Appointment of the Children's Commissioner for England - Children, Schools and Families Committee Contents


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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