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EVIDENCE TO  THE RICHARD COMMISSION

by ENID ROWLANDS

Chair of the National Council for Education & Training in Wales

28 March 2003
1) In giving evidence I ought first to record that my husband Huw Vaughan Thomas is a member of your Commission. He will not be present the day I give evidence, in the same way as he was not present when the Minister for Education & Lifelong Learning and the Chair of the relevant Assembly Subject Committee gave evidence, so as to avoid any implication that he is somehow influencing the evidence I am presenting. Secondly, I ought also to add that these are my personal observations. They do not represent an official viewpoint from the National Council for Education & Training in Wales.
2) I see I have been billed as the Chair of ELWa. That is an incorrect description. ELWa has existed only as an umbrella marketing name for the two Councils – Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, which Roger Williams chairs, and my own Council – the National Council for Education & Training in Wales. Since even National Assembly Members get our titles wrong it is perhaps not surprising that the confusion of identities has become widespread. I want to return to this point later in my closing remarks.
3) I have looked at your terms of reference and feel it would be useful if I concentrated my remarks on four aspects:
a) The role of an ASPB under the National Assembly;
b) Accountability issues;
c) The National Assembly’s Scrutiny function;
d) Difficulties experienced due to deficiencies in legislation.
4) Whilst my observations concern my current role, they also reflect my previous experience as Chair of the North Wales Health Authority.

(a) The role of an ASPB under the National Assembly
5) Quangos have traditionally been established where Ministers wish to see detailed operational decisions made separately from policy decisions. This does not of course prevent Ministers from becoming directly involved in successful initiatives launched by their Quangos, or becoming involved in directing the more detailed development of new policy developments.
6) CCETs are an interesting example of the latter. Their formal status is a voluntary coming together of providers of learning opportunities in an area (usually equating with local authority areas). There is a close involvement between their work and that of the National Council, but no formal accountability. The National Council has undertaken a detailed review of CCETs on behalf of the Minister of Education and Lifelong Learning, and she has sought to help clarify the role of CCETs on a number of occasions, an initiative which the National Council has welcomed, but they remain voluntary associations.
7) The question that I feel needs examining is whether there is sufficient headroom under the National Assembly for the ASPBs which currently exist to operate in an arms-length relationship. Our own experience is that in a wide range of areas the Welsh Assembly Government Civil Service feel required to consider and comment upon the decisions made by the National Council or our Executive. The problem with this is that it can lead to weeks or months of delay in implementation, with decisions needing to be revisited. But worse than this is that it confuses accountability and responsibility. If one feels that one’s work is going to be checked/ revisited by someone else then it no longer feels like one’s decision and there is a danger that this can remove a sense of responsibility for the original proposal. When something does go wrong, the reaction is usually to call more decisions in for revisiting – compounding the problem.
8) Many of our projects, in some cases for sums as low as £50,000, require Assembly Government approval. This has on occasions led to substantial delays followed by pressure on the National Council to deliver the projects to deliver the projects in a much-reduced timescale or risk budget underspends. The National Council is restricted to carrying over between financial years just 2% of its grant in aid, and then only in respect of firm commitments which have to be met before the first draw down of grant in the new financial year. It is an interesting comparison to look at the financial regime under which our parallel organisation in England operates. The Learning and Skills Council has a three year rolling budget. It can carry forward underspends/overspends from one year to another reflecting the fact that setting up and operating training and education measures cannot be operated with the precision demanded of fixed in-year budget allocations.
9) As National Council we are prohibited from talking to Civil Servants or other government bodies outside Wales without prior approval of the Welsh Assembly Government Civil Service, or being accompanied. Meetings can as a result often take weeks to arrange and in the nearly three years I have been in post I have met officials at the DfES only once, despite there being many areas of common interest between our operations and those in England, as we still share common legislation.
10) In these circumstances I do understand the argument that it would be more sensible for the National Council to become a traditional main stream Department under the Welsh Assembly Government. Such a step would certainly reflect the fact that our activities are highly political, are of key Ministerial interest, and account for a significant slice of National Assembly expenditure.

(b) Accountability Issues
11) I see from your evidence session with the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning that you are interested as to the extent to which the National Assembly has increased the accountability of Quangos. The Minister in her reply emphasised the crucial nature of the annual remit letter which in the case of the National Council is backed up by quarterly monitoring meetings involving the Minister and myself.
12) This is indeed the case, and the monitoring arrangements are working well. However there are at times difficulties in establishing clear connections between the remit letter setting out the Minister’s expectations of the National Council, and the budgets which are made available at an earlier stage by the Welsh Assembly Government for programme and running costs. There is usually an element of negotiation between the National Council and the Welsh Assembly Civil Service over the contents of the remit letter and also any in year changes in priorities. We do our best to juggle priorities in a politically acceptable manner, and are then advised by the Civil Servants if that is acceptable or not. Nevertheless the effect is to place the National Council in the firing line from various groups who have not received the funding they anticipated, who in turn then proceed to lobby Ministers and AMs.
13) I think there is a need for greater transparency and consistency in the current arrangements as regards the relationship between the National Council’s Corporate Plan, Operational Plan, Remit letter and Budget allocation. The timing of the issue of these various documents often mitigates against there being a sensible or logical flow of decision making. Indeed one can find that the sums of money available to us are reduced yet further as a result of Ministerial initiatives announced which we are required to meet from within our original budget.
14) Part of the confusion is the relationship that exists in any Government between the Sponsor Department and the Finance Department. A good example here is the Welsh Assembly Government’s commitment to Equal Pay. We responded as a National Council to the request to implement equal pay after an internal exercise which our Sponsor Department reviewed and requested changes. This then went to the Welsh Assembly Government’s Finance Department who commissioned their own separate review of our proposals. When, after a period of several months, we eventually received approval, we were given insufficient running costs to pay for its implementation. Over a year later, and following extensive negotiations with the Assembly Government, we have now received confirmation that we will have 90% of the costs involved in future years.
15) At one level our line of accountability might be thought to be a clear cut. However the existence of National Assembly Subject Committees on which Ministers sit as full members can create some ambiguity. Initiatives can at times be presented as if they are owned jointly by the Minister and the Committee, yet I do not see the National Council as accountable to the National Assembly Committee for Education & Lifelong Learning. Rather we are accountable to the Minister for the discharge of the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy as expressed in our remit letter. The National Assembly Committee may and indeed should scrutinise our actions and hold us to account, but that accountability should be within the context of our remit letter and available budget, not in terms of policies which might be desired by individual Committee Members which the Welsh Assembly Government has not adopted.

(c) The National Assembly Scrutiny function
16) I have read the evidence presented to you by Gareth Jones AM as Chair of the National Assemble Education & Lifelong Learning Committee, and I note that he considers that the primary focus of the Subject Committee thus far has been policy formulation. He also refers to a desire to become involved in the drawing up of Remit letters, which for the reasons I have outlined above I think will simply serve to make lines of accountability more confused. I agree with his view that one of the most important roles that the Subject Committee has to discharge is that of scrutiny, but do feel that the National Assembly Education & Lifelong Learning Committee still has a learning curve ahead of it.
17) The National Council has only infrequently been invited to give evidence to the Education & Lifelong Learning Committee. The last time the Chief Executive and I appeared in front of the Committee we followed a discussion which lasted over an hour dominated by the pay of FE lecturers, a subject over which the National Assembly has no direct control. Our own session was short and consisted of answering a varied range of questions posed by individual AMs. The impression on the receiving end was there did not appear to be a systematic look at the overall policy areas being tackled by the National Council, but rather that we were responding to the particular interests of individual Committee Members. The benefit of our various appearances thus far would appear in the main to be an opportunity to inform AMs of various proposals the National Council is developing.
18) In contrast it does seem to me that the Audit Committee has tackled fully and constructively issue s arising from NAO reports about the work of the Council.

(d) Difficulties raised by deficiencies in legislation
19) There are two areas where I believe we have experienced real difficulty as a result of a failure in the drafting of the Learning & Skills Act. Our counterpart in England, the Learning & Skills Council was able to begin operating in shadow form some 9 months before they took over operational responsibility. In our case it was not until February 2001 that the National Council Board was fully constituted, barely a month before we went live. The difficulties that caused have been well publicised.
20) I understand that the reason given for this delay is that whereas a UK Secretary of State could rely on general Ministerial powers to create a shadow board; the National Assembly was limited only to that which it had been expressly empowered to do in legislation. Until the granting of Royal Assent to the Learning & Skills Act the Welsh Assembly Government could not therefore begin the process of forming the National Council.
21) The second area is that of "ELWa". The assumption had been that in the same way as the Welsh Funding Councils had provided an umbrella body for the Higher Education Funding Council and the Further Education Funding Council, the same practice could continue post Education & Skills Act with ELWa acting as the umbrella body for HEFCW and the National Council. Very early on it became apparent that this was unworkable and, as a result of an approach by both Councils, the Minister commissioned Hugh Rawlings to conduct a review whose central recommendation is that the two Councils whilst sharing some common service staff should have separate Chief Executives and Directors of Finance and Risk. These recommendations are now being actioned.
22) However it has become apparent that it is not possible under the relevant legislation for the Councils jointly to employ staff, and there are doubts as to the extent that the Councils can provide services for one another. Recent legal advice I have seen suggests that difficulty existed even under the Welsh Funding Councils; full implementation of the Rawlings report will require greater certainty on this point.