UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 521-i HOUSE OF COMMONS ORAL EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEE THE WORK OF THE CABINET OFFICE TUESDAY 9 JULY 2013 RICHARD HEATON CB Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 141 USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others. 2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings. 3. Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant. 4. Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee. 1 Oral Evidence Taken before the Public Administration Committee on Tuesday 9 July 2013 Members present: Mr Bernard Jenkin (Chair) Charlie Elphicke Robert Halfon Kelvin Hopkins Greg Mulholland Lindsay Roy ________________ Examination of Witness Witness: Richard Heaton CB, Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office, gave evidence. Q1 Chair: Permanent Secretary, may I welcome you to your first evidence session in front of the Public Administration Select Committee? Please could you identify yourself for the record? Richard Heaton: Thank you, Mr Jenkin. I am Richard Heaton; I am First Parliamentary Counsel and Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office. Q2 Chair: Thank you for joining us today. Your role is a somewhat complicated one because you are still in charge of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel; you are still in charge of all the drafting of legislation, which certainly has an overlap with the central role of policy co-ordination within the Cabinet Office. You also run a rather diverse group of activities in the Cabinet Office. You are therefore undertaking a dual part-time role. Do you think the Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office as a role lends itself to a part-time role? How are you finding it? Richard Heaton: I am lucky to have not just one, but two of the best jobs in Whitehall. I had four or five months as just First Parliamentary Counsel, which is brigaded as part of the Cabinet Office, so I was already part of the Cabinet Office collective leadership. There was already a certain degree of overlap. The two jobs complement each other pretty well. I do them roughly 50-50 in terms of my time. They are both about serving the whole of Government; they are both about making things work better; they are both about innovation; in terms of collective leadership, they are part of the same team. Cabinet Office getting by on half a Permanent Secretary seems to be pretty economical, but I hope it works okay. Q3 Chair: How do you divide your time between the two roles? Richard Heaton: It is roughly 50-50. There was a period when I started as Permanent Secretary when it was much more on the Cabinet Office side. Then, when I launched Good Law in March/April this year, it was more on the Parliamentary Counsel side, so it evens out. Roughly speaking, I go through the diary at the beginning of each week and it works out as roughly 50-50. It ebbs and flows, but it is roughly half and half. 2 Q4 Chair: You were full-time First Parliamentary Counsel and all your predecessors were full-time Parliamentary Counsel. How is OPC operating now that you are part time? Richard Heaton: I have to make a confession: I am not a career law drafter and all my predecessors were. That is the key to it, as far as my time is concerned. My predecessors would spend a good half or two thirds of their time drafting, and I am not a career drafter, so I do not draft Bills. My role is as leader of the Office, helping to run the Office, providing direction and placing our work in the context of Good Law, but not drafting. That is why I found it possible to free up some of my time to do the Perm Sec job. That is the big difference between me and my predecessors. Q5 Chair: The Institute for Government described part-time leadership as “the plat du jour in Whitehall”. What impact do you think these part-time roles are having at the senior levels of the Civil Service, given that the Head of the Civil Service is part time? Richard Heaton: When Gus O’Donnell was Cabinet Secretary, he was also Head of the Civil Service and he was Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office. Gus was a great leader of the Civil Service, but the Cabinet Office was not the big organisation it is now. It is justifiable that we have gone from being one-third of Gus’s time to half of my time. It is about time management and working out the things I can get stuck into to make a difference and add value. In those areas where I am present, either as Parliamentary Counsel or as Cabinet Secretary, I would hope that is a full-time presence; that I am properly briefed, know what I am talking about and that I can really make a difference and change things. If I were flitting in and out of 100 different meetings with my mind elsewhere, it would be pretty hopeless. I try to organise my life so it is not like that; I try and choose the areas where I can get stuck in as Perm Sec. Q6 Chair: Whom do you report to? Richard Heaton: I report to Sir Jeremy Heywood. I have regular meetings with Sir Bob Kerslake and Sir Jeremy Heywood. Technically, as First Parliamentary Counsel, I report to Sir Jeremy; and technically, as Head of the Cabinet Office, I report to Bob. Effectively though, I report jointly to both the Head of the Civil Service and the Cabinet Secretary. Q7 Chair: In practice you report to Jeremy Heywood. Richard Heaton: Yes, I did my end-of-year with him, so that must be the case. Q8 Lindsay Roy: You say that part of your function is to make things better. What prompted the move of responsibility for cross-Government youth policy from Education to the Cabinet Office? Richard Heaton: First of all, it is not responsibility for youth employment and apprenticeships; it is quite a small co-ordination role looking after the sector. As to what prompted it, we were already involved in the National Citizen Service so we had a pretty close understanding of the youth sector and organisations that work with the youth sector, in the voluntary sector and local authorities, because they are both involved in NCS. We work really closely with the voluntary sector generally because we are the Government Department responsible. We thought we knew the area pretty well, and we thought we could make a difference, in what was quite a traditional policy area, using our innovative techniques; we could do things differently; we could build out from the NCS; we could do things economically, imaginatively and with a bit of energy. We were up for it and the transfer came our way. 3 Q9 Lindsay Roy: What are you doing differently? Richard Heaton: We start this week, so we have not got motoring yet. We hope to be doing it by building on our knowledge of the sector. We will not be employing dozens and dozens of people; we will not be doing great big, industrial-scale projects. We will be asking the sector what small, innovative, value-added things Government can do with the theme of innovation and creativity, and building out through the insight we have from NCS. Q10 Lindsay Roy: NCS claims the programme will provide a chance to learn new skills. What are they and why can they not be delivered through schools? Richard Heaton: NCS is about some quite soft skills like leadership, self-confidence, teamwork, trusting peers, getting stuck in and helping. It is not classic curriculum stuff. The feel of NCS is really rather special. I have seen it on the ground a bit and it is quite special. It has this amazing social mix, with 16 and 17 year olds going away from home very often for the first time, spending two weeks on a residential activity, working in teams to do things, get things done, working in socially mixed teams. You get kids from all sorts of schools and backgrounds, geographically mixed. It is not classic school activity and the feedback you get from NCS kids at the end of a session is that they have learned to talk in public for the first time, to work in a team and to trust each other with a Jacob’s ladder. It is quite a breakthrough experience for the children who go on it. It is not school activity. Q11 Lindsay Roy: So it is a different context, but you expect the same skills to be reinforced. Developing confidence, trust and teamwork, for example, are all delivered in schools as well. Richard Heaton: I very much hope they would be delivered in schools, but NCS appears to add something a bit different. Q12 Lindsay Roy: What is the added value? Richard Heaton: The added value is spending a prolonged period of time away with your age group out of the school environment, taking initiative and being asked to take on responsibility for things in partnership with the kids you are in a group with.