Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DAVID BELL
AND JON
THOMPSON
25 JUNE 2008
Q20 Mr Chaytor: My second point is a
similar one. A large amount of the work that you are responsible
for is delivered on the ground by children's services departments
or children's trusts, where they exist. But in the report we do
not see direct budget allocation to the children's services departments
of local authorities. Would it be possible to have it presented
in that way, either now or in a future report? Would that be valuable,
or do you think that it is not significant?
Jon Thompson: Again, that information
is available within the Department. Information on the significant
elements of spend which either go directly into the schools system,
through something like the dedicated schools grant, or which go
to local authorities, through area-based grants, could be produced,
either by or within the Department, if the Committee wanted it.
We could consider including it in a forward Departmental Report—it
would extend the appendices quite significantly, but we certainly
can do it.[2]
Q21 Mr Chaytor: On table 8.3, which gives
the detailed breakdown of expenditure, the basic structure is
expenditure allocated to schools, children and families and young
people, but surely those cannot be mutually exclusive, because
young people and children attend school. We see certain headings,
such as the amount spent on Academies and specialist schools,
which clearly benefits young people as well. Does that structure
serve any purpose, or is it an attempt to match up with the name
of the Department? It is not necessarily the best structure to
present the information because there are so many overlaps between
the three sub-categories.
David Bell: I should probably
ask the head of the government financial management service to
answer the technical points about how the data is presented, but
you have made a valid point. If you look at the dedicated schools
grant, of course we know that it goes directly into schools, but
much of the expenditure under the children and families heading,
for example, will have a direct impact on the same children, through
children's centres. The work that we are doing with young people
through the Connexions service or supporting positive activities
will also impact on the same young people. This is more to do
with the presentation requirements for the accounts.
Jon Thompson: Table 8.3 on pages
88 and page 89 is set out, to be honest, largely for convenience
and for our own departmental purposes, because that is the way
in which our budget is structured and because the local authority
system would recognise those funding systems. In terms of making
a three year forward announcement, which is also set out in the
table, sticking to that architecture assisted both us and the
system. In answer to your previous questions, we can certainly
set out the information in a different way, and we would essentially
rehash it in relation to local authorities.
Q22 Mr Chaytor: Do you accept that
it is better for the process of scrutiny and accountability that
the funding is shown as being allocated to institutions, rather
than to broad-brush themes or individual services? For some institutions,
such as school sixth forms and the Connexions service, the funding
is clearly listed, but other heading are fairly vague, such as,
"Other Youth Programmes" and "National Strategies".
Do you accept that there is value in clearly linking the funding
to specific institutions?
Jon Thompson: Yes, I do accept
that. If it would be helpful, we could provide that information
in a table 8.3A. We could take those figures and cut them in a
different way to answer that.
David Bell: Interestingly, if
you look at the accountability arrangements for schools over the
past 20 years, you can identify that funding right down to school
level because of the reporting requirements under the section
52 statements. We now have a fine level of detail on spend at
the level of individual institutions, and the local authority
accounts give a similar sort of detail. As Jon said, we have tried
to group those in a broad way, but we could probably have some
discussions and consultation outside the Committee on what would
be a more helpful way of exploding those big numbers and giving
you a better sense of what they include.[3]
Q23 Mr Chaytor: I have just one more
question. There has been a big increase in the numbers of annexes
this year, and they provide a fascinating amount of detailed information,
but the one thing that the Department seems reluctant to publish
or make available is the future projections for pupil and student
numbers. Your planning assumptions are based on the comprehensive
spending review period so that we can look forward three years,
but given apparent demographic changes, would the scrutiny process
not benefit from your assumptions about the changes in the birth
rate or the impact of immigration on pupil and student numbers?
Student and pupil numbers are absolutely key to aspects such as
the 14 to 19 developments and the Building Schools for the Future
programme.
David Bell: There is no secret
in those, and we wrote to you about that issue.[4]
Q24 Mr Chaytor: You did, but it is not
in this document. As a matter of course, ought not that to be
in there? We clearly know now, 10 years on, the numbers of children
at the age of 16, because they are already in the schools.
David Bell: Absolutely, and there
is no difficulty with that as a piece of base data for the report.
Jon Thompson: My apologies. I
thought that that data was in there. Like you, I was just struggling
to find it.
Q25 Mr Carswell: I have three questions
for Mr Bell. The first does not relate specifically to funding
questions, but as you can see it is not totally unrelated. I note
that you are a fan of US politics and follow it closely, so would
you like to see reforms in this country that would give a role
to the House of Commons, as the legislature, to ratify the appointment
of permanent under-secretaries and senior officials in the Department?
That could be done in some sort of televised confirmation hearing,
rather like the American system, and perhaps through this Committee?
It is a perfectly serious point. Perhaps the House of Commons,
as the elected legislature, should approve and vote on the departmental
budget every year, which is something that we do not do de facto,
if indeed we still do it de jure.
David Bell: I am sure that we
could have a long and fascinating discussion about American politics
and comparisons with the UK. With regard to your first point,
however, we recently announced that a number of public appointments
will be brought before committees, and in fact we have put forward
two of Her Majesty's chief inspectors. I think that you actually
asked the Chief Inspector about that at a recent hearing.
Chairman: She was not very happy about
that.
Q26 Mr Carswell: That is why I would
like to hear whether you, as the Permanent Secretary, would be
happy to go through that.
Chairman: Would you not have applied
to be Chief Inspector if you had to be interviewed?
David Bell: I had nothing to hide
and I am sure that the current inspector has nothing to hide either.
We put up a couple of appointments for the process: the Ofsted
job and the post of chair of the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority.
Q27 Mr Carswell: What about the Permanent
Under-Secretary?
David Bell: I am probably speaking
beyond my pay grade here. There is something very strong and significant
about the role that the civil service commissioners play in the
appointment of the most senior ranks of the civil service. For
the sake of our parliamentary democracy, it is quite important
to separate the appointments of the permanent civil service from
any oversight—if I can put it in that general sense—of
the Executive. That would be absolutely consistent with our traditions,
which go back a number of years. It is rather interesting, of
course, that there is a forthcoming civil service Bill, and there
is discussion about appointments. So, on balance, I would stick
to the current system of ensuring that you have independence in
the selection process and have that overseen by the civil service
commissioners. You can make a respectable argument for public
appointments, such as the chairs of the regulators and so on,
being in a different category from those of the permanent civil
service.
Q28 Mr Carswell: I am fearful that
the current Government, or God forbid a future Government, might
try to centralise local education authority budgets, either to
try to carry out some hare-brained education scheme or, more fearfully,
to try to solve the local government balance of funding problem.
Do you see that as a danger, or are you moving towards that?
David Bell: That has been one
of those interesting debates that has probably waxed and waned
for 20 or so years, but it is interesting that we have retained
a strong degree of local oversight control. There is a wider question
about the funding of local government. You might say that the
Government have already decided, through for example the Dedicated
Schools Grant, that you take out a very large sum of money and
say that that is identified and cannot be touched. But do not
forget that even within that there is a high degree of local accountability
and responsibility: for example, the way in which the funding
formula is constructed at the local authority level allows for
local influence and oversight. That is a matter for Governments
to determine, but my sense is that there is not a lot of agitation
for centralising and having a national funding formula. It brings
controversy about the funding levels in particular authorities
across the country. That is a controversial issue, I know, but
one of the arguments that has been put up historically—it
is a fair argument—is that you want to try to recognise
the different circumstances of different areas. I do not see any
great pressure in that direction at the moment.
Q29 Mr Carswell: This is my final
question. As you know, some local authorities have been allowed
to do things such as experimenting with direct payments in social
services. What changes would we need in primary legislation to
allow a local authority to bring in a system that would give any
parent the right to request and receive control over their child's
share of local authority funding?
David Bell: You would require
changes in primary legislation because we do not, under the current
legislation, enable individual parents to have their share of
the budget for the education of a child in the maintained system.
It is interesting that you cited the example of the social care
payments. I was with a group of parents in a London borough recently,
who have had that opportunity to have personal budgets for their
disabled children. Opinion was rather mixed. Some parents really
appreciated the freedom to do that, and others were very anxious
that if you went in that direction you would have a kind of collapse
of service, and then a market would not emerge. Obviously, part
of the role of local authorities in that context is to help to
create the market, but for me that was a neat illustration on
a very small scale of something that is not without its problems
or controversy. But you are right, you would have to change primary
legislation if you were going to give a parent a budget share.
Chairman: We will now move on.
Q30 Annette Brooke: I have to confess
that I am totally bemused by the number of targets, so I hope
that you will lead me through the maze, as I see it. I understand
that there are 26 indicators for the five main Public Service
Agreements, a further responsibility for another 13—cross-departmental,
I presume—and then the six departmental strategic objectives
are underpinned by 80 PSAs. Are you trying to measure too many
things here?
David Bell: If we take the Public
Service Agreements, the PSAs, under the 2007 settlement, there
are 30 cross-Government PSAs and those have illustrated a significant
shift from the previous PSAs, because they are genuinely cross-Government/cross-departmental.
Each Department is allocated a lead role for a number of PSAs.
We have a lead role for five PSAs: improving the well-being and
health of children; improving children's and young people's safety;
raising educational attainment; narrowing the gap in educational
achievement; and finally, increasing the number of children and
young people on the path to success. We are responsible for those.
As you say, underneath those sit a number of indicators that give
a measure of progress in each. For example, if we look at safety,
there are indicators to do with accidents in the home, road traffic
accidents involving children and young people, and so on. All
the PSAs have those indicators, as you say, and then for some
of those indicators, there are specific targets. For example,
we have targets for educational attainment for children at the
age of 11, or at 16, and the like. It is, to use the jargon, a
complex architecture and one of our jobs is to ensure that all
those in the system, with whom we work, understand what the priorities
and the PSAs are. If you take local government as an example,
here we have the new innovation of local area agreements, which
enable local authorities to identify within that large suite the
things that they think are priorities, as well as priorities that
are local and not national. So it is an architecture that can
be explained, we have a clear description of what that architecture
is, we have quite a bit to do to continue to explain that, but
it is important to have that architecture in place that assigns
responsibility for Public Service Agreements to Departments. It
assigns it to senior officials who have to lead it, it requires
Government Departments to work together and it does set hard and
at times very demanding targets. It is right that Government,
not just in our Department but across their responsibilities,
set those demanding targets to bring about improvement.
Q31 Annette Brooke: Can you tell
me if there is any degree of priority, or do you have to keep
all these plates spinning at the same time?
David Bell: One of the reasons
for moving to a smaller number of PSAs was to encapsulate those
areas that were of most significance across Government. You might
say, "Yes, but underneath that, you have all these targets
and so on." It is an interesting question, because if you
take the children's plan, which subsumes our PSAs, we have to
move across many different fronts at once. You cannot say, if
we focus on this one priority, everything else will be well, partly
because there is a very significant interrelationship between
what you do in one area of focus and what happens in another.
Take the emphasis that we have given to early intervention—giving
children a good start in life. You could say that that is at the
top of the tree of priorities, but it can never be the only priority,
because it has to be supported by the work that we are doing on
children's health and well-being, ensuring that their safety is
protected and making sure that they move from early education
into a good school and get good teaching at the school. It is
important to give a sense of the priorities, while recognising
that we cannot move to a situation where there are only one or
two priorities. This area of children's services is complicated,
so we have to see those interrelationships between different priorities,
or we will not achieve what we want to achieve.
Q32 Annette Brooke: Can I backtrack
to the relationship between the money and the priorities? There
are so many priorities. Also, with the cross-departmental shared
targets, are there pooled budgets, or if the DCSF is the lead
Department do we see somewhere in those figures all of the money
that has been attached to that particular target?
David Bell: Perhaps Jon and I
can try to answer that together. As far as the PSAs are concerned,
as we said in our answer to Mr Chaytor, we have been very clear
what resources are required to achieve what we want to achieve.
In fact, it was a very important part of our spending review negotiations
with the Treasury to be clear that we were assigning money to
particular PSAs or targets. There had been a wee bit of a tendency
previously not to do a rigid analysis, saying, "Well, what
kind of money do you need to achieve this?" We have now done
that and it was an important part of our PSA process, so we can
identify the sums of money attributed to any of the PSA targets.
As far as formal pooling is concerned, the answer is: not at national
Government level, but we are seeing some examples of that kind
of pooling at local government or children's trust level, where
local authorities are putting together moneys and then having
the allocation of those moneys determined locally. But—this
is a really important "but"—when it comes to the
PSAs, such as improving children and young people's safety, we
need to be very clear about what other departments are spending
or planning to spend to enable us together to meet our shared
targets. Throughout the process, we need to have good conversations
with the Department for Transport over the kinds of initiatives
that it is taking to reduce road traffic accidents involving children,
and very good negotiations with the Department of Health over
a particular allocation of funding for tackling childhood obesity
and the like. We do not have a wish list. Part of the responsibility
of the PSA owner—the people who lead the PSA—is making
sure that the resources are identified in different departments
to achieve the ends that we all want to achieve.
Q33 Annette Brooke: So if I was to
ask a parliamentary question on child safety, such as how much
is being spent on that PSA, and I directed it to the DCSF, would
I then get an answer that gave me the precise details from each
department?
David Bell: We could probably
give you a breakdown of how much funding was allocated across
different indicators, and we could probably see what departments
were allocating. Sometimes, of course, it is not quite that straightforward.
If we take health, which is an interesting example, the primary
care trust would not necessarily separate out to the "nth
degree" the specific expenditure for children, as opposed
to their other responsibilities, although some aspects will be
specifically identifiable, such as funding for health visitors
and the like. So we could probably give a good approximation of
the allocations of individual departments to achieve a particular
PSA, but perhaps I will ask Jon to come in on this as well.
Jon Thompson: I would not have
been quite that definitive. We definitely could tell you how much
of our budget is allocated against the relevant Public Service
Agreements. To manage expectations, the total budget can be broken
into the six departmental strategic objectives, so you can allocate
all the money into those bits, but PSAs do not cover the totality
of the Department's spend, so you then have to go to another level.
We could answer your question from our perspective, but beyond
the Department the information that we would provide to you would
be less specific. We could not necessarily answer how much in
total is spent on a particular PSA, but we could definitely tell
you how much we are contributing.
Q34 Annette Brooke: That is not a
line that I planned to go down, but what I am interested in is
whether as part of an overall planned budget tackling priorities,
you are all working together saying, "Well, this is the right
global sum to be spending on this particular PSA." I do not
quite see how you come together. I can see each department paddling
its own canoe, and we can then say, "Oh that's great, that
much money is spent." But I do not see how the allocation
of finances on PSAs that cross departments is planned.
David Bell: How these PSAs were
put together is really important. We had to negotiate with other
Government Departments to get their commitment to contribute to
PSAs that we were leading. For example, we had to talk extensively
to the Department of Health about the PSA on children's health.
We had to talk very closely with the Department for Culture, Media
and Sport about the PSA to increase the number of young people
involved in pathways to success and positive activities. No department
was able just to put its name to a PSA being led by another department
without being clear that it had the means to support the achievement
of those ends. That is a really important point. It is not just
us saying, "Here is a PSA, we will cross our fingers and
hope that other departments will participate." The whole
purpose was to involve the relevant Government Departments to
demonstrate that they were committed to the achievement of those
ends. To give you another example, there are other PSAs which
we are not leading, but to which we might be contributing. Therefore,
we are in a similar position of being asked by another department
to contribute. For example, in some of the work that the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is doing, it is interested
in the contribution that we are making with regard to sustainable
schools. We could not just say, "We will sign up to that,
but not do anything about it." You have to be able to demonstrate,
in the outcomes identified under each of the departmental strategic
objectives, that you are contributing in a very practical way
to the achievement of those ends.
Mr Stuart: Could I come in on that last
point?
Q35 Annette Brooke: If I may finish
this bit, I will be happy to move on. How would you rank how much
joined-upness you have achieved? On a scale of nought to 10, with
nought being absolutely no joined-up working, where are you at
the moment?
David Bell: Not nought, and not
10.
Chairman: That is a bad answer.
David Bell: That was the beginning
of my answer—I have my glasses to put on and take off so
I can gain time to think. I think we are probably in the territory
of sixish to seven, and I will explain why. The requirement to
have these PSAs was an important driver, but perhaps much more
importantly the very creation of the Department for Children,
Schools and Families was about making those connections across
Government. If we are interested in making this the best country
for children and young people to grow up in, we as a Department
cannot do that on our own. We just cannot. We therefore have in
place formal dual-key arrangements on areas like juvenile justice.
We have very clear, written, shared responsibilities with the
Ministry of Justice. We are working very closely in areas related
to alcohol abuse among young people, crime among young people,
substance abuse more generally, and sport. In all those areas,
we are working together really closely and well. Are we there
yet? No, we are not. We have to be able to demonstrate, at national
level, that we are able to do what quite a lot of local areas
are doing themselves. A lot of local areas would say to us, "We
are better at joining up services than you are at national level."
I think that is an important challenge. I am quite optimistic
about this, because what I do not see at all across Government
is resistance to working together to achieve these PSAs. It is
early days, but I think the signs are good. Your question is a
good one to ask me the next time we meet, and I will see whether
we have moved up the scale at all.
Chairman: Graham, I will call you briefly.
Q36 Mr Stuart: Very quickly, how
can Committees such as this scrutinise what is a complex set of
arrangements? You have said that you are not allowed to sign up
to the PSA without being able to demonstrate what you are going
to do. It is not obvious to me, from what we have been provided
with, that we can see that for ourselves. We cannot easily identify
your section, let alone the whole, and therefore there is a danger
that we, as a parliamentary oversight body, are unable to hold
to account whoever it is we should be holding to account for it.
David Bell: I think I can be,
perhaps, more reassuring than that. We have broken down—and
it is publicly available—all the indicators that lie under
each of the PSAs, and beneath that where there are targets, and
there will be public reporting of the progress we are making against
these indicators and targets. Therefore, I would have thought
that was a very good means by which the Committee will be able
to look at the data and the progress we are making. Actually,
this is probably a better way of tracking progress than we had
previously. It is quite an interesting question for the Committee—and
again maybe we can discuss this outside with the officials—
how far you reflect that in the annual report, because we do have
to publish our progress against the PSA targets in another place,
but I think you will have hard data with which to hold us to account.
Q37 Mr Heppell: What you do not seem
able to identify is what actual money is going to the PSA from
every single area, from each single department. Clearly, if you
had some sort of target for something, whether it is child obesity
or whatever, then surely the commitment has to be something more
than just a woolly commitment. I would have thought it was possible
to identify what resources each area is prepared to put into that
commitment.
David Bell: Absolutely right.
Our focus is on the outcomes. If we look at some of the outcomes
that are specified under the PSAs, that is our focus. We are obviously
interested in the input; how much money you are putting in, what
kind of staff are you putting in, how you are helping the system
to do these sorts of things. It is very, very clear, under this
PSA suite, that when we have the various PSA boards that bring
together the officials from across Government, if you are there
from another department, supporting one of our PSAs, you have
to be able to demonstrate what commitment you are making. You
might say we are putting in X sum of money or Y number of people,
or we are working with local government to do this, or we are
working with highway authorities if it is transport—
Q38 Mr Heppell: Where could I see
that?
David Bell: What you can see is
what we have called through the delivery agreement, so each of
these PSAs has its own delivery agreement. When the PSAs were
all signed off by the Treasury last November or December, we then
had to put into place a delivery agreement that will spell out
in more detail what the contribution of different parties will
be. As Jon said, sometimes that will be specified in very hard
financial terms; in other times it will be specified by, for example,
a commitment to a particular kind of programme in a different
department. The important thing to say is: you cannot, as a Government
Department—and I can speak personally—sign up to contribute
to a PSA unless you have behind it the resources, whether that
is money and/or people or programmes.[5]
Q39Mr Heppell: How significant are the
2004 PSAs now? Now that we have moved on to 2007, what happens
to the old ones? For instance, the target to reduce the under-18
conception rate: is that still a target, is it still a priority?
Or is it possible for those to drop off the end of the screen
as we move forward?
David Bell: There will be a final
sweeping-up report of the year across Government—what progress
was made under the SR04 targets, because there is final validation
that has to go into the data—which will be done quite soon.
Some of the targets will have changed as a result of coming to
the end of one spending review period. Others will have progressed
on. We can do a kind of tracking back, to show you where we have
carried forward a target. So, for example, the one about under-18
conception, that remains a very important target. Interestingly,
I should say that about 120 local authorities have put that as
one of their local targets under the local area agreements, and
it is a good example of how local areas still see this as a very
important priority. So we can show you the tracking from 2004
targets as they have migrated into 2007, but of course, when you
see the full layout, you will see some targets that are new, as
a result of these new PSAs. But as to the final report on SR04,
I am not sure when that is due.
Jon Thompson: I am not sure. Essentially,
the change between spending review 2004 and the Comprehensive
Spending Review 2007 is that the number of Public Service Agreements
shrank considerably. Some of them, like the one you just quoted,
become an indicator for what is now a much wider public service
agreement. We can track them and would happily provide that information.
David Bell: We have a—I
was going to say helpful, but that would be for you to determine—chart,
an exploded diagram that lays out each of the PSAs, with all the
indicators underneath them. If you do not already have it, it
is quite good, although I have to say that I did have to use my
glasses when I saw the first version. We will make sure that we
give you one that you can actually read.[6]
2 See Ev 21 Back
3
See Ev 21 Back
4
See Ev 22 Back
5
See Ev 21 Back
6
See Annex B and C: Ev 21, 23-28 Back
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