Examination of witnesses (Questions 180
- 201)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 1998
MR FRANK
MARTIN, Second Treasury Officer
of Accounts, HM Treasury, further examined. SIR
PAUL CONDON,
QPM, and MR
DAVID OMAND
180. Could I next look at the paragraph
my colleague has just picked up, Figure 12? I was interested in
this differential between the highest and lowest and you have
given an explanation for that. Is there a correlation here between,
say, areas which are more difficult to police, inner city areas
having the worst figures, and the suburbs which in some ways could
be said to be easier to police having the lower figures? It is
very difficult to judge here.
(Sir Paul Condon) Quite the reverse; it is actually
quite the reverse. In some people's minds if you like the more
challenging policing environments, the more exciting policing
environments, have the lowest sickness records. That is partly
a product of the fact historically they have also had the youngest
age profile, but until fairly recently we were pretty severely
inhibited in moving people around London to make sure we had a
better age distribution.
181. If we look at the suburbs of London,
the appropriate figures to compare would be those of rural police
forces, those areas where it is quietest as it were where you
assume there is less excitement, to use your phrase? They would
be an appropriate parallel? Would that be fair? I am trying to
see whether or not there is anybody we can reasonably compare
yourselves with when other forces are so much smaller. Can we
break down the Met into different areas and compare little bits
with other areas?
(Sir Paul Condon) The indicator of sickness or
the predictor of sickness is more to do with the age profile of
people working at the location than the working environment. If
you look at our family of forces, I would argue that London is
unique and we are very proud of that, but if you are looking for
a family of forces, then it is places like Manchester and Merseyside
who, in terms of medical retirements, average sickness, have tended
to be higher than us, so that is a force-by-force comparison.
182. So it is unfortunate in a sense that
there is nowhere in this report then where it tells us that the
best correlation of illness is really with age rather than anything
else in the sense that if you were comparing different sections,
the age criterion is more than anything else.
(Sir Paul Condon) If you are asking me to predict
and manage, then most of the challenges or the big challenges
are around long-term sickness of officers who have got 20 to 27
years' service and that is the management challenge that is the
legislative reform challenge. It is not linked to a challenging
or exciting policing environment because some of our most exciting
locations with a lot going on have the lowest sickness records,
or the best sickness records.
183. The Chinese cries of "We're living
in exciting times", but can I come back to the one aside
that you made about how your absence figures were increased as
a result of the length of medical waiting lists. I am not sure
whether or not that was a major factor or whether or not that
was just a throw-away.
(Sir Paul Condon) No, it is not our figures, but
figures we have access to. The waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery
are, on average, two to three months longer in London than they
are elsewhere, so as we are not the primary carers, as the GPs
are the primary carers, as we are not allowed to provide private
health care for our colleagues, we must be cognisant of the environment
in which we are working.
184. I understand that.
(Sir Paul Condon) And research bears that out.
185. I understand that point. There is a
difficulty because we want to ask a number of questions, but not
necessarily receive long answers and go over some of the ground
we have already heard. Do I take it then that if Frank Dobson
is successful in reducing waiting times, then we could expect
automatically to see a reduction in the sickness figures for yourselves
and indeed if that does come to be the case, then Frank might
very well use that as a platform for running for Mayor of London!
(Sir Paul Condon) It will have an impact. Something
which I am also exploring is that I would like to be able to pay
to save, so again in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, if via
a case conference it makes sense for us to spend £1,500 to
get a colleague back to work and to save either a medical pension
or a long-term sickness, then I think that is valuable use of
public money. Now, the challenge is not to say that we are going
to provide that——
186. Are you able to do that at the moment?
(Sir Paul Condon) I cannot do that.
187. Have you asked for permission or for
powers to do that?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes.
188. And that is with the Home Secretary
as well, is it?
(Sir Paul Condon) Yes, I am exploring via my Police
Committee, via the receiver, and through to the accounting officer
whether I can have more freedom to pay to save around the provision
of health services.
189. Can I just seek clarification? Is that
then a decision which will be made ultimately by your Police Committee
or by the Home Office?
(Sir Paul Condon) At the moment I would find it
difficult. Although I can do it in limited circumstances, in the
past when I have explored issues of private health provision and
other issues, it has been received in a luke-warm manner.
190. I can understand that. That was not
actually the question I asked you, with respect. Is that decision
for your Police Committee to make or is that ultimately a decision
for the Home Office and the Home Secretary?
(Sir Paul Condon) They are one and the same thing
in the sense that the Police Committee merely advises the Home
Secretary as our police authority.
(Mr Omand) I would have to say, though, in addition
that the Home Secretary would need to look at the implications
of this for the police service as a whole and also consult obviously
with his colleagues in Scotland and Northern Ireland. His position
as police authority for the metropolitan area is separate from
his responsibilities for England and Wales as a whole.
(Sir Paul Condon) Other forces have more freedom
to utilise pay to save than I do because I am working to a different
regime.
191. That may be something that we will
want to think about. Could I just come back then to another question
about the relationship with GPs? You seem to be very respectful
of the clinical judgments of doctors in these matters, I think
more so than we have been in previous discussions on other matters.
Is there not a situation where different doctors are applying
different criteria and indeed when you feel it necessary to send
somebody for a second opinion, you are effectively casting doubt
on the first doctor's view and indeed if your second opinion overrules
that doctor, that clearly is an indication that the doctor applying
the criteria that you believe are appropriate has actually been
more appropriate in the circumstances than the original doctor?
How do you progress the question of harmonising the judgments
made by individual GPs to ensure that some of them are not perhaps
being more lax than is appropriate.
(Sir Paul Condon) I hope I did not mislead you.
All I was seeking to convey was that GPs are the primary carers
and they are the primary relationship with our staff because we
are not into a regime of total health care, so we must respect
that relationship, but we do challenge with increasing vigour
some of these medical decisions. We are currently recruiting a
new senior occupational health physician to be the senior doctor.
We are redefining that role to remove it from the clinical side
of interventions and to be primarily a management intervention
health post, so the newly-recruited senior occupational health
physician, a big chunk of his job description will be about health
audit, monitoring the role of GP interventions and so on, so we
are prepared to do that and will be doing that with increasing
vigour.
192. Presumably you are in the early days
and all that and that is something that we will have to look for
in due course. I am slightly confused by this question of early
medical retirement and the costs thereof. Is it cheaper for you
and have you considered moving to early retirement on medical
grounds in advance of, say, the six months or the twelve months
on sick pay? When you feel that either someone is at it or they
are not at it, but they are not going to get better, do you move
in more quickly and would that be a saving to the public purse
or is it a standard procedure where they get six months, twelve
months and then the end date for the medical retirement?
(Sir Paul Condon) The cost-benefit analysis suggests
that we would incur significantly higher in-year and ongoing costs
with more medical retirements and there would not be anywhere
near equivalent savings by putting people off pay on the button
at six months or twelve months, so the medical costs or the costs
incurred through early medical retirements far outweigh any potential
savings from a more robust use of Regulation 46.
193. Is it not worth taking the chance on
that basis that that will cost you less, that it would not be
advantageous financially to take the decision earlier? In fact
I can see the representatives from the Home Office nodding, so
I am happy with that. Can I turn to figures 8 and 10, which relate
to the position of civil staff in the Metropolitan Police. I am
slightly concerned about what I have heard from yourself about
the position of traffic wardens and how difficult their position
is and so on and so forth, that we are actually measuring apples
and oranges together here because presumably these statistics
conceal within them quite widely different figures for traffic
wardens on the one hand and others on the other hand. Would it
not actually be much better and more meaningful for us to have
had separate statistics for these? I wonder, since traffic wardens
cannot be presumably compared to almost anybody else in any other
circumstance, whether or not correlations have been done between,
say, the clerical staff in the Metropolitan Police and the equivalent
clerical staff in government service or local authorities and
would that not make for more appropriate comparisons?
(Sir Paul Condon) That is not my judgment, that
is an NAO judgment.
194. You have no doubt on that? You saw
the report in draft form and you did not choose to raise it at
that time.
(Sir Paul Condon) I think this is a vital and
valuable report. If you are saying to me, could we have put another
20 pages of supplementary information in there, well, of course
we could, on almost any subject covered here, but the judgment
about what goes in and what is relevant—I am not offloading—I
think is really an NAO decision.
195. The point has been made. Could I clarify,
on page 34, paragraph 3.31? You make the point about separate
regulations, and I understand this was in completely different
context, but I am not clear from what you said whether or not
the material which is going to be determined by the Home Secretary
in due course in consultation covers all those areas, or whether
or not there are some areas still outstanding. If so, have you
made appeals in some way or direct approaches to have these three
matters addressed?
(Sir Paul Condon) I have argued for some while,
and to some extent controversially, that there is a need for a
holistic review of pay and conditions so that the police service
moves into the next millennium with conditions which are relevant
to now rather than 20 or 30 years ago. I have had ample opportunity
to lobby for that reform, Home Secretaries past and present have
given me the opportunity to lobby for these reforms, and the Permanent
Under-Secretary has indicated there are some key statements about
to be made by the current Home Secretary which touch upon these
issues.
196. Can I seek clarification whether or
not all these issues will be addressed by this marvellous document
which is going to be produced?
(Mr Omand) The current Home Secretary is looking
for early action, so that is in part why we would not want to
embark on a long and wholesale review of the entirety. What we
have got is action on three fronts. We have the Police Regulations
of 1996, and there are some amendments to be made there to pick
up the points which have been made. Those points will require
discussion in the Police Negotiating Board. We have the Police
Pension Regulations where we are talking about very major change
potentially. We will be publishing a consultation document, and
that will have to be subject to wide-ranging consultation which
will take us up to the summer, to the end of July. Finally, we
have the Discipline Regulations, where some of these tricky issues
arise, for example the question of whether there should be a middle
way between disciplinary dismissal and sickness dismissal, something
equivalent to what the rest of the public service generally would
know as limited efficiency. Those proposals the Home Secretary
will bring forward in response to the Home Affairs Committee's
Report when he makes a statement to the House next month.
197. Can I clarify that there is nothing
in the way it is being approached which would make it more difficult,
at a later stage, to have the introduction of a holistic view,
as it was described, of the whole situation? It is entirely compatible
with that?
(Mr Omand) We would hope this does pull together.
What the work by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary has shown
and what the National Audit Office has also shown is that there
are some gaps in the coverage of the three separate sets of regulations.
An example is an officer who is the subject of disciplinary proceedings
and who goes off sick, perhaps as a result of stress, when the
disciplinary case cannot be brought to a conclusion because the
regulations stipulate the officer must be present in person and
the Chief Officer of Police has no alternative but medical dismissal.
That is an area which has been picked up, and we have already
held discussions with the Police Association, and we want to bring
forward changes. I hope you will find the set of proposals in
the three areas mentioned will cover most of the ground, but that
is not to say there will not be further changes we will want to
make to try and get a grip of those problems.
198. One final, brief question: how many
of these sickness absences both short and long-term are caused
as a result of sporting injuries?
(Sir Paul Condon) I do not carry a figure in my
head, there are some, but not in terms of injury on duty[8]——
199. I would not expect them to be sporting
injuries on duty.
(Sir Paul Condon) I have not got prepared how
many injuries are related to sport, but sport will feature in
here. If I may, Sir, I will provide a note on that.
Mr Davidson: Thanks
very much.
Chairman
200. Finally Mr Davidson has been able to
bring Mr Wardle's twin ambitions together somehow! Sir Paul, Mr
Omand, can I thank you for your evidence today. What you do on
our behalf, and I am sure I speak for the whole Committee, is
vitally important and, as I said, we are wholly with you on the
things you do, and of course one other thing is that we are all
fully behind your officers, the vast majority of whom, I am quite
sure, do a marvellous job for the people of our capital and our
country. That being said, the issue we are dealing with today
is an issue which, as you yourself pointed out, is a very expensive
and important one, and indeed if you resolve this, you will be
adding to the effectiveness of the Metropolitan Police in doing
that service, so I have, as I usually have, I am afraid, at the
end of these meetings, a series of factual questions which I would
like notes on if at all possible, and I will run through them.
The first is could we know what analytical data will be available
from PIMS1? In other words, how will you be able to correlate
some of the causes and effects in the issues we have been talking
about today? The second one is can we have details, and probably
in the form of a working example, I think, of how medical retirement
is financially advantageous1? That is a quote from the report.
Thirdly, you undertook to provide a note following Mr Alan Williams'
question on various causes of injuries, and can we have details,
as far as you have them, of cause and cost of vehicle-related
injuries, since that is a large category1? The fourth one is really
I think for the Home Office. We have been told that the use of
recuperation posts in other services up and down the country helps
reduce the numbers on the sick lists. Can that be assessed for
other metropolitan authorities? It may only be possible to find
an example, but can we see if there is any information to indicate
the impact of this[9]?
(Mr Omand) The Chief Inspector of Constabulary
may have figures and I will search for them.
201. That would be helpful. It is just really
that this is clearly a by-product of civilianisation in one respect
and perhaps there is an unseen cost in doing that, so it is perhaps
worth knowing about the consequences. You have told us, Mr Omand,
that the Home Secretary will in effect be making some decisions
and some statements next month. Obviously we will have to wait
for that, but once that is done, it would be useful if we could
have an assessment of where you see and how large you see that
any savings or effects of that would be, again with respect to
the issues we are talking about today. Obviously that was in the
area of sickness, retirement and discipline that the issue was
raised. Also, and I think this is for Mr Omand, could we have
an explanation of why pay to save does not apply to the Metropolitan
Police in a way that it applies to other police forces, as we
have been told today1? Finally, could we have the details of your
action plan and the timetable to deal with the issues you have
talked about today2 which you have referred to a couple of times
and the expected results of that? I know it is quite a burden,
but I think it is quite a complex area and one we shall have to
take very seriously and, as I think you have deduced through the
course of the questioning, Sir Paul, this Committee is entirely
with you in what you are trying to do in resolving this issue.
(Sir Paul Condon) Thank you very much.
Chairman: Gentlemen,
thank you both for coming to see us today.
8 Note: See Evidence, Appendix 1, page 28 (PAC
218). Back
9
Note: See Evidence, Appendix 1, page 28 (PAC 218). Back
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