THURSDAY 16 MARCH 2000

PROFESSOR SIR JOHN KREBS and MR GEOFFREY PODGER

  80. Can you do very much with £23 million per annum?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The important point to note is that the 23 million—I am not quite sure what the number is, to be honest, but 23 we will take as the number since you have offered it—this is not all the money that goes into food safety, food hygiene, and nutrition. There are other funders: the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, which sponsors the Institute of Food Research, the Department of Health, MAFF, the Scottish Executive, and so on. What I want to do is to ensure that our 23 million is positioned within that broader context, such that the overall effort in the United Kingdom research that underpins food safety and food standards is effectively carried forward. Our own particular research budget will be directly focused on our policy requirements. Other people have slightly different responsibilities to maintain the health of the science base or to meet slightly different policy requirements, but all pieces of the jigsaw have to be fitted in together in a way that gives the best value for money.

  81. I appreciate, Sir John, that you will learn from research which is commissioned outside your own budget. Certainly, impressionistically, £23 million is not a large research budget. Within that budget what priorities will you have at this stage?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I should say that if it turns out that 23 million is not enough, I will either be making representations to Treasury for more money, or looking for other ways of prioritising our overall budget. As far as the priorities within the existing budget are concerned, we inherit a programme of research from the previous sponsors, largely from MAFF and to some extent from DH. The typical cycle of an individual project is three years, so there is a certain inertia in the system. We will spend the first period within the board looking at our research portfolio in a zero-based review to determine our new priorities.

  82. To the extent that you are already committed in part.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) We are already committed. We cannot simply cut off the work that is going on because the projects which are sponsored are typically three-year projects. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It means that we cannot start new priorities straight away but it also gives us time to think clearly what the top priorities are.

  83. It limits your budgets on new schemes?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) Yes. Then we can restart on new schemes after the first year when current projects come to the end.

  84. Do you anticipate having your own dedicated research facilities or do you anticipate doing research by way of sub-contract?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I think we will contract-out the research to the best providers in the United Kingdom. I do not think we should build a research in-house expertise. That would be very costly and very inefficient because there are very good laboratories out there already who do the work for us.

  85. You have repeatedly talked about openness. That is to be warmly welcomed. You will be having a word with Jack Straw on the Freedom of Information Act shortly. It sounds like a new era of glasnost (or perhaps because we are talking about food it should be grubnost) hence the question I would like to ask you, which is this. I understand already that documents are being put on the MAFF website in connection with food, and that is to be welcomed. I understand that there is a scheme to carry on doing that, publishing reports openly. But are you able to, and would you prefer to go back into the archives of MAFF and Health, to be able to publish other reports that, at the moment, are not available, in order to demonstrate to the public that they can trust us, and that we want to show that we are going to be open in the future?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The answer is that if those are MAFF or DH documents, it will not be up to me to determine whether or not they are published. I can only publish our documents as we move forward in the future. If I could perhaps just elaborate a little bit on what I mean by openness, certainly publishing the agendas, documents and minutes of the various committees and advisory groups which inform us on policy, that is an important part of it. It is very important that my board meets with the public. We plan to do that, starting in May, to meet with the public and engage in a dialogue. Still under discussion—and it will be one of the priorities to discuss with my board when they start—is the extent to which we will hold our meetings in public, both for the board and for the advisory committees. My own preference is to be as open as is possible.

  86. May I follow that up. In principle, what would you agree to if you think an existing MAFF or Department of Health document in existence but not available to the public should be published? Would you, therefore, ask the correct Minister to do so?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I could put that request to him or her but I cannot cause it to be published.

  Mr Marsden: I understand, thank you.

  87. Did you say you intended to hold board meetings in public?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I said that was still under discussion.

  Chairman: That would be very interesting indeed. Whether you will come to any sensible decisions if you do, or whether you will just meet again in private— There is a lot of precedent on this, Sir John, and I wish you joy of the worm as Enobarbus said to Cleopatra.

  88. Where do the staff of the Agency come from?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The approximate 500 staff, who populate the head office in London, come from MAFF or from the Department of Health, and some are new appointees.

  89. Split what way?
  (Mr Podger) Approximately 300 from MAFF, 100 from the Department of Health—
  (Professor Sir John Krebs)—and 100 new appointees.

  90. I think it is fair to say that MAFF, whether fairly or unfairly, did not have a tremendously good reputation in this field. Fair comment?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) That is the reputation which goes with them, yes.

  91. Since most of the people you are working with are from that background, there would be an understandable concern that this would be a continuation of what some thought was rather poor practice.
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The first point to make is that the people who are transferring from MAFF and DH into the Agency are doing so on a voluntary basis. They did not have to move in. In making the move they have recognised—and I have spoken with all the staff—that they are moving into a new organisation with a new culture. So that is the starting point. The second important point to make is that the new culture, which will include openness, includes the independence I talked about earlier. Putting the consumer first is a culture that the board will lead in developing, but that all the staff and the Agency themselves will have to take ownership of, and I believe are already taking ownership of. I am confident that one will see a very different kind of organisation and staff buying into very different values.

  92. Really more a question for the executive management of the Agency, what experience does that management team have of radical culture change?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) I had better ask the Chief Executive to speak to that.

  93. I was hoping you might do.
  (Mr Podger) First, I do feel obliged, Chairman, as a permanent civil servant of the Department of Health, to rise to the defence of my MAFF colleagues who are joining the Agency. I would like to put on record very clearly that although there are activities which other colleagues in MAFF may have engaged in, which are now the subject of controversy, those colleagues who are joining the Agency—in my experience, working with them over three and a half years—have given absolutely excellent service, which I could not fault on any of the grounds about which others may have made accusations about other people. They have also taken the lead in changing towards the new culture of the Agency. Forgive me if I say that.

  94. It is good to place it on the record but do go on.
  (Mr Podger) The second point is essentially: what possible qualifications do you have to have to manage radical change? I would answer that by saying that my own career—and, for that matter, of other colleagues—has very much involved very extensive change working in multi-disciplinary organisations with Government. I, myself, was heavily engaged when the Department of Health reorganised itself so as to bring medical colleagues into the same management stream as administrative colleagues. As you can imagine, that in itself requires some quite radical changes in views and thinking. I have myself, for the last two and a half years, been running the Joint Food Safety and Standards Group of MAFF and in the Department of Health, where we have both had to engage in the constitutionally quite innovative practice of providing common advice within two Ministries; but also, let me say, where we have actually begun the changed agenda which the Agency will inherit and take forward, in terms of communication with a wider variety of stakeholders, and in terms of seeking to understand better the concerns of the public and meeting those concerns. So I think I could fairly say that we have already engaged in quite radical changes. I would accept entirely that there are more to come.

  95. Would you accept the criticism that, perhaps, long term career civil servants are not the people that you would normally associate with radical change of any organisation, whether of its culture, its personnel or its level of performance?
  (Mr Podger) I have to say, having been a civil servant since 1974, it is unwise to under-estimate the extent of radical change that has actually occurred in the public service.

  96. We shall obviously have to monitor what is actually achieved, but I think it is fair to say that many from other backgrounds would, from their experience of dealing with British civil servants, enter a note of caution in view of the expectation of how that might happen. Can I specifically refer to the Meat Hygiene Service? I said that MAFF generally had, perhaps, what is seen as a dubious reputation in this field, and the Meat Hygiene Service has, among some of it stakeholders, a vilified reputation in this field, and you have the task of having them within your compass. How do you address that problem?
  (Mr Podger) I think, again, in relation to the Meat Hygiene Service, we must recognise that the job that they do is an inherently difficult one and, given the charges that they are required to levy, they are unlikely to be deeply popular with those paying. I say that with no disrespect to the argument about individual areas which could be improved and the changes we want to make, but I think that we have to accept that they are working in an inherently very difficult area. I think we have always taken the view that the Meat Hygiene Service's objective is the same as ours at headquarters, which is the protection of public health. The kind of discussions that we have been having about setting ourselves targets and about engaging in measurement of our performance and what we achieve are also applicable to the Meat Hygiene Service.

  97. You will have read the regulatory review on the performance of the Meat Hygiene Service, which would appear to have given some subjective substance to the view that, perhaps, they have been over-officious and not effectively reviewed their procedures to ensure that risk is the main burden of the approach to tackling their task, and instead procedure is seen as the dominant thrust.
  (Mr Podger) I answer that by saying, first of all, we contributed to the regulatory review, and were very glad to do so. What I would say is that these criticisms of the Meat Hygiene Service have to be seen in the context that the Meat Hygiene Service is having to take on ever new responsibilities which are BSE related and which place very heavy burdens upon it. There is no dispute in my mind as to the need to actually engage in review of the efficiency of the Meat Hygiene Service. It carries out what is a very necessary task. I think it would be quite wrong to suggest that we, or the Meat Hygiene Service, are complacent about their performance.

  98. Since the Government has largely accepted the regulatory review, can we be certain that the effect of that will be the implementation of the recommendations, rather than the implementation of particular recommendations and their substitution by a range and array of other processes which may be just as burdensome but appear to be necessary by those carrying out the review?
  (Mr Podger) I think that we have already indicated very clearly that our primary purpose is protecting public health. What we are not about is engaging in unnecessary and burdensome regulations which do not contribute to that. If we are going to look, as we are, to other enforcement authorities for evidence that they are following this principle, it clearly beholds us to apply the same principles to our own in-house organisation.

  Chairman: Sir John, I am sure Mark Todd did not mean any possible criticism of Conservatives and civil servants, and Mark did not imply that Members of Parliament were in the forefront of radicalism themselves.

  99. Presumably collective responsibility will rule within your board?
  (Professor Sir John Krebs) The board, as an entity, has a responsibility for the agency.