Mr. Laurence Bond:

The box ticking comment is important. On the poverty proofing of policy and budgets, some of the systems and processes put in place in the 1990s worked positively for a while and appeared to be having some influence, but then for various reasons, they slightly died on the vine and it became a routine process. There is an issue about how one puts in place systems and processes that will be meaningful and sustained, not just something that have to happen. It is important to look at what happened. For example, there is a commitment that when measures are being brought before the Cabinet, they must be proofed, yet much of it seems to have become a little routine and not that meaningful. It would be useful to look at why that has been the case and what must be behind the system to make it meaningful. Part of the difficulty is that it is a chicken and egg scenario; one must build on what one has and try to make it work as well as possible and make it as efficient as possible in order that people do not feel they as if are going through a meaningless exercise but one that requires them to buy into the idea that this is a way of improving policy making and decisions taken that are for the benefit of people as against a bureaucratic exercise.