role.
Pat McFadden: I do not think we
have. Another thing we are doing on this—which again has
been referred to previously in the inquiry—is developing
the new Charter Mark which will have how to handle complaints
as part of the criteria for achieving that. The form in which
we give out guidance on best practice on this may change over
time but I do not think it is a task that we have dropped. I think
it is important to be clear about what our role is. There is a
difference between a Cabinet Office role or encouraging best practice,
setting a standard that we hope people to get to and creating
a duplication or centralisation. It is the latter that we would
be keen to avoid.
Q477 Chairman: I think what David
is after is that at the moment there does not seem to be even
a common definition of what a complaint is and there is no common
recording system across government. If someone wants to know how
many complaints were received by a particular government department,
what they were about (which is useful information to know) or
how many were upheld, this information is not available in common
form. No one is saying it is the Cabinet Office role to do this,
but it is their role surely to ensure that there is such a system
in place.
Pat McFadden: That seemed to be
what David was driving at, that he thought it was the Cabinet
Office role.
Q478 Chairman: No, it was the assurance
role that he was asking from the Cabinet Office.
Pat McFadden: We have our own
guidance on how to handle complaints which is that they should
be taken seriously, they should be dealt with in a timely manner
and that the organisation should learn from the experience. That
is something we do encourage departments to do. In terms of the
counting of those complaints, I think that is best done by the
departments involved.
Chairman: We may say something about
this and then you can come and talk to us about it. Kelvin?
Q479 Kelvin Hopkins: I have a general
problem with the language both in your letter and in the government
document, the executive summary from government policy review
Building on progress. I find the language like verbal treacle
and if I cannot understand it I am sure many citizens would have
difficulty. Maybe I am wrong; maybe they would understand but
I do not. Even the English is badly written. The first bullet
point suggests that the Government should make progress as soon
as possible on "extending choice in acute healthcare to all
qualified providers."[17]
It suggests it is extending choice to the qualified providers
but I think it means to the patient. That is just one example.
Would it not be a good idea to test this language on citizens
to develop a form of language that people can understand and can
then say whether they agree or they do not?
Pat McFadden: Do you mean a greater
use of focus groups and citizens' forums?
10 Environmental Audit Committee, Keeping the lights
on: Nuclear, Renewables and Climate Change, Sixth Report of
Session 2005-06, April 2006, HC 584 Back
11
Department for Work and Pensions, A New Pension Settlement
for the Twenty-First Century, November 2005 Back
12
Ev 196 Back
13
Institute for Public Policy Research, The Future Hospital:
The progressive case for change, January 2007 Back
14
Q 38-104, 198-259 Back
15
Public Service Agreement. Back
16
Q 1-37 Back
17
Cabinet Office, Building on progress: Public services,
March 2007, p 41 Back
| 
