UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 853-i
HOUSE OF COMMONS
ORAL EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE THE
EDUCATION COMMITTEE
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION REFORM
WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY 2013
RT HON MICHAEL GOVE MP AND MR CHRIS WORMALD
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 -111
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Education Committee
on Wednesday 23 January 2013
Members present:
Mr Graham Stuart (Chair) Neil Carmichael Alex Cunningham Bill Esterson Siobhain McDonagh Ian Mearns Chris Skidmore David Ward Craig Whittaker ______
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, and Mr Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary, Department for Education, gave evidence.
Q1 Chair: Good morning and welcome to this session of the Education Committee. It is a pleasure to have both the Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of State with us today. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Secretary of State, it has been another exciting, rollercoaster week in the world of education with yesterday’s announcements on reforms to A levels. Our focus today is on the running of the Department, but most of our focus in our inquiries has been on exams up to and before 16. I wonder if you could just briefly say something about the thinking behind your reforms to A level and AS level, in particular? Michael Gove: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here, and thank you for extending the invitation to the Permanent Secretary as well. Early in the lifetime of this Government I outlined what I hoped would be some of the reforms we could make to A levels. I had an opportunity to talk about them at the Sunday Times Festival of Education, with Anthony Seldon in the chair. What we wanted to do, then, was essentially to try to ensure that A levels—which are primarily but not exclusively, as you know, preparation for university education—give people a better preparation for the universities involved. I think we both share the aspiration that more students should go to university or at least have the option of doing so. It seemed to me that there were two significant ways in which we could improve things. One was to improve content and essentially make sure that both questions and the process of preparation for those examinations were influenced, to a greater extent than had been the case at least recently, by universities. Originally we proposed that the Russell Group themselves take control. The view from across the university sector, and indeed from the Russell Group themselves, was that they were flattered and wanted to play a part, but they did not want to bear exclusive responsibility. Therefore we struck what I thought was a good compromise, where the Russell Group organised subject experts from across the university field, and I hope that will be welcomed. 2
The second thing is that I was worried that there was too much assessment and too little learning. It seemed to me that one of the most effective ways in which we could encourage the sort of deep thinking that we want to have in people—who are not just going to go on to university, but who are going to enter an increasingly testing and sophisticated world of work—was to move towards a linear A level. There are certain gains, of course, in the flexibility that the AS level has given, so we did not want to abolish that. We thought that the best way forward was a standalone qualification.
Q2 Chair: Before we move on, are you confident that, as a standalone qualification that is not an intrinsic component of the A level, people will continue to use it? Michael Gove: Yes, I think so. You may have seen floated elsewhere the idea that we should move towards a baccalaureate approach at 18. It is open to debate; no firm decisions have been taken by this Department, but one of the ideas that has been there, which I confess has attractions, is trying to make sure that you maintain balance post-16. Therefore I think there may well be some attraction in having an AS level—or indeed other qualifications—in, for example, English or mathematics, which students would take alongside the suite of A levels. A baccalaureate approach towards 16–18, in which we have an advanced baccalaureate that acknowledges both people taking what one might call “balancing subjects” and either undertaking an extended project or doing some form of citizenship or community work—or indeed both—might be worth doing. However, I am conscious of the fact that, having relieved teachers and students, I hope, of one burden for sixth formers, we do not immediately replace it with other things they might consider to be too burdensome. It is an area where we should seek to proceed with as much consensus as possible.
Q3 Chair: As you have mentioned the bacc, the Government has said that it is minded towards having a tech bacc, not at 16, but at 18. Could you briefly tell us something about the thinking behind that? Michael Gove: Yes. At different times, the phrase “tech bacc” has been used to describe different concepts. What we were thinking about was having a baccalaureate qualification that recognised a high-level vocational qualification, plus English and maths, plus an element of work experience. You would need to have an English and maths qualification that was broadly equivalent to a GCSE, an improved GCSE or a successor examination, plus a high-level, level three vocational qualification, which was more than just a pass-fail qualification.
Q4 Chair: Moving on to the running of the Department, The Spectator blog quotes an unnamed source at the Department, who he reported as saying that Tim Loughton, our colleague was, “a lazy, incompetent narcissist, obsessed only with self-promotion,” and accuses him of not acting professionally when in Government. This was not a leak but a comment from someone in the Department about a serving Member of Parliament and a former Minister. First of all, do you know who made that comment and gave that briefing? Michael Gove: I do not know who gave that comment; I do not know who gave that briefing. Briefly, if I can take the opportunity to say firstly, that Tim Loughton, far from being lazy, was an active and energetic Minister and remains an active and energetic advocate for children’s rights. Secondly, far from being incompetent, he was a talented and effective Minister, who made a difference. Far from being a narcissist, one of the things I found—and find—about Tim is that he has a good sense of humour and a capacity to laugh at both himself and the foibles of the political world. I am grateful that you have asked the question, as it gives me a chance to dissociate myself from it. 3
I do not know who said that. Let me emphasise again that it is wrong. Let me emphasise again that while I have said to you in the past that I try to face leaks, briefings and the necessary parts of political life with equanimity: on this occasion the person on the receiving end is someone who gave, and continues to give, distinguished public service. I think it is wrong that that briefing took place.
Q5 Chair: It could be that your expressions of equanimity about things, from the leaking of the GCSE reforms to the Mail in the middle of last year and the rest of it, has encouraged people to feel that it is okay to do that. This was, unless we disbelieve the people at The Spectator, a briefing given from the Department under your leadership and control. Is it not incumbent upon you not simply to shrug your shoulders and talk about equanimity and the realities of political life but to do something about it? Michael Gove: I think that is a very, very fair challenge. If it is a briefing that either damages or disrupts the progress that I or other Ministers wish to make, then, as it were, we are on the receiving end. Therefore we can regard that with a degree of equanimity, or not. When it is someone else on the receiving end then it is someone else who is the victim. Therefore that is one of the reasons why I would condemn it, say that it was wrong, and I would say to everyone in the Department—and I know the Permanent Secretary would reinforce this—that that sort of behaviour helps no one. It takes us all away from the work we want to do. It is more than ungracious. It should not happen in politics. It does. I am trying to be realistic about it, but I also wanted to be clear that that is wrong, and you have given me the opportunity, which I am grateful to have, to state publicly, as I have within the Department, that what we want to do is to get on with the job.
Q6 Chair: Mr Wormald, you have a role as the Permanent Secretary in ensuring that standards of behaviour are maintained. What is your role in terms of something like this, which, as the Secretary of State has just said, is a peculiarly egregious example? Chris Wormald: Yes, I would like to echo what the Secretary of State just said about the nature of the comments, and if they were indeed made by one of my staff that is clearly unacceptable. In this case the shadow Secretary of State for Education has written to me yesterday on the same subject, asking me to inquire into who it was, and I will be considering the appropriate response with my colleagues at the Cabinet Office.
Q7 Chair: Surely, the only appropriate response is, “Yes, and I am getting on with it, and I have already started”? Chris Wormald: The decision of whether to do an inquiry in these cases rests on two things: one, the nature of the offence that is alleged to have been committed; and two, because they are expensive and time–consuming, the likelihood of the success of any inquiry. As I am sure the Committee knows, the vast majority of leak inquiries are into documents and pieces of information where it is possible to trace who was in possession of that information. It is extremely difficult to trace who made an oral comment. That is not to say we will not launch an inquiry into it, but that will be one of the factors I will need to take into account in discussions with colleagues. We will respond to Mr Twigg in due course.
Q8 Craig Whittaker: I think everybody welcomes both of your comments about the comments that were made. I accept that at this stage you do not know who it is, but can I ask that if you do find out, Chris—whether it is a civil servant or whoever, or, Secretary of State, if it is perhaps somebody like a SpAd, for example—that strong disciplinary action will be taken? 4
Chris Wormald: The responsibility is split between us on this subject. As far as civil servants are concerned, the civil service code is very clear on these issues and we would deal with anyone who had breached the code in an appropriate way. I cannot say what that way would be because you would have to look at the facts of the individual circumstance: were you to be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt who had done it? The special adviser code is equally clear; perhaps the Secretary of State would comment. Michael Gove: The Permanent Secretary is absolutely right. As we stressed before, these words are unacceptable, and I think if it were possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt the circumstances and the origin of this, then of course disciplinary action would be appropriate, yes.
Q9 Chair: Has there been any communication with staff since this happened, about the subject? There are two issues here. One is an inquiry to find out the culprit; the other is to make sure that the message goes through the Department—a message I would suggest has perhaps not been clear on the basis of previous leaks—that this is completely unacceptable and would lead to immediate disciplinary action if evidence emerged of someone having behaved in this way. Have you made any such communication to the staff, either special advisers or civil servants, or both? Michael Gove: I have, in that regularly my private office and special advisers meet sometimes to go through the issues of the day. I made it clear last week, following criticisms directed at the Department, that the most important thing to do was not to respond by shooting the messenger but to respond by fairly assessing any criticisms of the Department internally that were fair, and that if there were any criticisms of the Department that we felt might in any way be misplaced there should be a sober attempt to put any record straight where that needed to be done, but that what we absolutely should not do was, as I say, to shoot the messenger. I made that clear then, and I would make clear at all times, to everyone in the Department, that it is important that we act professionally. That message was reinforced both at the time of the current Permanent Secretary’s appointment, and by the previous Permanent Secretary.
Q10 Chair: It is hard to imagine that something like this would be said by a civil servant. That does not make it impossible; it makes it unlikely. It is so political that one’s natural suspicion would be it is more likely to come from the political end, namely special advisers. There are not many of them. Would you consider it appropriate to ask your special advisers to confirm to you whether or not they did this and let you know whether they did or they did not? Michael Gove: I think we have to ask a number of people, yes.
Q11 Chair: Starting with your special advisers? The Permanent Secretary is responsible for the civil servants in this regard; the special advisers are responsible to you. They are a small team. It is a highly political, as well as personal and inappropriate, comment. Going to every civil servant, asking them to sign something saying they did not do it, across the whole Department, I can see that could be seen as inappropriate, disproportionate and absurd. It is less clear that that would be true of a small group of special advisers. Chris Wormald: Do you mind if I answer? I do not quite accept the premise of your question. There is nothing in the article that specifically suggests that it was special advisers—
Q12 Chair: So you are suggesting it could be civil servants in your Department? 5
Chris Wormald: No, sorry. The point I want to make is that given that, as has been pointed out by the Committee already, we are dealing with potentially disciplinary actions. I think it is very important that we do not jump to conclusions about who might or might not be responsible, and that individuals, as a piece of natural justice, are not targeted specifically when there is no direct evidence against them. Chair: Thank you for that, Permanent Secretary, but as we have said, the special advisers fall under the Secretary of State and I would have thought any inquiry, police or otherwise, is worried more about finding the culprit and targeting resources where they think there is the greatest likelihood, rather than worrying desperately about equity, treating everyone in the town as equally liable to have done something. Michael Gove: Fair point. I will say two things. The first is to reinforce the point the Permanent Secretary made. For context, there was some recent reporting in The Times, which you may want to return to, about the relationship between Ministers and the civil service. In that, Chris’s predecessor as Permanent Secretary, David Bell, said that the Department had been the victim of leaks, and some of those leaks, relatively early in my time as Secretary of State, were politically motivated. Therefore it was the case—I do not know, I cannot know, who was responsible for those leaks—that there would be an element of suspicion to suggest that there were some people who were employed by the civil service, who, whether out of personal loyalty to the previous Government, ideological sympathy, or some other reason, had leaked. Therefore the first think to say is we do not know. The second thing is that as a journalist I spent some time studying libel law. It is the case that if you deliberately take a small group and say that within that small group “they” are more likely to be guilty than others, that you can run the risk of defamation. I am not suggesting that you do, but I am suggesting that I need to be careful not to give any indication that I believe that any individual or any group of individuals is more likely to be suspect than anyone else—
Q13 Chair: Nonetheless, you are personally responsible. The Permanent Secretary is responsible for thousands of civil servants and you are responsible for a small group of special advisers who are peculiarly political, and whose job it is to link with the press rather more than it is your average civil servant. It is therefore not unreasonable, and you are hardly putting the finger of guilt on them if you get them in a small room and ask them—after all, you could get them in a telephone box, there are so few of them—“Can you just confirm to me that you did not do this?” You talked about having your regular meetings. A failure to even ask the small team around you, who are the only ones who are directly responsible to you in this regard, to tell you whether or not they did it, would create more suspicion on them than would your bothering to do so. Can I put it to you, will you ask them? Michael Gove: You have outlined a particular case and of course we will take appropriate steps to make sure that we ascertain exactly what happened.
Q14 Alex Cunningham: That is a no, then? Michael Gove: No, it is the answer that I gave, Alex. I want to be very careful here, because I do not want to allow anything that I say to suggest that I think that any one or any group of people within the Department are under a greater or lesser degree of suspicion. I do not think that would be fair.
Q15 Alex Cunningham: There is no problem asking the question, surely? Michael Gove: Indeed, there is no problem asking any question at all.
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Q16 Alex Cunningham: I assume you are close enough to your close advisers to be able to ask them that straightforward question, surely? Michael Gove: I can ask all sorts of questions, and indeed will, but one thing I will not do, Alex, is to allow you or anyone else—whether through inadvertence or deliberately— to suggest that any one individual or group of individuals might be more or less likely to have done something that again, I want to emphasise, was wrong.
Q17 Chair: I am pleased you said that, Secretary of State, and I suppose we do not want to do this to death, but when something on one occasion in an inquiry of this Committee—you will be aware that any leak of the findings of an inquiry of a Select Committee is a contempt of Parliament and a serious issue. When that occurred on one occasion—I am glad to say it was only one occasion in the last two and a half years— although the Report will have been seen and released to all sorts of various people, nonetheless, as the Chairman of this Committee, my first step, and the Committee certainly did not complain to me, was to say it was unacceptable, remind them of the rules, and ask each of them to confirm that they had not done so, because that is part of keeping a united team. It seems a fairly basic thing. I was not trying to finger anyone or put the finger of blame on anyone. Michael Gove: No, no.
Q18 Chair: Everyone was clear that they were not responsible for that, and they were equally clear that it would not be acceptable to do so. It had a double purpose. Michael Gove: I quite appreciate the spirit in which you are asking, and I absolutely think it is a reasonable request to make of me. All I wanted to emphasise is that I would not want, by anything that I said or did, to give the impression that I felt that the finger of suspicion pointed in any particular direction. It has been the case in the past that there have been assumptions made within the Department about individuals responsible for leaking information, and it has subsequently been the case that some of those assumptions have been entirely wrong as a result. Chair: You are absolutely right. No better way, then, to ensure that that cannot be thought than to ask directly the small group of people under your immediate control, and ask them to confirm one way or the other, and—given the seriousness of this issue, which you have referred to yourself— make sure that you can let us know if that has indeed happened. I will leave that there, Secretary of State: we cannot compel you to do that. We can merely, as a Committee—and I think I see consensus on the Committee—ask you to consider doing that. With no further ado, I will pass over to Ian.
Q19 Ian Mearns: Good morning, Secretary of State; good morning, Permanent Secretary. There have been previous allegations about SpAds acting inappropriately within the Department. Are there elements working within the Department that are out of control, Secretary of State? Michael Gove: No.
Q20 Ian Mearns: Categorically, absolutely not? Michael Gove: I am not omniscient, but I have seen no evidence of that.
Q21 Ian Mearns: Are you aware of allegations of SpAds acting inappropriately to civil servants within the Department? Michael Gove: No.
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Q22 Ian Mearns: Right. The comments that were made to the press about Tim Loughton: do you think the press would have printed them if it had not been someone of substance saying those comments in the first place? Michael Gove: I do not know.
Q23 Ian Mearns: What do you think, as a former journalist? Michael Gove: As a former journalist I know that there are any number of reasons why people might choose to print any number of things. The editorial judgment of individual journalists and individual editors is a matter for them. I would not want to second-guess or gainsay their judgment.
Q24 Ian Mearns: Thank you very much. During the course of last year, from June to November, the Department did a fundamental review, which was published, I think, in November of last year. Did the Department need to undertake such a wide review? Michael Gove: I think so. Obviously it is a matter of judgment about how one prioritises one’s time. If it is okay with you, Ian, I will allow the Permanent Secretary to say something in just a second. I think it is right that every so often, every organisation looks at itself and thinks, “Are we making the best use of our people and our resources?” Particularly so at a time of budget pressure, because one of the things you want to do is ensure that, if you are being asked by the Treasury, for very good reasons, to husband your resources, you do not simply want to engage in what might be called salami slicing. You want to think seriously about how you can get the maximum effectiveness out of the resources at your disposal. Chris Wormald: If I could just add to the Secretary of State’s comments, there were four key reasons why we did it. It was something that I very much wanted to do as the relatively new Permanent Secretary. It is not an unusual thing for new chief executives or Permanent Secretaries to want to do, to have a look at how their organisation works in a fundamental way. That was one. Second was that there was quite a lot of unfinished business in the Department. We had just finished our arm’s length body reform, which I know the Committee has looked at before, which had been a very successful programme; but as I have discussed with this Committee before, that did leave quite a lot of questions about how the Department should operate going forward. We had brought those organisations in in a physical sense, but with regard to how the Department should operate, there were questions to be answered. Third, the review was our contribution to the wider programme of civil service reform. Indeed, it was announced as part of the civil service reform White Paper that Francis Maude published. Finally, we had a set of questions about how we would live within our resources going forward. We had a significant savings element to make simply to deliver our spending review settlement, and we needed a plan to do that. In particular, we needed a plan that would take account of the success of the academies and free schools programmes, which were bringing quite a lot of additional work to the Department. Then we had the overriding need to contribute to Government’s need to cut the deficit. If you put all those things together it seemed to me, in discussion with the Board and the Secretary of State, that that all added up to the need to try to answer all those questions at once; that that would be the simplest and cleanest way to do it. It would be challenging for the Department and its staff, but nevertheless better to try and settle all those questions at once. That is what I hope the review that we have published does.
Q25 Ian Mearns: In conducting the review, the Department brought in to assist the review Bain & Company, which are an international, very successful business, but they have very little experience of doing work in the public sector and very little indeed of work in 8 education, apart from some minor stuff in the United States. On what basis were they brought in, and how much did that cost? Chris Wormald: The work was pro bono, so Bain did not charge us. There was obviously some resource cost for the Department in terms of the provision of facilities and out-of-pocket expenses, but they did not charge for their work. It was partly to, just as you say, bring an entirely external perspective to what we did, from people with wide experience in other sectors. The review was not run by Bain; the team that ran it was a joint team, comprising a number of people from Bain and an equal number of people from the Department—who brought all the expertise we needed on how the Department and the public sector works—all reporting to me and my senior management team. What Bain very successfully did—I was very impressed by their work—was to bring a lot of their expertise from other sectors to challenge us. They did quite a lot of benchmarking work against other types of organisations of the type we do not normally compare ourselves with, and techniques for analysis around decision-making and deep dives into particular areas, which enriched our understanding of the Department.
Q26 Ian Mearns: Now in reflection, Tim Loughton, when he was speaking to us and referring back to a time when he was wearing a different hat, described the Department as “bureaucratic, formal and anachronistic”. From your perspective, has the review brought forward ideas to change all of that? Chris Wormald: The first thing I would say is that obviously you have to take the views of Ministers and ex-Ministers very seriously. We will be considering Mr Loughton’s comments, but I do not quite recognise that as a picture of the Department. It is certainly not the picture that the review paints. What the review found was it was a Department with huge strengths, particularly in its people; it is not short of talented people working hard and seeking to deliver for Ministers. It was a Department that had achieved already a considerable amount in terms of cost saving and implementing Ministers’ priorities, both on the children’s services side and, as I said before, on academies and free schools, but one that could be better. In particular it could be better if it had better and slicker systems, and organised itself in a slightly different way. To that extent, of the kind of things that Mr Loughton was pointing to, the review did find that we had some bureaucratic procedures that could be changed and could be better. It did find that our decision-making processes were not as slick as either they could be or they needed to be, that we were not as efficient as we could be and that we were not as good at prioritising as we should be. It did find quite a lot that we wanted to change about the Department, but I would emphasise what I said at the beginning: it found a lot that was very good about the Department as well.
Q27 Ian Mearns: Now the review talks about a culture of continuous improvement and that is what you are hoping to gain. I have certainly heard lots of reports that morale amongst staff within the Department is very low at the moment. How would you describe the culture of the Department at present? Chris Wormald: As I said in my previous point, the review is challenging for the Department, and it is particularly challenging for some members of staff and I fully understand that some members of staff do not like the direction of travel in which we have gone. That is particularly the case in terms of some of the sites we are closing; the staff on those sites have reacted hugely professionally, I should say, but with understandable concern about what it means for them. Large sections of the review—particularly around being slicker and more efficient, rewarding talent better, and all those things—have been quite widely welcomed within the 9
Department, but I will not pretend that announcing that the Department will be 1,000 people smaller and operate on six sites rather than 12 is a universally popular measure. We did not expect it to be. The overwhelming response has been a high level of professionalism, even where there was personal concern.
Q28 Ian Mearns: Certainly as regards the north of England, I have heard speculation—and it is speculation—that one of the sites that has been closed in the north-east of England has been identified as a potential site for a free school. There was no hidden agenda there, was there? Chris Wormald: Those two things are unrelated. On our Mowden Hall site there are two buildings. There is a building that is owned by the Department but largely not used, which used to be a school—it is full of meeting rooms at the moment—and there is a proposal for a free school to open in that school. In our main building in Darlington—and we have been very clear about this—the reason we are moving out of that building is because it is not fit for modern usage. It has a number of problems with it and will be extremely expensive to refit. It is considerably cheaper to move to another site. The question we face in the north- east is, “Where should that other site be?” That is the question we are looking at right now. We are looking at alternative sites in Darlington and we are in discussion with the local council, as you would expect, but we also have to look in the wider north-east, to ensure there is not a better deal for the taxpayer somewhere else. That is uncertainty for my staff in Darlington, but it is the process that we have to go through. Chair: Thank you. We have a lot to get through, so if I could ask for short, sharp questions and short, sharp answers, as best we can. Chris Wormald: Sorry.
Q29 Ian Mearns: The review report says that “continuous improvement is a way of thinking and behaving, supported by a set of tools and techniques, which improves customer service and efficiency by identifying and eliminating waste in all its forms.” What does that actually mean, beyond the management-speak? Chris Wormald: I will give you an example, because we did this on one of our deep dives. If you look at our processes for approving new free schools, these grew up piecemeal as we developed the free school process; we learned as we went along. The process has too many stages in it. That is expensive for the Department and makes it more difficult than it should be for Ministers and also more difficult than it should be for potential free school applicants. That is not a criticism of the people who are doing it; they were developing these processes for the first time.
Q30 Chair: So will you have a Kaizen board, like they have in factories, so that every member of staff can put up improvements that need to be made? Chris Wormald: That is the basis of continuous improvement, asking the staff themselves, “How can these processes be more efficient? Which steps add value and which can be dropped? Which pieces of information that we collect are actually necessary?” You can give that the name you suggested, which I think it comes from Toyota, but it is—
Q31 Chair: How do they do it? Listening to former Ministers last week, it does sound quite bureaucratic. It seems to be borne out by other people’s experience in other Departments: the idea that if you want to meet officials you have to book it weeks in advance. If you just wander off, you have to elude your private office to go down and talk to an official on another floor. 10
Chris Wormald: I do not recognise that picture at all.
Q32 Chair: It certainly fits with what former Ministers have told me has happened in the past. How do we get out of that kind of culture into a world in which people have the confidence to say, “Actually this is not the most rational way of doing things”? How do we create that? Chris Wormald: By people like me specifically asking the question and me and my senior staff making it clear that we want to hear from staff about improvements, and then being seen by our actions to take up the suggestions that people make and make the improvements that people have suggested. That is what we hope the review implementation will do.
Q33 Ian Mearns: Regarding the culture and morale, Chris, in particular, there is this story about this party game with the hats. Is there any truth in that? Chris Wormald: There was a light-hearted meeting of the directors, which was just before Christmas, in which there was a—what would you call it?—a game, I suppose, that did involve hats and taking them off. What it was not about was staff cuts. It was about what individual directors were going to stop personally doing. It is easy to make fun of; lots of organisations do these sorts of things, and when you print them in the newspaper, as I say, they are easy to make fun of. Chair: It is even funnier when you have a senior civil servant explaining it. Chris Wormald: I am sure it is. I will take my penalty. What irritated me about the description of it that appeared in the newspaper was the idea that it was about staff cuts. That would have been completely inappropriate, and had it been I would agree with the points that PCS made. It was not about staff cuts; it was about what people would personally stop doing,
Q34 Ian Mearns: It was new year’s resolution time? Chris Wormald: It was in that spirit, yes. Ian Mearns: Can I make one suggestion? Stop playing daft games with hats. Alex Cunningham: What about a big tall one with a D on it, Chair? Chris Wormald: As I say, I will take my penalty on this subject.
Q35 Bill Esterson: The report talks about the new skills to enable people to do their jobs differently, including focusing on ministerial priorities. I am amazed that ministerial priorities are not the No. 1 focus of everybody working in the Department. Why is that not already there? Chris Wormald: It is always more difficult than you would think, and the difficult bit—
Q36 Bill Esterson: Sorry, what is difficult about it? Chris Wormald: I will explain. The difficult bit is always to move resource on from priorities when the job is done. That has been a traditional civil service problem. We have normally structured ourselves in standing teams: a problem arises; you set up a team to deal with it. That team then frequently remains after the problem has been dealt with, which is why the review majors quite a lot on being much more flexible about how we deal with resources. The problem is not responding to individual ministerial priorities, it is the constant updating of the resourcing of the Department to evolving priorities, both in terms of what Ministers want and in terms of reacting to the outside world.
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Q37 Bill Esterson: Secretary of State, perhaps you can tell us what your priorities are for the Department? Michael Gove: To build a more highly educated society, in which children from every background have the opportunity to overcome the disadvantage of their circumstances or accidents of birth, in order to achieve their full potential, to become authors of their own life story. In order to do that, what we want to do is to change the school system so that we have a self-improving school system with an emphasis on teachers and head teachers shaping the education of the next generation of children, to equip them to make the choice to go on to either university or fulfilling work, and at the same time making sure that our vital duty to protect those children who are vulnerable or at risk is sharpened by ensuring that the support we give to social workers, those in local government and other agencies to protect children from harm is enhanced. I should say that contributing to both is a culture of early intervention, seeking wherever possible to establish what the weaknesses are in how we provide support to children and families and seeking to intervene in order to ensure that children from poorer homes have the resources and support they need in order to flourish intellectually.
Q38 Bill Esterson: Which of those priorities are most important? Michael Gove: The most important thing for me is making sure that every child arrives at and spends their time in school fulfilled, happy and learning.
Q39 Bill Esterson: So children’s services are a lower priority? Michael Gove: No. Bill Esterson: But you have just said that the top priority is what goes on in school. Michael Gove: But in order to ensure that children arrive at school fulfilled, happy and learning you need to ensure that they have a secure home life and that they are cared for.
Q40 Bill Esterson: Have you published the list prepared by Ministers, referred to in the review? The review refers to a list prepared by Ministers. Have you published that list? Michael Gove: A list of—? Bill Esterson: Of priorities. Michael Gove: I hope we have made all our priorities clear. We will certainly publish any taxonomy of priorities that we may have, yes.
Bill Esterson: Obviously Ian referred to stopping certain games. What work is likely to stop as a result of the reprioritisation? Q41 Chair: Sorry, Bill, if I may, before we move on to that, as Bill referred to, as part of the review it says that, “The Secretary of State has asked Ministers to set out by the end of the year what their priorities are”, so that officials can match resource to these priorities. Michael Gove: Oh yes. Sorry.
Q42 Chair: Civil servants are supposed to have this ruthless focus on ministerial priorities and, as the review said, we had better tell them what they are, and we had better get the list done by Ministers by the end of the year. Michael Gove: You will forgive me, Mr Chairman. The word “list” always creates a slight shiver down the spine of many of us in the Department for Education. What we do have is clarity about a hierarchy of priorities Minister by Minister, yes.
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Q43 Chair: Can we have a copy? Is it published on your website? I do not think it is published on your website. Michael Gove: Of course you can, yes. Chair: Splendid.
Q44 Bill Esterson: What work is going to stop as a result of the reprioritisation? Michael Gove: We are establishing now some of the areas where work should stop, and some of the areas where we should move away from some of the priorities that have been set in the past. I think it is fair to say that we believe, in the Department, that youth policy is primarily a matter for local government and not for central Government. We believe that the emphasis that the last Government, for example, put on the coordination of access to play spaces is a matter that should be better left to local government than coordinated by central Government. We also think that some of the data-pursuing and bureaucracy-generating parts of the Department need to be slimmed back. For example, we believe that we need to have a simpler admissions code—and we have achieved that—and then step back and allow that system to operate effectively. We believe that the need to obsessively ring-fence sums of money for every initiative is not worthwhile. Therefore, we need to have a leaner and more effective means of distributing money to the front line. We also think that it is appropriate that, when it comes to how we operate inspection, we should ask Ofsted to focus more—and the new framework reflects this—on teaching and learning, leadership, pupil achievement and pupil behaviour and safety. Some of the things we asked of Ofsted in the past we are no longer ourselves going to pursue, because it seems to get in the way of the central goal of making sure that schools and teachers can concentrate on effectiveness in the classroom.
Q45 Siobhain McDonagh: Just quickly, in the very interesting evidence that Mr Loughton gave to the Committee last week was a comment that one of the ways in which he suggested safeguarding children had gone down in the list of priorities of the Department was that there was not one press release about the Savile inquiry or the investigations into Jimmy Savile’s abuse. Michael Gove: One of the things I would say is that there were a number of points that Tim made that caused me to pause and reflect and think, “Ooh”. However, one of the areas where I think he was absolutely wrong is to say that child protection has assumed less significance and less salience within the Department. Since September it has more salience and more significance. It is not just that we have not issued press releases. We have deepened and accelerated a programme of reform. I gave a speech just before Christmas to the Institute of Public Policy Research: more than 6,000 words outlining a variety of areas where we had analysed weaknesses in the child protection system, and new challenges. One of the things that that speech set out to do was to draw a distinction between the inevitable focus on a few high-profile offenders—many of them historic offenders, who operated in circumstances that have changed—and the real threat that children face at the moment. There is a greater threat of abuse and neglect to children from those who are known to them, in circumstances of moral and physical squalor, than there is from the actions of these people, these celebrities, who are the subject of allegations. There is a real problem with the sexual exploitation of young people, particularly teenage girls in certain circumstances, but it is the case that those girls are disproportionately those who have either been in the care system, or who have tended to suffer abuse and neglect themselves, and who therefore find themselves more easily the target of people who want to manipulate their need for affection. 13
The other thing is that we are looking at how we reform residential care homes, how we reform the social work profession overall. We have embraced a brilliant idea put forward by a chap called Josh MacAlister from the IPPR about how we do for social work what TeachFirst has done for teaching. We are taking steps to reform the family justice system in order to ensure that children spend less time uncertain about whether or not they will be in one care setting or another. We have undertaken a series of changes, with more to come, in order to make it easier for children to be adopted and fostered. It may well be that there is criticism of the direction we are taking in a number of these areas. Fair enough: we can have that debate. However, to say that child protection has been deprioritised, I think is nonsensical.
Q46 Chair: Secretary of State, one way that the former Minister particularly did exemplify that was by saying that his “great concern” was that “the children and families agenda has been downgraded since the reshuffle”. As he said, we now have “one Children’s Minister”, for whom, as you said, he had a great deal of respect, “who now has a huge brief to deal with and a declining number of officials to help him. That is going to be a problem.” We are looking at the Department today, and notwithstanding the actions the Government has taken, if you downgrade the seniority and number of Ministers involved in an area, you cut the number of officials serving them not only absolutely but relatively to other priorities within the Department. You also fail to appoint a chief social worker having said you would, so you can understand why some people would think there had been a downgrading, notwithstanding some of the positive steps you have also talked about. Chris Wormald: These are— Bill Esterson: He uses the phrase, “some neglect of children and families.” It is a very serious accusation. Michael Gove: It is. Bill Esterson: Very, very serious, and of great concern to everybody. Michael Gove: If it were true, it would be. Since it is a serious allegation, let me take some time to deal with it. Firstly, the particular point about ministerial responsibilities: Mr Loughton’s successor, Edward Timpson, has broadly the same area of responsibilities that Mr Loughton had. The responsibilities that Sarah Teather had—who was Children and Families Minister and did a brilliant job—have been divided into three. Special educational needs sits with Mr Timpson. It is the case that responsibility for child poverty, the pupil premium, and the social mobility strategy has gone to David Laws, and it is also the case that responsibility for early years and for child care has gone to Liz Truss. In that sense, every Minister within the Department is an education and a children’s Minister, so there has been less of a silo approach than one might have been accused of having, or alleged to have, before. The number of civil servants who are working on safeguarding has diminished by two or three, I think. Chris Wormald: I think it is a bit under 10 since the election. That area, the children and young people’s area, as the Secretary of State set out before, has got smaller, but within that, we have largely protected the area that works on safeguarding. It will reduce in size as the whole Department will reduce in size, but it is certainly not the case that it has suffered disproportionate reductions. To be blunt, I have some of my finest senior civil servants working on safeguarding issues. I think that is a view shared by Ministers. Michael Gove: At the moment, in the safeguarding group, if you look at that, the headcount at the moment is 79; it was 82 in May 2010. That is a reduction of three in the safeguarding group. There are other civil servants who deal with children and families issue. There is a group called the supporting delivery group. I know that sounds like a sort of bureaucratic title, so forgive me. What it essentially does is work with local authorities in 14 order to ensure that the provision of children’s services is as effective as possible. It was 96 in May 2010; it is now 109. The officials working in this area—and I hope you will forgive me mentioning their names, Olivia McLeod in supporting delivery and Paul Kissack in safeguarding—are two of the most impressive people I have met in Government. Paul Kissack is a high-flyer who used to work as private secretary to Gus O’Donnell. Olivia McLeod is one of the most formidable intellects in this field. What they have been doing is helping us to challenge local authority performance in this area and to develop appropriate policies as well. There has been no downgrading in the number of staff, and in fact an enhancement of the intellectual capacity available in this area. There are deputy directors I would mention as well working in safeguarding, like Graham Archer, who has been working with me in order to dedicate a new approach in Doncaster, in the wake of the Carlisle report and the terrible events that happened in Edlington. It mattered to me that we got that right, because it seems to me that a perfect storm of things went wrong in Doncaster—poor local governance; misallocation of children to foster parents; ineffective early intervention—that exemplified many of the problems we had. This is why I took the decision myself to visit Doncaster, to talk to the parents of the victims, and then subsequently to talk to the director of children’s services and the chief executive there. It is also why I have taken such care over the appointment of a chief social worker. You make the point that the appointment has not been made; that is partly because I wanted to make sure of two things. Firstly, the original suggestion was that there should be a chief social worker who united adult and children’s social work. That is still the view of many; it is not my view. I think there are specific challenges in children’s social work that need to be addressed. There are a number of candidates whom I hoped to persuade, such was the importance of this post, to apply. For a variety of reasons, some of those candidates—and I cannot pick the person, but I can persuade people to enter the race—chose not to. We will be moving forward very shortly and I am confident that we will have a strong field, but one of the things we also needed to do was to clarify what it was that we wanted of the chief social worker. Was it someone who would act as an advocate on behalf of the profession, to defend current practice, or was it someone who was going to challenge, much in the way that Sir Michael Wilshaw, as a brilliant head teacher, has now become an exemplary chief inspector. There are other things about the way in which social workers are trained, the particular nature of their practice and the experience they have, that I believe need to be addressed. I think we need to look at the cohort of people who are currently social workers. Again, some people are doing a superb job, but we also need to recognise that the quality of management and leadership in social work in certain areas is not good enough and that we need to have a stronger intellectual cadre there. However, we also need people who have the emotional intelligence at the front line to develop strong relationships with their clients, and in particular who have the common sense to be able to challenge some of the behaviour they find that parents indulge in that harms children. One of the problems we have had in the past is that social workers have had an optimism bias about the capacity of families to reform, and have had a desire to put children back into circumstances that are not right for them. I have attracted controversy—I attract controversy all the time—by saying that too few children are taken into care at the moment. I absolutely believe that we need to take more children into care and to get more children adopted. Forgive me for going on at such length, but while there are certainly some observations or criticisms about how the Department has been run that have caused me to 15 reflect and to think, “That may be a good point, let me consider that”, the suggestion that child protection has a lesser priority in the Department now is utterly unfounded.
Craig Whittaker: Could I briefly come in, Secretary of State? I fully understand and appreciate your thoughts and comments in this area, but in regards to the chief social worker, for example, this Committee was given assurances at the start of last summer that the post would be filled “soon”, I think was the word used. Here we are almost at the start of another summer and it still has not been filled. Almost—I did say almost. Chair: He is suffering an optimism bias in terms of the seasons. Q47 Craig Whittaker: Surely you can accept that people feel that the Department is not giving this as high a priority as some of us would want to see, for the reasons that have been mentioned already? Michael Gove: No, that would be completely wrong. To look simply at the appointment of the chief social worker and say that is all that is happening in the field of social work is to— Chair: It is emblematic, nonetheless. Michael Gove: Anything can be emblematic. Chair: The chief social worker is naturally emblematic for the world of social work. Michael Gove: So is the programme of social work reform. So is the establishment of the College of Social Work. So is the front line. So are the deliberate attempts that I and other Ministers have made to challenge existing social work. It is more important—as you have often reminded me, Mr Chairman—to get things right, and sometimes you have urged me to stop “taking the urgency pill”. In this area there have been discussions across and within Government about how we do this job. Almost by definition, because the first chief social worker will set the tone for the job, because it is an innovation, it is more important that we get that right, in the same way as the very first Children’s Commissioner, or the very first schools chief inspector will set the tone for his or her successors. All I would say is that anyone can pick any issue, and say, “This, for me, is the most important thing in child protection, and unless you do this, you are failing.” That would be a huge mistake, and a misunderstanding of what the Committee has consistently understood is a complex issue. One of the things that has certainly influence me is that your own Report in this area was excellent and chimed with many of the things that we have been doing and are doing.
Q48 Bill Esterson: Yes, but at the same time as there are concerns being raised by former Ministers about the Department and about this balance, local authorities themselves— you made the point about the impact on youth and play and other things—are expressing very, very grave concerns that there is a crisis waiting to happen in children’s social care. That seems to go alongside what Tim Loughton said to us only last week. Michael Gove: No, it does not. It is always the case that local government—and I do not blame them for it—will say, “Let us have more resources.” What I would be more interested in doing is having a— Bill Esterson: I think this goes a bit further than saying they want more resources. They are pointing to a whole systematic series of problems, many of which were touched on by Tim Loughton last week. Michael Gove: Which are? Bill Esterson: About not just the downgrading— Michael Gove: What downgrading? There has not been a downgrading. Bill Esterson: That is what he said. Michael Gove: He is wrong. 16
Bill Esterson: He was the Minister. Michael Gove: Yes, and I am the Secretary of State. Bill Esterson: You told us earlier how much you valued him, how much you thought he was a superb Minister, yet you sacked him. It cannot all be true. Michael Gove: No, I did not. The Prime Minister sacked him.
Q49 Alex Cunningham: You did not get a say then? Michael Gove: No, the Prime Minister makes these decisions. I am still waiting, Bill, for you to tell me what the specific things are in child protection that you think have been downgraded or changed, which are wrong.
Q50 Bill Esterson: I am only going on the evidence that Tim Loughton gave us. It is there in the transcript, and I am sure that— Michael Gove: There are a number of things that Tim said in the transcript that, as I mentioned earlier do not relate to child protection, which I think are worth reflecting on. We can touch on those later. However, let me ask you to ask me what it is in child protection that you think we are not doing, that we should be doing, either on the basis of Tim’s evidence or anything else. Bill Esterson: You have a 40% cut in my local authority, and many others like them, so far. That has a profound effect on local authorities’ ability to do their job. Michael Gove: A cut in what? Bill Esterson: In the funding they have had. You know that as well as I do. Michael Gove: So your specific concern is about the decisions that have been made by Sefton council over funding? Bill Esterson: No, I said that this is across local authorities, which does not come from your budget; it comes from local government.
Q51 Ian Mearns: With respect, Secretary of State, for instance, I will give you the figures from my own local authority. About five years ago, when I was still deeply involved in the place, Gateshead had a gross turnover of about half a billion pounds. In terms of revenue support grant and its net budget it was about £300 million. Out of that £300 million, £66 million has been taken out already, and a further £32 million is due to come out. You cannot honestly expect that an authority like Gateshead, with a revenue account of about £300 million, can deliver the same range, depth and quality of services with a third of its revenue budget taken out. Bear in mind that an awful lot of the revenue budget that is left is ring-fenced for specific areas. Michael Gove: It is a fair point, Ian, about funding, and we can have a broader discussion about it. If the Committee want to move on to that area I would be very happy to. However, I just wanted to clarify, because in our earlier exchange I said to Bill, “Apart from funding, what are the areas?” And it seems to me that there are none. Bill Esterson: Funding is fundamental. Michael Gove: Of course it is, but are there any other areas? Bill Esterson: You cannot do things without the money. Michael Gove: We will come onto funding in a moment, because I think that you can find some local authorities have been very generously funded, where the amount of money available for social care—as in Doncaster, for example—has been greater than in some comparable cities, but things have not worked. Of course we can have a debate about funding and whether or not it is sufficient, but I think we also need to have a debate about how that money is being used. To say that the Department only has a responsibility to provide a cheque and then step back really would be a relinquishing of our responsibility in this area. 17
If you think that we are going down a wrong direction in some of the thoughts that we have about social work reform, it would be interesting, and we can discuss that. If you think we are going down the wrong path in the emphasis we are putting on reforming the family justice system and reforming adoption, let us discuss that. If you think it is wrong for us to look—and I know that you have a particular interest in this—at residential care and quality of the settings in which people are placed, let us look at that. I think there is a funding question that we need urgently to look at, and are looking at, which is what the incentives are that lead some local authorities to place a significant number of young people out of area: more, at first, second and third glance, than I think is justifiable. All of those are areas for debate, but I cannot see any evidence at all that there has been any downgrading of the responsibility of child protection in the Department for Education, quite the opposite.
Q52 Chair: On the children’s agenda, Tim Loughton is not alone. We had two former Children’s Ministers before us last week, and both of them said that as far as you were concerned. Sarah Teather said, “There is no doubt that Michael’s focus is on schools and school issues.” She talked about the “creative tension”, as she called it—she was more politic—with No. 10 and the Deputy Prime Minister. “Their interests were predominantly more on the children and families areas, and Michael’s very specific focus was on schools.” Not one, but two. You talked about being happy to sit back and reflect, and think, “He might have a point here.” It is pretty hard to say that with one Lib Dem, the one Conservative, both Children’s Ministers, both saying that. Going forward, can I just ask whether you think, given that your focus has been on schools—which I am sure you will be unapologetic about and have been pursuing serious reform—for the rest of this Parliament could you imagine that the balance of your focus might move more to the children’s agenda, while maintaining focus on education as well? Michael Gove: One of the things that I think came through in Sarah’s evidence is that I wanted to make clear to Sarah that she was the lead Minister in the areas for which she was responsible. We adopted an approach whereby, because there was a programme of education reform that I wished to implement, I would do that, and then she would be in the lead on a variety of areas. Chair: She said, when she needed you, you stepped in, backed her all the way, and helped to do it. Michael Gove: She was very gracious in that, and in a way it was one of the benefits of coalition. Sarah was clear about what she wanted to deliver, and if there was a clash between my Department and another Department and Sarah had one view and another Conservative Minister had a different view, if that Conservative Minister had a different view from Sarah’s, even if I shared that Conservative Minister’s view privately, I would stand up for Sarah’s view, because it was my responsibility. In that sense, yes, my focus was more on schools while she led in these areas. Now, Sarah has moved on. There is a new Liberal Democrat Minister, whose responsibility is predominantly, but not exclusively, schools. That means that I now can take more of an interest in, and steer, and drive policy in these areas to a greater extent. That is why you have seen some of the speeches I have made and some of the interventions I have been responsible for. Yes, I am, and have become, more interested in how we reform the social work profession, because I believe, exactly as Andrew Adonis has said, that the social work profession is where the teaching profession was 10 of 15 years ago: lots of great people, but it needs a significant change and modernisation if it is to achieve everything of which it is capable.
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Q53 Alex Cunningham: I want to go back to the numbers in the Department. I know 1,000 jobs or so will be going within the Department, but you are talking about the numbers on the social care side and saying that there will be more staff, not fewer, in children’s social care. Does that mean that that area has been protected, and that the vast majority of jobs are going from the education centre? Or are they all going from the education centre, because there are more, not fewer, people dealing with social care issues? Michael Gove: A significant number of the jobs that have disappeared so far are jobs where essentially functions were being duplicated in arm’s length bodies that could be more effectively discharged within the Department, but it is the case that there will be an emphasis on making sure that we deploy our staff as effectively as possible. One of the things we need to do is move towards an increased level of flexibility, where instead of people being in particular groups that carry on regardless, and where individuals are asked to find things to do to fit into that label, there is a greater degree of flexibility over the allocation of how staff work. One thing I would say is that there are two distinct points. There is the allegation that was made last week, which is that these functions have been downgraded. The evidence shows clearly that they have not, on the basis of the reduction in staff. However, if you say that the only way in which you can judge the effectiveness and priority of an area is the number of civil servants in it, that is clearly a mistake. I do not know how many people in the Treasury are dealing with public expenditure control. Given that the Treasury is only 1,000 and a significant number of them deal with other stuff, it cannot be that many, but no-one would deny that, for better or for worse, public expenditure control is the defining mission of this Government. I would not look just at the headcount, but I wanted to hit firmly on the head the notion that there had been any deprioritisation, for any reason, of those responsibilities.
Q54 Alex Cunningham: So you have sufficient expertise, but there are still plenty of people who can go from the Department, whether they are working on child-centred work or education? Michael Gove: We need to make sure that we get the best out of everyone in the Department, and we can do that with fewer staff.
Q55 Alex Cunningham: You said that the Ministers are all education and children’s Ministers now, which is good if they are taking that level of interest, but how often do they get together to join all that up? It sounds as though you have stuck a bit here and stuck a bit there. Michael Gove: We meet regularly. One of the—
Q56 Alex Cunningham: Sorry, when you say “we”, does that mean you as well, to discuss specifically these issues? Michael Gove: Yes. We have a meeting every Monday, with Ministers and special advisers, and also the Permanent Secretary and my Principal Private Secretary attend that meeting. They very rarely speak at it, but they are there to absorb the atmosphere as Ministers and advisers discuss the events of the last week and forthcoming events. Then I have a subsequent chat on Thursday, which is intended to be more relaxed, which gives Ministers a chance to reflect on anything that has occurred in the week, and I allow them to set the agenda. Obviously there are things I want to talk about—
Q57 Alex Cunningham: I believe you, Secretary of State. “More significance”, you say, for child social care issues: what does that look like? Social workers, who are seeing 19 thousands of their colleagues leave the profession across the country, do not see more significance being placed on that area because of whatever is happening in the Department. It does not matter what is happening in the Department; what is happening out there is seeing fewer and fewer people in the system. Michael Gove: There are some problems with turnover, you are absolutely right, but the attention we are directing towards children’ social care is a recognition that our current system is not working. If you look at the Ofsted inspection regime for safeguarding, the number of local authorities that have been found wanting has been significantly greater than either of us would have expected or could be happy with. It is also the case that if we look at the reality of social work practice, there are a variety of problems that need to be addressed. I mentioned a couple of them earlier.
Q58 Alex Cunningham: Getting rid of thousands of social workers is not going to help that, is it? Michael Gove: No. I think that if the only thing that anyone did were to say that we want to move a section of the workforce, with respect to social workers, that would not be the best way to do it. What we need to do is reform how social work operates. That means looking at the training of social workers in the first place. Will they be equipped with the right skills in the right circumstances?
Q59 Alex Cunningham: So fewer, better skilled social workers? Chair: We need to move on, Alex. Michael Gove: No, I do not think the right answer is to think about numbers. Ultimately, the choice of how social workers are deployed— Alex Cunningham: With respect, Secretary of State, when you are a social worker and your caseload has increased by 20-30%, numbers do matter—the number of staff you have in the Department. Michael Gove: Yes, but why has it increased by 20-30%? How effectively are you being managed by those above you? The relationship that you have with your clients, or the families with whom you work: what support are you receiving elsewhere in order to deal with that? These are all important questions. Within the local authority, is it the case that schools, the police and others are playing their part in order to help you in the work that you do separately? One of the innovations that was advanced by Professor Julian Le Grand, which I think has a great deal to recommend it, is the idea of social work practices. One of the reasons why I cite Andrew Adonis is that, in the same way as Andrew very wisely pointed out, simply saying, “Let us shove more money at the education system and hire more teachers”, while it may make politicians feel good because they can announce the figures, will not improve education, and certainly not on its own without reform. Simply saying, “Social work is very important, here is a cheque”, will not improve social work practice. Of course what we need are appropriate and adequate resources, but what we also need is to ask how effectively we are supporting professionals, and how effectively they are doing their job. Chair: Final question, Alex.
Q60 Alex Cunningham: Final question? I have half a dozen here. Your saving plans have proved quite controversial; the civil servants are talking about possible strike action. I wonder how you make sure that the cuts do not impact on the service: how on earth are you going take this demoralised staff with you? Michael Gove: The first thing I would say is that at any time of change in any organisation, there is always a challenge for those who lead it or are responsible for its future. 20
The first thing that this Committee gives me an opportunity to repeat is my admiration for the team with which I work. Just this week, I had the opportunity to read a report that is coming out very shortly, which the Department has been responsible for, on adoption. The two civil servants, Olly Park, and Annie Crombie, who were responsible for that, did an amazing job, and I had the opportunity to thank them in person. I do not have enough opportunities to thank people for the work they do, and I need to be more assiduous and determined in doing that. The press of business on Ministers means that we are sometimes not as thoughtful and considerate to people who do a brilliant job for us as we should be, and your question provides me the opportunity to do that. More broadly, in terms of thinking about a change and reduction in staff, I think that in a Department, as in any organisation, including in a school, if the overwhelming number of people are doing a fantastic job, but you see that one or two people are not doing as good a job, that in itself can be demoralising. One of the things about the Department of Education is that I want to build on the professionalism of the overwhelming majority, to ensure there is a culture of excellence throughout. I do not know if the Permanent Secretary can augment that. Chris Wormald: I have debated this with the Committee before, and I know it does not agree with me, but I do not see any evidence of a demoralised Department. Its staff survey results are very similar to a lot of the rest of Whitehall. Is it a challenge to be a civil servant at the time of—
Q61 Ian Mearns: Sorry, Permanent Secretary, they may be broadly similar, but the staff survey report shows a deterioration in morale year on year. Chris Wormald: Yes. There has been a very small change in our engagement index, which has gone around the civil service average. Of course that is something that senior managers will always be concerned and worried about. You always worry about the morale of your organisation. What I do not see, as I have said to the Committee before, is any evidence of a demoralised Department. As I said in a previous answer, are some of the things we are doing in the Department review challenging, and are some civil servants concerned? Yes, of course they are, and it is the job of me and my senior managers to manage that situation. What I do not recognise is the picture of the Department that you paint.
Q62 Alex Cunningham: I want to talk about something quite specific: your staff are responsible for your school building programme, the expansion of the academy model around the country. You have overspends and potential cuts to non-academy school programmes in order to plug the gap. My hon. Friends for Houghton and Sunderland South and for Easington tell me of delays to the new school programme. I wondered, is this because of budget mismanagement, is it a lack of suitable staff, or is it something else? Another series of schools are delayed opening for another year. What is happening? When can we start giving them some confidence that things are actually going to happen along the timetable that your Government has said they will? Michael Gove: Bridget raised it in education questions on Monday, and I promised to look into the specific case. If it also applied to Grahame in Easington I will look into that as well. One of the things we have sought to do is accelerate the pace of school building and renovation by making some overall reforms. There are some specific issues there. I owe them, and you, a fast response in those specific cases. Alex Cunningham: A full year’s delay in opening a school. Michael Gove: It was the first I had heard of that specific delay in that specific area. Let me investigate and get back to you.
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Q63 Mr Ward: Secretary of State, good morning. Can I ask you if you are a believer in evidence-based policy? Michael Gove: Yes.
Q64 Mr Ward: I am not talking about evidence of a need for reform, but the actual reforms that would be effective. Are you in favour of evidence-based reform? Michael Gove: Yes.
Q65 Mr Ward: To gather that information in, how wide a pool do you rely on? If we look at some of the things we were investigating, such as careers guidance, the replacement of GCSEs, or indeed the academies and free schools, which we are coming on to, there is clearly evidence of a need for change. However, we found that there was a lack of evidence for the proposals in meeting those needs. Where would that evidence have been gathered from that they were the right reforms? Michael Gove: I think the first thing to say is that one of the biggest areas of the Department is the team that deals with policy analysis and research. Right from the moment that I arrived—and certainly under the influence of the ministerial team and non-executive directors—we have acknowledged that there are some weaknesses in the way in which the Department gathers evidence and does policy analysis. We cannot wait for perfection to arrive, because the best can sometimes be the enemy of the good, but we are undertaking some reforms. We asked Dr Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Science, to help us here. I had been impressed by the fact that he had argued that in lots of areas of social policy there was nothing like the rigour that you had in medicine—use of randomised control trials, the proper interrogation of evidence. Ben and others are helping us to improve the way in which we gather data and use it. There are some areas of the educational debate where people deploy data, and sometimes the data they deploy—when you dig away at it, as some people have pointed out—are statistics people use that have been discredited years ago but still recur in debates. They become what are known as “zombie statistics”. There are some areas where we need radically to look at the evidence on which policy is being built. There are other areas where evidence is more robust, and there is a final set of areas where ultimately one man’s evidence is another man’s prejudice, and judgment has to come into it. One final point: it is outside my bailiwick, but there was a discussion in the last Parliament between Alan Johnson and Professor Nutt about drugs policy. The professor said, “This is the evidence for the effect of drugs”, and Alan Johnson said, “That is fine. I am the politician, I am responsible. I have taken account of it, but I take a different view.” I think it is possible to do that. On the whole I prefer to rely on the evidence. The final point I would make is that two books that have had a big influence on me in this area are both by a guy called Daniel T. Willingham, who is an American expert in neuroscience. One is called, Why Don’t Students Like School; the other is about good and bad evidence in educational policy. It shapes it. The final thing I was going to say is that the approach towards academies and free schools is intended to allow there to be a greater degree of diversity, and sometimes experimentation on the ground, so that we can learn from that evidence. I will freely admit that I expect that some of what happens in that programme, and in the programme of school reform, will show that there are ways of organising schools that I might instinctively not like, which tend to be far better than any of us could have imagined. Chris Wormald: Can I add one point? One additional thing that flows out of the work that Ben Goldacre and a gentleman called Roger Plant did for us on this subject is that we are moving away from a model where we do policy in one part of the Department and 22 analysis in another. That large team that the Secretary of State described is being broken up and analysts will now be where they should be, which is with the part of the policy teams dealing with that area. The idea is to have a much greater integration of analysis and policy.
Q66 Chair: So we will not move to evidence-based policymaking, but we will at least move to evidence-informed policymaking? That is a step forward. Michael Gove: Certainly evidence-informed, yes. The Committee must decide whether it meets the test.
Chris Wormald: I will add one more thing. The evidence base in education—not just in the Department but more generally across the UK—is not as good as it should be. It is not as good as the evidence that is available to my colleagues in the Department of Health, for example, or in a variety of other Government Departments. There are a lot of questions in education where the current evidence base does not provide you with an absolutely clear answer.
Q67 Chair: Is that because of the nature of the beast, or because of a failure of methodology or quality of research? Chris Wormald: It is two things. One, it is partly the nature of the beast, in that you are dealing with a series of unrepeatable experiments, and it is social policy, and therefore you cannot measure it in the way that you can with hard science. However, I also think that within education, for a whole variety of reasons, the kinds of professional structures that have grown up in other professions—Royal Colleges, the BMJ, the teaching hospital system, all those sorts of things that have allowed the profession itself to grow its own evidence base— for historical reasons that has largely not happened in education.
Q68 Chair: So it can defend itself from Ministers in a hurry? Chris Wormald: No, this has grown up over several hundred years in terms of how those professions have developed. It is why I think one of the most important reforms we have is teaching schools, with the idea that we have properly evidence–based research, done by actual practitioners. Education research has tended to be done by people who do not practice; health research, if you compare it, is done largely by practitioners. It is a huge strength of health research. To get to the kind of evidence-based policy you want, we will have to do quite a lot to enhance the actual evidence base. As a policymaker, there are two ways you can react to that. You can decide to do nothing until you have the perfect evidence base—that is clearly inappropriate—or you can make what you have of the evidence base that you do have. That means in particular looking at international examples, so you have the case of academies and free schools. This was picked up on: there is a lot of research evidence from the OECD elsewhere that school autonomy and raising standards are related factors.
Q69 Mr Ward: One of the most important sources of evidence is that gained from experience. You had, I think all parties will agree, a very experienced team of Ministers, who have now gone—Sarah Teather, a soul mate in Nick Gibb, I would argue, but I would also include John Hayes and of course Tim Loughton. Two of the Ministers who have replaced them seem to have a pretty scant knowledge and experience of education, which is regrettable. Are you confident that that gap that now seems to exist will be filled, or can be filled? Michael Gove: It is invidious in a way to compare individuals, but I will answer the question honestly. Yes, it was the case that every single one of the Ministers who left the 23
Department was passionate about their area, and had developed a body of knowledge and contacts that enabled them to do their job very, very well. Change, inevitably, poses challenges. However, if I may say a little bit about each of the new Ministers? Chair: We have quite a lot more to get through. Michael Gove: All I will say overall is that in Edward Timpson you have a family lawyer who has devoted his life to improving the care of looked-after children. In John Nash, our Lords Minister, you have someone who has transformed a comprehensive school in one of England’s most challenging areas as a sponsor. In Matthew Hancock, the Skills Minister, we have one of the most gifted economists of his generation, who has also been a policy innovator and has operated at a very high level. In David Laws—I am sure you would agree, David—you have someone who as Liberal Democrat education spokesman has modernised Liberal Democrat education policy, whose commitment to social mobility and whose passion in these areas is second to none. I think it is a fantastic team. Mr Ward: What I am interested in— Michael Gove: Oh yes. I forgot about Liz Truss. The most important thing I should say about Liz is that she changed the debate about child care more than any other politician since Harriet Harman.
Q70 Mr Ward: What I am interested in is the pool of experience that was there before and whether in fact that was used. It seems to be—and this was the evidence that we received—that the Ministers in their respective areas were pretty much allowed to get on and do their own thing, and there is a dividing line between being given the freedom to get on with it, and not being given due attention from yourself, which came through. However, those Ministers, that pool of experience—they told us that there were these soliloquies. I do not think they met as Ministers, apart from a Christmas event. In terms of a “man on a mission”, which is sometimes how you are described, I wonder what input came from these people with a wealth of experience of the education system, and how that influenced you. I am interested that your source of inspiration came from reading some books, not from that ministerial pool. Michael Gove: You are right. I am perfectly happy to acknowledge the influences of what I have read. However, it is also the case that, as you say, all of those Ministers made me think and reflect in a variety of areas. The first point to say is that we met regularly most Mondays. One of the points that was made about those meetings is that maybe there were too many people in them. I do not know; I wanted to make sure they were as inclusive as possible. I wanted to make sure, for example, that Sarah Teather was not simply the only Liberal Democrat in that meeting, but that the Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesperson for education, both in the Commons and the Lords, was there, so that we had as broad a discussion as possible. We had Joan Walmsley—
Q71 Mr Ward: Tim Loughton said that he had never had a strategy meeting. Am I right in saying that? Chair: It was about not having meetings without officials present, apart from one Christmas dinner at your house, which you kindly hosted. Michael Gove: Apart from that very enjoyable occasion— Ian Mearns: He said it was very good. Michael Gove: Thank you. Maybe the Committee should come. Alex Cunningham: We did not know you could cook. Michael Gove: I will give you my recipes. Food is very important to me, as must become increasingly apparent over time. On the serious point, he could have had a private 24 meeting. I tried to make sure that the meetings we had on Monday were as inclusive as possible. Maybe I took up too much of the time myself, talking.
Chris Skidmore: I just want to make the point that personally I have thought there has been too much emphasis on Mr Loughton’s comments to the Select Committee, without regarding the evidence given by Nick Gibb— Chair: If you have a question for the Secretary of State, please do ask it. Q72 Chris Skidmore: I have. Nick Gibb talked about the fact that there was also the notion of the KITs, the keep in touch meetings; you could have as many of those as you needed, and they could be with or without Department officials. Could you explain the process of these KIT meetings and how often you have them? Michael Gove: Yes. We arranged to have, depending on the taste of the Minister, weekly, fortnightly or monthly keep in touch meetings—KITs—and in those meetings there was an opportunity for the Minister to raise any issue on the agenda that they wished to, or for me to mention it to them. As I think Nick mentioned in his evidence, sometimes you actively want to have a civil servant there. We know that sometimes when Ministers meet without civil servants, when they meet people outside the Department or discuss things themselves, you do not have the effective follow-through throughout the Department. It is generally good practice to have someone there to take a note. However, sometimes there may be a personal issue a Minister wishes to share, or a political issue that they feel it would not be fair to have a civil servant privy to, where you can have those discussions. We have them all the time, on a range of issues.
Q73 Chris Skidmore: Sarah Teather also mentions in her evidence—I think it is fair that we should reflect all three Ministers’ evidence—that she also had regular personal meetings with you. In fact, Tim Loughton’s evidence is the exception to the rule here of the other Ministers. Michael Gove: It is Burns Night on Friday: “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!” I think that the style of meetings that I ran were fine for Nick and for Sarah—good for Nick and for Sarah—but did not quite suit Tim. I will have to reflect on that.
Q74 Craig Whittaker: Permanent Secretary, could I just take you back very briefly on the issue of staff morale? It is quite interesting, because you said to us that you did not recognise what my colleague’s assessment was, and you said it was broadly in line with Whitehall. It was more interesting, sitting on this side of the desk, because when you said that, several people behind you, some of whom have now left, were shaking their heads. To me that would indicate that perhaps you have not quite got your finger on the pulse in regards to how your staff feel. I am not saying they were your staff; I do not know who they were. When you compare your Department to the rest of Whitehall, if the rest of Whitehall is in a dire situation with staff morale, surely that indicates— Chris Wormald: Yes. I have said several times, and I will reiterate now, the things we are doing to the Department, as set out in the review, are tough things to do. They were not done with our primary objective being to get good staff survey results. You do not announce reductions in jobs, closures in sites, with that objective in mind. We went into that with our eyes open. The part of your question I fully accept is: “Do we have a big challenge in carrying our staff through what is a tough series of challenges that we have set them?” Yes, we do. That is what I and my senior staff are fully aware of and want to deal with. Should our staff results be higher? Yes, they should always be higher, and that is something we will continually worry about. 25
Q75 Craig Whittaker: Secretary of State, are you happy with the level of service provided by senior civil servants in your Department, or would you prefer to have political appointees? Michael Gove: I am very happy. One of my sadnesses is that recently, for understandable reasons of promotion, some of the best civil servants I have had a chance to work with have gone on. Sarah Healey, who has been responsible for education funding reform, has done an amazing job. It is in the nature of the civil service that if you stay in one Department throughout your career, you will not reach the level that I know she is capable of reaching, so she has gone to DWP, and Iain Duncan Smith’s gain is my loss. It is also the case that Nick Donlevy, who was a relatively junior civil servant in the Strategy and Performance Unit, was poached by David Laws to go and work for David in the Cabinet Office. Lucy Smith, who is, again, an outstanding civil servant, was also poached by Nick Clegg—yet another example of his good personnel judgment. There are lots and lots of good people. We are fortunate that, a bit like Manchester City, we have strength and depth, and therefore we have been able to see more people promoted to those positions, who do a brilliant job. I think civil servants themselves would acknowledge that it helps if there can be people who have a political understanding of what Ministers want. It also means that there is some political work that might otherwise land on civil servants’ desks, which they can easily ensure gets done. One thing I should say, since I invoked football, is to congratulate David Ward on the success of Bradford City last night. The last time I saw David, he was very— Chair: If we are doing football analogies, I would have thought that for strength and depth in a lean, well-run club, Manchester United would not only be five points clear, but a much better example. Michael Gove: I am partial to the others, I am afraid. Chair: Anyone can spend a lot of money. It is harder when you do it to a tight budget. Craig Whittaker: Chairman, can I bring this back to— Chair: You can.
Q76 Craig Whittaker: Can I just ask you, Secretary of State, about the permanent positions of director-generals? Is it right that the current posts are in the hands of the caretakers for such a long period of time, and when do you plan on fully making those positions permanent? Michael Gove: The people who have been doing these jobs have been doing a brilliant job, but over to the Permanent Secretary. Chris Wormald: Again, we discussed this last time I was here. I took a very specific decision to retain the senior team that I had through and beyond the review. You can criticise that decision, but I took a very specific decision that I would keep that very successful temporary team in place for quite a long time while we went through the review and built—
Q77 Chair: So when are you going to fill the posts? Chris Wormald: Now that the review is in implementation, we will be advertising the jobs within the next few weeks.
Q78 Chris Skidmore: We have spoken about staff morale, and we have spoken about the reaction of staff to the review. What process is there that you have established for formal feedback, in the context of the review? 26
Chris Wormald: We have the normal discussions that we have with the staff trade union side. There are a large number of staff engagement events, and I personally am travelling around all sites and holding a large number of staff meetings to hear directly from people in all parts of the country.
Q79 Chris Skidmore: In terms of the staff survey for 2012, was that in time for the review? Chris Wormald: No, it was just before, so staff would not have seen the results of the review at the point when they filled in their survey forms.
Q80 Chris Skidmore: In terms of the survey results, as this brief was going to press, we could not get hold of a copy of the staff survey, although apparently the Department said it has been published. Chris Wormald: No, I checked this. That is not correct. The staff survey results by Department are published all together, so every Department is published at once, and I think that happens in March. I am quite happy to provide you with—
Q81 Chris Skidmore: Would it be possible for you to send the Committee a copy of the thing? Chris Wormald: Yes.
Q82 Ian Mearns: If you could take your mind back, Secretary of State, to July 2010, the Chairman asked you a question about appointments and pre-appointment hearings. I think in reply you said, “With permission, Chairman, I am very keen to explore that with the Committee. There are certain key appointments that Parliament should have a say in.” You said you would like to work with us to identify those posts that we, the Parliament’s representatives, believe should be subject to pre-appointment hearings. Have you had any further thoughts on that since 2010? Have we been involved in an awful lot of that, Chairman? Chair: Periodically. Michael Gove: I think there was a very good pre-appointment hearing before Glenys Stacey was appointed. I am open to your thoughts on that matter.
Q83 Ian Mearns: What about members of the departmental Board? Do you think it would be appropriate for us to have consideration of who comes onto the departmental Board? Michael Gove: Some of the people on the departmental Board are Ministers; some of the people on the departmental Board are civil servants, so no. However, with non-executive directors, I would have to check with John Browne to make sure that we would not be creating a precedent for work across Government, but it is an interesting question. I will come back to the Committee on it. Chair: I will just make it clear that that was a question from a Member of the Committee, and not a bid. Michael Gove: Ian certainly has a lot of experience. Ian Mearns: You never know, I might end up in the House of Lords, but there you go. Michael Gove: I think it is guaranteed. It is only a matter of time.
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Q84 Ian Mearns: I will put you down as a referee. Thank you very much. The departmental Board has lost two non-executive members. Can you talk us through the process you are following to replace those appointees? Michael Gove: Yes. One of them has been promoted—I hope; he might consider it demoted—to become a Minister. The other, Anthony Salz, has, as we all know, a particular challenge in dealing with some of the issues that Barclays have faced. Both have done, and are doing, a great job, as are the other two NEDs. The process of appointing non-executive directors has been supervised by the Government’s lead NED, John Browne, and he goes out of his way to try to ensure that we have people who combine different types of experience. I know you have had the opportunity to interview NEDs in the past. I am sure that John and other NEDs would be happy to come before you now. It was only a fortnight ago that John was appointed, having been lead NED for about a month, to be a Minister. Again, we will come back to you with our thinking about that process, and what role the Committee might helpfully take.
Q85 Ian Mearns: In evidence to us, Anthony Salz said that he was particularly interested in the problems of implementation of policies across Departments. The interchange that we had before shows that there are difficulties with Department policy relying on CLG funding in many respects. Have you had any further thoughts on developing that work, making sure that what the Department for Education—and for children’s services—wants to do is not fettered in its ambition by what is being done by other Departments? Michael Gove: The holy grail of Government is joined-up Government, cross-Government working, and all the rest of it. I am fortunate in that in a number of areas, there are good relationships between senior officials or between Ministers that have helped. You mentioned the CLG. Eric Pickles has been a hero in what he has done in order to try to help us in a variety of ways. Ian Mearns: I have to say, Secretary of State, I do not think he would be regarded as a hero everywhere. Chair: Few people are. Michael Gove: To me, he is a hero: some of the changes he has made to planning in order to facilitate the growth of free schools, some of the work he has done in order to ensure that local government resourcing can be spent more flexibly. The burden of your point, though, is right. Anthony, a formidably intelligent and systematic thinker, identified a problem that I think anyone who comes into Government will recognise: that working across Departments is a challenge. There are two ways of trying to solve that challenge. One is to try to maintain good personal relations and to see the other Department’s point of view. The other is to try to develop better systems. One of the things about the coalition is that while of course there are frustrations because your own party is not in the majority, nevertheless the business of working across Government, through the Home Affairs Committee or other Committees, does help formalise things. One of the many great advantages of having Chris as Permanent Secretary is that he worked in the Cabinet Office, in the engine room of Government, and understands how to get things coordinated across Departments. Chris Wormald: Could I mention two very specific examples, because they probably are our two most crucial bits of cross-Government working. We of course have a joint Minister and a joint apprenticeships unit with BIS, which works very well indeed and is one of the best examples of cross-Government working we have. The other key relationship we have is with the Department of Health, particularly around special educational needs, where we have done a lot of work on things like sharing information across the health and education services, which will make a huge difference. 28
I think cross-Government working works best when it is aimed at those sorts of specific problems, so you have a problem on the table to solve and you come together to do it. What has dogged it has been what you might call unspecific cross-Government working, in which lots of people meet and talk, which has never cracked the problem. The key is doing it as we have done it: identifying a specific problem and the specific Departments that we need to work with to deal with that problem.
Q86 Ian Mearns: Secretary of State, you have mentioned Anthony Salz. I think you alluded to the fact that he has gone off to concentrate on business affairs elsewhere, but the Department hardly mentioned the fact that he had left. Am I right in thinking this? The Department website— Chris Wormald: Somebody told me that we failed to update our website, which is an error. Chair: In the paper that came to us, you said, “As Members will know, Anthony Salz has left.” We read that and thought, “We had no idea at all.” I worked with— Ian Mearns: We do now. Chris Wormald: I do not think this process has been managed quite as efficiently as it might have been.
Q87 Ian Mearns: We will take that, Chris. Thank you very much. The fact that you now have two vacancies for non-executive Board members, the third report you will be considering, the need for children’s services expertise in appointing new non-executive Board members, how are you taking this into account in your search for new Board members? Are you thinking about looking for people with particular expertise in children’s services? Michael Gove: It would definitely be an asset, but I would not make it a deal breaker.
Q88 Ian Mearns: John Nash has his own kind of hinterland in terms of the expertise he has, but he also has particular political and charitable interests within the world of education, and he has sort of progressed from the ranks of being appointed as a Board member and now into the House of Lords. Do you really think it is appropriate for non-executive directors to progress to be Ministers? Michael Gove: I think certain non-executive directors would probably hate nothing more than to be Ministers, but the fact that you can develop both an understanding of Government, and build on the expertise you have developed outside as an educationist and philanthropist, is as good a preparation as any for being a Lords Minister. Folk might disagree with some of the positions John takes, but I do not think anyone can deny that he knows how to run things, including schools.
Q89 Ian Mearns: Certainly part of his philanthropy has gone to making political donations, has it not? Michael Gove: Yes, and one of the things I think very strongly is that if we deny talented people a chance to contribute to public life because they have made political donations, we will deny ourselves as parties of a lot of talent. The other thing, speaking personally, is that I think giving money to political parties, including the Labour Party, is something that should be recognised and applauded. The more individuals support political parties, the less the taxpayer has to. Alex Cunningham: Particularly from the trade unions. Michael Gove: As a former trade unionist, though not a trade union aligned with the Labour Party, all I would say is that any organisation whose individuals decide to support a political party through funding— 29
Alex Cunningham: And they do. Chair: We will avoid this, Alex.
Q90 Neil Carmichael: Michael, at the time of the last reshuffle I was just wondering if it ever crossed anyone’s mind about the structure of the Department vis-à-vis BIS, and whether or not the Prime Minister and yourself had considered creating a sort of super-Department for Education to overcome the fact that bits of education are in another Department? Michael Gove: Before the election, I discussed it with the Permanent Secretary— Chris’s predecessor, Sir David Bell. We had a lot of useful conversations about that. That was an option. It was decided, in the course of the Coalition talks, not to do that. While in a perfect world I think they should be in the Department, I have to say that the job John Hayes did and the job that Matthew Hancock is doing—and more than that, the generosity of Vince Cable and David Willetts towards the Department and the collaboration between officials— means that I have been very impressed and encouraged.
Q91 Neil Carmichael: Great. You have two Ministers whom we have just discussed, each with a foot in another camp, so to speak: David Laws and Matthew Hancock. That obviously works quite well, from what we have just heard. Presumably it also helps in, say, Cabinet Committee discussions. Does the Department for Education get a good foothold in those structures? Michael Gove: Yes, we are very lucky in that, for example, you can have Home Affairs Committee meetings or other Cabinet Committee meetings—including meetings of the full Cabinet—in which you have Vince, David Willetts, myself and David Laws. In effect you have four education or education-related Ministers, and you also obviously have the territorial Ministers for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, who all have an interest in it. That helps, yes.
Q92 Neil Carmichael: Excellent. Another question I wanted to ask was about strategy. Tim Loughton quite robustly, and Nick Gibb sort of tangentially, talked about the lack of involvement of Ministers in terms of shaping strategy. Is that a correct description, or are you thinking more about moving into more ministerial meetings for strategy development and policy development? Michael Gove: I want to involve Ministers and senior civil servants in the strategy decisions at all times. By definition, if Tim felt that they did not occur in the right way and they did not involve him properly, they did not.
Q93 Bill Esterson: You said earlier that it was the Prime Minister who sacked Tim Loughton, and obviously the other two as well. Do you think that the way the system works is sensible? The implication of that is that you had no role, you were not consulted at all, and you had three people doing a very good job and you lost them. Michael Gove: Reshuffles are never easy, and the job of Prime Minister is never easy. I think the Prime Minister’s decisions about appointments are always right. Bill Esterson: You have stumped me with that answer. Mr Ward: Even when they are wrong.
Q94 Chris Skidmore: I wanted to talk around accountability, and the Department’s accountability particularly, to Parliament as well as the wider public. In terms of accountability to Parliament, in particular there have been criticisms around the time delay of answering written Parliamentary questions, in that it seems to be one of the worst 30
Departments across Whitehall. When it comes to all written parliamentary questions, over 50% are answered later than 10 days, but more worryingly when it comes to written questions, named day written questions, only 17% are answered on that specific named day, compared to the overall departmental average of 69%. You mentioned, Mr Wormald, about the problem of getting evidence. Is that part of the issue on why these questions are being answered so late? Chris Wormald: The Secretary of State and I are before the Procedure Committee later today for an in-depth look at this question. The Department’s performance on parliamentary questions is nothing like good enough and it is something that the Department need to take firm action on. Last week the Secretary of State and I launched a new programme of action within the Department to try to significantly improve our performance. The reasons for our poor performance—and I can go through them if you like—are manifold. We have a failed IT system, which is at the root of quite a lot of the problems, and going with that we have a process that was overcomplicated and did not involve an individual being personally responsible for ensuring that each PQ was answered on time. Our system is not good enough in this regard and we need to do something about it. Your challenge is a correct one.
Chris Skidmore: When it comes to letters, I know the Committee has raised the issue that it has taken seven months to get a letter back to the Committee on a particular issue. Chair: To the Chairman of the Committee, anyway. Q95 Chris Skidmore: If there is any Minister it would be Nick Gibb who would raise the issue of spelling and drafting of letters, but he said in his evidence, “One of the things that really depressed me about the whole process, when I showed a senior civil servant examples of atrociously drafted letters, he was shocked. I was shocked that he was shocked, because this is a management issue, and he should not have been shocked about what he was seeing.” That concerned me: there are issues about management and drafting that extend beyond correspondence and go into public documents. Now, as you came in last March, will you effectively be a “new broom” and ensure that we get some action on this issue? Chris Wormald: On the correspondence—this is before my time—there were big problems on correspondence handling, similar to the problems we still have on parliamentary questions. My predecessor, Sir David Bell, instituted a wide-ranging reform of how it was done, and the numbers have certainly improved. I think, from reports from Ministers, the quality has improved too. There certainly was a problem. Is it good enough yet? I would probably ask the Secretary of State: probably not in quality terms; getting there on times. Michael Gove: Not quality, no, but I have been very pleasantly surprised by some exceptionally well drafted letters recently. We are on an upward curve with correspondence; on PQs the situation is exactly as the Permanent Secretary characterised it.
Q96 Ian Mearns: Chairman, I am sorry, but this was raised early in the new Parliament, in 2010. Chris, when you came into the job your predecessor was aware that there was a problem. When I looked at the questions—because they have done away with the PIMS portal now, it is more difficult to look at the questions; it is more prosaic in the way that you actually access them—there were over 160 unanswered questions, some of which dated back to May last year. I am afraid to say, from my perspective, you have to manage the Department, but blaming the IT: that is about attention to details. Chris Wormald: I will be very clear. I did not want to make any excuse for the Department’s performance on PQs. It is not good enough. I am saying what I am saying by way of explanation as to what makes up it not being good enough, but I am not attempting to excuse the performance. One of the errors that I made in this was to intervene too late. The 31 situation when I arrived was that a set of measures had been taken, and between, I think, January and June 2012 what we were seeing was an improving percentage return rate each month. What it looked like at that point was that we were still very low, still nothing like good enough, but heading in the right direction, i.e. the medicine was working. In June, our IT system for PQs crashed completely, and our performance fell back to the numbers that have been quoted. We then spent some time attempting to fix that IT system. That proved to be impossible. In November I and my colleagues took the decision that we would need to procure an entirely new system. With hindsight, we should have done that much earlier. Chair: The other big issue, of course, is not only appalling response times, which you are fully acknowledging, which is welcome, but also the quality of those responses.
Q97 Ian Mearns: Chairman, this is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan had, I think, a dozen questions unanswered from summer last year. I understand the problems with the IT, but while you were sorting the IT problem you could have reinvented a paper system that answers PQs. Chris Wormald: That is effectively what we are now doing, and until our new IT system is in place we have a much more manually driven system. That is a big problem. It is very difficult to track where PQs are within the Department, and we do not have the level of management information that we would like, because that was all produced by the IT system. However, that is exactly what we will be doing. As I say, I am not attempting to excuse the situation; it is clearly something that we have taken action on and that we need to take significantly more action on.
Q98 Chair: Can I focus a bit on the quality issue here? I am told in years gone by PQs would not go anywhere near a special adviser, whereas now they are signed off politically. The implication is—if we do not have the evidence trail completely—effectively the Department comes up with the answer to the question, and then someone looks at it politically and takes it all out, in case it is embarrassing. PQs should be answered factually, correctly and fully, with absolutely nobody interfering because it might be embarrassing for the Government for the truth to come out. Is that your view, Secretary of State? Michael Gove: Absolutely.
Q99 Chair: I am struck again by Mr Loughton; he has put down questions, and doubtless as an ex-Minister he has some idea about what some of the answers are. He said the quality of the answers he got was unacceptable and it was quite clear that the Department knew what the answer was, and was choosing not to give it. Is that coming from the civil servants, Chris? Chris Wormald: I should say something about the role of advisers. I have now had the pleasure of working for three types of administration—Conservative only, Labour only, and now a coalition. In all of those, it has been a role of special advisers and other advisers to play a part in the PQ process. That is not unusual at all, and indeed as we look around Whitehall almost every Department has a role for special advisers. Given that a question asked by one politician of another politician is one of those things that sits on the boundary, that is one of the reasons why special advisers are part of our system. I do not think the involvement of advisers is in any way unusual.
Q100 Chair: Whether it is improper, inappropriate, and gets in the way of transparency and truth, which are values the Government espouses, is a different matter entirely, is it not? 32
Michael Gove: If it did, then it would be a problem. Most of the questions that are cleared by advisers are cleared by an individual who is not a political appointee, but an individual with specific expertise in schools policy. What that individual seeks to do is make sure that the answer is properly comprehensive, and that it does not omit information, whether by inadvertence or design, which the Member of Parliament asking that question deserves to have. Sometimes it is the case that a question will reflect policy that has changed. Sometimes it is the case that a form of words will be used that might set hares running, because it might suggest a change in policy that is not going to happen. It acts as a final editorial filter, the equivalent, essentially, of the final sub-editor making sure that everything is coherent before it goes to press. That is the principal role they play. There are many, many weaknesses with the approach the Department has taken to parliamentary questions; I do not think the role of advisers is one. I am happy, and we can deal with it through correspondence or any other means, if there are specific parliamentary questions where you feel that the way in which they have been answered is wrong, to seek to put the record straight in any of those areas.
Q101 Chair: You would give us your personal commitment, given the Department’s ruthless focus on ministerial priorities, to ensuring that if in doubt it should be a fuller answer rather than a thinner answer, and political convenience of suppressing a fact should not be allowed to get in the way of divulging it, if it is indeed a fact. Michael Gove: Absolutely. Let me mention briefly one case. There is one question asked recently where there was a request for information about visits. There was some concern on the part of my private office, and other private offices, that the information was correct. In the end that list was released. That list did not contain the full information required, because the process of trying to gather the information was problematic. Sometimes—and I remember this as a journalist—there is a balance between speed and accuracy. There is no issue on which the Permanent Secretary and I have spent more time in the last week than dealing with this matter, and the message has gone out across the Department to everyone involved in this process that we must improve speed, that there must be no loss of accuracy, and that we must not be afraid of the truth. Chair: Excellent.
Q102 Mr Ward: Mr Wormald, you are the Departmental Accounting Officer, I understand, and the accounts have been qualified. Chris Wormald: Yes. Mr Ward: No doubt you take that seriously. What measures are you taking to ensure that this would never happen again? Chris Wormald: As you say, it is something that every Accounting Officer takes very seriously indeed. Our accounts were qualified on two grounds. I would probably have to write to you with the specific accounting reasons. Mr Ward: We are aware of those. Chris Wormald: Yes. One, as you will then be aware, relates to a historic pensions issue that dates back to the early 1990s, which was not being recorded in the accounts as a contingent liability and should have been. That has now been dealt with. We did it with the agreement of the NAO that we would deal with that in the accounts this time. It is, I think, entirely a technical qualification and will not repeat. The other one, which I discussed with my colleague Peter Lauener in detail with the Public Accounts Committee, who as you would expect take a considerable interest in this, related to payments by academies to departing staff, where up until this year, and every year when that category of school has existed—since 1988—it had been believed that academies 33 had the same powers as in maintained schools to make the payments they felt necessary without referring to anyone. A much stricter reading of the Treasury’s Managing Public Money suggested that they should have been seeking Treasury approval for these payments. It had not happened, and that was the basis of the qualification. It is clearly not sensible for 2,000 to 2,500 schools to be applying to Her Majesty’s Treasury for these things when maintained schools, the other 20,000 schools, do not have to, so what we have done for the next year is, with the agreement of the Treasury, to change the guidance to schools in the new academies financial handbook, to make clear that up to a de minimis level, this is something academies can do for themselves, in exactly the same way as every maintained school. That problem should not recur either. The only thing I would add, however, is that the creation of the academies programme does create a big problem for how we do our accounts. We are attempting to consolidate, at the moment, 2,500 schools’ individual accounts into the Department’s overall accounts. That is an incredibly difficult thing to do; indeed, I believe it is the biggest single consolidation of accounts being done. It is further complicated by the fact that schools do their accounts on an academic year, which is of course very sensible for them, whereas we do ours on a financial year, and we have to try to reconcile two sets of accounts over different time periods. Those are all very difficult technical things, and we are working through, with the Treasury and the National Audit Office, how we will do that in a way that keeps Parliament rightly informed of how money is being used. Can I promise that there will never be a qualification? No, I cannot, because it is a very difficult challenge. Do I think we are on top of all these issues? Yes, I do.
Q103 Mr Ward: I have heard the argument that academies are required to do something that the other schools, non-academies, are not required to do. That seems a strange argument, that we are not increasing the responsibility on the other schools to make that knowledge. This is about payments beyond contracted levels. Chris Wormald: There was a specific Act of Parliament that gave maintained schools that power. Would Parliament be free to change that rule? Yes, it would. Would it be a good idea? That would be for MPs to decide.
Q104 Mr Ward: Would you not agree that there are other accountability measures that apply to maintained schools that would make that information known to the governors of the school? Chris Wormald: Sorry, I am not sure I understand the question. Mr Ward: We are not talking about making it equitable between academies and non-academies in terms of accountability, because there are other measures that non-academies have in terms of accountability to community governors, to parents governors, and so on, that would not necessarily apply to academies. Chris Wormald: In strict financial terms, academies are far more accountable. Every academy has to have an audited and published set of annual accounts. That is not true of maintained schools. Every academy has to have an accounting officer, ultimately responsible to me, and then to the PAC and Parliament. That is not true of maintained schools. In terms of transparency and the personal responsibility of the head teacher for value for money, one of the ways that academies have been designed is that they are considerably more financially accountable than other schools.
Q105 Mr Ward: To you? Chris Wormald: To Parliament. They receive money from Parliament, and via the accounting officer system, I delegate my responsibilities to the Education Funding Agency, 34 which delegates it to individual head teachers. There is a clear flow, for the first time in the schools system, from the Public Accounts Committee to individual schools. I do not think it is true to say that maintained schools are more accountable. There is an entirely separate argument about what the right—
Q106 Mr Ward: So in future, if an academy paid beyond contractual obligations and reported that to you, would you make that public? Chris Wormald: Academies publish in their accounts all those sorts of payments. I will send you a copy of our new financial handbook. What we have put in the financial handbook for academies, which they are required to follow as part of their funding agreement with the Department, is a clear set of rules about what the de minimis levels are, i.e. what they are allowed to authorise themselves, and what they have to refer to the Education Funding Agency because of the size or novelty of that payment.
Q107 Mr Ward: In the future, payments beyond contractual obligations would be shown in the accounts? Chris Wormald: I will write to you with specifically how they are done. My expert on this subject is not with me, but yes, that is my understanding. I will write to you with the specifics of how they are published. It was a question the PAC raised with us as well.
Q108 Chris Skidmore: In the annual accounts of the Department, there is a significant underspend in the education standards, curriculum and qualifications ledger of around £40 million, nearly 42%. That was due to there being fewer applications for academy converters, particularly in the last quarter of the financial year. It states in the accounts that conversion was well below the forecasted level. I wanted to ask when you saw that coming down the track, who made the forecast, and why it was so widely out. Chris Wormald: Again, I will write to you on the specifics of that, Chris, but overall, again as we discussed in quite some detail with the Public Accounts Committee, there was a forecasting challenge for the Department around the academies programme, because it was a demand-led programme. At one point we had significantly underestimated the number of schools likely to convert. Our estimates are now considerably better, but they are not yet perfect, so there was certainly a challenge with how you properly predict what is a demand-led programme. I will write to you about that specific number, because I do not know the explanation off the top of my head.
Q109 Chair: Gentlemen, thank you very much for giving evidence to us this morning. Secretary of State, have you shadowed a teacher yet? Michael Gove: No.
Chair: Oh dear. Q110 Alex Cunningham: When are you going to do so? Michael Gove: Tomorrow I am going to shadow an HMI on an Ofsted inspection. I cannot reveal which school.
Chair: You did specifically undertake to this Committee that you would shadow a teacher. You came back to this Committee and said that you were scheduling the shadowing of a teacher, and a week after the suggestion—not specific to you—by an often-quoted former Minister that civil servants and Ministers perhaps needed to get out more and meet people on the front line, it would be good to see you honour that commitment. Q111 Craig Whittaker: Could I invite you to Calderdale to come and do just that? 35
Michael Gove: You certainly can. There are two things I would say. Firstly, I try to pack as much as possible into every day that I spend out; I try to visit as many schools as possible. However, one day committed to one school I think will probably be a treat, so I will take an urgency pill and make sure that happens.
Chair: Excellent. It is good to finish on agreement. Thank you very much indeed for coming before us today.