Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
MONDAY 6 JULY 2009
MR IAN
AUSTIN MP AND
MS LORRAINE
REGAN
Q300 Mr Betts: Do you think the pilots
were long enough to be certain that that will happen?
Mr Austin: Given that so many
of the projects are commissioned over a two or three-year period
if you wanted to run them longer you would have had to run pilots
over quite a considerable period. But in addition to the pilots
122 local authorities already had greater freedoms and flexibilities
because of their CPA star ratings and could have been moving money
out of Supporting People programmes into other areas. That they
have not done that indicates that the fears or concerns expressed
will not be shown to be true.
Q301 Mr Betts: Are there any benefits
to lifting the ring fence? Presumably, it was done for a reason.
What improvements do you expect to see as a result of it?
Mr Austin: The general point is
that it is a good thing for people in local areas to be able to
have the freedoms and flexibilities to assess local needs and
plan services to meet them. That is the principle that underpins
this change and that is the approach to which the department and
government are committed. It will also ensure that Supporting
People services are not seen in individual silos but can be mainstreamed
across council services more generally. One hopes that that will
drive innovation and get people working together more effectively.
There is also quite a lot of research, for example from the OECD,
to show that the more decisions can be taken at local level as
opposed to being directed and driven from the centre the more
efficient and effective the delivery of those services.
Q302 Mr Betts: When the Audit Commission
appeared before us it said that at this stage it had no evidence
that money was being taken away from some of the most vulnerable
groups who are included in the Supporting People programme, but
we were given some information that in Scotland that had happened
in a few cases. Do you have any information or have any concerns
about that situation? Will you monitor the situation to flag it
up if it does happen?
Mr Austin: This could have been
happening over the past few years. Over the past few years in
addition to the pilots a number of local authorities have had
those freedoms and flexibilities and could have moved money out
of Supporting People and into whatever services they wanted to
spend it on. If this were to happen more widely it could already
have happened. The evidence we have published today in the Capgemini
report provides strong and compelling evidence that local authorities
continue to invest in these services.
Ms Regan: As to how we monitor
that, local authorities submit their financial data to us on an
annual basis. That will continue at least in the short term, so
we shall be able to look at the impact of where funding is spent
over the next couple of years within the spending review period,
if not longer. We shall be able to see if funding is being shifted
out completely or how it is being shifted within the particular
client group.
Q303 Mr Betts: Just to make sure
you give each local authority an idea about the level of spending
it should aim for, have you thought how they might protect at
least some of the money for the most vulnerable groups or given
an indicative figure within the general area-based grant as to
what sort of money might be spent on those services?
Mr Austin: The effect of saying
that you will remove the ring fence but maintain it for these
particular groups is not to remove that ring fence, if you take
the policy decision to extend freedoms and flexibilities to local
level. You could end up with services for the most vulnerable
or excluded people being marginalised in a local area and not
being mainstreamed. My fear is that you would not be able to drive
innovation and you would end up with marginalised services. I
have not seen the evidence in Scotland to which you refer and
I would be interested to look at it. But if this was going to
happen it could have been happening anyway despite the pathfinders
and what the 122 local authorities with greater freedoms and flexibilities
could have been doing. The ring fence has been around the Supporting
People programme generally, not individual services within it.
If authorities had not wanted to fund services for the most marginalised
or excluded groups the ring fence would not mean they would have
to do that.
Ms Regan: The ring fence has been
there but people tend to take out of it rather than put back in
to make the budget bigger. If we ring-fenced particular vulnerable
client groups local authorities would not have discretion as their
strategic needs changed to add to the funding to make those particular
ring fences larger. One could well marginalise some of those very
vulnerable groups.
Q304 Mr Betts: The Audit Commission
has recommended that there should be a "long term financial
framework to underpin planning and investment by providers and
local partnerships." It is not just local authorities; there
are many people involved. How will you achieve that? Does the
removal of the ring fence make it more difficult because there
is less certainty about what the funding might be?
Mr Austin: This will be achieved
presumably through the comprehensive area assessment process and
authorities' performance will be judged against the national indicators,
two of which are purely about Supporting People services. I believe
that two thirds of local authorities have signed up to one or
both of those as part of their local area agreements.
Q305 Mr Betts: What about the ones
that have not done so?
Mr Austin: All of them will be
assessed against the 196 national indicators, two of which are
purely about Supporting People.
Q306 Mr Betts: If the Audit Commission
flags up concerns that some authorities are taking money away
from the most vulnerable groups and it is going elsewhere because
of the removal of the ring fence will your answer be that it is
the right of local authorities to spend freely the money they
have, or will you do something about it?
Mr Austin: There will be ways
to address that. We shall be able to work with local authorities
through the regional improvement and efficiency partnerships.
There is a transition process in which the CLG is engaging with
local authorities. My colleague may have more details on that
because she will lead on that in your region. The fundamental
point is that if this was going to happen it would have happened
already. The pilots would not have had any effect on it. Any local
authority that wanted to do this could have done it all the way
through the process. The ring fence has been around the Supporting
People programme only as a whole, not individual projects within
it.
Ms Regan: To go back to the original
question about long-term financial planning raised by the Audit
Commission, there are lots of things that local authorities can
start to do to make sure that happens. There is already a plethora
of evidence out there in terms of the Supporting People outcomes
framework. We can measure how many people have achieved their
levels of need while being in housing-related support. For example,
we know how many people have needed to get back into employment
and have achieved that. We can then track it back to the funding
set aside for that. We also have the new financial benefits tool.
There is some really good information that SP teams can put together
to go to their local strategic partnerships to say that this is
a probation agenda, this is saving money in other areas and they
need to ensure they have long-term planning and stability by offering
providers longer-term contracts. There are other things we can
do. There are other pieces of work around the transition package
that we are putting together at the moment at CLG to support authorities
in that regard.
Anne Main: You just mentioned a long
list of things some of which went past me. You said that had confidence
in the regional improvement partnerships as disseminating good
practice and so on. If you had been in the room during the evidence
of the previous witnesses you would have heard that maybe people
believe it is happening but they have not seen any proof that
it is. Do you have proof that this dissemination of best practice
is going on? Can you give us examples of where it has proved valuable,
or paid dividends or it can be shown people have learnt from it
and done things differently? At the moment there seems to be a
query over whether or not this is happening.
Q307 Chair: This is specifically
about the groups.
Mr Austin: RIEPs are a relatively
new innovation and they are still perhaps a little immature. We
have probably not yet seen all the benefits that we shall be able
to get from them when it comes to understanding the complexities
and benefits of housing-related support. That is probably not
an unreasonable point to make.
Q308 Anne Main: When will you revisit
that situation and do some kind of evaluation so you are assured
they are worth having and are doing anything?
Mr Austin: This is an ongoing
process, is it not? All sorts of work are going on between the
CLG and local authorities and government offices and all the rest
of it. I do not know at what point we ought to be looking at this.
Perhaps that is something to which we ought to give some thought.
Q309 Anne Main: Sometimes criticism
is made of these matters. Things are given a label or role and
people assume they are doing something because of that, but at
the moment we do not seem to have anyone who can tell us exactly
what has happened and whether at some point there will be an evaluation
of the progress being made as a result of having set up this partnership.
Mr Austin: The RIEPs?
Q310 Anne Main: Yes.
Mr Austin: On this specific issue
or more widely?
Q311 Chair: The specific issue of
RIEPs.
Mr Austin: But specifically the
engagement of RIEPs in housing support or more generally?
Q312 Chair: RIEPs more generally.
We are concerned here only with Supporting People, but we did
not get a very clear view from the previous witnesses whether
anybody was checking up on what RIEPs were doing, or whether anybody
knew if they were or were not delivering benefits.
Mr Austin: I am afraid that that
is an issue on which I am not able to shed any more light. I can
look at it and write to you if you wish.
Ms Regan: Perhaps I may add a
point specifically about RIEPs in Supporting People. The RIEPs
are relatively new partnerships and are quite immature in different
parts of the country. What CLG has done is put regional resource
teams in each of the regions to build capacity and understanding
with the RIEPs for Supporting People. We are also working very
closely with the government offices. The RIEPs have not had much
involvement with Supporting People and they will have greater
involvement in Supporting People as the CAA process is rolled
out. There may be specific issues about a local authority and
then a RIEP may be involved, but the CAA process is so relatively
new that we have not had dialogue with the RIEP about it. A capacity-building
process is going on at the moment. I had a quick listen to what
the previous panel said. In terms of the value improvement programmes
they were done in 2006 which was prior to the setting up of the
RIEPs, so that is where the misunderstanding arose.
Q313 Mr Turner: Minister, you said
that some of the local authorities were able to think outside
the normal silo mentality because of the Supporting People programme.
Can you assure us that central government is capable of doing
that with the Supporting People programme as well, because it
covers many other departments apart from your own?
Mr Austin: I would hope so. We
talked earlier about what we were trying to do to get CLG and
the Department of Health to work more closely together here. A
common caricature of this government is that it wants to direct
everything from the top down and does not allow any local freedoms
and flexibilities, but this is the complete opposite of that.
What we are doing here is decentralising and thinking outside
the box, trusting people at local level to identify needs in their
areas and provide them with the flexibilities to address them.
I would hope we could assure you of that.
Q314 Mr Turner: Do you think that
the Supporting People programme should be put on a statutory basis
to ensure that local authorities achieve certain minima rather
than leave it to comprehensive performance assessments and all
the other LSPs et cetera?
Mr Austin: Probably not. That
is not what we are trying to do. What we are trying to do is decentralise
and give people more power at local level. That is the driving
principle that guides all of this. If you then say that you will
enforce things by statute you run the risk of stifling innovation,
decreasing flexibility and perhaps increasing bureaucracy, and
it would probably be more expensive.
Q315 Chair: What about giving some
of these vulnerable individuals entitlements?
Mr Austin: But is there any evidence
that vulnerable groups have not been well served by the programme
so far when local authorities have not needed to spend money and
allocate resources to them?
Q316 Mr Turner: Obviously, the money
that goes to the local authorities is based on a formula. We have
had some evidence that not all local authorities are happy with
the formula, ie they do not get enough or they are afraid that
there will be a reduction in what they hope to receive. What do
you think of the formula in terms of its fairness? Insofar as
it can, does it assess the needs of a local authority and allocate
money to those needs accordingly?
Mr Austin: This is an area in
which you campaigned for a long time. This is quite difficult,
is it not? We inherited the legacy of services which had been
set up under a different funding regime. Services in local authority
areas were being funded on the basis of those that had already
been established, not on the basis of an equitable analysis of
need right across the country. I understand your concerns and
have some sympathy for them, but the difficulty is that if you
move from a situation in which local authorities are funding all
sorts of services perhaps above the level you would achieve if
you just assessed it on need and you went from that overnight
to a needs-based allocation it would result in services being
closed immediately and vulnerable people losing support they would
otherwise get. You have to find a way of achieving a more gradual
change. That is what the department has tried to do. I agree that
this is a difficult issue. At the end of the day ministers have
to make a judgment, and in this case they did so after lots of
meetings and a great deal of thought. I have sympathy for your
point of view and I would be very happy to meet you and talk about
it in more detail if you would like to do so, although I cannot
promise anything.
Chair: You might address other Members
of the Committee as well.
Anne Main: That might be viewed in a
certain way.
Q317 Mr Turner: In that case, perhaps
it should be in my other roles rather than as a Member of this
Committee.
Mr Austin: I am happy to meet
any Member of the Committee who would like to talk to me about
anything.
Q318 Mr Turner: Having served in
a local authority which has suffered massive cuts year on year,
I understand and support the dampening process that we have in
funding at the moment through floors and ceilings. But two or
three years ago we had a problem with the double-dampening of
social services which your predecessor got rid of. Would you be
happy to look at ensuring that we do not have double-dampening
of the Supporting People programme now it has gone into the ABA
and dampening is restricted to overall funding levels rather than
the ABA and a further dampening on the Supporting People programme
money within it?
Mr Austin: I am very happy to
talk to you about this.
Q319 Chair: I think the Committee
needs an answer.
Mr Austin: It is being damped
down, is it not, between now and 2010-11?
Mr Turner: It is being damped down by
about 7% and on top of that of there is the damping down of the
overall AVA.
Chair: Are we talking about more than
one local authority here?
Mr Turner: Yes. For instance, Dudley
has a Supporting People programme deficit of £2½ million
and £5½ million on LA grant; Gloucestershire has got
nearly £10 million more on Supporting People and £6
million less on the LA grant. It applies right across the board.
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