Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-227)
MR PETER
GILROY OBE, MR
PAUL CARTER,
MR DAVID
PETFORD AND
COUNCILLOR MIKE
FITZGERALD
10 NOVEMBER 2008
Q220 John Cummings: Have you done
that? Do you have the evidence to support what you are saying?
Mr Gilroy: Yes, we have.
Q221 John Cummings: Can you present
that to the Committee?
Mr Gilroy: Not today I cannot.
Q222 John Cummings: But you would
be able to send it in?
Mr Gilroy: Yes, we can get you
evidence to show that.
Q223 Chair: Can we try a different
one? As indeed did Birmingham or Manchester, you want control
over incapacity benefit to be handed to upper tier authorities
to ensure close co-ordination with welfare to work programmes.
Do you think you would get a yes or no from the people in Maidstone,
and do you think you would get the same answer from people in
Margate?
Mr Carter: I referred to the Supporting
Independence programme, and the activities that we have been on
working in the most deprived wards in the county of Kent, comparable
with the rest of the country, and had that analysed by Oxford
University, and the interventions that we have made since 2002
on incapacity benefit, the conclusion that Oxford University reached
is that those people on long-term incapacity benefit of maybe
up to 10 years or beyond have a 30% greater chance of getting
back into employment having had the interventions of the Supporting
Independence programme in the Kent economy. We have statistics
that Peter probably has in his briefing note —
Q224 Chair: That is not quite the
question. That is the evidence the programme works. What we are
asking is whether you have evidence that your local populations
would support you getting those extra powers.
Mr Carter: My answer would be,
you talk to those 30% who have been on long-term incapacity benefit
now being able to enjoy employment opportunities that were not
there for them before. We have a massive thrust on what we call
our 14-24 unit for the young people getting generational change
by making sure that we maximise the opportunity of vocational
programmes which we have been pioneering for the last seven or
eight years into quality apprenticeships into sustained employment.
How can the public sector, I chair the public service board in
Kent, respond to creating more job opportunities, with what I
call reverse ageism in the public sector? When you look at the
age profile of people under the age of 24/25, it is pretty small
compared to the population of the 45 pluses age category. So what
can we do, in the 12 districts, roughly we have about 500 or 600
long-term unemployed people per district in the Kent economy under
the age of 25, costing about £60-70 million a year on the
DWP or JobcentrePlus. We have some massively creative schemes
that we would love to run with, but the freedoms and flexibilities
that we are given, we have been working with DWP for a number
of years —
Q225 Chair: Sorry, Mr Carter, I do
understand that, that is not the question that was asked. The
question was asked: before any of these powers are given, have
you checked with people beforehand and asked them whether they
want you to do it, and therefore is there any evidence that local
people, before the power is given to you, actually want you to
be given extra powers? That was the question. Mr Gilroy?
Mr Gilroy: The answer would be
yes if you are talking to the particular users of that particular
service. If you talk about the generic population of 1.4 million,
or nearly 2 million if you use the unitary, the answer would be
no, but it would be the same for central government. Members go
out and have a manifesto and they tell local people what they
are going to do, the same as central government.
Anne Main: That is the bit I wanted to
get to. You probably say that politically, you would have to ensure
that this was spelt out as a political message: does that cause
any problems where different authorities operate on different
electoral cycles, some coming up in thirds; for example, my own
district comes up in thirds. You would need an electoral mandate
at a local level to carry through much of what you want to do.
Do you see there is some sort of need then to ensure that we have
a degree of maybe electoral reform to ensure this happens?
Chair: We really do not want to go down
that —
Q226 Anne Main: I am only talking
about terms of authorities —
Councillor FitzGerald: And we
are on thirds.
Chair: And we need to get Maidstone in.
Q227 Anne Main: If you are on thirds,
that is a good question to you.
Mr Petford: I do not want to deal
with the specifics, but the difficult questions I think are all
about engagement and leadership. To pick up your point, sir, about
localism, I think that again is about engagement and leadership.
As a council, my cabinet goes round and visits every parish, calls
a parish meeting, and talks about its work, what it is achieving,
what it is not achieving, enters into a dialogue. That is very
time-consuming. I have to say, when we first started it, as a
chief executive, I thought, hmm, we are not going to get much
from this; but it has been tremendous, the feedback has been tremendous,
and the council does things differently because of that. I think
you can do it on a larger scale, we have had some difficult issues
in Maidstone, so we have had meetings called a "big debate",
and we have taken over the local picture house and called the
public, it has been packed out, and the cabinet, and leaders of
the opposition within the council have had a debate with the public.
Now I think if you engage and you express those leadership skills,
you do move forward, and I think it is how you do it. It is not
about imposition, it is about how you actually manage that process.
It is hard, it takes a long time, but it is certainly worth it
in terms of localism, and that for me is all that localism is
about.
Chair: Thank you all very much. We have
to move on to the London boroughs, who have been sitting here
patiently. Thank you.
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