Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1-19)
MAGGIE ATKINSON
12 OCTOBER 2009
Q1 Chairman: Maggie Atkinson,
welcome to this Committee. This is a first for us: it is the first
time that we have had a pre-appointment hearing for one of the
four appointments for which we are able to have pre-appointment
hearings. We are not too formal in this Committee; how do you
prefer to be addressed? Maggie Atkinson, Maggie, Mrs Atkinson,
Ms Atkinson?
Maggie Atkinson: Maggie is fine.
Q2 Chairman: Okay. Before we get
started, is there anything that you want to say to the Committee
about this amazing job that you seem to be the favoured candidate
for?
Maggie Atkinson: I think that
it is an amazing job, Chairman, as you have just labelled it.
The opportunity to have a statutory role to speak for, and on
behalf of, children and young people to those in very important
policy roles, both locally and nationally, seems to me to be a
chance not to be missed. The commissioner has been in place for
five years and started the role. There is now a chance for a second
term under a new commissioner to move the role forward even further.
So I am very excited by the role—scared to death, but very
excited none the less.
Q3 Chairman: But you will be moving
from a job where you had real executive power and really made
things happen—you could go home every night sure that children
were safer, because you did your job well, than they would have
been otherwise—to a job that many people think does not
have much power and has very little influence.
Maggie Atkinson: Chairman, I think
that you overestimate how powerful a Director of Children's Services
truly is in practice on the ground. The role of a DCS is very
much about influence. Although I have a statutory duty and indeed
a statutory power to require people to co-operate under a Children's
Trust, I do not employ most of those people, I am not responsible
for their pay and rations. In most circumstances in most parts
of the country, successful Children's Trusts are about good will
and people taking the time to listen to each other, as well as
to the children, young people and families for whom they provide
services. Very often, those trusts come to agreement by compromise,
patience and mutual respect and understanding. Therefore, although
the team that I am leading at 11 Million is far smaller than the
one that works within a Children's Trust, there are significant
similarities between the two roles—the Director of Children's
Services in a locality and the Children's Commissioner for England.
Q4 Chairman: If you look at some
of the comments by your predecessor, Al Aynsley-Green, and at
some of the things that he told this Committee when he regularly
came to meet us, there was a feeling, towards the end of his time,
of disillusionment, that he was the weakest of the UK Children's
Commissioners and had less power than the other UK Children's
Commissioners. One felt that he retired from the post a little
early because he was a little disillusioned about the frustrations
of not being able to make enough impact.
Maggie Atkinson: I cannot speak
for Sir Al, of course. I know him and I have worked with him;
he was president of the north of England conference when we hosted
it in Gateshead in 2006. So I have worked alongside him and worked
with him and young people. The four Children's Commissioners in
the UK are different from each other. Only the Scottish commissioner
is independent, but it is still a royal appointment. The others,
including the English one, are all non-departmental public bodies.
I think that the role is what the commissioner makes of it, to
be honest. The Children's Commissioner for England has very significant
powers of entry, for example, into some fairly important parts
of the children and young people's estate, not least young offenders
institutions and places like Yarl's Wood. Should significant numbers
of young people raise an issue with the commissioner, the commissioner
has the power to institute whatever inquiries need to be made
if the weight of evidence is such that there is a need for them
to look at those things. Again, you are back to influence. You
are back to not wielding a big stick and to engaging not only
children and young people but those who run services for them
in ways that mean that there is a sense of being engaged in a
mutual endeavour. Statutorily the powers may not be as Sir Al
would have wanted them to be; you would need to rewrite primary
legislation to make them stronger and that would mean a bit of
a delay. It seems to me that you would also need to review significantly
the entire role, when there is work to be done. I can appreciate
that Sir Al feels that, in comparison with some of the other UK
commissioners and with some of the commissioners in Europe, the
powers may be somewhat constrained. Nevertheless, I do not see
that the formal constraints upon the role mean that the commissioner
cannot have a very strong voice.
Q5 Chairman: You have a formidable
CV but one thing that you do not have, from my reading of your
background, is much experience in public relations. Indeed, the
one thing that most children's directors do not want is publicity,
although they sometimes have better or worse competencies in dealing
with the media. Some people were perhaps hoping that we would
get Esther Rantzen or Joanna Lumley in the role of Children's
Commissioner. You are not a high-profile public figure, are you?
Maggie Atkinson: Last year felt
fairly high-profile. You'll know that I was president of the Association
of Directors of Children's Services during the year when the horrors
of the Baby Peter case broke. I seemed to spend a good deal of
my autumn and well into the winter and, indeed, into the spring
talking to either the print or the broadcast media. What we were
doing was putting across a very strong case that not all the system
is broken. I was on the "Today" programme, BBC News
24, Sky News and Radio 5 Live; I was in The Guardian—
Q6 Chairman: What I'm saying,
Maggie, is that you are a very highly qualified, competent public
servant—
Maggie Atkinson: Thank you.
Chairman: —but have you got the
flair for this job?
Maggie Atkinson: I consider I
do, yes. The selection process having been as rigorous as it was,
I was appointed against a strong field. That was made clear to
me from the off.
Q7 Chairman: So you saw off Esther
Rantzen and the rest?
Maggie Atkinson: I don't know
who else was in for the role, apart from one candidate who is
the current deputy commissioner, who is a very fine civil servant
and an extremely good chief executive of the organisation. I don't
know who else I was up against.
Chairman: Okay. Let's press on then and
ask Graham to lead the questioning.
Q8 Mr Stuart: Welcome. We've had
much talk of bonfires of quangos. We have, in the Children's Commissioner,
one that has no formal powers, which differs, as you've already
said, from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The current incumbent,
the first incumbent, is obviously rather disillusioned at the
end of it. Isn't it just the sort of powerless, toothless quango
that should be abolished?
Maggie Atkinson: With respect,
it is not a quango; it is a statutory body, under part 1 of chapter
31 of the Children Act 2004, so it isn't a quango. That is the
first thing to say. I don't know that Sir Al has led a toothless
organisation. Look at the work that the organisation has done
with the UK Border Agency. In the last year, a great deal of the
work of the commission has been gradually to get the UKBA to work
much more constructively with previously incarcerated asylum-seeker
and refugee children. The statements that have been made in the
report by 11 Million on guns and knives in the hands of young
people are, I think, potentially very strong steers of policy
in future. I also think there's a lot to play for. The commissioner
has been in and out of, visiting, young offenders institutions
and very often makes exactly the same criticisms of them as the
Chief Inspector of Prisons. The commissioner has spoken with and
has a good relationship with the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Q9 Mr Stuart: Sorry to interrupt,
but you just said that the commissioner makes exactly the same
criticisms as the Chief Inspector of Prisons. Precisely. There
is no delineated role for this commissioner. You are going and
duplicating the work of someone whose voice is already there,
already stated, and who has the expertise, the oomph and a lot
more clout—they do not get enough clout, but they have more
clout than you'll have.
Maggie Atkinson: The distinction
between Dame Anne Owers's work and the work of this commission
is that this commission's reports are driven through by the words
and feelings, the interests and the wishes and wants of children
and young people. That's the difference. You get the view of nought
to 19-year-olds.
Q10 Mr Stuart: That's a very good
point, but why do we want to have some member of the establishment
like yourself put up as the spokesman when we have the UK Youth
Parliament? Surely it would be better to hear the undiluted, authentic
voice of young people coming through an enhanced UK Youth Parliament,
rather than having somebody seemingly speaking for everybody when
they obviously will speak largely from their own opinion, however
hard and however well they listen.
Maggie Atkinson: There is a difference
with members of the UK Youth Parliament. I was with one of mine
only two days ago, just before the weekend. The difference is
that he's a full-time student and his place in the UK Youth Parliament
is in addition to what he does in the rest of his life. He is
studying to be a lawyer, as it happens. The Children's Commissioner
is full-time employed to express the views of children and young
people—and sometimes to explain to children and young people
why the system is saying no to those views—to policy makers,
to those in power, in ways that, with the best will in the world,
somebody who's being educated full time does not have the time
to do.
Q11 Mr Stuart: Thank you. That
leads me on neatly to the issue of independence. Your role, if
you are appointed, will be to give voice to young people and to
their interests. However, looking at your CV, in 2008 the Secretary
of State appointed you as the external chair of the national expert
group on children workforce. In 2009, you were appointed by the
Secretary of State to chair a new national children and young
people's workforce national partnership. You appear to be absolutely
steeped in the educational and children's workforce establishment
and the likelihood is that at the end of your five years you will
return to that world. So, in terms of your ability to convince
people on the outside, I am not trying to suggest for one minute
that you are not a person of the highest integrity and independence
of mind, but in this role is it not important, and would it not
have been preferable, to have somebody who was not coming fresh
from the patronage of the Secretary of State and was in fact coming
from the outside, able to act independently and was not going
to return to dependence on the patronage of the Secretary of State
for future employment thereafter?
Maggie Atkinson: I take issue
with the use of the word "patronage" twice in that sentence.
I was the externally appointed independent chair of the children's
workforce expert group and I will chair my final meeting of the
national partnership on the children's workforce on 24 January,
after which I will step down. At the end of my five-year term
I will be 58 and I really don't know whether I would want either
a second term at this job, or a full-time job of any sort, either
within or beyond the establishment. I have been president of the
Association of Directors of Children's Services. One of the things
that the ADCS has been extremely good at, it seems to me, is welcoming
policy when policy has been right-minded, and being extremely
robust when it has not. It was me as president of ADCS who insisted
that the entire system was not broken just because—however
tragic and however awful—that baby Peter died in Haringey.
I am fearlessly independent.
Q12 Mr Stuart: Can I ask what
you think you bring that is distinctive?
Maggie Atkinson: For the first
time the appointment will go to somebody who has actually delivered
Every Child Matters on the ground for the last five years in a
locality in England faced with all the difficulties of saving
money while keeping children safe, well, happy and achieving at
school. It is a natural next step for somebody who has done that
job very well in a locality.
Q13 Mr Stuart: Given your establishment
track record, do you plan to speak truth to power on behalf of
children without fear or favour?
Maggie Atkinson: I don't think
you should recommend that the Secretary of State gives me the
job, or the Secretary of State should have recommended me as the
Government's preferred candidate, if he were not certain that
that is what I would do.
Q14 Mr Stuart: Secretaries of
State are famous for appointing people precisely because they
will not speak truth to power, so I would not take any reassurance
on that; I would rather take your word for it. If you are prepared
to do that, can you tell us whether the current commissioner has
made any mistakes, and if so, what they are?
Maggie Atkinson: That I will speak
truth to power is my assurance—that is the first thing I
would say. I think that the current Children's Commissioner for
England has perhaps not always listened to what is going on at
the points of delivery in the system as well as he might have
done before making pronouncements about that system. While I will
not be in the pocket of that delivery system, I will listen to
and learn about what is going on through that delivery system
before I make pronouncements. There have also been times when
arguments have happened through the media, which should better
have happened in more measured and tempered ways.[1]
Chairman: I want to take you across to
Lynda now.
Lynda Waltho: You stole my thunder again,
Chairman; you always ask my questions.
Chairman: She always blames me for this.
Q15 Lynda Waltho: Maggie, I would
like to ask you what you think you can bring that is different.
Why did you beat the other candidates? I want you to tell me how
good you are and why, but I want to know how—really, following
on from Barry—will you be different from the previous incumbent
and how will you make sure that you really are the authentic voice
of young people?
Maggie Atkinson: Can I start with
the second of those two bits first? One thing that I think I need
to do in the first year is to go out to all the government office
regions and meet the elected youth assemblies and youth councils
in as many local authority areas as possible and listen to them.
However, I would also like to go out and meet representative groups
of the schools councils of the country. I think that there is
a need for the commissioner to go the furthest ends—to Berwick-upon-Tweed,
Falmouth and so on—rather than necessarily into a fairly
narrow geographical area. I don't know whether Sir Al has managed
to get all the way around the country, which I think is a really
important thing to do first off. I said it in my interview and
I will say it again here: it is very important that the commissioner's
first concern is for the children who are most vulnerable and
least likely to have a voice of their own or who, if they have
a voice of their own, are unable to express it and have it heard.
However, my youth assembly took me to one side the day after I
was announced by the Secretary of State and, in a scrutiny session,
said that they were keen that I also bring to the role a notion
of broadening it, under the positive contributions strand of the
commissioner's remit, to do things such as ensuring that the issues
that bother children and young people every day, even if they
are in stable homes and doing very well in school or college,
are brought to the ears of policy makers. Issues for the Gateshead
youth assembly's policy advisers—I can only give you examples
from there at the moment—include climate change, the green
agenda, sustainability, transport and access to higher education,
including access for those who have no money. They raise parenting
issues very strongly. Those who are in or on the edge of the looked-after
system want a country that enables them to be better parents themselves
and have better parenting skills than those they experienced in
their own childhoods. The commissioner has a role in going out
to listen to those youngsters who are not as vulnerable as some
of the others and bringing their general and universal issues
back into circles of power. That brings me to why I will be different.
For me, that concentration on the most vulnerable was a natural
thing to do in the first five years of the role. To be relevant
to all the 11 million-plus children in the country, you have to
go out and talk to them about what their issues are in general.
That means talking to the ones who are going to get a bucketful
of GCSEs and go to Cambridge as well as to the ones who are not
going to get anything and will need support and help throughout
their lives. I think that the next five years will potentially
be really exciting for the role and will see a broadening of its
spectrum and focus, and it will do that under the positive contributions
strand.
Chairman: We will now go on to David.
Q16 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask about
the recruitment process and start with the advertisement? The
advertisement said "Father Christmas. The Tooth Fairy. The
Easter Bunny. Children's Commissioner. Are you someone to believe
in?" Which of the three attracted you to apply?
Maggie Atkinson: None of them.
I had a go at the recruitment consultants, I'm afraid, because
I felt that the advert had the potential to lose possible candidates
by doing something that was actually pretty patronising, and it
wasn't exactly the way I would have advertised an important role
like this one. The materials in the recruitment pack were absolutely
fine, when one got past gagging on the advert. The recruitment
process itself was rigorous, as you would have expected it to
be. The advert—hmmm, that is what I would say about the
advert.
Q17 Mr Chaytor: The advert had
"Children's Commissioner" in big type, but "11
Million" got one little reference in the text. Do you think
it was a terrible mistake to call the organisation 11 Million?
Maggie Atkinson: I don't think
it was a terrible mistake, but I'm not sure how future-proof it
is, because my indication from the Office for National Statistics
is that we are actually moving fairly close to 12 million.
Q18 Mr Chaytor: Would you then
call it 12 Million if the figures justified it?
Maggie Atkinson: What happens
if the figures move to 12.5 or 13 million? I think that the one
thing about calling it 11 Million that was a piece of genius is
that that actually brings you up short and makes you realise that
more than 1 in 6 of this country's population are aged nought
to 19. That makes them citizens now. I would hesitate to change
its name lightly, because 11 million is a significant number.
It is not, however, as accurate as it might be, as the birth rate
grows.
Q19 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it
has some brand recognition among the nation's young people?
Maggie Atkinson: I think it is
beginning to, but I come back to your colleague's question, because
it will gain greater and greater recognition as the spectrum of
issues that young people bring to it broadens so that they can
be brought into the policy remit.
1 Note by witness: This statement
is not an implied criticism by the witness of the person concerned,
but a reflection on the relative maturity of a new post created
only 5 years ago. Back
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