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Lord Higgins: We have had an interesting set of exchanges. The only matter I am unclear about is if the levy is to be the same as the levy raised for OPRA, and as the regulator will clearly be more expensive than OPRA, how will it be financed in full?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: The point that I was making was not that the OPRA levy will stay the same; merely that given OPRA's current responsibilities the level of funding necessary to deliver those responsibilities has been predictable in such a way that the levy has remained unchanged for the past three years. I said earlier that I thought that there would be another 40 or so added to the 240 to 260 members of staff that are currently part of OPRA. Obviously, more staff would require an additional levy. That is reflected in the fact that it is going up from £17 million to £23 million. In so far as that is borne by schemes, there will be a modest increase in the levy paid by members to do that. I am surprised that noble Lords are surprised by that.
Lord Higgins: If the levy is not going to be the same, I am not sure why the noble Baroness must refer back. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 [Transfer of OPRA's functions to the Regulator]:
On Question, Whether Clause 7 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: I have only one point. As far as the pensions of the employees of OPRA are concerned, are those provisions going to be transferred in most cases to the new authority? Is the procedure consistent with
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that which we would normally regard as best practice in the private sector? Will the pensioners in OPRA who transfer over—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: In TUPE?
Lord Higgins: Yes, TUPE, in short. I do not like the word TUPE.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Neither do I; we are agreed.
Lord Higgins: In short, will they be TUPE-d? If so, will all of them be TUPE-d, or will some of them be made redundant?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Will some of them be made redundant? That is territory that I do not have the faintest intention of straying into. Basically, the existing staff of OPRA will all shift over into the new regulator, and their existing conditions of service, particularly as regards pensions, as I understand it, will be protected accordingly.
Clause 8 [The Non-Executive Committee]:
On Question, Whether Clause 8 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Higgins: As far as Clause 8 is concerned, we have a non-executive committee, which includes the chairman, which is partly the point that we referred to earlier. That reflects our concern that it will tend to be a divisive arrangement rather than otherwise. I will not pursue the matter at this stage.
Clause 9 [Functions exercisable by the Non-Executive Committee]:
Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 35:
The noble Lord said: I must admit to a rather personal prejudice. The prejudice is not that were I a detective story writer I would be preparing to write a book about the metaphor that got away after the last amendment; the prejudice is that I hate the word "targets", especially when I do not know what they mean. Ever since this Government came into power, my hackles have risen at the very mention of the word. The noble Baroness earlier admitted to having been a member of a health authority. That was under a Conservative government. That is a political point that she can forget about.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: That is why I was sacked. I was sacked because of my political affiliation.
Lord Skelmersdale: So was I, but in a different context. We will leave that aside.
One only has to read reports of patients spending hours in ambulances in order to meet the centrally-set targets for time spent in accident and emergency departments. The fact that the parliamentary website
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contains 97,147 other references to targets shows that this Government have gone target mad. Why this obsession with targets? I am not asking the noble Baroness, but I am making a general point. It is not quite a rhetorical question, that would be under-kill. I do not particularly want to have a philosophical discussion about targets but I note that the Little Oxford Dictionary describes them as "anything aimed at". I would have thought that that is fair enough. But if one looks up the word "objective", definition 2 states that it is a noun meaning:
Does that not say it all? Objectives and targets, certainly in the way they are mentioned here, are one and the same thing. Years ago, I was taught that that amounts to tautology, which, in my children's language, is a "no-no". Why do we need both words in the Bill? I beg to move.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Being very crude about this, objectives are strategic goals or aims, maybe to eradicate child poverty or something like that. Targets are when one turns the qualitative into the quantitative so that progress can be measured down the road. They may break down into low level targets about how many phone calls are answered within nine rings or how quickly letters are returned or, in the example about child poverty, they could be that one wishes to do half by such and such a date or a quarter by such and such date so that the target is measurable. For example, one could have a target for the regulator to reduce the number of schemes in the high-risk category by 10 per cent, which is to fulfil the objective of protecting members.
My experience in government is that the target is something one can quantify and therefore measure on one's way to fulfilling the objective. It is the difference between the blue-sky high level and the accountable and measurable way of delivering it. One might say that the objective is to protect members and the target might be to reduce the number of schemes in the high risk category by 10 per cent, or it might include a much lower level target, for example to ensure that all scheme returns are produced within 30 working days. One could have a range of different targets at different levels of blue skyness in order to meet the bigger objective.
It seems to me to be perfectly proper to have the objective on the face of the Bill. It seems to be perfectly proper to allow the organisation to work out how best to meet those objectives by specifying its targets, which would then be widely available and known. I do not know any organisation that does not work in that way.
Baroness Barker: I am struggling to remember who the management consultant was who said that an objective is what one tells the world one's organisation aims to do and a target is what one tells one's boss one will struggle to achieve in the perfect knowledge that one can do so very easily.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: This is a digression but we are coming to the end of the day. The point is that
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the trouble with targets is that staff tend to perform to the targets because pay is very often related to them. By definition, targets have to be quantifiable. One ends up putting more value on quantifiable things than qualitative things. There is a problem about turning qualitative objectives into measurable ones for staff at quite modest junior levels whose pay is related to them. This happens in every field whether in universities, research publications, health authorities or in this body. But I am in no doubt that there is a distinction. It is sensible to preserve that distinction, which the Bill currently does.
Lord Skelmersdale: This is a very academic argument. I am not sure that after four hours on the Bill I can quite take it in. But who will set the targets? Will they be set by the regulator so that it aims at its own benchmark or will it be set by the Secretary of State and the department? Does this apply to both the objectives and the targets?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: If I am wrong on this I shall write to the noble Lord, but my understanding is that we will expect the regulator and his regulatory body to come up with proposed targets and to see that they satisfy the Secretary of State. This happens with the Child Support Agency, for example. The chief executive of the agency produces a proposed list of targets on matters such as accuracy, speed in answering letters and telephone calls, the number of complaints that go to the independent case examiner and so on. Those come through to me so that I can make a recommendation to the Secretary of State on whether those targets are sufficiently demanding or whether they perhaps need to be revised upwards. On that basis, the targets are publicly available. When the agency's annual report is done, its performance is measured by the agreed targets.
I have no reason to think that the procedure will be any different here. If it is, I will write to the noble Lord.
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