The
Chairman: The Committee now wishes to turn to the child
poverty commission.
Q
115Helen
Goodman: What, in the witnesses’ view, is the
rationale for having the child poverty
commission? Neera
Sharma: I think that the commission is a key part of
the accountability process. There is definite value in having a
commission that can play a key role in designing the strategy and
scrutinising progress towards the targets. We believe that having a
commission is a key part of the
legislation.
Q
116Helen
Goodman: Would you agree that, in the process of
consultation, the powers of the commission have been significantly
strengthened?
Neera
Sharma: We believe that the commission should be as
strong as possible so that it can play a key advisory role. In order to
do that, we feel that it should be able to publish its own
research—and have a budget for that—and to call for
witnesses. We feel that the powers of the commission need to be
strengthened.
Q
117Helen
Goodman: Are you satisfied by the proposals in the Bill to
publish the advice and require the Secretary of State to have regard to
it, with the experiences laid out by members of the
commission? Neera
Sharma:
Yes. Kate
Green: We would also like the Secretary of State to
explain why he might be departing from the advice, if that is the
case. Neera
Sharma: We would also like Government to look at the
time scales for setting up the commission. The first strategy will be
published within 12 months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. That
could limit the commission’s ability to influence that first
strategy. If the commission is not set up for several months after
Royal Assent, it will not have enough time to influence the strategy.
The first strategy will be a blueprint for other strategies and annual
reports to follow. The timeline for establishing the commission is
absolutely key. In other legislation, such as the Climate Change Bill,
a shadow commission was established so that it could get to work as
soon as the Bill got Royal
Assent.
Q
118Steve
Webb: I think that that last point is a powerful one,
having been involved with the Climate Change Bill. The shadow
commission more or less dictated the amendment of the Bill—to an
80 per cent. reduction—and made it
powerful. To
be momentarily cynical again, the child poverty unit’s impact
assessment of the Bill says that the child poverty commission will meet
four times a year and have 14 staff. It tells us the cost of their
travel. It even includes the cost of a room; I am surprised that it
does not include tea and biscuits. The commission will oversee
Government spending of £400 billion, according to the Bill, over
the next 20 years, with an annualised running cost of £190,000.
The civil service staff will be one policy grade 7—I am sure
that they will be a splendid person, but that is not terribly
senior—and an executive officer, who does minutes, I suppose.
There is an £80 day rate for people attending. It is all a bit
half-hearted, is it not?
Kate
Green: Clearly we think that it must be adequately
resourced, including, as Neera said, with an adequate research budget,
the power to call for and commission its own research, and adequate
staff to critique the strategies and provide proper advice and
information for Parliament and the
public.
Q
119Steve
Webb: Does that sound adequate to
you? Kate
Green: It does not sound adequate to
me. Neera
Sharma: There is another option in that assessment,
which is £390,000. That would include a research budget. We
would, obviously, want to push for the higher budget so that the
commission can have its own research
budget. Fergus
Drake: But overall, the point you are alluding to is
that it has to be properly resourced in order to give it the role that
it needs for best practice in some of the areas that we have been
talking about. We need to
ensure that there are not four or five wonderful beacon authorities and
then tens, or hundreds, that are lagging
behind.
Q
120Steve
Webb: Do you think that the Bill should provide for the
child poverty commission to be abolished once the job is
done?
Neera
Sharma: I think that the commission should have a say
in whether it is abolished. This is also about at what point it should
be abolished—there is a question of sustainability. We could get
to 2020 and the targets might have been met, and then a year later
child poverty could start going up again. When the commission is
abolished depends on the process and the timing. It could stay until
after 2020 to ensure that the whole strategy is proving to be
sustainable.
Kate
Bell: As I remember, I think that the commission must
be abolished through an affirmative resolution in Parliament, although
that does not provide the greatest safeguard. Clearly there must be a
strong provision that some debate will happen before we say,
“Okay, it is telling us things we don’t like;
let’s get rid of
it.”
The
Chairman: I think that there are no further questions, so
that brings us to the end of this evidence session. On behalf of the
Committee, I thank Kate Green, Neera Sharma, Fergus Drake and Kate
Bell. 5.18
pm
The
Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome to the second session
of the afternoon. We are now going to hear evidence from Catherine Fitt
from the National College for Leadership of Schools and
Children’s Services, Colin Green from the Association of
Directors of Children’s Services, Kevan Collins from the London
borough of Tower Hamlets, Richard Kemp from the Local Government
Association, and Paul Carter from Kent county council. Welcome to all
of you. I start by asking John Howell for a
question.
Q
121John
Howell: Local authorities already have a number of ways of
prioritising child poverty. They have the NI 116 as an overall
indicator of child poverty, and they can sign up to a number of
specific indicators that better reflect the local circumstances. They
also have relationships with myriad other partnerships on the ground,
and in many authorities I am aware that the child poverty agenda goes
right through those partnerships. The basic question is: what does the
Bill add to that?
Catherine
Fitt: I think I need to explain that until nine weeks
ago I was director of children’s services for Newcastle city
council. To a great extent, what I want to say today is coloured by my
experience of the last four years and four months. I have also been
chairing a theme group of the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in
Children and Young People’s Services, looking at child
poverty.
For me, the
reason for having the Bill is to ensure consistency across the country.
We know from what has been happening over the last few years that local
government and its partners are engaging very positively. For example,
nine out of the 11 local authorities in the north-east region now have
child poverty as a priority in their sustainable communities strategy.
That has been very much down to the work of the region’s
coalition to
tackle child poverty. We are very aware that it is no good solving the
problem in just one part of the country, because whether a
child’s needs are met should not be dependent on where they
live. We are looking for
consistency. Richard
Kemp: I take a different view from that. Giving local
government a duty would not help us, but enhancing the duty of our
partners to co-operate with us around a specific thing would. You will
be aware, because you have passed the legislation, that the Local
Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 gives
all the partners around the LSP table the duty to co-operate with the
council, in this case the upper-tier authorities. It is taking time for
our so-called partners to understand what that duty to co-operate is.
Even where a council is being a good lead partner, it takes two to
tango. Who is coming in behind us?
Although it
is clearly evolving, partnership is developing and more and more
councils—as I think we will see from the comprehensive area
assessment reports, which will be presented in the next few
weeks—are creating successful partnerships. However, that is not
always carried through by the quangos and departments of local
government. So, we think that ensuring that that co-operation means
something, rather than just being an Act of Parliament, would be of
assistance to
us. Paul
Carter: I take a long-term view. In trying to address
child poverty you are not going to get a quick fix. In Kent, we are
taking a longer-term approach to the underlying problems to try
to stop the cycle of repetitive benefit dependency and generational
behaviours, through transformation in education as well as working
alongside Sure Start programmes, children’s centres and the
support given to wraparound family care. That all adds value. There has
to be a multi-agency approach to the solutions. On the journey that we
have been on for the last six, seven or eight years, we are beginning
to see some positive outcomes.
In Kent, by
raising young people’s aspirations and ambitions we have reduced
the number of young people who are not in education or employment by 16
per cent. The numbers in the rest of the country have gone up. So, some
of the medium and longer-term solutions in changing the mindsets of
young people are beginning to take effect. One head teacher of a high
school—not a grammar school—in Kent said to me,
“The only child poverty around here is the poverty of aspiration
and ambition”. It is not about money. It is not about resource.
If you have families where one or both parents have alcohol or drug
addiction problems, no matter how much money you give them it will not
stop child poverty. Child poverty crosses all social boundaries. There
is child poverty in relatively affluent parts of society as well as the
more deprived areas.
It is a
massive problem, but to think that putting in financial resource and
increasing benefits will stop child poverty is absolutely wrong in my
view. You have to get to the underlying cause. You have to do all you
can to bring wealth and prosperity into an area. Some people think that
Kent is relatively prosperous. Our average gross value added per head
is less than the average for this country, not just for the south-east
of England. The east of Kent has social deprivation indices that are
off the Richter scale and in the top 20, something we are not proud of.
Roger Gale said to me the other day that when he first became an MP he
was going to change the
dynamic of Thanet in five years. If anything it has gone backwards, not
forwards. So, what are the underlying levers of control that we have in
local government, working with the other public agencies that can bring
wealth, prosperity and job opportunities and through education change
the mindsets, ambitions and aspirations of young people? I think that
we are starting to make good progress. Q
122John
Howell: What you have just described is a situation, if I
read it correctly, that Kent has been involved in for some time. What I
am trying to grasp is what you would do differently, if the Bill were
to be passed tomorrow, as a result of its passage?
Paul
Carter: But the Bill does not go into the solutions
model, does it? It talks about establishing the commission X, Y and Z.
As I understand it, however, it does not go into what we are going to
do about it. That is the interesting debate in my view: what are we
going to do all over the country to try to address the essential need
to reduce the number of those in child poverty, however you define
it?
Q
123John
Howell: I think that that goes to the heart of another
question really, picking up the consistency argument that Catherine
Fitt made. Surely, what we need to establish in the Bill is a balance
between some consistency and quite a lot of flexibility, because the
solutions for tackling child poverty will not be the same in each area.
How will we get that balance, or do you see that balance already within
the
Bill? Richard
Kemp: One can see that, from the local area agreement
indicators that we have signed up to. In crude terms, only 45 out of
about 140 local authorities have signed up to NI 116, which is the
child poverty indicator. However, 118 local authorities are doing work
on NEETs, 101 on obesity in teenage schools and 107 on under-18
conceptions. Those issues are entirely relevant, because these things
go hand in hand. So that is an indication that local authorities are
saying, “What is it that we need to do in our area, using our
local knowledge and our partnerships?” So my response to your
earlier question about what we would do differently as a result of the
Bill is, “Not necessarily anything at all”, although it
might help to change the way that some of our partners relate to us,
because I do not think that those partnerships are strong enough to
deal with some of the indicators that we face.
Kevan
Collins: The point about what we would do differently
if the Bill is passed is the key one. I think that we are already doing
things differently because of the debate that has begun. The most
interesting thing is the way that people have come together to look at
this issue in the round. Paul’s point is absolutely right: this
is a complex and very sophisticated issue, and you need the broad set
of partners around you to consider it. However, the question is this:
is there a collective effort genuinely across the whole of local and
central Government, or is the buck being passed to local government?
People are nervous about that issue, to be honest with you.
Nevertheless,
I think that the point about local plans, including the strategic needs
analysis, is important. All of that activity is creating a much richer
frame to place our actions against, and I think that much more
intelligent work is going on because of the potential of the Bill, and
even more work of that kind will flow from the Bill.
There is an
important point about there being a greater sense of duty to co-operate
with the Bill and to be part of it, which needs to go right across the
range of partners. In Tower Hamlets, we have found that the work with
health workers, police and our community groups has been fundamental in
getting a comprehensive plan in
place.
Q
124John
Howell: How do you see the relationship between central
Government, with its responsibilities under the Bill, and local
government working out? Is it one of stick, or one of carrot? The Bill
threatens, or promises, guidance. How do you see that guidance coming
into effect on this
issue? Kevan
Collins: Guidance always leaves me with a
slight—do we need more guidance? I think that the tension
between responsibilities will have to be resolved. If the guidance
becomes a stick that is used to beat local authorities, for example
Tower Hamlets where we have a higher degree of child poverty but we are
working hard on it, I think that would be unhelpful; it would be
unhelpful if it created a new level of conflict. I think that it has
got to be about co-operation and working collaboratively, to pull all
the levers that are available and that are only available if you are
working at the national and local levels in concert. That is my worry
about the guidance in the Bill.
Paul
Carter: I think that the answer is in local solutions
and in public agencies working together. When we started all these
public service agreements and local area agreements, I was a real
sceptic. All this partnership working was going to deliver the holy
grail supposedly. And yet when you look at some of the big outcomes of
the first local area agreement, before it started in micro-management
and became far too complex, the big outcomes of fewer children being
taken into care and a significant reduction in bed blocking in our
acute hospitals in Kent were really significant results that were
achieved by the public sector and the public agencies coming together.
That is why I am a great supporter of the Total Place concept, which is
about joined-up public services looking at the totality of expenditure
in any one area and sitting round and trying to go into solutions mode,
when currently there is still a silo mentality across the public
agencies, which are acting in isolation and not in concert. If you can
get them all working together in a defined area with the totality of
their budgets and a clean sheet of paper, public agencies will start to
deliver things in a fundamentally different
way. Colin
Green: I would agree with most of what has been said.
The potential of the Bill is in adding leverage to what is already a
very high priority for nearly all local authorities. The ADCS regrets
that the Bill is not framed in terms of families rather than children.
Children live in families and a family concept of poverty is more
useful in engaging the totality of partnerships, particularly the NHS,
whose resources are devoted in large part to older people and very
significantly at a local level.
The other
issue is that there are many other measures on which we are already
performance-managed, particularly on equality. In terms of the driver
for disadvantage and poor outcomes, inequality is the core driver
rather than absolute measures of income. I think the matter is strongly
on local authorities’ radar. It is on the radar of directors of
children’s services. I advocate minimal guidance. The Bill is an
enabler: we do not need more micro-management. The national indicator
set has a whole
range of indicators—not just NI 116 but all the ones concerned
with educational attainment and gap narrowing, of which there are a
number. They are very effective measures about whether we are having an
impact in the local authority and with the
partners. | 
