Examination of witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 1998
MR FRANK
MARTIN, Second Treasury Officer
of Accounts, HM Treasury, further examined. SIR
PAUL CONDON,
QPM, and MR
DAVID OMAND
80. Before we come back to that, C&AG,
when Ms Griffiths asked her first question about extra overtime
that was incurred in order to cover for absent officers, I was
confused by the answer Sir Paul gave. Was the reason that you
did not provide that cost simply because it could not easily be
extrapolated, in other words, it was not readily part of the management
information, or is that not the case? I know what you looked at.
Could you put your hands on the information to which I have just
alluded? In other words, it was not readily available?
(Ms Hands) Not specifically in relation to sickness.
81. Thank you. When your team went in and
did this excellent report, did you have any specific discussions
either with the Police Federation or the Superintendents' Association,
or were you asked to consult with either of them?
(Ms Hands) The HM Inspector was talking to both
organisations during his report, and through our liaison with
him we took account of that.
82. Excellent. I want to stay on the theme
of management, Chairman, but just before that could I ask Mr Omand,
when you said that HM Chief Inspector placed the Met's record
on early retirement on medical grounds somewhere in the middle
of the range—I think it is 1.6 per cent and other forces
were as high as 3 or 4—that does not mean, does it, that
Sir Paul's point should not be addressed by the Home Office? Namely,
that if an officer gets into his or her head that either they
are unfit to carry on as a police officer or they simply do not
want to, then ideally, if it can be afforded, there ought to be
other exit lanes along the way other than having to prove to a
bunch of doctors they are medically unfit? Ideally is that not
the case?
(Mr Omand) It is, and may I explain what we are
doing about it? The Home Secretary will make a statement to the
House next month in response to the recommendations of the Home
Affairs Committee on police discipline. In that statement he will
address a number of the points that Sir Paul has made and that,
I hope, will provide part of the answer. Another part will come
in the reform of the police pension arrangements, in particular
in the definition of injuries sustained in the course of duty
and associated matters. We will be publishing a consultation paper
on that which will be of some significance, again we hope next
month. So we do recognise it is our responsibility in the Home
Office to set the regulatory framework. It does need up-dating.
83. Thank you. Sir Paul, getting back to
this management question, if the team leader on duty hears that
Bill has called in sick and he has a bunch of priorities in front
of him, I can understand why the last thing he wants to think
about is playing around with the computer to record the fact Bill
has not come in and ask it to tell him when Bill comes back. Is
there not therefore a cultural problem? Is it not the case that
hard-pressed police officers and particularly team leaders, or
whatever the jargon is, do not put much priority on assembling
this kind of information when they have more urgent tasks in policing?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, I acknowledge there is
strength in your observation. I think the way we have responded
to that is initially with an exhortation to do better and now
with a mandatory requirement that Tom or Sally must actually be
contacted. Regardless of how busy they are, there is a mandatory
requirement to contact them on their first day sick, to discuss
with them why they are sick, how they can be supported, how we
can help them get back to work. That is not an option regardless
of culture or not.
84. I understand that but I would like to
go back in time on this. You did say to Mr Clifton-Brown that
it was more significantly a problem with uniformed constables.
Actually, if you look at the statistics it also applies to sergeants
and inspectors pretty much the same, not quite as much, but if
that is the case, if the role model in the group has a high absentee
rate is it not going to be pretty difficult to persuade police
constables they should be a little more diligent on this front?
(Sir Paul Condon) Although the statistics bear
out what you say, Sir, I think the underlying causes are slightly
different. I think the reason uniformed colleagues, either constables,
sergeants, inspectors, have a higher sickness rate than their
detective or specialist colleagues is because of shift work, because
of vulnerability to assault; by and large it is the uniformed
officers who are vulnerable to sicknesses, illnesses and injuries
linked to that. So I would expect the uniformed inspector to have
more vulnerability to sickness than a detective inspector.
85. Because of the lead——
(Sir Paul Condon) Because of the shift work, working
conditions and day-to-day contact with incidents.
86. I am trying to tease out from you where
this management priority lies. You were appointed to the Met in
1993, Sheehy was upon everybody, your officers were unsettled,
you took brave stances on race, on corrupt police officers, you
had the Sheehy factor, is it not really the case that you decided
in 1995 when the new regulations came out to give this a lower
priority to show your police officers that you were making a concession
rather than challenging them on their integrity so far as absence
due to sickness was concerned? Is that a factor?
(Sir Paul Condon) I hope my motivation was honourable
in two senses——
87. I did not doubt it was.
(Sir Paul Condon) One, as you have hinted, was
to give lawful and legitimate support where it should be observed.
We were cognisant that the six months limit was for the whole
of the country, regardless of primary care, waiting lists, GP
availability and all of that. That worried us. But also there
is the issue of value for money, knowing our medical retirements
are significantly lower than many other large city forces if we
had been cavalier, regardless of consequences, we could have added
perhaps as much as £30 million a year to our medical retirement
bill.
88. You said that in reply to the Chairman
and I had a look. The crude cost is 72 million for police officers
and if 33 per cent of the illnesses suffered are—I cannot
remember the exact terminology, you may have to help me—musculo-skeletal
or spinal, then the cost would be 24 million, if you take a third
of 72 million——
(Sir Paul Condon) I think there are different
costs. The 72 million is in relation to the opportunity cost lost.
Medical retirements cost significantly more and the average cost
for a medical retirement is £57,000.
89. So it is not inevitable all of those
would lead on to medical retirements. I understand. When did you
come up with this value for money analysis and the figures you
have just repeated, the 33 million, et cetera? Was this when the
regulations first came out, or was this something you looked at
later?
(Sir Paul Condon) The anxiety was present at the
time. The actual costings were subsequent, as part of our working
through this for nearly two years.
90. I am coming back because I am determined
to pin you on this slightly because I think, for reasons I would
support entirely, as the new Commissioner, or the newish Commissioner,
you looked at what needed to be done and you set a list of management
priorities. The fact is that until this focus was renewed by the
C&AG report this was a little further down, for reasons that
I, at any rate on this Committee, find understandable, but if
you were doing that certainly your employees would have known
you were doing that—that is all part of the politics of
the Met—and if that is the case how can you expect line
managers at the operational level to set more priority on this
when they saw their Commissioner carefully putting this a little
further down because there were other key tasks and challenges
for the Met to face?
(Sir Paul Condon) I do not think we put it down
anywhere. We had taken a professional judgment about the implementation
of this policy. On the regulations the Home Office gave us no
guidance whatsoever——
91. They gave you discretion?
(Sir Paul Condon) Total discretion. So each force
was into a value for money/welfare policy implementation——
92. I think you are playing with a very
straight bat, Sir Paul, and I shall consider the ball dead on
that one. Why has it taken so long to include within your corporate
objectives the simple message, "reduce absence"? Why
has it taken as long as it has, because this has been around since
1991, since the Home Affairs Select Committee Report?
(Sir Paul Condon) We have had the ambition and
the policy statement for many years. What we are now in a position
to do, and this report and continued support from the NAO has
been an important stimulation to get us into shape to do it, is
actually deliver. We have moved from exhortation to setting targets
and——
93. Will PIMS help you on that?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, it will.
94. I am always suspicious of public servants
who say, "Our new computer systems will ...", but it
really will?
(Sir Paul Condon) It is not the primary thing
but it is part of the jigsaw of analysis, data input and confidence
in the figures. The NAO have been generous enough in recent months
in our work with them to acknowledge that we have put ourselves
into a process of cleansing our records and getting ourselves
into shape which probably no other force has been able to do.
95. But then PIMS plus the belief on the
part of those operational men and women down the line that this
is a piece of information that will be useful to them and useful
to you? Is that not the case?
(Sir Paul Condon) I am sorry, I have lost the
thread.
96. Is it not terribly important that down
the line your line managers understand that this does matter and
that the information, however tiresome it may be when they are
facing a crisis in protecting the public, let us say, can help
them in management terms and can save money, money which can be
applied elsewhere within the Met?
(Sir Paul Condon) The first attempt at a new policy
statement on this during my time as Commissioner, the first significant
drawing of this all together was in 1996 when one of the key objectives,
and this was our policy statement on sickness, was to treat as
serious misconduct any abuse of the sickness absence procedures
and take poor attendance records into account when assessing performance.
That was one of the key motivators for our policy reform in 1996.
What we have moved on to is a point of saying that exhortation
is not enough and that there have to be targets, there have to
be mandatory conditions and there must be auditing and we must
deliver.
97. If you are on to value for money then,
if your occupational health support costs £3.2 million a
year, as the C&AG says in his report, if you were to double
that support, not just get the odd extra health professional,
but double the support, and that cost would only be equivalent
to saving half a day lost per person, is not the economics of
that, therefore, fairly obvious, particularly for the growth of
stress?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, one is new money and one
is opportunity cost money and I am not moaning about my budget,
but, as I say, as the Audit Commission have shown, apart from
Warwickshire, I have taken the biggest hit on a police budget
nationally, so if we are into tough choices, if it is a trade-off
between new real money and opportunity cost money, that may actually
lead to me taking perhaps 100 officers off the streets to finance
that short term, so the value for money savings are there, but
I think it is very easy to move from opportunity cost money to
real new money.
Mr Wardle: Sir Paul,
you have not only played with a straight bat, but you also managed
to put a bid in front of your Permanent Secretary, and I thought
I detected just for the merest nanosecond a smile coming across
the Permanent Secretary's face, but I must be wrong! I think I
will leave it at that, Chairman. Thank you.
Chairman
98. Before I call the next Member, you used
a figure of £57,000 for the cost of a medical retirement.
(Sir Paul Condon) That is a very crude average,
sir. That is a commuted sum of money in relation to commuting
part of the accessible pension and so on, but with my 457 medical
retirements, that costs me about £28 million, so when we
looked at the implications if we had doubled that, we would be
looking at nearly another £30 million.
Mr Hope
99. I have got to declare my interests as
well. My brother is a serving police officer but not in the Met,
and my father was a former Commander of the Met, but I have not
consulted either of them prior to this hearing. Can I turn first
to the facts. I want to go back to overtime costs. We have not
got a figure for this. We do know that the opportunity cost is
£72 million, with £8 million for the costs of the occupational
therapists and so on, so the overtime costs then could be very
substantial. They could be in the tens of millions of pounds if
officers are making choices for other officers to cover.
(Sir Paul Condon) The assumption is that if someone
goes sick, they are automatically back-filled either with a live
body or overtime or whatever. The reality is that on most occasions
if someone goes sick, then the team carries that burden and they
all work a bit harder. There is not a cause and effect which says
that if someone goes sick, therefore, overtime is then incurred.
Quite properly, as the NAO is entitled to speculate, there can
be a speculation that it may lead to overtime. I would say that
it is speculation. At the average police station if someone goes
sick on relief, then they will not be back-filled through overtime.
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