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Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley): I am not surprised that civil service morale is low. The speech of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), and the threat from the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) that a new Labour Government would be elected, were enough to send morale plunging to the depths. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) observed, we heard both the miraculous and the miserable from the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, but we heard only the miserable from the hon. Lady.
Before my election in 1992, my experience of the civil service was limited to watching "Yes, Minister" on television and wondering whether it was a documentary or a comedy. Once elected, Members of Parliament find that there is a bit of truth in both: "Yes, Minister" is a comedy, but there is a strong vein of truth in it.
Shortly after my election, I became a parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Employment. After a year, I moved to the Department of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, where I remained for a further year. I am currently with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Having worked in three Departments, I have formed the view that the calibre of most civil servants is extremely high. They work very long hours, and I think that the country would be poorer without them; but that does not mean that we should be complacent. We must ensure that our civil service can take the country into the
21st century, which means proper training for civil servants. That is what the White Paper is all about. We need to adapt not only to the need for continuity in regard to the independence of the civil service, but to the changes and extra demands that are being forced on it.
Last night, and for several days before that debate on Members' pay, many hon. Members spoke of the increase in the work load. If our work load has increased, that of civil servants has done so as well. We must ensure that they are given the training that they deserve and we need, so that the country can remain competitive. We must be given proper advice, so that we implement policies that maintain our status as the enterprise centre of Europe.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, North mentioned a couple of aspects that he thought needed more attention, and I agree with him. As a small business man, I should like far more civil servants to be seconded to small or medium enterprises and to see at first hand the daily problems experienced by such enterprises. One problem is the amount of paperwork that businesses receive from civil servants seeking information. Some small and medium enterprises feel that they have merely been given the burden of extra form-filling, with no accompanying benefits.
We need more transference between the civil service and business, in both directions. Already, more people are able to move from industry--small, medium and even larger businesses--to the civil service, where they can use their wealth of experience to give Ministers better advice and thus improve their policies and legislation.
No one could say that we have not had problems in the past. When the Child Support Agency, which has been mentioned time and again, was introduced, there were appalling problems. It is certainly much better than it was, but I am not saying that further improvements could not be made. People are still coming to my surgeries saying that they have had problems with correspondence, and with inaccurate calculations of the payments that are due.
I also think that it would benefit members of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue to take more interest in business, so that they understand business people's problems and deal with them more compassionately. I am sure that some of the problems that I find in my mail bag, and hear about from constituents who are in business, could have been dealt with more sensitively had those in Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue understood better how businesses work.
I am delighted that the Government have decided to throw open competition for more senior posts. That is a major start on the road that continues the principles first established in the Northcote-Trevelyan report. As for privatisation, which has been mentioned today, I see no reason why we should stop the process: privatisation and contracting out have been universally successful. That is demonstrated by the fact that the Labour party is scared to say that it would reverse any of the privatisations that have already taken place. All that Labour Members will say is that they will not introduce any further changes. I believe that we shall experience the benefits of privatisation in the future, such as the financial and efficiency savings that will result from the privatisation of the Recruitment and Assessment Service.
As the civil service flourishes, so does the Government's commitment to training, education and recruitment. As the White Paper explains, they plan to step up training and qualification levels. They intend to give all civil servants job-specific training, and to allow any wider development that they need to perform their current jobs to the best of their ability. That is absolutely right, and I hope that Labour has no objection to it. I have no doubt that standards in the civil service, high as they are now, will be improved still further by the plans for training and development outlined in the White Paper.
I am also delighted by the plan to invest in people. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor explained, by the beginning of the 21st century every civil servant will be working in a Department that has been recognised as an investor in people. That will not only make the Government and the civil service more efficient, but help civil servants to develop and to reach targets, and to improve the morale about which we have heard so much today.
As I told my right hon. Friend earlier, I am extremely interested in information technology. We can learn a good deal from other countries, and other countries--the United States, among others--can learn from us. We should examine the way in which their civil services work, and the way in which they use information technology to get their message across. I have already put several pages on the Internet in an attempt to send a message to my electorate about the work that I do, and I also use e-mail so that they can contact me. A constituent working in Abu Dhabi has already contacted me with a problem. E-mail, which is being used increasingly, enables my constituents to contact me immediately and enables me to reply.
That is relatively new. I know that a number of hon. Members are using information technology and e-mail, but the system will expand. We have all been contacted by several companies that are climbing over each other to offer us free access to the Internet. I hope that hon. Members will take the opportunity to seek challenges so that they can use information technology to the best advantage. Many young people are tuning to the Internet and we can use it to get our message across to them.
Some departmental pages on the Internet are good, and I am delighted at the way in which information is being spread. I am sure that Departments could make some of the pages more user-friendly and readable for the people that they are trying to serve. Many children are completely computer literate; they can operate computers better than their parents and will seek to use technology for information. I hope that we shall try to put even more information on the Internet, and that far more people will be able to use it.
Businesses need information to help their enterprises to flourish. They could even use the Internet to get through to the Minister, who could provide suggestions on policy. In the context of deregulation, for which the Minister has responsibility, perhaps they could suggest where rules and regulations could be put to one side to help their businesses.
Training that is based on legislation or on the interpretation of legislation or Brussels directives by the civil service or by Whitehall, must be assured of transparency and fairness, so that businesses are given as many opportunities as possible and will know that rules
are not interpreted differently in different parts of the country. Even worse is the fact that rules from Brussels that are being implemented here are being ignored or treated in a completely different way in other parts of the European Community, thus giving them an advantage.
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland):
Like all hon. Members, I greatly admire the high standards that are observable in the civil service. However, I regret that the debate started with a sharp exchange during which the Chancellor of the Duchy thought fit to refute, as he put it, the allegations by the First Division Association about pressure from Ministers on its political impartiality. That is such a serious matter that it merited the time that the Minister took to answer it. I do not object to the fact that he devoted 18 minutes to it and gave way several times. The Opposition spokesman devoted 15 minutes to the issue.
What did not come out of the exchanges was the precise nature of the charges, and there was certainly no detailed refutation. The reports that appeared today in some newspapers derive not only from the press release to which the Minister referred but from direct briefings of journalists. They included allegations that Ministers have asked officials to prepare material for election manifestos and to alter official reports to provide a party political slant, and that they have asked to be briefed on political responses to Opposition policies and speeches.
Ministers are alleged to have sought briefs for public relations events during conferences, and it is also alleged that civil servants were asked to supply material that was subsequently used in party election broadcasts. It is alleged that they were asked to write political speeches by absent political advisers who were not civil servants, and to work in support of regional visits organised by Conservative central office. Apparently, they were asked to cost programmes that were drawn up by the Labour party on employment, social security and law and order, and it is alleged that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler, gave instructions that those requests should be complied with.
The Minister's refutation did not apply to any of those individual allegations. He rested his case on a general assumption that standards were not declining and that the code was being observed. His case had three legs. First, he said that he had personal experience of the civil service and that it did not behave in that manner. That may be a reassuring view about the general behaviour of the civil service, but these are particular accusations, and one cannot take the generality of his acquittal as a refutation.
Secondly, the Minister said that there was no evidence that the due process for complaints that should properly be followed under the code of practice had been followed, or that such complaints had been brought to the notice of the responsible permanent secretaries and, ultimately, to the civil service commissioners. That may be true, but it is not even a prima facie refutation of the allegations: it simply means that they have not yet emerged at the top of the civil service.
The Minister also relied on the Nolan finding that there had been no systematic threat to politicise the civil service, and that no evidence had been laid to show that
there were other than isolated cases of that kind. But Lord Nolan's committee sat some time ago and the allegations, generally and particularly, were that these instances of pressure on civil servants were made in the context of the run-up to the general election. I do not think that Lord Nolan's committee sat in the penumbra of the general election. The Nolan inquiry was stimulated in the first instance not so much by bad behaviour by civil servants or Ministers, as by dubious behaviour by hon. Members. The findings were certainly encouraging at the time, but have no bearing whatever upon the generality or the particularity of these allegations.
I was tempted to ask what the Minister thought his purpose was in coming to the House to speak in the way he did, offering a sort of knee-jerk rejection of such serious charges without telling the House how he proposed to investigate them. It is quite extraordinary that he should simply rely upon the process of the code when, according to the reports, the allegations form a pattern of behaviour by his colleagues which spreads across 11 Departments of State and includes 20 allegations of improper behaviour, with five serious ones being investigated. In such circumstances, the House has a right to look to the Chancellor of the Duchy for some idea of what he thinks would be the proper response.
What is to happen about this? I understand that the general secretary of the First Division Association requested a meeting with Sir Robin Butler. That seems a perfectly proper first step. Openness is now required. There have been too many important, but protracted, internal inquiries, the results of which are produced long after the allegations are made, when they have little relevance. Such an approach would not be sensible or satisfactory. The House requires the allegations to be made specifically and explicitly, for them to be dealt with in a quasi-judicial manner by Sir Robin Butler or someone appointed by him, and for the whole transcript to be made available, so that we can learn whether these serious charges are justified. If they are, it is a matter of the gravest import, and if they are not, they should not have been made.
I cannot even begin to accept the idea that there could be a hidden agenda when someone of the standing of Elizabeth Symons, the FDA general secretary, puts forward what she and her union clearly regard as a pattern of behaviour. It is up to the Minister responsible to take that seriously; not merely to say that he takes it seriously, but to demonstrate by action that the matter will be put to rest and that, if there is any truth in it, the people responsible will be dealt with appropriately.
I question whether the Chamber is the most ideal forum in which to discuss a paper that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) described as rather thin and that deals with matters of detail that can be best examined in a Select Committee atmosphere, rather than in the adversarial atmosphere generated by the circumstances of the debate. It is an inflated document, without much value. It is less prescriptive than descriptive.
It is not entirely clear who is to take responsibility for the implementation of the proposals on development and training of civil servants. The paper says:
Not being greatly enthusiastic about the language of management consultancies and business schools that permeates the document, I felt inclined to ask whether such proposals are what the civil service needs most. I hope that, from what I say, I will not be thought to be questioning the importance of management and specialist skills, which are obviously of serious moment in increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
The paper, however, singularly lacks any sense that any training is required for public service qua public service. This document could apply to any large organisation. Nothing in it is peculiar to the civil service. The civil service requires qualities, characteristics and aptitudes that are, to some extent, peculiar and that have given this country's civil service its high repute, and deservedly so.
Those qualities, characteristics and aptitudes include the need for honesty, the duty of diligence, the appropriateness of courtesy, imaginative insight, toughness of intellect, generosity of spirit and readiness to co-operate. None of those is valued. They are certainly not so valued by the Government that they feel it necessary even to pay lip service to those things in the paper, which purports to be comprehensive in its discussion of civil service development and training.
That absence of attachment to those traditional civil service values has led to demoralisation in the civil service--to which the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich and others have referred--as those values have made the civil servant a person to whom the public look to deliver a response that is tailored to a particular need, not a churned-out, computerised reply that arrives late, is inaccurate and cannot be held to be the responsibility of an individual person. One finds in one's constituency that those are things that are changing the public's perception of the civil service. I hope that, in future documents on development and training, more than lip service will be paid to those characteristics.
The paper raises questions that are of questionable use to the civil service qua civil service. In some ways, it seems that the paper is more appropriate to commercial activity than to the provision of services in which the civil service is predominantly engaged, although I do not for one minute deny that serious and important commercial activities and the management of large sums of money are involved in the principles that the Investors in People standard seeks to cultivate: "commitment, planning, action and evaluation". Those are all, however, directed
to improvements in business performance and, so far as it is necessary to say that is important, it is a statement of the obvious.
A survey by Investors in People Ltd. of 231 accredited organisations reported that the most common benefits included better business performance, sharper focus on training and development, a motivated work force, better customer services, effective communication, a better corporate image, a better appraisal strategy, a more skilled work force and higher productivity.
Interestingly, the number of respondents reporting higher productivity benefits appears to have been relatively low compared with the number reporting other benefits. That leads me to wonder whether we have reached nearer the peak in that sphere than in some of the other matters that were measured by IIP. I do not know that it tells us much about the benefits of the civil service's Investors in People standard, because it was not a survey specifically of the civil service.
The paper has been published some two years after the programme has begun and, as I have said, it is more a chronicle than a set of proposals for implementation. Perhaps some of that will come before the Select Committee on the Civil Service or, in time, before the Public Accounts Committee. Performance can be measured more accurately there on a question-and-answer basis than it can by dialogue across the Chamber.
What is not clear from the document is how the proposed improvements are to be paid for. It seems that, if money is to be spent on training, it will not be new money, but money that has been shifted around. That might have been brought out more clearly in the debate's opening speech.
Civil servants claim that there is a lack of commitment to training specialists--that the old training and administration course is virtually defunct. They claim also that there is inadequate investment in the Civil Service College, which was mentioned earlier, in contrast to the use of expensive management consultants for training--particularly IIP Ltd., which apparently charges anything up to £1,000 for a two-day course--although perhaps that is not excessive as the standards of commercial organisations.
The White Paper does little to tackle the fundamental problem of civil service morale, and the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich was not making a partisan point when she drew attention to that aspect. I have encountered in my constituency managers leaving their civil service roles early in their lives in search of new employment, not because they do not love the service but because they feel frustrated in their desire to serve the public through policies that do not enable them to operate as they believe is their duty.
I do not mean the spectacular, high-level, high-flying civil servants who seek pecuniary advantage by going into the City or some other place where, in the culture of the times, they will be more highly valued. That trend must be reversed. I am not able to say the extent to which that trend is due to under-remuneration. I doubt that that is the cause. My experience is that civil servants have a cast of mind that makes them ready to give service and accept lower levels of pay than people in other walks of life. It is a matter of valuation.
"it is for the hundreds of organisations that make up the Civil Service to carry forward their own plans to improve their investment in training and development in accordance with their own organisational needs",
11 Jul 1996 : Column 615
but I wonder who is responsible if those targets are not met. How will this all be presented? As it stands, the paper is flannelly.
A few yardsticks can already be gleaned from the progress report, which is more what it is like. It shows that, by 1 October last year, about 10 per cent. of the civil servant organisations covered had achieved the Investors in People standard, and that 16 per cent. were committed to it. Some six months later, the number achieving the standard had risen by 2 per cent., and 23 per cent. were committed to it. With such measures of progress, one must be a little sceptical about the Government's suggestion in the paper that it is possible to achieve 65 per cent. commitment in the next 10 months.
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