Q41 Derek Wyatt: Does the Audit Commission do that? Do you talk to the Audit Commission to say, "Listen, I know you analyse the local authorities into good, fair, weak and all that, but if it is weak and fair in this area, what goes in to help these local authorities get better?"
Mr Stewart: The answer is the best local authorities are those which have done more than one procurement and I think Leeds is highlighted in this Report as a Council that improved its performance over a number of PFIs. One of the initiatives in the Building Schools for the Future programme has been for Partnerships for Schools to arrange to capture skills in the local authority market and transfer them from one local authority to another. Unfortunately, a lot of the data that you are asking for is anecdotal rather than comes in any formal manner.
Q42 Derek Wyatt: You do not say, "Oh, goodness me, it is Kent again"?
Mr Stewart: Kent are quite good, they have done a number of procurements.
Q43 Derek Wyatt: Luckily, it is my authority. That is why I am asking.
Mr Stewart: They have done a number of procurements.
Q44 Derek Wyatt: In the various stages-the Chairman said it is getting longer and longer, or it is not getting shorter, the procurements thing-there is nothing you can do on-line, you cannot take three stages on-line confidentially and move them faster between departments and so on? Must this all be a paper and meeting process or is it on-line? Can you offer a confidential intranet system to help with the bidding process and the deal-making?
Mr Pocklington: I think there are a number of aspects in which the Treasury helps and assists and also holds local authorities to account. We have already discussed the important standard contract which is designed to improve the quality and consistency of PFI procurements across the public sector. The Treasury also runs the Project Review Group which is required to approve all local authority PFI projects and that provides us in the Treasury with an opportunity to scrutinise projects and the advisory teams at two stages in the lifecycle of a project.
Q45 Derek Wyatt: On-line?
Mr Pocklington: No, this is a real meeting with representatives from the project.
Q46 Derek Wyatt: There is nothing you can do using technology to speed up the process?
Mr Pocklington: We provide all our guidance online.
Q47 Derek Wyatt: I know, but I am thinking about filling in forms and getting the thing done, it is too complex.
Mr Kingman: I think the impression that it is all about forms and bits of paper is not the world I recognise really. This is more a world of personal relationships. The Operational Task Force, for example, is a phone-based system. I am very clear there are things that can be done to speed up the process, but I do not think the process problems we have here are really one of bits of paper moving around the system.
Derek Wyatt: Thank you, Chairman.
Q48 Dr Pugh: I could not help noticing-it is not very far away from me-that St John's, Bootle more or less broke the record for a benchmarking exercise lasting, I think, twice as long as the nearest competitor. I wondered whether you could tell us a little bit about what went wrong there because if benchmarking is a good thing, surely it ought not take that long to do?
Mr Kingman: I am not sure, I am afraid, there is anyone here who knows enough about that case. We would be very happy to send you a note about it. 1
Q49 Dr Pugh: Could you send us a note on that? It would be useful. It would be surprising and obviously a very expensive exercise and if you also indicate in your note what the whole benchmarking exercise, if it lasted two years, cost. You mentioned quite voluntarily earlier Building Schools for the Future. Presumably, Building Schools for the Future includes not just simply the actual physical fabric of the schools themselves but some soft services as well, they are going to be involved too in the PFI contracts. Does the provision of soft services include, for example-because schools in the future are going to be quite different from schools in the past and they are going to have a very heavy IT role and so on-the supply of software or IT support?
Mr Stewart: One of the main objectives of that programme was to incorporate the integration of ITC into the design of the building and ultimately to improve educational standards so, yes, the ITC supply is an integral part of that. Two years into the programme Jim Knight, who is the Minister for Schools, has asked for Partnerships for Schools to look into that issue to see how it is going.
Q50 Dr Pugh: So it is an integral part so there will obviously be some fairly lengthy contracts involved for software services?
Mr Stewart: I am not convinced, but I will check, that it is actually the educational software; it is more the hardware, the wiring and the white boards.
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