UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 625-iv

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

NORTH EAST REGIONAL COMMITTEE

 

INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION IN THE NORTH EAST

TUESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2009

(WESTMINSTER)

JONATHAN BLACKIE, KIRSTIN GREEN and GRAEME REID

 

Evidence heard in Public

Questions 182 - 205

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the North East Regional Committee

on Tuesday 3 November 2009

Members present:

Ms Dari Taylor (Chairman)

Mr. David Anderson

Mr. Denis Murphy

Phil Wilson

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Jonathan Blackie, Regional Director, Government Office for the North East, Kirstin Green, Deputy Director, Regional Policy and Partnership, Economic Development Directorate and Graeme Reid, Deputy Director, Economic Impact, Research Base, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, gave evidence.

 

Q182 Chairman: May I warmly welcome you? We are very pleased to meet you. I am fairly confident that you might have some idea of what we want to ask you today. During our evidence sessions in the North East with industry, employers federations and universities, there was, not thematically, but pretty regularly, a statement that London and Whitehall are a long way from the North East. We all know about the £6 billion in the Government's science and innovation pot. There is £150 million available for universities, so that we can see the commercialisation of products, and we know that there is a development of tax credit, which again provides about £3 billion-worth of support to UK businesses. A common question asked by a group of universities and businesses was, "Where is the money for the North East? We do not believe that we get our fair slice of funding in proportion to our size and the activity that is taking place in the North East."

Today, we would really like to ask you some questions about that and to see whether we can establish some answers and, if possible, some routes through. If we could improve the relationship between the North East's universities and companies and Whitehall in future, that will be a positive outcome of this session. I warmly welcome you. Let's have an hour of questioning and answers between us, and I hope that we will have some very positive outcomes. With no more ado, I will ask David Anderson to ask the first question.

 

Q183 Mr. Anderson: We have raised in a number of arenas-most recently with the Minister for the North East on 16 July-the issue of what appears to be a disparity regarding the funding for research and development that seems to be going to other places. That is not just to the normal suspects, but includes places like south-west Scotland and Manchester. Why do we appear not to be able to make as big an impact in this regard as others do?

Graeme Reid: First, I think the North East, when I look at the data, performs very well in terms of its university research. It's got some strong universities and some very strong universities. If you come down to individual disciplines, like medical research in Newcastle, it's got some really outstanding universities. I have looked at the way in which research funding, through research councils and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, is distributed across the UK-I think that this may come close to the answer. I find that if I look at the absolute amounts of cash, going by region, the North East has one of the smallest allocations of cash of the UK regions. But when we try to take account of the different sizes of the regions, a rather different picture emerges, which frankly is closer to what my instinct would tell me. If, for instance, we look at the amount of money per university, the North East comes fourth out of the 12 UK regions. If, on the other hand, I look at the amount of money per capita, the North East is sixth out of the 12 UK regions. If I look at the amount of money per unit of gross value added, the North East is fourth out of the UK regions.

There is concern that that performance is a consequence of distance from London-or, I guess, more precisely, distance from Swindon and Bristol, which is where the funding agencies are based. I'm not quite sure that that is consistent with my figures. If I look at the amount of money, normalised to suit the character of the region, funding per capita is higher in Scotland than it is in the North East, funding per GVA is higher in Scotland than it is in the North East, and funding per university is lower in Scotland than it is in the North East. So, the overall picture is one of a strongly performing region in a system that is transparent and meritocratic, in which the funding decisions are made by the scientific community rather than by the Government. It is a system in which the UK performs outstandingly well in the world, so institutions in the North East that perform as well as they do in the UK league tables are automatically up there among the first division at world level.

 

Q184 Mr. Anderson: So, the system that is in place now has us at only the average across the board? We are either fourth or sixth out of 12. What can be done to put us at the top? Why aren't we at the top?

Graeme Reid: That is a question for the universities rather than for me, but let me offer some thoughts. First, the universities that perform best in terms of capturing research funding are universities that, by any international standard, are quite exceptional. In the UK, the universities at Oxford and Cambridge and two London institutions perform very well, but Times Higher Education ranked those four as being among the top six in the world only a few weeks ago. As a benchmark, that is a pretty tough challenge to set anyone else in the UK.

Steps have been taken in several parts of the country to try to raise research performance in universities. I think in all cases, it is a little early to say whether these have been successful, but I can offer three examples. In Manchester, as I believe you know, the two major universities merged some years ago. I think one of the goals of that merger was to create a university in the north of England that would be of a scale and performance to feature on the world map. That was one of the things that they set out to do. They are less than 10 years into that, and I think that they themselves would feel that it was rather early days to be assessing its success.

In Scotland, and also in the south-east of England, physics departments in universities have collaborated. I think it is probably going a bit far to call them virtual departments, but strategic alliances have been formed across the physics departments, on the one hand in the south-east of England, and on the other hand in Scotland, essentially so that they can share the capital-intensive equipment that is required to perform at the highest levels in physics. It is difficult for any university to afford all the equipment it needs in all the branches of physics. Once again, I think that it is early days to be judging performance, because the south-east alliance is quite new and the Scottish one is not yet 10 years old, but in both cases you can see the strategy. By pooling resources, they are going to try to perform better as a group than as the sum of the individuals. It is not for me to say whether universities in the North East should follow that model, but I would not be the slightest bit surprised if they were watching closely to see how their colleagues in other parts of the country got on.

 

Q185 Chairman: That is a very valuable response, but if I were to say to you that four physics profs made virtually the same statement about putting "excellent research projects" together and not being funded again and again, perhaps it would surprise you, especially as this is now Durham University. We do not expect to see PETEC, which is producing some of its most amazing pieces of research to product, not being successful. I put that down more as a marker than as a request for explanation.

When you were talking about the North East being fourth in the university league and sixth per capita, were you talking in terms of the population size or in terms of students per university?

Graeme Reid: My figures refer to the population of the region. I am conscious that a competent statistician can draw up a league table that shows anything, and I did not want to come here with that sort of material. Instead, I tried three different versions of the statistics. They were not three chosen from 10, they were the only three that I prepared. Of those three, the North East is fourth in two and sixth in the other, out of a total of 12.

 

Q186 Mr. Murphy: To continue along a similar line, we also took evidence from Dr. Alan Rutherford who is chairman of NaREC, the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth in Northumberland. He was quite clear that he felt that there was a connection between those who were deciding on where the investment went and where they had been educated. Indeed, he said that some excellent bids had been put forward, but he felt that they were not close enough to the people who were making the decisions, because most of those people had been educated within the golden triangle. Do you think that was an unfair statement?

Graeme Reid: I think that is a hugely unfair statement and I would be interested to see the evidence on which it is based. There is a large population within the so-called golden triangle and not all of those who live there were educated there. I guess I live and work in the golden triangle, but I do not take part in any decisions on research funding at a project level and I was educated in Scotland. My strong impression of the peer review process, by which scientists decide on the success of others in the community, is that there is a very clear and strong dedication to selecting the best and screening out other factors. If scientists in the North East, or any other part of the country for that matter, do not feel sufficiently close to the things that are driving the funding bodies, the blunt answer is that it is up to those scientists to get close because there are other scientists who are further away than the North East who are attracting funding.

Mr. Murphy: It was not necessarily the distance, but the fact that if they had not been linked directly to the universities they felt disadvantaged.

Graeme Reid: I am aware of no evidence to support that.

 

Q187 Mr. Murphy: Can I get this gentleman to write to you?

Graeme Reid: Absolutely. You can write to me, and I would be happy to discuss this with him face to face if that would be better.

Chairman: I think that would be valuable. Kirstin, do you want to come in here, or shall I move to Jonathan?

Kirstin Green: I don't think I have anything to add on that point. Jonathan Blackie: The only point that I would want to add comes back to the question about how you get to be closer to be best. I have the draft research strategy for Durham University. They acknowledge that they are internationally excellent, but they also recognise that there is room for improvement. What is very impressive is how they have systematically looked not just at what they are good at, but how they could extend that right across other rankings. Their ambition is to be in the top 50 universities in the world by 2020. I am struck by how our institutions, particularly Durham and Newcastle which have genuine national and international strengths, have an ambition to go a lot further. It is not a static position. They want to move forward. They are universities that are keen to make sure that they have strong links to the regional economy, trying to take advantage of the new industry that we are seeing and around which we have been comparatively successful recently.

 

Q188 Chairman: The problem for us, and we are taking evidence as factually and as carefully as possible, is that if we take both Durham and Newcastle out of this, we are left with Teesside, Sunderland and Northumbria. Where we would be in the league table then? All three of them are producing not just excellent but staggering research if you look at the electric car and some of the medical implementation at Teesside University. There are concerns here, Jonathan, and we are not prepared just to leave those concerns. We want answers to them because we want to believe that the funding councils are fair to our universities. They certainly do not believe that that fairness is a fact.

Jonathan Blackie: I spent five years as a governor at Teesside. It is one of the world leaders in digital technology. People come from around the globe to work there, particularly in Digital City, which is a very impressive campus. Equally, there is the work that Sunderland have been doing around digital media and Northumbria's work in fashion. The plans that the regional development agency has to build a centre of design for the north is building on Northumbria's expertise. I am certainly not complacent about those universities, but they all have particular strengths and they are distinctive. They are different from Newcastle and Durham. That helps the region. The diversity that we now have is a genuine strength.

Chairman: Thank you. That is really valuable.

 

Q189 Mr. Anderson: When we took evidence from the chamber of commerce back in May, it was highly critical of the role of the Government office for the North East in terms of the regional spatial strategy and questioned whether it was punching its weight. Do you accept those criticisms?

Jonathan Blackie: No. To take the example of the regional spatial strategy, it was prepared by the former regional assembly, which involved a great variety of stakeholders from across the region. If I recall correctly, at the examination in public, there was quite a debate about getting the balance right in housing growth across the region, and I think a number of local authorities were quite ambitious to get a higher target than perhaps the market was prepared to deliver.

There was quite a robust discussion at the examination in public about how housing growth should be allocated. We made some robust interventions about realism in terms of some of the forecasts, and I particularly recall an interesting discussion around some of the science-based developments. I think NETPark was a good example. There was a very interesting debate about how much land should be set aside for the growth of NETPark. I think we ended up coming to a very sensible solution which has enabled NETPark to go ahead. I chaired the European programme management committee there just last week and saw all the very impressive developments that have materialised since then.

I think that the Government office has tried to play an even-handed role in trying to balance ambition with realism. Certainly on European funding, to come back to the previous question, we invested a lot of money in the universities, in the previous programme, to enable them to go ahead with things like the PETEC centre, the renewables centre at Blyth and some of the projects at Newcastle and Durham. I am very clear that we are in tune with the region's ambitions and working closely with the chamber of commerce, trying to be realistic about what can be achieved in the North East.

 

Q190 Mr. Anderson: I think it's right that you're able to address the comments, Jon. The summary on the regional assemblies and GONE stated that the Government office for the North East had not demonstrated sufficient commitment to work on the region's-rather, Whitehall's-behalf, that businesses had struggled to identify how the Government North East properly supported the region and that the North East regional spatial strategy was a clear example of the Government office failing to support the region. They are quite damning comments, in a sense. They've obviously got the wrong point of view, but if they're saying that, then clearly they must have concerns. Does that give you concerns?

Jonathan Blackie: Of course it does. The fundamental concern is that we're not the original champion. We actually represent central Government in the region. I sense that at times there is a balancing act, for example on transport, where we're trying to get it across that Government policy is to tackle congestion rather than build significant new trunk roads across the region. Trying to communicate that isn't always universally popular. We always want to encourage and enthuse, but sometimes we have to be realistic and say that there aren't the resources available to realise some of the ambitions.

At times there is a tension between representing central Government in the region and being a representative or a champion for the region in Whitehall. I think we try to play an even-handed role, and I think the regional Minister has demonstrated very effectively how you can play both roles. Sometimes it's not easy to accede to all the requests that the region makes of Government. I recognise that we're not always universally popular in playing that role.

 

Q191 Chairman: I'm going to take this a stage further, because there's hard fact and there's harder fact. The hard fact is this: in terms of the market share of research income, in the North East, the five universities get 3.6% of what is available. Oxford, Cambridge, the University of London and Imperial get 36.6%. We have four universities in the south-east and five in the North East, and 36.6% to 3.6%. That is the difference in their share of research income.

I am bound to ask the question again. Witnesses have expressed concern about this disparity, and the Minister, when he gave us evidence, accepted that such an academic clique was an issue and a problem. That is from the Minister. What analysis have you made of this problem? In asking that question, I am seeking to find out how many times Whitehall visits the North East, the various universities and companies, and to what extent it is acknowledged that the percentage of grants given to the golden triangle is so significantly greater than that which we receive. Why, in particular, does Manchester receive a grant greater than the whole of that received by the North East? I have widened it slightly. I want to know if there is analysis of the problem, because we still see it as a problem. We accept your answers, but we want the facts. Is there an analysis that there is a potential problem or an actual problem here? Could you give us more detail on this?

Graeme Reid: I am happy to try to do that. May I begin by saying something about the comparison that you drew? To compare the North East with a selection of institutions from three other English regions and to select those institutions from among the top six in the world, sets, I think, a rather high hurdle for the North East, as it would for any other part of the United Kingdom. Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and UCL are extraordinarily high performers in global terms and I think that many people in the UK would feel that we are fortunate to have them in this country. They are not the enemy.

 

Q192 Chairman: I'm not saying they are.

Graeme Reid: No, I know. I beg your pardon, I didn't mean to suggest that you were, but some commentators almost treat them as an enemy when, in fact, they are a huge asset to this nation. The process by which funding is allocated is transparent and the subject of considerable scrutiny, both from Government and from the community-particularly from the community, in fact.

The way in which the funding is allocated is performance driven, and the decisions are made by fellow scientists rather than by Government officials or Ministers. There is a considerable degree of scrutiny of the decision-making process, as well as the outcome of the decisions.

One point that might be worth bringing into the discussion and might help to explain the very strong difference in perception of the North East experience is that, in the research councils, the success rate for bidders is somewhere around the 20% mark- actually a little less in some councils. Across the nation, there is something like a 20% success rate. The unsuccessful projects, in almost all cases, are of very high quality. The unsuccessful projects in research council competitions are not poor projects; they are very strong projects that are in an extraordinarily tough competition for money.

The experience of academics across the UK is one of finding it difficult to get research council money. That is a reality. It is actually one of the things that frustrates the academic community a great deal, and yet, at the same time, this very high degree of selection is one explanation for the UK's exceptional performance in global terms. We are so selective that when Durham, Newcastle or others win research council funding for projects, they have demonstrated quite a significant achievement simply by winning the funding.

When it comes to the high levels of funding in the four institutions that you mentioned, there is a long and complicated history behind all of our major universities. It would take some time to analyse and discuss the way that individual funding streams have evolved over this long period of time. In brief, however, the level of funding going into a university is a product of its size, the spread of its subject disciplines and its research performance. So in looking for an answer to the question that you put, I would look partly at those three factors. I see no evidence that there is some regional bias at work. I see evidence of a system that operates with a high degree of transparency and a high degree of rigour.

Chairman: The concern we have-maybe I will leave it here, but I will again register the concern-is that once research grants have been given, they often last three, five or seven years and a continuum is started up that excludes others from that money. I think we see it, not just with the four universities I mentioned, but within the region. We think that is problematic-you can hear that we do. I am parking that for the moment.

I asked whether it would be a good idea to have Whitehall up in the region and you, very carefully, did not respond to that. We think it would be a very good idea to have them up. We think it is very valuable for them to see as well as to start trusting and respecting the delivery factors within the northern region. But I am going to move, because time is always going to beat us, to Denis's question.

Mr. Murphy: The question referred to the Minister's involvement with the process and I think that Jonathan covered that, thanks.

Chairman: Okay then, to Phil.

 

Q193 Phil Wilson: What assistance have you provided to North East universities to help them put together bids for research and development funding? How can they ensure that their bids are as good as those from Oxford and Cambridge?

Graeme Reid: The Government do not provide assistance in the preparation of funding bids. Frankly, if we were to try, I would not feel confident that we were able to provide assistance. I would worry that we would be causing them more harm than good if we tried to assist, because the decisions are not made by Government; the decisions are made by their peers in the academic community.

That said, the funding system operates in a so-called dual support mode, with part of the funding being awarded project by project, as the Chairman said, for finite periods of time to specific projects, and part of the funding through the Higher Education Funding Council going as a block grant to the institution. One of the reasons for operating in that way is to allow the universities a combination of block grant that the vice-chancellor can use in a strategic fashion-perhaps to build strength in areas that have not been successful so far, or to cross-fertilise between departments-and the project-level funding through research councils. So I would throw the challenge back to individual universities, rather than take it on the shoulders of Government.

Jonathan Blackie: I think what has been going on over the past 10 years has been a very significant investment in universities in the North East. The strapline that was adopted in 2001 in the regional economic strategy was that they should be at the heart of the regional economy, so a lot of investment has gone in from both the RDA, One NorthEast, and European regional development funds to really build up the expertise in the universities. We have various centres of excellence in a variety of subjects, some of which have led to quite remarkable achievements.

The New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth is probably the best example. From a fairly modest base, it has gone on to excellent activity. The work of the chemicals sector is also a good example of where there has been a strong relationship with universities. Recently, the universities, particularly Newcastle and Durham, have really changed gear and are looking to have their own plan to develop their research expertise. I mentioned Durham earlier, and I think that these documents are a testament to that. It wants to engage regional partners in understanding how we can best help those universities to realise that ambition. I think it's work in progress.

 

Q194 Chairman: I will be absolutely frank here. Again, Jonathan, I think that you might know exactly where we are coming from. NaREC in the north and the North East of England Process Industry Cluster in the south are two One NorthEast bodies that are very focused about delivering research money for specific product within the area. Without those two organisations and One NorthEast, the chances are we would not be seeing wind power and biofuels work and become world leaders. This is not from university moneys. We are still struggling.

Teesside, Sunderland and Northumbria are all new and without the reputation of Durham and Newcastle. The absolute concern of this Committee is how we get their reputations to be as easily acknowledged as Durham and Newcastle, which we are delighted by. We have no problem with that, but, equally, we want their reputations as established as the golden triangle. I am sorry, I do not wish to offend any of you, but we are very focused about the fact that we get 3.6% of the research money compared with 36%. We are very focused about that. We know that within that percentage, Teesside, Sunderland and Northumbria, which are delivering some brilliant work, are, frankly, at the bottom of the pile in terms of research moneys. It is reputation and trust, and we know that we are failing to persuade Whitehall that these universities are as good as, and it is not acceptable to us.

Jonathan Blackie: Again, if I could just say a word on behalf of Teesside. The university was named by The Times as the University of the Year. It is a tremendous achievement for a university that was 126th in The Times league table. It has now climbed. It is almost impossible to appreciate the journey that it has managed. It has been on the back of excellent teaching, a great campus and some very significant research in a very modern industry. I am not at all apologetic. There is a lot of strengths, and the university will, on merit, earn significant research funding in the future. I am confident of that. All five universities demonstrate the same ambition.

Chairman: Well, you can hear our concern. Phil is coming in on the next question.

 

Q195 Phil Wilson: How will you ensure that Whitehall-based civil servants acquire an understanding of the regions-not just in terms of local government-to help to determine and develop their view of policy?

Kirstin Green: Perhaps I could have a go at answering that one. I have obviously been thinking about this in preparing for the Committee. I think that officials in BIS do recognise the particular challenges and issues that are facing the North East. There is a level of understanding there about your particular historical issues and challenges-the fact that the region is the smallest one in terms of population and has historically done the least well in terms of gross value added and a number of other measures. We also know that the North East is doing better than it was in the 1990s under quite a few different measures, such as productivity, GVA growth, skills growth and so on. We very much recognise the particular challenges that the region is facing through the recession, and many of our programmes aim to tackle that. There are the Real Help programmes and programmes that are targeted at particular industries that are based in the North East.

But also looking at the positive side, in addition to the challenges, BIS-the Department I work for-does recognise the particular opportunities that there are in the North East. Some of our recent actions demonstrate that. Looking at the priorities set out by Lord Mandelson in "New Industry, New Jobs," which was published back in April, there is actually a lot of potential in the North East to grow in those sectors and in the industries that the country needs in terms of a real economic future. I am thinking of things like low carbon-related industries in terms of electric cars at Nissan and renewable energy. You have just been talking about the NaREC centre: the Department has recently announced £10 million of funding towards wave and tidal testing systems. There is recognition that there is a lot that the North East can offer in terms of our future priorities, and particular streams of funding are going in to try to encourage that.

We also recognise that we in Whitehall cannot be completely expert in every place. I do acknowledge that, which is why we work so closely with our colleagues in Government Offices, the RDAs and many other delivery partners, including local government and industry bodies, learning and skills councils and so on. We rely on the local and regional knowledge that those bodies have to give us the regional and local understanding, to contribute to our policy-making processes, to advise us on what would work best for that region or local area and to tell us if our nationally devised policies are actually working for the region or the local area. That interface between the Department, the Government Office and the regional development agency has become stronger over the last 10 years and is absolutely vital to us.

In terms of understanding the region and visiting it, lots of people in the Department visit various things in the North East-our Ministers do it and officials do it. My team in the economic development directorate and I visit the North East quite regularly and have discussions with colleagues, like Jonathan, in the regional development agency and the Northern Way. That is not to say there is not more that we can do; I think that there is. Teams that lead on regional policy, like mine in BIS, have a responsibility that we try to discharge to educate the rest of the Department about regional differences.

 

Q196 Phil Wilson: What more do you think you can do?

Kirstin Green: The kind of things that we do at the moment include holding masterclasses, lunch time seminars and that sort of thing, which focus on particular aspects of regional policy and trying to explain what we do and how it is important to our national policy-making colleagues-why they need to work with RDAs, for example. We have all the RDAs in each month to tell us about the impact of the recession on their regions, and we distribute widely around the Department the findings of those monthly sessions, so that people can see what impact the recession is having on different places and so it can colour what our fellow officials do.

 

Q197 Phil Wilson: Do you second staff to the North East as well?

Kirstin Green: There is some secondment and interchange, yes. There isn't a formal programme; it tends to happen on a case-by-case basis if people want to make that move-obviously, it is quite a big geographical move for people to make. We value it tremendously. In my own team, I have someone who is based in Newcastle and comes down to London for just part of the week. We find that those sort of flexible arrangements can work quite well, if teams locally are prepared to give them a chance-and teams like mine very much are. Perhaps what more we could do is to tell others in the Department that that kind of arrangement can work. Of course, since the creation of BIS, we have more staff from the Department based in the region as well, with quite a large number of staff based in Darlington on the university and skills side, as well as the small team in Billingham, which the former BERR had as well.

Chairman: May I just add something that will maybe make a keen sense of understanding of where we are and where you are? When we took the Secretary of State from our Government-my Government-up to the North East to Ensus and showed him that animal fodder is actually one of the major contributors to CO₂ emissions, because of the land use and the amount eaten, and that Ensus has produced a chemical process that reduces starch, increases protein and therefore uses less land and food, thereby significantly reducing emissions, there was a serious lack of understanding. This is profoundly important and part of an agenda that we are all supposed to be signed up to, so we wonder: how can a private company that will float this autumn, with private money to the tune of £300 million, be so unknown in Whitehall? I say that, Kirstin, more because I think you can hear the anxiety that there is a disjuncture between what we're doing and what people know that we're doing. I'll let Phil develop that.

 

Q198 Phil Wilson: There is one other thing. We talk about developing understanding of the regions, but there seems to be no mention of training to develop regional knowledge in the National School of Government's learning and development prospectus. Are you going to change or rectify that? You've got all kinds of courses, but nothing about developing people's understanding of what's actually happening in the regions.

Kirstin Green: Yes, that is a good question. Obviously, the National School of Government runs its own curriculum, but it responds to demand, so there may be an issue about lack of demand from Whitehall Departments for courses of that nature. Again, teams such as mine that have a focus on regional policy might be able to do more to stimulate that demand. At the moment, we do it quite informally with lunchtime seminars and discussions between colleagues if they are interested, but something more formalised is possible, I guess, or it could be added on to some other courses where it makes sense to do so.

 

Q199 Phil Wilson: So it is possible and is something to look at. When you leave here, what can you actually do to ensure that it does become part of the prospectus?

Kirstin Green: I could talk to the National School of Government about this directly.

Jonathan Blackie: The National School of Government runs a programme for fast-streamers. They come up every year to the region and we take them out to some of the companies in the region-NaREC has been mentioned several times. We take them out to see companies because there is no substitute for hearing at first hand what's going on and what people's ambitions are. This year, the group was predominantly from BIS, so we had a lot of bright sparks coming up-people who I'm sure will occupy senior positions in years to come-and they came away, I think, with a very favourable impression of companies in the region and their level of ambition. That probably appears as a sort of fast-stream programme, but it does not actually recognise that they come up to the region. I am sure we could explore with the National School of Government how we could get more of a regional feel to the programme.

 

Q200 Phil Wilson: Can you let the Committee know how you get on?

Jonathan Blackie: Yes.

Kirstin Green: I'd be glad to.

 

Q201 Mr. Murphy: Would it be true to say that the vast majority of people who work in Whitehall have never visited the North East of England? They may well be aware of it on the map, but the people I speak to in each Department, and even people who work in the House of Commons Library, have never visited the region. It is a huge disadvantage for us, when trying to put forward the needs of the region, if people in Whitehall have never even visited the area. We really need to try to put that right. You mentioned secondments earlier: what percentage of the people in your Department are currently seconded to work in the North East, and vice versa?

Kirstin Green: I don't have any figures on that at the moment.

 

Q202 Mr. Murphy: Would it be a tiny, tiny percentage?

Kirstin Green: I think it would be.

 

Q203 Mr. Murphy: Do you intend to improve on that and increase that percentage? First of all, do you see any value in secondments?

Kirstin Green: Yes indeed, but it is quite difficult for us to try to make people leave their home in the south-east and move to Newcastle or another place in the North East, or vice versa.

 

Q204 Mr. Murphy: It's a nice place.

Kirstin Green: I agree. I visit there quite often myself, and I agree that it's a very nice place. But, personally speaking, my home is here and I have roots here and of course that applies to other people as well. It works for some people in some circumstances, and in those circumstances I think we'd be very supportive.

 

Q205 Mr. Murphy: But is it a policy you are actually starting to encourage? Yes, it does happen, but I imagine that the numbers are very small. If it is something that you value, do you intend to ensure that it's expanded, so that when people apply for a job, they are told that, as part and parcel of that, they may well be expected to do some work in the regions.

Jonathan Blackie: I do think experience of central Government in the regions is a very valuable component in anybody's career. We have done two things. We actually recognise that when people come to work in a Government Office, people in the regional business community really appreciate Whitehall experience. They want to know what Ministers are looking for and what Departments expect. I have tried to bring in people from the Treasury and other places to give them that perspective and to ground them in the reality of working in the North East.

Secondly, we are working through civil service north east, which is a new initiative to bring together all civil servants in the North East and to offer people more of a career in the region. Over the years, Departments have become more specialised so you can spend your entire life in one Department and your career can be realised only if you move to London. What we are trying to do is offer more jobs in the region so that people can have a career, whether in Washington or North Tyneside, and then on to Newcastle. In the old days, you used to be able to do that-you could come in at 16 at the Ministry at Longbenton and work your way up and round the different Departments. We are keen to offer a better career path so that people can stay in the North East.

We also want to attract more fast-streamers because we are a small region and fast-streamers are precious. It would give them an opportunity to work across different Departments, to get invaluable experience of Whitehall, but to come back to the region to continue their careers. That is one of our ambitions as part of the civil service initiative.

Chairman: Graeme, anything to add?

Graeme Reid: It is a few years since I visited the North East on a professional basis, although I do go there for family reasons. If we are invited to visit, we are more likely to go than if we are not invited.

Chairman: Good point. We'll definitely take that back. Kirstin, anything else to add?

Kirstin Green: No, I think that is it.

Chairman: I think my colleagues may well have finished. We have done that in a staggeringly good-record-time. Thank you once again. This has been valuable. We have learned a fair bit this afternoon and hopefully you have too. I hope that we can continue this dialogue, because it is incredibly important to us.