COMMISSION ON THE POWERS AND ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

of the

EVIDENCE OF:

CHAIR OF THE EDUCATION & LIFELONG LEARNING COMMITTEE OF THE

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES,

GARETH JONES

held at

National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff

on

12^th December 2002

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much for coming, we are much obliged. What we have been doing in general terms is to ask people to speak for perhaps five or ten minutes and then we can ask questions. I wonder if you would be kind enough to introduce yourself and your colleagues, just for the sake of the record.

MR JONES: I am Gareth Jones, Welsh Assembly Member. I am Chair of the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee. In attendance with me I have got Chris Reading, who is Clerk to the Education Committee and the Deputy Clerk, Holly Pembridge.

I see there is interpretation equipment here, so if I may I shall speak in Welsh. I am exceptionally grateful for the opportunity to come to appear before you as a Commission. Before proceeding may I remind you that I am a comparatively young Chair as far as chairing is concerned. I have been the Chair of the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee since March. I succeeded Cynog Dafis, he was the Chairman previously.

Just a word about the committee itself. We are a committee of ten members and, as you know, it is politically balanced. We meet once every fortnight but with the possibility of scheduling additional meetings in accordance with the wishes and desires of members and, of course, the co-operation of the Business Committee. Organising such meetings also causes difficulties because if a member is on a number of committees, two or three for some members, that then complicates the issue and how frequently one can meet in order to ensure that all members are present. As I say, those meetings are relatively regular and the minister is a member of the committee.

There is then an opportunity each month for us to scrutinise the minister= s report and that is quite an important element of the work that we are involved with. We allocate approximately three-quarters of an hour for scrutiny of the minister= s report and then members are free to write to me or to the Clerk to ensure that if there are points of importance that they would like included in the minister’s report, that the minister can report on those points and they are given priority together with whatever the minister herself wishes to present.

The work primarily involves receiving evidence as far as the formulation of policy is concerned. As I say, I am a comparatively new Chair in those terms but I have been a member of the Education Committee from the very outset. The first committee, of course, was the pre-16 Education Committee. The important work of the committee, as far as I can see, is that we do discuss aspects of education and we then have an opportunity to air issues when we feel there may be weaknesses. We acknowledge and recognise the strengths but where there are weaknesses and a need to improve matters then those issues are discussed and if the report follows the discussion, that report is important as far as I can see to give the Government of Wales and the minister, of course, all the information available to establish an action plan so that the Government of Wales can then adopt that action plan. That is the main role of the committee as far as I see it.

Apart from that there are other important aspects, namely scrutinising the ASPBs, that is important work. As individual members we all receive information or we are lobbied. Whatever way this occurs, if there are difficulties there is an opportunity to ask questions when we scrutinise the work and progress of these organisations. Some of them are vitally important, of the utmost importance, and I can refer to ACCAC and Estyn and, more recently, ELWa and the Higher and Further Education Councils. Those are extremely important for Wales. There is an opportunity then for us to ask questions and see for ourselves what progress is being made. Generally there is some very important work being done within the committee.

May I also say that quite great emphasis is also placed on legislation. To date I would have to tell the Commission that we have primarily focused on policy formulation and creation, policies we very much hope will be of benefit to our education service in Wales, we have an opportunity to do that, and the minister herself acknowledges the role of the Committee in policy formulation in that ideas and items that have arisen from the deliberations of the committee are incorporated in these important policies. There is recognition in a number of action plans by the minister that this is the case and, therefore, that satisfies us that things are progressing.

I am not certain, Lord Richard, whether you want me to elaborate now on some other issues or whether you have questions?

LORD RICHARD: If you would be kind enough to elaborate on where you see the constraints at the moment and what have the existing powers prevented your committee, prevented the Assembly from doing that your committee thinks is desirable?

MR JONES: If I may speak generally about education. Of course, as far as I see it there is almost 80 to 90 per cent, if it is possible to attach a figure to it, of freedom to accomplish things within our existing powers and that, of course, has to be welcomed. For example, in the world of education some will know full well that the curriculum and control of the curriculum lies with the Government of Wales. That is of key importance, crucial if I may say so. By now, in accordance with the latest Education Act, there is a curriculum for England and there is a curriculum for Wales. I believe it is important for us to recognise that.

The other side of education is that you wish to nurture and develop the profession, develop members professionally for all the work of major changes occurring in the world of education and ensuring that we have a profession that is skilled for the future and those changes.

The one major thing that has occurred recently through the Assembly is the performance management framework for teachers. It is by now established in our education system that teachers are willing for their work to be managed and evaluated, if you like. That is a substantial and significant change, a significant step forward. If such performance management takes place it is crucial, in my view, that you should also be able to control and manage how you are going to reward teachers because those are the two sides, you have got the carrot and the stick, if you like, and both go together.

As far as I see it, that aspect involving the working conditions and salaries of teachers has not been devolved. I cannot tell you whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. All I can say is that if the Government of Wales is serious in developing a profession then it is important that the Government of Wales has the right to engage teachers in terms of the form of work that they undertake. That right and control does not exist at present, that has not been devolved. I feel that is a weakness, for example.

The other element that has not been devolved as far as I can see it is that element involving teacher training. We have the Teacher Training Agency that was established in London but with some kind of an extension in Wales and it is within the Education Department in the Assembly. The training and development of teachers, in-service training and doing so professionally, naturally goes hand in hand with salaries and management of those salaries and control over those salaries. If we do not have that control in Wales what we will get is the stop-go situation. We have a situation at present where there is a study into bureaucracy in our schools and there is a great deal of talk that teachers not only have to teach but the paperwork is interfering with the work of teaching, and that is a very important point. There is a review being undertaken of this but it is a review across the whole of England and Wales, therefore we have to wait in Wales until we hear the outcome of that before the minister and the Government of Wales here can set about achieving what needs to be done. In those terms I do not believe that under the current circumstances we are seeing a smooth development of the education service.

Certainly progress is being made and moving on but it is progress made from one step to another. I feel that we need that control. Almost everything else is in place in the world of education to secure this smooth development. In the note we sent to you that is one point, performance management procedures for school teachers. Also, if I may say so, on the threshold payment, I am sure you know the situation that faced us about two years ago when the performance pay was linked to results. That was a cause of great concern to us as a committee and also to every Assembly Member and it was decided at the plenary session of the Assembly that we should object to the coupling or linking of performance related pay to examination results. We failed to influence that outcome and it has now been passed, although it is completely contrary to the principle and aspiration and the resolution of the National Assembly.

What was difficult in that, if I may say so, was that the salary payments had not been devolved and the Government was determined to have a threshold payment based on national standards. We could be here until Doomsday talking about national. Are we talking about England and Wales or talking about Wales? I do not want to enter into any political argument but if we are going to be talking about national standards in Wales then I would imagine that we must pay attention to them and those are not in the national standards. For example, the minister that we have, and I agree with her stance, reminds us that she believes strongly in the comprehensive principle so that every school in Wales should respond to the comprehensive principle, equality of opportunity if you like, but that means any type of national standard in Wales has certainly got to consider that crucial principle. In England there is a movement outside the comprehensive principle with the development of specialist schools, for example. That is one aspect where I do feel that it has been a loss that we do not have that control.

On the other point, a report was commissioned from Professor Rees on financial support for students and, once again, that report has received every support across the whole Assembly by all the members but because of the desire in Wales to assist students financially in this manner a system had to be devised and that system is the Assembly Learning Grant Scheme. As far as I can see, and as far as I understand it, the only possibility of assisting students directly, as the Assembly or the minister does not have the powers at present, is to entrust the local authorities to transfer or deliver the money. From the point of view of local democracy, I have great faith in local authorities, I must tell you that, but for this intention and for this aim perhaps that was not the best way of setting about it because, to begin with, there is a difference between the various authorities as regards how much resources they all have and there have been difficulties following this kind of arrangement. Some students are yet to receive their grants and have written to me and asked what improvements could we make. Any scheme that we aim for should ensure that the money should be available, some of it at least, at the start of the very first term. Because of the lack of powers the Government of Wales has had to devise this kind of a system. I hope I was able to make that point clearly.

There is a third point, the strategic planning in further and higher education sectors. I was not in on that report as the Chair but, of course, I have been party to the investigation, inquiry, and have listened to the evidence. I assume that prior to that work of collating evidence and establishing a policy for higher education being undertaken there was a tendency for HE institutions in Wales to all go their own way. I think that was the kind of threat that existed and in order to ensure that higher education is accountable and answerable to the needs of Wales, our country and our young people, I would say that it is incumbent upon the National Assembly to endeavour to influence the kind of higher education we have in Wales. That is why we are dealing here again with some non-devolved aspects. Certainly HE is not entirely devolved.

By controlling the funding, if you like, it is possible in that manner to try to influence the strategic development of higher education but it would be much easier perhaps if you did not have to invent or devise these systems or if you could set about it in an alternative way to try and meet your objective.

I very much hope that those give you some idea. I am not here to paint a bleak or black picture at all. I will repeat what I said at the beginning, that as far as education is concerned we can accomplish a great deal, and certainly we can develop Welsh education, but there are some aspects where I would appeal to the Commission to consider this element of the stop-go. Thank you.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much indeed. I wonder if I could ask you to start off about the work of the committee itself. You have got a minister sitting in your committee and for somebody brought up in the Westminster system this is a very strange thing to happen. Do you think that it is a plus or a minus to have a minister in the committee?

MR JONES: I believe that it is a plus. Let us work it through in terms of, let us say, Estyn who sends its report to us. Estyn, in all fairness, reports upon the strengths and weaknesses. One particular weakness in Wales is falling standards at Key Stage Three at the transfer from the primary into the secondary stage. Estyn highlighted that over two or three years. We have an opportunity to discuss this very important issue and the minister is there to respond. In fact, not only on that particular case but on many an instance the minister has taken on board our concerns and when the actual report is published they include in that report all aspects that are of concern to us.

There is a further stage and the further stage is the action plan drawn up by the minister and the Government, the Cabinet obviously. It is in that action plan that you can see that it has really come to fruition in terms of the minister having looked at those areas of concern and acted upon them. I feel there is merit in that way.

LORD RICHARD: But the language you use, and have used in answering my first question, is there is a flavour of it being adversarial in the sense that the minister responds to the committee and the minister takes on board what the committee wants. Is it more than just the convenience of having a potential adversary sitting in the committee or is it a genuine case of the minister participating equally with the rest of the committee?

MR JONES: There is an element of the adversarial there but also we have to acknowledge the fact that we have the top officers, if you like, from the Education Department and we are allowed to ask questions, as it were. I find that to be very, very helpful. There is a frank exchange of information but we are also, I would say all members of the committee, very much aware of the fact that the minister can only work within certain resources, for want of a better term, and will have to take a stance on certain issues.

The other important aspect where we might say there is not the continuity there that we would like to see is we have mentioned the ASPBs, ACCAC, Estyn, ELWa, and through our deliberations and discussions we can tell the minister we would wish ACCAC to take this on board and Estyn and so on. What happens is that the minister then goes away and writes a remit letter but we are not actually involved in formulating that remit letter, it is "that is my responsibility and I do that on behalf of the Government". I would like to see further involvement in the remit letter from the committee members personally.

LORD RICHARD: Do you see it?

MR JONES: I see the letter. We have sight of the letter.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: But after it has gone?

MR JONES: After it has gone.

LAURA McALLISTER: That is quite different because some other committee chairs that we have heard from have a feed into the remit letter.

MR JONES: It does vary, I am sure.

TOM JONES: If it does differ is the reason for that because you as a committee do not have sufficient input? Do you have more input than other committees?

MR JONES: We have not asked specifically. This is the minister’s letter and not the committee’s letter.

TOM JONES: Which she has conceded to you to see.

MR JONES: We have sight of the letter certainly.

LAURA McALLISTER: For reasons of clarity, has the committee tried to feed into the remit letter and not had your comments accepted or has that not happened?

MR JONES: In all fairness I would have to say that I have not seen any glaring omissions in any remit letter. I mentioned earlier the very worrying fact about Key Stage Three achievement, let us say. We had to prioritise and they have been included in the letter. I am here as Chair and in a way, speaking to you personally, individual members might not agree on that particular matter. There is a whole range of things that we do discuss. I believe it would be true to say that the major issues would be included in remit letters of that nature. It is a very key area for us because obviously unless it is done you will then find perpetual weaknesses within the system.

LAURA McALLISTER: It is very difficult retrospectively then, is it not, if you have not fed into the remit letter?

MR JONES: It is. There is a little bit of scope there for us as a committee to be more involved with the remit letter.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: After all, you are on the same side at the moment and now is the time to do it. The fact that you do not really disagree, the minister might be more inclined to say "splendid letter, I agree with ninety-nine hundredths of what you say but you did not actually have a footnote about whatever it was".

MR JONES: I have to be honest with you and say if I were the minister I believe I would also be influenced by my officers. If a committee here agrees on a number of issues that need to be discussed or presented in a remit letter there has to be some filtering somewhere and I believe that filtering takes place with the head of the Education Department, let us say, who might say "We cannot afford that, we have not got the resources to do that". I am just speculating, I do not know. I would surmise that has to be the case.

TED ROWLANDS: One of the things that influenced the last referendum was the belief that the Assembly was going to bring the quango state under a degree of control or accountability. Within your remit you have one of the largest quangos of them all. Having said that, I declare an interest in relation to ELWa. Let us take ELWa, for example. I understand that it has been the subject of an official report and there have been problems that have arisen in trying to get the whole thing going. I read through a year’s worth of your committee stages and did not get any feeling that you were really scrutinising this most important quango, a quango that has had a certain number of problems. Why was that? Is it your powers or is it your priorities?

MR JONES: Established as a quango or an Assembly Sponsored Public Body, whichever term we would use, although it is a massive organisation, it responds to the principles of the National Assembly and one of the major principles is social inclusion and equality of opportunity and so on. ELWa is at least an opportunity of getting higher education, FE schools, providers and so on together. If we are keen and genuinely interested in widening access, and I believe that is a major field, as you know, if that is the case then we have a better chance of doing that if there is ----

TED ROWLANDS: The merit is that subsequently it appeared to transpire that there was something fundamentally not right with it and I remember there was a lead report by an official called Mr Hugh Rawlings. Have you seen that report?

MR JONES: Yes.

TED ROWLANDS: Have you pursued those kinds of issues with ELWa in your committee scrutiny?

MR JONES: Not specifically, no. My understanding is that there has been some pressure on ELWa in terms of the magnitude of the work it is undertaking and also this wide area or remit. Because there has been this pressure on individuals within ELWa I cannot honestly say that I am very much aware of problems on the shopfloor, if you like, pertaining to schools and colleges. We are in touch constantly with principals of FE colleges, with the heads of schools and so on. There is no doubt that there is a lot wrong in terms of the way that the consultation has proceeded, in fact it has had to extend, has it not, because it was supposed to start next April but I think it will be April 2004 before ELWa takes over the overall funding.

I think the answer to this very important question is, yes, we could always be dwelling on and making a meal out of problems because ELWa does have problems and there are many deep rooted problems there. It is a body that has emerged from the Assembly. Coming from the Assembly it should certainly be based on the three principles that I mentioned of equality of opportunity, sustainable development and social inclusion, but it cannot respond to those principles unless there is a change of culture. If ELWa has inherited out there the cultures that were there before the Assembly then it has got even more autonomy.

TED ROWLANDS: You have not seen it as the role of you and your committee to pursue those basic issues with this particular ASPB or quango in the way perhaps the public perceive the role of the Assembly to be? That is your decision but is it a lack of power, you said you did not want to make a meal of it, or political priority? Is it a question of power or a question of priorities?

MR JONES: It is a question of time really because we agree to scrutinise a body, let us say, once a year. I think with ELWa, with 800 million being the budget, whatever, it should be scrutinised far more often. At the last meeting with ELWa the chair and the chief executive were there and we were able to ask those questions which members had expressed concern about and had been approached by people out there about, certainly about funding, certainly about school sixth forms, etc., etc. In the previous meeting, with the minister= s support, she did pass on information from this Rawlings report so we were told about the possibility of this restructuring because of the sheer size of ELWa. No member has approached myself or the Secretariat to say "Look, we do not think things are right here, we need to look at this". It may be that in the new year we will have to look at this because it is only now becoming ----

TED ROWLANDS: It is not a question of your lack of powers?

MR JONES: Certainly not. We do have the power to bring ELWa in at any time to scrutinise.

LORD RICHARD: How would you do that?

MR JONES: This is where I would have to express I welcome very much the fact we do now have enhanced research powers, as it were, to help the Secretariat. Let us say I am very concerned about ELWa, these things are in the press and so on, and I would say - not making a political point - we do not want to destabilise what is very, very important to us. We do need to have a confident Wales and so on and that applies to all parties. We would look at ELWa and I would discuss it with Chris Reading here, and any member would discuss it. I could also see the minister because we do meet every fortnight along those lines. I could say to the minister, "Look, minister, we do have a problem here and members want to recall ELWa and we want to be quite specific", but in the meantime our researchers that we have now could look at the very issues you mentioned there and brief us in terms of "these are areas of concern". All members would be given that information and they could base whatever questions they want either on the briefing notes or whatever information they have got to hand.

MR READING: May I possibly give a practical example. We had an ad hoc scrutiny, if you like, of the National Council of ELWa last year when there unfortunate redundancies after closure of the Llanwern steelworks and ELWa very rapidly put together a package of measures to retrain redundant workers. We held a very useful joint meeting with the Education and Economic Development Committees. That was a practical example of us responding.

LORD RICHARD: Did you actually get them there?

MR READING: We had the chief executive in the chair. That was an example.

MR JONES: Just to illustrate this a stage further. Members knew about problems, about restructuring and so on, and we were told by the chair and the chief executive at that stage everything was fairly straight forward and there were no major problems. In fact, no decisions had been made, so anybody out there complaining about this and that had nothing to complain about because ELWa had not made a decision. I think the point I would wish to leave with you is if next week there is a major upset, we could invite ELWa at any time but we would then have to allocate space within our forward programme.

LAURA McALLISTER: Would you have the power to bring Mr Rawlings into the committee?

MR JONES: I am not sure about that because that is the minister’s decision. I would have to take advice on that one.

EIRA DAVIES: In the Rawlings report he has made recommendations to restructure ELWa and he has suggested that there should be two chief executives. If I understand the situation correctly, is the problem with the Assembly actually implementing this straight away that they would need additional powers for this to be achieved?

MR JONES: Well, I think that is true, yes, because this actually involves the Skills Act. This has been established through legislation and I am sure that legislation would need to be returned to and that would create a problem. I am not an expert in this area but I do feel if that is the recommendation it has been made by a civil servant and I would think that the committee itself would need to discuss this before coming to a decision to say whether we are in agreement with that particular recommendation. It is an important issue because I can tell you as Chair my great concern would be I accept that it is difficult to structure this kind of body but if we are going to go back to establish these silos of higher education on the one hand, further education on the other and schools then that is an enormous loss to us. I do not think that we should give in so easily as to think that is some kind of final arrangement.

I have not looked at this in detail so I cannot actually speak with authority, I am just sharing my concerns on this issue. At the moment we trust in the minister but if members do feel that things are not working as they should then that would become an urgent issue for the committee, so it would be brought before the committee, yes.

EIRA DAVIES: Okay. If I could just follow that up with a hypothetical issue. On the news this morning I heard that the Government in England were getting to grips with truancy and were going to provide powers to punish parents. How would you, as a committee, deal with that kind of situation? We are looking ahead now but could you tell us what steps the committee would take?

MR JONES: First of all, the first step is that the minister would make a statement. Let us say this idea has come forward from Westminster, she would look at this issue and maybe decide that it is something we should adopt here in Wales. That would then be presented to the committee and we would insist that it was presented to the committee because it would be a fundamental change in policy in Wales, so it would appear before us as a committee for discussion. I do not think for a moment that the minister would go down that particular path but were she to we would have an opportunity to discuss the feasibility of such a step, the usefulness of such a step, here in Wales and so on and so forth. The initial decision is made by the minister. With that kind of situation I do not know whether we would need an Order or a Regulation officially before the Assembly itself as something to be adopted but we, as a committee, would certainly have an opportunity to discuss that issue.

EIRA DAVIES: Thank you.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Can you expand on your point three about powers in relation to higher and further education. Is this a matter of what education is being provided or is it more to do with the organisation of colleges, mergers and so on? You list this as the third point where you have been frustrated about the Assembly’s powers but I am not entirely clear whether it would mean more powers for the Assembly or amending the existing legislation to enable you to do what it is you want to do.

MR JONES: The thrust of the higher education report at the end of the day is about reconfiguration and collaboration. Things were not happening in Wales. It was perceived as being in a way inefficient. There was a need, therefore, for the institutions to collaborate, to work together, but it is very, very difficult because as far as I can make out in terms of presentations at that time mergers have been bad experiences and people were very concerned. We were sitting in camera, as it were, there were concerns that if any details were leaked there would be problems as far as individuals were concerned, jobs would be at risk and so on. I believe the overall situation was that things could not carry on as they were in terms of the loose structure in Wales at that time. One of the phrases in the report was "something for something". This is my interpretation but I believe that the funding being controlled by the Assembly could be used as a lever to ensure that higher education institutions would fall into line in terms of sharing, working together, in terms of collaboration, in terms of reconfiguration, and we do have examples, for example in Bangor and UWIC in North Wales having an agreement and possibly working together far more closely to the future. There is talk even of a University of North Wales and Cardiff University and the Legal School are talking about working together, this is UWIC, and the University of Glamorgan. The outcome of all that would be a greater sharing of resources, and resources are finite, as we know, they are limited, and also higher education for Wales coming back to the principles which we mentioned in terms of equal opportunity, in terms of widening access and so on.

To answer the question, my understanding is that at higher education level the universities have not actually been devolved, so if we want a share as the people of Wales to influence higher education, if we had control of the purse it is feasible to think in terms of controlling direction and for that direction to be in accordance with the needs of the people of Wales.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Is it that they are autonomous chartered institutes and so on that are accountable to their own court of governors or whatever? Is it about devolution or is it about the legal status of these bodies that are university colleges and institutes?

MR JONES: My background is in secondary education, I cannot answer that specifically. It is to do with the status of the university and the fact that they feel they have this independence. Side by side with that you have to look at devolution and how higher education will actually fulfil the needs and respond to the needs of the people of Wales. Although historically HEFCW has been just the passive distributive body as far as finance is concerned, in other words passing the funding on but nothing much happening according to the needs of Wales, in other words an ivory tower springs to mind, we cannot actually afford that today. We do need higher education if we all look at the changing economy of Wales, the high skilled economy and so on and the role of higher education. If we have HEFCW not simply allocating money but saying "we also demand that you do this" then there is control.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: I am not questioning the rationale behind your thinking, it was more for the evidence on the record here to know what powers you are asking for. It would be helpful if you could do a note for us after this meeting.

TED ROWLANDS: Is it the power to force mergers? That is what it was described to us as. Is that what you are seeking?

MR JONES: I am not seeking that at all, it is a possibility. If there is, say, a wastage of resources, repetition or non-provision of courses. It is very complicated. From my understanding of what the Assembly is about, and certainly in terms of education, and this is coming back to ELWa and leading on, therefore, to higher education, we want to develop an education service that looks after the needs of the individual, the individual is there and that individual can pick and choose their course and so on, otherwise there is the distinct possibility that you invest in the institution and not in the provision for the individual.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: There is a philosophical argument here about there being a centralising approach, but that is not what I am trying to get at. I want to follow up exactly what powers it is you want to achieve what you want to do.

MR JONES: We can get back to you on that.

PETER PRICE: Can I take up again this issue of control of public bodies because you have such a big one within your remit in the case of ELWa. Could you just explain over the past 12 months in respect of that body in your scrutiny role, what actions you have taken and, where this has involved actual meetings with the committee, which of those meetings have been formal meetings of the committee, which of them have been informal contacts between the committee as a whole, I am not talking about you as an individual or individual members, the committee as a whole and ELWa? In your work, what independent sources of advice have you had in order to carry out your work of scrutiny?

MR JONES: I would say that we have simply had ELWa on the annual basis, as it were. Obviously it is the end body in that sense.

PETER PRICE: Does that mean one meeting or more?

MR JONES: Yes.

MR READING: They have been formally in front of the committee to be scrutinised twice, once most recently a few weeks ago and, in addition, the joint meeting I mentioned earlier which was specifically to do with the Corus rescue package.

PETER PRICE: The Corus rescue package was not in scrutiny mode, that was about taking a new policy initiative in which you were seeking their co-operation.

MR READING: Yes.

PETER PRICE: So in scrutiny mode, and that is what I specifically asked about, just one meeting per annum?

MR JONES: Yes.

PETER PRICE: And the duration of time spent on ELWa during that meeting would have been about how long?

MR JONES: An hour.

PETER PRICE: Does the committee as a whole have any informal meetings with ELWa during the course of the year?

MR JONES: No, the committee does not. I would obviously suspect that the minister is in absolute regular consultation with ELWa. I would have to say that is the length and breadth of our scrutiny.

PETER PRICE: In the course of your scrutiny either for that hour long meeting or generally following it during the year, do you have any independent source of advice?

MR JONES: I mentioned earlier that what we are achieving now is greater research support. This has been raised by Ted Rowlands. We can charge our researchers to look at ELWa on behalf of the Secretariat, to me as Chair and I will share that information obviously with all the committee members. In a way that kind of approach is going to be very, very useful. It is not direct scrutiny but at least it provides us with extra information.

Our main source of scrutiny material, if you like, is our involvement as members out, as it were, in our constituencies and meeting people and then we are told "We are frightened about the prospect of this or that happening@ or A this is not happening" or "ELWa is not engaging in this or that" and that information is fed back to us and through to the committee. It is my role as Chair then to ensure that when there are concerns we are given sufficient time to air those concerns. I accept the point that we only have an hour but at least then we would have satisfaction from the last meeting, which was last week, that these key points were raised so we know that the chief executive and the chair of ELWa know about these issues.

LORD RICHARD: Can I move us on and ask you about the next stage in the process. The committee has got a scrutiny role, it has got a policy formulation role. You have formulated policy and the minister has gone away reasonably happy with the policy that has been formulated and it needs legislation, it needs something that goes through the Assembly, an instrument. Do you look at that?

MR JONES: Take the recent one we had with the Welsh Language Review. We had problems as the Education Committee with our education part on the Welsh Language Review. That was presented as a report and as far as we were concerned, as a committee, that was it but behind the scenes, as it were, the Government of Wales was looking at the report which we had drawn up and in their action plan they then referred to what they intended to do and that will be brought before the committee. That is the level of discussion.

LORD RICHARD: You will not see the actual piece of ----

MR JONES: No, that is the action plan.

LORD RICHARD: So you will not go through it line by line?

MR JONES: No, all we can say is that as a committee we would certainly support this or we would be very concerned that the minister had not given sufficient attention to that particular aspect.

LORD RICHARD: You have really got no legislative function at all?

MR JONES: No.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: First of all, could I apologise, I put you in the wrong party earlier with one of my questions and that was my foolish error and I apologise unreservedly. My more substantive point is about where you draw your evidence from. You said you did not hear civil servants. Having served parliamentary committees at Westminster for many years, the truth of the matter is that civil servants sometimes know more than ministers in Westminster terms, just as outside experts sometimes know more than civil servants. It does seem to me a very serious deficiency in the scrutiny process if you are unable to hear them. For example, when we had the minister here on your subject she brought with her a very able and very hard worked civil servant. Apparently a very hard worked civil servant.

MR JONES: They are all hard worked.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: My serious point is this does seem to me a really serious lacuna if you are not able to cross question them, even if they do it under the wing of the minister.

MR JONES: I would have to say in terms of my committee meetings they do attend with the minister and we do question them direct. I cannot see the minister turning around and saying "you are not supposed to". She will often turn to the officers for support.

You mentioned there a very important point in terms of officers having this expertise and I do not dispute that at all but what does worry me, and I would wish the Commission to take note of this, is I believe when devolution was presented to the people of Wales we were allocated, and still are, this six per cent balance and so on. From my own experience as a former secondary head involved with the Secondary Heads Association, we know full well that we have a huge Education Department based at Westminster but I cannot help but notice that we do have excellent ideas emerging, I cannot say I agree with all the ideas, but there has to be a think-tank there working seriously in terms of developing education with ideas and giving time to make proper research and inroads into the changing field of education.

When we were presented with the devolved settlement I do not recall having six per cent of the Department for Education and Skills, whatever name they had, transferred to us in Wales. We should have because we inherited the 2,000 civil servants, presumably, and then we had the 60 Assembly Members with a totally different regime certainly making far more demands on the civil servants. I think that was a loss personally. I just wonder if the Department for Education in London has lost six per cent of its resources following on from devolution. That goes for quite a few other departments, I should think. In other words, we would have been far better off in Wales making a good start if that kind of level of support had been made available to us.

My understanding is that there is now an increasing level of support. I mentioned the researchers, for example, somebody has to pay for that. Whether it comes in the overall , 9 billion, whatever budget we have, I dare say it does. It seems that would be something for the Commission to look at in terms of the pro rata transfer of resources.

LORD RICHARD: You used the phrase a minute ago about the minister coming to the committee with her civil servants but when you are scrutinising the minister she has actually got officials with her, is that right?

MR JONES: Yes. A very important function for the officer there, the top civil servant, would be to provide very often a position statement on paper if we start on any policy review.

LORD RICHARD: You would get that?

MR JONES: We would get that, yes.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much indeed. You have been very generous with your time and with your answers. Speaking for myself, I have found this extremely helpful.

MR JONES: Can I say that I am very, very grateful for the opportunity and I wish you well in this very important work that you are undertaking. I am very pleased to have been able to be here and share this experience with you, best wishes to each and every one of you in this important work.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much.