Disability: Premature Deaths

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on securing this debate and on being such a tireless champion for the rights of people with learning disabilities to receive the same access to and quality of healthcare that the rest of the population takes for granted. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, on her excellent maiden speech. I am sure we will be hearing much more from her. I associate myself with the fulsome tributes paid, rightly and movingly, to our late colleague Lord Rix.

As we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, the 2013 Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities was set up to investigate the avoidable or premature deaths of people with learning disabilities through a series of retrospective reviews. I hope noble Lords will forgive me for repeating several statistics. I know that those in the Chamber tonight will be familiar with them, because they are passionately concerned with this issue, but the statistics bear repetition because, in a way, they say it all. We have already heard, from the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, the shocking statistics that men with learning disabilities die, on average, 13 years sooner than men in the general public and women with learning disabilities die 20 years sooner. Overall, 22% of those people were under 50 when they died. These are not just dry statistics, they are deeply shocking and nothing short of a national disgrace. Perhaps the most shocking statistic of all is the confidential inquiry’s finding that 37% of deaths were potentially avoidable if good quality healthcare had been provided.

As so often happens when you start to delve into statistics, the situation across the country is very variable. An independent review of deaths of people with a learning disability or mental health problem in contact with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust between 2011 and 2015, commissioned by NHS England, found a number of serious failings. These included the trust having no effective way of reporting, investigating and learning from deaths. It also found that, while 30% of deaths in adult mental health services were investigated, only 1% of those of people with learning disabilities were investigated. What are we to make of the statement made by the former chief executive of Southern Health? She said:

“We believe that Southern Health’s rate of investigations into deaths is in line with that of similar NHS organisations”.

I leave noble Lords to draw their own conclusions from that.

As we have already heard from the confidential inquiry, one of the 18 key recommendations was the establishment of a national learning disability mortality review. A key part of the review programme, commissioned again by NHS England, is to support local areas to review the deaths of people with learning disabilities and take forward the lessons learned to improve services. I am sure we all think that is what should happen. So far, so good. However, as has already been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, participation in the programme is not mandatory, so, unlike the child death review process, and, indeed, many other inquiries, agencies can choose whether or not to contribute to the review of deaths of people with learning disabilities. In the current financial climate, I guess it is understandable that many organisations choose to do only what they have to. In my view, giving this issue mandatory status would undoubtedly raise the profile of the work and show that the lives and deaths of people with learning disabilities are valued. That is the crux of what we are talking about tonight.

I know there are also serious concerns over the sustainability of local reviews of deaths of people with learning disabilities once the review programme ends. Therefore, in responding, will the Minister update the House on the review’s overall progress? Does she agree that if we really want to stop people with learning disabilities dying prematurely because they are not getting good-quality healthcare, the mortality review should have a mandatory rather than an optional status?

Finally, on a related issue of sustainability, the Public Health England Learning Disabilities Observatory, set up in the wake of the independent inquiry chaired by Sir Jonathan Michael, was established to keep watch over the health of people with learning disabilities and the healthcare they receive. It also provides data, information and advice to commissioners, families and people with learning disabilities about good practice and local performance in achieving improvement. Current funding for the observatory is guaranteed only until March 2017. Therefore, what assurances can the Minister give that funding will continue to be available for the vital work that the observatory is carrying out?

Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Scott on securing this vital debate and declare an interest as president of the National Children’s Bureau, vice-president of Relate and chair of the Making Every Adult Matter coalition of charities.

I share the view of other noble Lords that we are very fortunate in this country to have such an active and vibrant civil society, whose reach extends into nearly all aspects of British life. We are also fortunate to live in a very generous country—the sixth most generous in the world, we are told—and rightly pride ourselves on the public-spiritedness of our citizens. The examples of Britons rallying behind a good cause are too numerous to count, but the tremendous success in fundraising for the Teenage Cancer Trust by the late Stephen Sutton—a young man who died so tragically young but provided such inspiration—speaks volumes about that generosity of spirit.

My focus today is less on what the charitable and voluntary sectors do than on how they do it and, more specifically, what needs to be done to ensure that they have the means to carry on their vital roles. I particularly draw the attention of your Lordships’ House to the recommendations of the Growing Giving parliamentary inquiry, whose report, Creating an Age of Giving, was published two weeks ago. The inquiry benefited hugely from the excellent chairmanship of David Blunkett. Along with Andrew Percy MP, I had the privilege to co-chair the inquiry.

The inquiry was established following the publication of research commissioned by the Charities Aid Foundation showing that fewer households are participating in regular charitable giving—just 27% in 2010 compared to 32% in 1978. It also found some marked changes in the demographics of giving. The share of donations coming from the under-30s fell from 8% in 1980 to just 3% in 2010, while contributions made by the over-75s rose from 9% of all donations to 21% over the same period. The implications were clear: charities are relying on donations from an increasingly narrow and ageing segment of the population.

Of course, the recent recession has not helped. Young people in particular have seen their disposable income reduced, which makes it increasingly difficult for them to donate. However, that is not the full story. Crucially, the platforms that allow people to contribute have not kept pace with changes in daily life. Although digital donating is progressing, continual reform is needed to unleash the potential of digital giving. It is those and other structural factors that the report sets out to tackle.

The central conclusion of the Growing Giving report is that action must be taken to diversify our so-called civic core—the 9% of the population who are currently responsible for two-thirds of all donating and volunteering. For one thing, it is just unsustainable. Just a fortnight ago, newspapers were reporting on the National Trust asking too much of ageing volunteers, a concern that must apply more widely, given that one in three members of the civic core are over the age of 65.

It is obvious that people have different capacities to give time and money at different stages of their lives. The stand-out feature from our evidence sessions, which I want to underline, was the palpable desire of people of all ages to give more of both their time and their money. Our focus was on practical ways of creating a culture of giving, embedding charitable activity into everyday life, from school to retirement.

It is clear that a commitment to social action is still thriving among our young people. Nearly three-quarters of 16 to 24 year-olds report that they have volunteered in the previous year, and almost 80% of young people agreed that they should give up some of their time to help others—hence the recommendation of our inquiry that UCAS forms should provide a section in which university and college applicants can detail their charity work, volunteering and commitment to social action. The report also had a raft of recommendations on how schools, colleges, universities and charities could better work together.

We can all sympathise with the pressure that people come under when they are trying to balance work with family life, and it is understandable that volunteering and other charitable activities can be some way down the list of priorities of working people struggling to make ends meet and bring up a family. However, it became clear to us that employers are not yet creating enough opportunities for employees to connect with charities in the workplace.

One of the most straightforward ways of giving at work is via payroll, but 45% of PAYE employees are still unable to give through their pay. Moreover, many companies that offer payroll giving are failing to make their employees aware of that. In some cases, even the HR department was unable to say whether the company provided payroll giving. Clearly, employers have a key role in raising the availability and visibility of payroll giving, but the report also urges the Treasury to look into the incentives in place for employers to provide matched employee giving schemes, which tend to be highly valued by employees. I was personally struck by the fact that simply mentioning the matching of donations has been found to increase response rates by 71% and average donations by more than a half.

Finally, I turn to the older generation. For many, retirement provides an opportunity to give time to charitable causes. However, according to the Royal Voluntary Service, nearly one in five pensioners want to do voluntary work but have not found the opportunity to do so. It is for that reason that our report calls for post-careers advice for the newly retired, a service along the lines of the financial advice that the Government are already planning to provide to people once they reach state retirement age.

My overall point is that a thriving charitable and voluntary sector does not emerge spontaneously or sustain itself indefinitely. As I said at the start of my remarks, as a nation, we already have the social conscience and enthusiasm for giving; what is sometimes lacking is the practical mechanisms that allow us to do that on a regular basis, irrespective of our age or circumstances. The recommendations made in the report of the Growing Giving parliamentary inquiry are practical steps that have the potential to make a real difference. I therefore urge the Government to consider the report’s recommendations carefully and ask my noble friend in his summing up to indicate when we might expect to hear the Government’s response.

Social Mobility

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McFall, for securing this vital debate. From listening to today’s debate and to wider debates in the area, it is sometimes tempting to think that there is a singular causal connection between these two worrying economic trends—growing income inequality and slowing social mobility. I suspect that the truth is not so simple. There is a significant body of research suggesting that rising inequality and lower social mobility are both symptoms of the same condition. This condition, as we heard so eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—I do not pretend to have his academic background—is what is sometimes called the hollowing out of the labour market. Increasingly the UK labour market is characterised by very high-skill, high-wage jobs on the one hand and low-skill, low-wage jobs on the other. This is having a major impact on feelings of fairness and social cohesion. For the record, yes I think that the widening gap between the rich and the poor really matters.

In the light of this fact about our labour market, I would like to focus today on the role that education plays in creating greater equality of opportunity. This is not because I do not think that certain economic measures can improve income equality. In fact, I believe that things such as raising the minimum wage and encouraging employers to pay a living wage, which is something I support very strongly, could make a significant difference. I want to focus on education because, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, it is only through education that we can truly tackle the pernicious problem of intergenerational social mobility. As the Save the Children’s briefing for this debate highlighted, the top performing countries on international educational comparisons—Hong Kong, Canada, and Japan—all have a comparatively low correlation between the socioeconomic status of a child’s parents and his or her performance in school. Therefore, if we are going to improve our education system to meet the highest international standards, which we must, we have to meet the challenge of improving inter-generational mobility head on.

Through my work as the vice-chair of the All-Party Group on Social Mobility, I have come to the conclusion that any social mobility strategy needs to have the following primary goal: continuously evaluating and improving our education system to ensure that all children develop the skills necessary to succeed in a demanding and changing labour market. This means investing to improve the quality of education that underprivileged children receive throughout their lives. Given that privileged children continue to enjoy disproportionately high access to a good education it should be no surprise that a person’s ability to get on in today’s jobs market is strongly correlated with the resources enjoyed by his or her parents. This lack of intergenerational mobility will continue unless we make a commitment to ensure that all children have access to a high-quality education. I think that state sector education should be as good as, if not better than education in the independent sector. Importantly, this equality of access refers not only to education during the school years, but early years education, further education and higher education. I would say that further education is often neglected in these debates.

I shall refer briefly, as did the noble Lord, Lord McFall, to the 2010 OECD report on income inequality. That report made clear that one of the best ways for developed nations to improve their overall rate of social mobility is by lengthening at both ends the portion of a child’s life that he or she spends learning, regardless of his or her parents’ income level. Today, access to high-quality early years education as well as higher education is still disproportionately enjoyed by those on the higher end of the income spectrum. This must change if we are to see any improvement in the overall level of social mobility.

Lengthening the time that every person spends in education will ultimately help more people be more qualified for better jobs. Employers are increasingly looking for employees with technological literacy, advanced foreign language skills and other key qualifications for a career in the 21st century. At the same time, employers are looking for certain character and resilience traits. They want people who do not get discouraged when the going gets tough, who can bounce back, who can work in teams and build meaningful relationships. These soft skills—or non-cognitive skills—are crucial to social mobility and should feature far more prominently among our educational priorities, particularly in the early years. The evidence shows how important this is.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Eaton for mentioning that, next week, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility will publish a major manifesto on character and resilience, and I hope that there will be an opportunity to debate it.

Civil Society

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, on securing this timely debate when the combination of public spending cuts, decreasing charitable donations from the public, and sharply falling trends in corporate giving have pushed the sector into a fragile financial state. I declare an interest as president of the National Children’s Bureau, vice-president of the charity Relate and co-chair of the parliamentary inquiry Growing Giving.

As other noble Lords have already said, civil society does not limit itself to the voluntary and charitable sectors but runs across all aspects of public life. However, it differs in one key respect from other sectors, in that it has a mission statement that is focused on the benefit of society and the collective good. Today I will be focusing my remarks on charities and the voluntary sector, concentrating particularly on three issues: the overall funding situation, the reduction in individual donations and improving the impact that the corporate sector can have.

On funding, a recent Charities Aid Foundation report on UK giving found that there had been a 20% fall in individual public giving, leaving charities £1.7 billion worse off. According to NCVO, 43% of charities’ funding is provided by individual donations—the sole largest contributor—and this has left many charities struggling to find other sources of funding. Indeed, one in six charities said recently that it is likely that their charity may have to close in the next 12 months. Other charities, as we have already heard, are having to make heavy cuts to frontline services at precisely the time when the need for the crucial services they provide is going up, particularly for the most vulnerable. The second biggest funding contributor is the state, providing 37% of charities’ income. This is a dangerous balance at a time when, as we all know, public funding is in short supply and approximately 50% of local authorities are cutting charitable grants disproportionately to the rest of their public services.

So the problem is very clear, but what are the solutions? Many charities are adapting to a new climate, and I know from my own experience that many have been doing this through mergers and collaborations, developing new business models such as social enterprises, and seeking new sources of finance, including the newly emerging social investment market. It is also important to remember that the vast majority of charities—the figure is thought to be 75%—do not receive funding from statutory sources and so look to the general public for money. However, there is a clear need for the Government to assist charities in this major change, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what the Government are doing and what more they plan to do in this respect.

I turn to individual giving. The cross-party parliamentary inquiry, Growing Giving, chaired so ably by the right honourable David Blunkett and of which I am a co-chair, has highlighted a reliance from charities on support from older people and is looking into new innovative ways of getting younger people involved and excited about giving their time and money to charity, with a particular focus on the importance of charities providing volunteering opportunities and helping young people to get involved as youth ambassadors, young trustees and so on. The inquiry has highlighted the need for charities to be more involved in the current citizenship curriculum in secondary schools in order to highlight the issues that they tackle and to give students as much information as possible.

A key point is finding organisations that young people feel passionately about, but also trying to match that with charities that are in greatest need of support. Perhaps it is unsurprising that charities that affect children in particular were found to be the most popular among children, with some 35% of 9 to 11 year-olds selecting those as the type of charity they would most like to support. It is vital that charities can clearly demonstrate the impact of their work to children and the wider public, and I think that this is easier when their involvement is local. What are the Government doing to encourage schools to develop partnerships with local charities, to enhance not only the immediate prospects of those charities but also the long-term benefit of educating children from a young age about the impact that their money and time can make—something that can then take root and translate into more sustained giving in later life?

What is the role of the corporate sector? A recent report by the Directory of Social Change, referred to by my noble friend Lady Barker, found that companies are keen to encourage giving in the workplace by their employees, including by providing volunteering opportunities through company foundations and associations with charities, as other noble Lords have said. Simple initiatives such as Movember—the competitive growing of moustaches for donations to testicular cancer in November—have proved very popular with employees who enjoy showcasing their charitable efforts. The introduction of payroll giving, which takes place in a relatively small number of companies, has certainly helped in the giving of money to charity by providing an easy way for employees to give money every pay day. It has proved a popular scheme. However, it would seem many companies are missing a trick. A recent Charities Aid Foundation report found that one in three employees would be likely to give through payroll giving if they had a chance. That same report, however, showed that only one in 34 employees in Britain gives regularly through the payroll giving scheme, showing the huge margins by which this scheme could be expanded.

Like my noble friend Lady Barker, I was fascinated by the recent report showing the new data on corporate giving, particularly the fact that big private companies, in terms of reinvesting pre-tax profits, are nowhere near the 1% benchmark set, and that the top 420 companies are giving somewhere in the region of 0.3% in terms of cash, making up some 2% of charities’ income.

So what do I think the solution is? I think one solution would be to encourage companies to match the charitable giving of their employees. This has been suggested as one way of increasing the amount donated by companies. Matching schemes, while having the positive effect of the overall company giving, could also galvanise the workforce, giving employees the feeling that they have more power to make a difference if what they donate will be doubled. Perhaps the Government could look at ways of incentivising corporate giving, perhaps through the tax system.

It is important that we do not forget the roles of smaller businesses in the UK, which are also vital players in civil society, often at a more grass-roots level. The sponsoring of sports teams, giving to local charities and paying greater attention to the environment are all aspects that small businesses have worked on, and due to their greater geographic spread they have managed a much wider reach than some of the big corporations that are largely London-based. I conclude by also quoting from the World Economic Forum, which stated:

“Civil society should be the glue that binds public and private activity together in such a way as to strengthen the common good … based on the core values of trust, service and the collective good”.

Social Mobility

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to promote social mobility, and what assessment they have made of the impact of factors such as character and resilience on individuals’ prospects.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, social mobility is part of a fair and just society. The belief that children from poorer families should have the same opportunity to succeed in life as children from wealthy families is something that rightly unites politicians across the political spectrum. Yet social mobility in this country is at least flat-lining and, although statistics in this area are always open to interpretation, many commentators believe that it has gone into reverse.

To illustrate this point, the first politician I am going to quote—and this may surprise your Lordships—is Michael Gove, who said recently:

“More than any other developed nation, ours is a country in which your parentage dictates your progress … those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege. For those of us who believe in social justice this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible”.

For me, nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the fact that although just 7% of pupils are privately educated, they account for 59% of our Cabinet Ministers, 45% of our senior civil servants, 15 out of 17 of our Supreme Court judges and heads of Division, and 54% of our country’s leading journalists. While one in five children is on free school meals, this can be said of just one in 100 Oxbridge entrants.

Since what has been called the golden age of social mobility, starting in the post-war years until the 1970s, things have fallen into decline. As the recent report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission shows, our leading universities may be some of the best in the world but over the past 10 years they have become less, not more, socially inclusive and increasingly the preserve of the elite. I am sure that other noble Lords will want to comment on this point.

The gap between the rich and the poor does matter. The influence of parental income on the income of children in Britain is among the strongest in the OECD. Parental income has more than one and a half times the impact on male incomes in Britain compared with Canada, Sweden and Norway. We also know that income inequality in Australia and Canada is similar to the UK, but they have significantly higher levels of social mobility, on a par with Sweden and Norway.

So what is going wrong? It is to the credit of this coalition Government that they have made social mobility a central plank of their social policy, and I welcome the efforts already made to tackle the barriers of disadvantage. I strongly welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement of the social mobility business compact to help ensure that all young people have fair access to job opportunities; the recent increase to the pupil premium budget to provide extra support to the most disadvantaged children; the extended access to early years education for disadvantaged two year-olds; and the additional help to get young unemployed people back into work or learning through the youth contract.

What more could and should be done? The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility, of which I am vice-chair, has sought to shine a spotlight on some critical areas of debate that are all too often overlooked. The APPG report, 7 Key Truths about Social Mobility, set out the key issues on which policy should focus, looking at the unequal opportunities that start in the earliest years of life and too often persist and widen in later life. These truths cover the importance of the early years in the home; the critical importance of education, including both the quality of teaching and extracurricular activities; the pivotal role of access to universities, including part-time study; and the need for other pathways to mobility, such as apprenticeships.

The final truth, which I want to focus on, is that of character and resilience, something the All-Party Parliamentary Group saw as the missing link in the chain. Character and resilience are somewhat amorphous terms, which some might choose to dismiss as fluffy or cosmetic soft skills. In fact, the very term “soft skills” strikes me as something of a misnomer. Far from being fluffy, developing character and resilience is about developing the fundamental drive, tenacity and perseverance needed to make the most of opportunities and to succeed in life, whatever the obstacles. It is about self-esteem, self-discipline, aspiration and expectation. In everyday language, it is about believing you can achieve, understanding the relationship between effort and reward, sticking with the task at hand and bouncing back from the knocks that life inevitably involves.

Recent survey evidence from the Prince’s Trust tells us that young people from affluent backgrounds are more likely to be told by their family that they can achieve anything, and that one in four young people from poorer backgrounds felt that people like them do not succeed in life; if they have, for example, failed an exam or been turned down for a job, they are more likely to feel that they have already failed. There is also a growing body of evidence showing the link between developing the social and emotional skills and doing well academically and in the workplace. Research by the IPPR indicates that personal and social skills have become 33 times more important in determining life chances, while soft skills have become 10 times more important in determining future incomes in a single generation. Paul Tough’s recent book, How Children Succeed, also illustrates the ways in which character skills contribute to cognitive ability along with the American Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman, who found that character traits are just as predictive of academic or job success as more traditional cognitive skills and, indeed, that the two are very much linked.

The really good news from all this research is the evidence that these character or personality traits are not innate. They can be taught and developed through life. Heckman has shown that investing early in these skills, particularly with disadvantaged children, generates strong economic returns. Looking exclusively at earning gains, returns to cash invested can be seen to be as high as 15% to 17%. These so-called “soft skills” can lead to hard results.

In the light of this evidence, the All-Party Parliamentary Group, with generous support from the Open University, hosted a character and resilience summit earlier this year. Whether hearing from Tony Little, the headmaster of Eton, on how he teaches his pupils about dealing with failure, or Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company, about working with some of the most deeply traumatised children in the country to rebuild their basic self-worth and faith in life, the summit confirmed to me that, for those who care about social justice, developing character and resilience is essential. As Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, who was present on the day, emphasised, it is not ability that is unevenly distributed, it is opportunity. In order to overcome this disparity, what he describes as the “Berlin Wall” between state and private sector schools needs to be broken down.

We heard about some great work going on in state schools, too, with examples of volunteering in the local community, outdoor activities which put pupils outside their comfort zone to develop their resilience and a really wide range of imaginative extracurricular activities. Indeed, we heard schools saying that developing such traits is now their core business and that, for employers, these less tangible skills of sticking at it, not giving up, empathy and teamwork are precisely what they are looking for in potential recruits. Overall, the message that we heard from academics, head teachers, employers and charity leaders alike is that, whatever qualifications you might have, where you are on the character scale will have a big impact on what you achieve in life.

Successive Governments’ efforts to narrow the gaps between the rich and the poor have largely focused on exam results. However, as the stark trends I outlined earlier show, just more of the same will not be enough. It is necessary, but it is not sufficient. That is why I call on the Government today to take more account of this growing evidence surrounding the role of character and resilience in improving social mobility and to start putting it into practice.

I have a few ideas to offer. More could be done in early years, working with health visitors and children’s centres, linked to the expansion of free early years education. To break down that so-called “Berlin Wall” between the state and independent sector schools, practical incentives are needed to encourage sharing of approaches and good practice. I would like to see schools being able to allocate greater space in the state curriculum for volunteering, sports, drama and music to help to bridge the gap, as well as using PSHE and citizenship to the full. I would particularly like to see the pupil premium being used directly to develop character and resilience and the identification and spread of good practice. Teacher training should include models for effective teaching of character and resilience. Because we all know what really drives behaviour in schools, I would like to see the Ofsted framework developed to include the importance of character and resilience to learning outcomes, and that reports and inspections say how effectively this is being addressed. These are just ideas, but I would welcome an assurance from the Minister that these and other ideas will be taken seriously as policy is developed.

I conclude by asking why this matters so much when in economic terms the case is clear. Studies suggest that reaching international benchmarks on social mobility could be worth around £150 billion a year in the UK, or the equivalent of a one-off increase in GDP of 4%. However, socially and morally the case is overwhelming. Someone who has overcome disadvantage, persevered in the face of adversity, and shown real strength of character is surely the one who deserves the opportunity to succeed and share in the rewards that society has to offer. Surely that is what a just society is all about.

Accountability of Civil Servants: Constitution Committee Report

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I welcome today’s debate on this very important issue, and start by paying tribute to the work led by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and the members of the Constitution Committee for their excellent job. The committee’s strong endorsement of the basic principles of accountability in our parliamentary system and the convention of ministerial responsibility is very much to be welcomed.

My reason for speaking in this debate is to offer the perspective of someone who was a career civil servant for 19 years in six departments. You could say that it is the viewpoint of someone at the other end of the telescope from Ministers and Parliament. I should start by saying that I firmly believe in the principles that underpin an impartial British Civil Service. These principles go back to the Northcote-Trevelyan report and still hold firm today. I wish to continue to see a Civil Service that is appointed on merit and that people who advance in it do so on the basis of merit. I feel sure that the whole House would wish to see a Civil Service that is impartial, objective and honest, and that acts at all time with integrity. These are the watchwords of the modern Civil Service.

None of the above should prevent any of the welcome changes of recent years in the Civil Service, nor should they prevent it learning from elsewhere, be it from the private sector or elsewhere in international public administration. Indeed, I read with interest what is happening in New Zealand to sharpen accountability for senior civil servants and in Australia where there is a very different system for appointing and dismissing their equivalent of Permanent Secretaries. A greater level of exchange with other sectors, a greater level of professionalism in the Civil Service, particularly in relation to procurement and project management, and a greater awareness of the challenges of modern information systems and the rise of the 24/7 world of communications will all help to enhance the effectiveness of our modern Civil Service.

Indeed, the Civil Service reform plan has already made a start in setting out the type of changes needed to deliver a 21st century Civil Service. I welcome the commitment in that document, for example, to a greater focus on learning and development in the Civil Service, from talent spotting and developing a fast stream right up to addressing the training needs of Permanent Secretaries.

That said, I am concerned that some of the values of the Civil Service are being undermined by some of the current developments in parts of the Civil Service reform programme. I share the concerns that have already been voiced in this debate about the negative way in which the Civil Service is being portrayed by some Ministers, particularly when there is no right of reply and, as other noble Lords have said, at the same time as major cuts in staffing levels are being made throughout the Civil Service, with the impact that that is having on morale.

I have four key points to make on the potential risks of undermining the values that I have set out, values which I believe are fundamental to our democracy. First, a worrying trend is developing—we have heard about it already in this debate—of too much political interference in the appointment of Permanent Secretaries. There has been much discussion recently in the media and elsewhere about this issue, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has already spoken most eloquently on this matter. In addition, the First Civil Service Commissioner has made very clear in his interventions that there is, in any case, always ample opportunity for a Secretary of State to make his or her views clear on the quality of the candidates being considered as Permanent Secretaries.

In a letter to the Times last year, Sir David Normington warned of the dangers of a more politicised appointments process, particularly if a civil servant becomes viewed as the personal appointment of a particular Minister rather than someone able and ready to work for a new Minister or a new Government. We all know how quickly the reshuffle merry-go-round takes place.

In my view, Ministers should not be able to overrule the decision of the Civil Service Commission. Some recent examples, such as the overturning of the commission’s recommendation for the post of Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, run the risk of undermining the principle of fair and open competition based on merit. I make no criticism whatever of the candidate eventually chosen in that department who, I know, is a highly regarded civil servant. However, the original candidate selected, and agreed by the Secretary of State, was, as I understand it and as was reported, subsequently overruled by Downing Street. If that was the case, then it was wrong.

Secondly, the proposal as part of the reform plan to contract out core policy functions and test the market in certain circumstances has real flaws and has not been properly thought through. If you are seeking impartial policy advice delivered to Ministers without fear or favour; if you are seeking people who can speak truth unto power it is best if those people do not have a financial interest in the advice they give. This is especially important when looking at long-term policy implementation, rightly one of the concerns of the Constitution Committee.

Of course Ministers will wish to have, and should have, access to a wide a range of advice from think tanks, other pressure groups, academics, management consultants with specific expertise and others. Of course, the Civil Service must not claim a monopoly of advice; it does not have it. However, there is always the risk that a private sector organisation, a think tank or any other organisation providing advice under contract to a Minister may be tempted to provide the advice that they think the Minister wishes to hear rather than what the Minister ought to hear, particularly if a future contract for that policy advice is in the offing. It is the role of senior civil servants to weigh up those at times conflicting opinions and give fair and impartial balanced advice to Ministers without any axe to grind or any personal or financial benefit to accrue to them or their department. I do not think there has been nearly enough attention or debate on this development and its serious implications for Civil Service accountability.

Thirdly, I wish to nail the accusation that the Civil Service is inherently risk-averse and that somehow this is an inbuilt weakness of the system and the way it is held accountable. Under successive Governments, but particularly recently, as we have already heard in today’s debate, the cry has gone up from Ministers that civil servants need to be more entrepreneurial and more willing to take measured risks. I wish to challenge that accusation. The work of the Civil Service is not capable of such a precise parallel with the role of the private sector. In the latter case, entrepreneurs take risks with other people’s money or with private money in the hope that they will generate more money and profits. Sometime they do and sometime they do not. On occasions, the businesses involved will lose money if the risk does not come off and the investors have to carry that loss.

In the public sector, and particularly in the Civil Service, it is not private money that is being invested. Rather, the Government are investing taxpayers’ money in public services. Civil servants, and at the top of each department accounting officers, have a constitutional duty, as the report of the Constitution Committee makes clear, to ensure due propriety in the spending of that money. Permanent Secretaries and heads of department are responsible to Parliament for the proper stewardship of expenditure. The Public Accounts Committee exists precisely for the purpose of scrutinising and challenging accounting officers on their management of public money. It would simply not be acceptable for civil servants to say, “I took a risk with public money and that risk didn’t come off. I’m sorry”. As a society, we rightly expect more of public money and public servants. Of course, civil servants must understand risk and be explicit in their advice to Ministers on the risks involved in pursuing particular policies. The idea, though, that civil servants across the board should be less risk-averse—the flipside of that is, as a result, more entrepreneurial—does not stand up to detailed scrutiny.

Finally, I think we need to look again at the relationship between Ministers and civil servants—something that I fear is currently at something of a low ebb, with a real impact on morale. We also need to look at the three-way relationship between Ministers, the permanent Civil Service and special advisers, and the benefits that that can bring to the system. The best special advisers—and I have worked constructively with many in the past—add value and protect that vital frontier between politics and the non-party political role of an impartial civil servant. I am very pleased that the committee reaffirmed the clear principle that Ministers are responsible for the actions of their special advisers.

The Minister-civil servant relationship needs to be strong and constructive, recognising the mutually beneficial role that each can play. In my experience—and in present company, I am going to try to put this as delicately as I possibly can—there are on occasion Ministers who are sometimes too quick to blame their civil servants when they would do well, initially perhaps, to consider their own effectiveness in particular circumstances. The best Ministers, and the ones who command the most respect from their departments, regardless of party, are those who set out a strong strategic vision, take decisions quickly, explain those decisions, recognise where the boundaries lie between their respective roles and, when things go wrong, accept personal responsibility, even when they have not been personally involved in the decision. In that sense, the spirit of Crichel Down lives on today, and that is why I agree with the committee’s conclusion on the convention on ministerial responsibility.

This is an important report and I very much welcomed the chance to take part in this debate today. I believe strongly in the values of the modern British Civil Service and, at the same time, support the need for it to change in order to preserve and support those values I have described.

I conclude with a quote from another report:

“the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of”,

a Civil Service,

“directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to advise, assist and, to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them”.

I agree. These are not my words but those of Northcote-Trevelyan back in 1854. They are as true today as they were then.

Public Services

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, on securing this very timely debate and start by declaring my interest as president of the National Children’s Bureau and vice-president of the charity Relate. I want to focus briefly on the importance of the voluntary sector in delivering vital services to vulnerable children and young people, as well as to older people, and to stress the importance of collaboration between sectors.

The children’s voluntary sector represents a quarter of the voluntary sector—34,000 organisations, the vast majority of which are small, local and with a low budget. It currently relies more on public funding than the voluntary sector overall, so is particularly vulnerable to austerity. Research so far suggests that it is also struggling to access new funding streams such as private sector funding and the newly emerging social investment market. In 2012, the NCB and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations estimated that children’s charities face cuts nearing £405 million between 2010-11 and 2015-16.

Despite austerity and despite these cutbacks, the children’s voluntary sector is doing invaluable work to identify and address social inequalities that, if unaddressed, can last a lifetime. I will give one quick example, of a project called Making it REAL—Raising Early Achievement in Literacy. It is a great project, with the NCB working in collaboration with eight children’s centres. The programme so far has touched nearly 500 carers, parents and grandparents, nearly 400 child participants and nearly 150 younger siblings through home visits and events in Sheffield and Oldham. Parents have improved their knowledge and confidence to support their children’s learning and children have progressed to the stage where nearly 90% can name a favourite book, compared to less than a quarter at the start, and more than 70% enjoy books most days compared to a mere 13% at the outset. I say that to try to bring this debate to life.

There are many other examples that I would love to give noble Lords but I have not got the time to show how the voluntary sector can really add value to the way the statutory sector delivers its statutory services. There are so many excellent examples of co-operation, and a very good report—which I commend to the House—called the Ripple Effect has set out some very good case studies in this area.

The services delivered range from cradle to grave. I have talked about children’s services but will very briefly talk about the work of the WRVS, which has 43,000 volunteers giving practical and emotional support to 100,000 older people monthly. It co-ordinates public services, and the home from hospital services provide support to older people after hospital discharge. By carrying out very simple tasks, shopping or making sure the right foods are available, they make a huge contribution to older people’s reablement. As my noble friend Lady Barker pointed, out the NHS is spared hospital costs to a very large degree. It is a real win-win.

This debate allows us an opportunity to ponder the way forward. The voluntary sector offers great potential for help in joining up services and making the best use of limited funds. I know that the children and families voluntary sector is eager to work with the Government to create a strategy which will enable it to become more sustainable and resilient during these difficult times. It will need a two-pronged approach. The voluntary sector needs to do all that it can to manage reduced resources and cut costs, including pursuing different business models and mergers, investing in its voluntary workforce and reinvigorating its fundraising strategies in all the ways that it can.

The Government have a clear role in engaging with the sector to develop the sort of transformation strategy that will help small and local charities to become much more resilient. This is likely to work better if it brings together representatives of the voluntary sector, service commissioners and potential investors. Will the Government be prepared to enter into these discussions with the sector to try to develop this sort of transformation strategy?

Civil Service: Training and Development

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of reductions in Civil Service numbers and training budgets, and the closure of the National School of Government, what steps they are taking to ensure that civil servants receive the necessary training and development to provide high-quality policy advice to Ministers.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the House will be aware, we published the Civil Service reform plan on 19 June, which set out recommendations on training and development, among other proposals. Civil Service Learning is now in place to provide greater choice, flexibility, quality and value for money. It ensures that the current and future skills requirements of civil servants are met. Civil servants can access more than 130 e-learning resources, 75 classroom-based courses and 4,000 learning resources through the Civil Service Learning website. The new policy curriculum is also available through Civil Service Learning. It provides a comprehensive range of policy training and was developed in consultation with people currently working on policy and with subject matter experts in specific policy areas.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. Given that these reforms are coming at a time when the Civil Service is reducing in size by some 23%, thereby putting a premium on sharper and more agile policy advice, which as the reform plan itself says should be clearly based on “robust evidence”, will the Minister explain what evidence exists to show that opening up the policy development process to external competition, including from the private sector, will lead to higher quality, more cost-effective and, above all, impartial policy advice?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not entirely the case that all Civil Service training was provided by the public sector before this. The evidence is to be found in particular in the rather critical NAO report of last year. Among other things, it quotes the Civil Service people survey of 2010, which said that,

“only 48 per cent of civil servants said that the learning and development they had received in the last 12 months had helped them to be better at their job”.

A lot in the NAO report was critical of the inefficient and divided provision of training, particularly between different departments. It discovered among other things that the cost of comparable courses in different departments varied by a factor of four.

The Big Society

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In the limited time available I shall focus my remarks, first, on why the reaction to the big society by some in the voluntary sector has been rather lukewarm; and, secondly, to call on the Government to show a more sophisticated understanding about the realities of running a charity, big or small, in modern day Britain, particularly the costs associated with volunteering, as has already been mentioned.

In common with many others in the sector, reaction from some of my own colleagues in Relate, where I have a declared interest as chief executive, has often been to say, “Well, we have been part of the big society since 1938, so what is really new here?”. Like so many other charities, volunteering, be it as a fully trained counsellor, a volunteer receptionist or a local trustee, has underpinned much of what we do.

When I knew that I would be speaking in this debate I conducted a quick straw poll of some charity chief executive colleagues in the children and families sector to get their views on what both encourages and hinders volunteering. Many of these charities employ co-ordinators to recruit and train volunteers to ensure that they are properly equipped to work with vulnerable families and children. A number of key points emerged but I shall mention only one today. It costs money to use volunteers effectively; the more volunteers there are, the more supervision and training is required to ensure good and safe outcomes for beneficiaries. A ratio of one paid worker to 10 or 15 volunteers would be quite typical. Other costs include insurance, producing materials, computers and meeting health and safety regulations.

Expenses need to be reimbursed if volunteering is to be socially inclusive. If this is not recognised, we are in danger of turning the clock back to the 1950s when virtually all volunteers were middle-aged, middle-class women not participating in paid employment. That is not in any way to denigrate their enormous contribution; it is simply to say that in this year we need people who are prepared to volunteer from all walks of life if the services provided by charities are to look and feel representative of the communities they serve.