Memorandum submitted by the Public &
Commercial Services Union (E8)
INTRODUCTION
The Public & Commercial Services Union (PCS)
represents members in the clerical, executive, secretarial and
support grades in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food,
including MAFF's regional organisation. We welcome this opportunity
to offer evidence to the Committee on the performance and effectiveness
of MAFF's Regional Service Centres, and we do so from the perspective
of the staff who work within it and who deal directly with farmers
and the farming community on a day-to-day basis.
DELIVERY OF
SERVICE
Contact with farmers
It is our conviction that the service provided by
the current structure of nine Regional Service Centres (RSCs)
situated at various locations throughout England, is not only
effective and efficient but is also essential to the future success
of British agriculture. The fact that there is a wide geographical
spread of RSCs maximises MAFF's local interface with the agriculture
community. It enables farmers direct access to the people who
are dealing with their business and, most importantly, it allows
for that interaction to be conducted face to face. Through our
contacts with farmers, we know that this is something which they
value highly in terms of the service they receive from MAFF. They
appreciate the local knowledge and expertise which is built up
within each RSC, concerning the individual farmers and their holdings,
their particular problems and the actualities of the local land
and its environment. Also, when there are still a number of farmers
who cannot read or write, the ability to deal with matters verbally
across a table is also a considerable benefit.
Farmers want direct contact with staff, eg in
resolving queries and problems. They do not want to be passed
around from pillar to post, or to be kept on hold at the end of
a telephone. RSC staff are able to avoid these things in most
cases.
Customer Satisfaction Survey
The facility of access combined with a co-operative
and knowledgeable workforce was recognised in the most recent
customer satisfaction survey of the RSCs, carried out in 1995
by BJM Research and Consultancy Ltd on MAFF's behalf. This survey
showed that 85 per cent of farmers considered the performance
of the RSCs to be good, very good or excellent. The survey also
identified the satisfaction of farmers with the way in which the
staff dealt with them. This echoes our own anecdotal evidence
that farmers, and very few exceptions, are always ready to praise
the work and attitude of RSC staff. Farmers do have criticism,
of course, but these seem to be almost exclusively related to
red tape and to central MAFF or EU policy, all of which is outside
the control of the individual RSCs.
Effectiveness
Statistics produced by the Ministry show that
the RSCs as a whole operate to a high degree of efficiency. The
Committee will be fully aware of the need for MAFF to meet certain
targets and deadlines in respect of the administration of CAP
payments, in order to avoid disallowance. Considering that the
nine RSCs manage between them around £2 billion of CAP funding
for agricultural grants and subsidies in England, the rare instances
of disallowance actually occurring have been minimal. This is
a further reflection of the fact that the RSCs operate at a consistently
high level of efficiency: figures indicate that this is around
about 98 per cent. This was confirmed by the Minister in an answer
to a Question in the House on 27 July 1999, which provided details
of the RSCs' performance against the required "Commitment
to Service" targets for 1998-99. Further evidence of the
effectiveness and importance of the RSCs' local relationship with
farmers is exemplified by the statement made by Lord Donoughue
in January 1999, when announcing that £838 million had been
paid out on time to farmers under the Arable Area Payments Scheme.
He said then that this achievement "reflected the successful
partnership between the Ministry's staff in the Regions and farmers
themselves."
The Social Dimension
PCS considers that "partnership" to
be a crucial one, particularly at this time of crisis in agriculture.
The Ministry's regional structure reflects the diversity and widespread
nature of UK agriculture, varying as it does, for example, from
the large arable holdings of East Anglia to the small, almost
subsistence farming of the Herefordshire hill farms. But it also
has an important social dimension. Local accessibility and familiarity
can help to avoid some of the problems of social exclusion and
isolation which can at times be a problem in rural areas. With
farmers currently under considerable pressure and stress, the
knowledge that there is a local presence from a Government Department,
which is dealing directly with their affairs can be a real help
to struggling farmers. As already mentioned, the ability to make
direct contact with known and trusted MAFF staff can both expedite
business and also provide important support in less tangible ways.
This relationship between farmers and MAFF staff
should not be misconstrued. Staff in the RSCs remain professional
and detached, as required by their position. They are helpful
and co-operative, but always mindful of the limits imposed on
them by the rules etc under which they work. But within those
rules the staff can and do ensure that the system is operated
so that the optimum service is provided for farmers in a way which
they both understand and feel comfortable with. By providing the
vital "human touch", the local MAFF presence is seen
as an integral part of the local agricultural community. It can
also be a metaphorical lifeline—and in some cases literally
so—for individual farmers under intolerable stress. We believe
that the RSCs are already acting, in part, in the sort of fashion
which the Government has envisaged for the Government Office for
the Regions; as a direct link between central Government and the
regional community. There may be scope for the role to be developed
further.
Resources
PCS believes that the high level of performance
demonstrated by the RSCs has been achieved primarily through the
goodwill, dedication and loyalty of the staff. It has also been
achieved despite years of inadequate resourcing and under circumstances
of increasing personal stress for the staff. There is an unacceptable
level of overtime being worked in the RSCs, combined with the
continuing use of casual staff. PCS believes that the increases
in overtime and casual employment in the RSCs coincided with the
introduction of "affordable staffing levels" to replace
the previous concept of staff complements. This philosophy, in
our view, means that staff numbers are now driven by the desire
to cut costs rather than to provide a service, and that insufficient
weight is given to the scale and nature of the work to be done.
THE FUTURE
E-business and the emerging technologies
PCS is conscious of the Government's declared objective
of facilitating the business of all Government Departments using
improved IT systems and, in particular, the Internet. We are fully
supportive of those objectives and we believe that it is entirely
right that all Government business should be capable of being
transacted electronically. However, whilst the Union will co-operate
fully with that process in MAFF, we do not believe that the take
up of e-business within the agricultural community will be such
that all business will be done that way for some time to come.
MAFF will need to institute a major and on-going initiative aimed
at assisting farmers to acquire the expertise and, in may cases,
also the equipment, before the majority of farmers can conduct
all their business with MAFF electronically.
Changes to the MAFF Regional Organisation
Towards the end of 1999, MAFF commission PriceWaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) to look into how MAFF administers the payment of funds under
the Common Agricultural Policy. That study was conducted at great
expense and in what PCS considers to be undue haste (just three
months in total). It produced recommendations for radical restructuring
of the regional organisation which, PCS believes, are not justified
by the realities of the role of the RSCs and the work they undertake;
will not improve either the service to farmers or the administration
of CAP payments; and could be the final straw which breaks the
back of British agriculture—at least for the majority of
small and medium-sized producers.
The PwC report recommends the closure of between
six to eight of the 11 offices currently run by MAFF and the Intervention
Board, (those 11 offices being the nine RSCs and two IB offices
in Reading and Newcastle), and the shedding of at least 1,600
jobs. The remaining three to five offices would be hived off into
a new Executive Agency of MAFF, dealing exclusively with CAP payments.
Its structure would be based on a banking/insurance industry model
with a "corporate centre", a remote telephone Call Centre
for dealing with all queries, and one or more "processing
centres". The processing centres would be, in effect, paper
"factories", involved exclusively in processing claims
and applications for money under CAP. All queries involving CAP
payments would be dealt with by the Call Centre and not by the
staff actually processing the payment. The whole process, under
the PwC proposals, would be predicated on the assumption that
100 per cent of CAP payments would be made via the Internet.
At the time of writing, a business case is being
submitted to the Minister for his decision on whether to proceed
with the restructuring. He is due to meet with PCS on 5 May to
discuss his decision. A summary response to the PwC report, from
PCS to the Minister, is attached for the Committee's information
[not printed].
PCS believes that the PwC proposals are superficial,
short-sighted, misinformed, and would be disastrous for both MAFF
and for the future of UK agriculture. It would be the antithesis
of the direct, customer-orientated service which MAFF provides
and which those towards whom the service is directed have said
time and again they appreciate and want. It would dismantle and
centralise the Ministry's regional organisation at a time when
greater regionalisation is supposed to be a Government aim. It
would break apart and destroy what is currently an effective and
proven operation, which has consistently delivered a high level
of quality service over many years, and would replace it with
an untried and untested regime that would not improve efficiency,
would not be popular with farmers or with staff working in it.
It would see the loss of hundreds of experienced and dedicated
staff, and the expertise which they have developed over time and
which is so vital to the iterative process which dealing with
queries in the RSCs entails.
Electronic submission of forms
PwC's report seeks to justify their proposed
structure of the CAP Paying Agency (CAPPA) by the need to modernise
MAFF's computer systems and facilitate e-commerce. PCS rejects
that linkage. Whilst we do not disagree that modernisation of
the IT systems in the RSCs is well overdue, work on a replacement
system was underway before PwC came along.
There is no reason that IT modernisation and
the move towards increasing levels of e-business cannot be achieved
within the current RSC structure. Indeed, it is PCS's belief that
it would be both easier and safer, (from the point of view of
avoiding disallowance), if the IT were to be developed alongside
existing systems and within the current regional structure. We
are convinced that to launch a new and radical IT system simultaneously
with new and radical working practices in a new Agency structure
would be monumental folly. No new IT system can be guaranteed
to work effectively from day one. But a system dealing with CAP
payments will have to operate to at least 96 per cent efficiency
if MAFF is not to incur disallowance. We do not believe that this
can be achieved under the PwC proposals. This is what our members
who do the work day in, day out, are telling us. What MAFF could
be facing is yet another high profile computer disaster such as
has dogged the public service over the last few years, eg in the
Passport Office—but with the attendant cost implications
of millions of pounds of potential disallowance.
The use of "third party agents"
We do not accept that 100 per cent of all farmers
will be in a position to use the Internet to do business with
MAFF within the next couple of years as PwC's report suggests.
PwC have proposed that "third party agents" could act
on behalf of farmers who could not or did not want to deal direct
with MAFF electronically. It has yet to be explained to our satisfaction
how this would work on the scale which is likely to be necessary.
Although the NFU's senior leadership has indicated its interest
in the third party role, much less enthusiasm and credulity has
been expressed by those within the lower ranks of the NFU who
would have to bear the burden of that role, or by those who would
ultimately have to pay for the service. One senior MAFF official
has since suggested that charities or the Women's Institute might
wish to take on the role of third party. PCS believes that the
whole situation is now bordering on farce.
Why change?
We can see no logic or benefit in dismantling
the current structure and replacing it with a new and very different
one entirely on the false premise that all farmers will be rushing
to use the Internet, or the equally false premise that there are
sufficient capable organisations out there who are willing and
have the capacity to take on the work required. Nor do we see
the logic in compelling farmers, in the middle of the worst depression
that farming has seen in living memory, to pay out even more money
to "agents" in order to operate a system which they
do not want, to allow them to continue to do what they currently
can do for nothing.
Neither do we accept that the staff "savings"
which PwC have predicted—and which are seen as being essential
in order to help fund the restructuring—are realistic, deliverable
or desirable. We have yet to find anyone who knows anything about
the realities of agriculture in practice, and the day-to-day work
of the RSCs in practice, who believes that the PwC proposals will
work or will improve the service offered by MAFF to its "customers".
The PCS Visions for the RSCs
We trust that the Minister will have recognised
all these various absurdities in the PwC approach, and will have
rejected their recommendations. We also trust that he will choose
instead to work in partnership with PCS and the other MAFF Unions,
as representatives of the staff, in taking forward a sensible
and realistic programme of modernisation within the regional organisation.
But modernisation which builds upon the strengths of the current
RSCs, which enhances its record, and that of its staff, for adaptability
and forward-looking, and which reinforces the link between MAFF's
local presence and the communities which it serves.
We are fully supportive of moves to secure the
RSCs the most effective and advanced IT system, so that an integrated
and modern working environment can produce benefits for staff
and farmers alike. We would also support moves to reduce red tape
in respect of the administration of CAP payments. But we would
advocate careful planning in respect of how MAFF is to be integrated
or assimilated with the Government Office for the Regions, so
that its role already as a provider of a regional service is both
recognised and developed.
Finally, it has been suggested from within the
NFU that MAFF should have more local offices. PCS certainly agrees
that MAFF should not have less, and we did argue against the closure
of offices under the previous administration, a decade or so ago,
when the then regional organisation was reduced to the nine RSCs
we have today. The view now being expressed that nine RSCs is
not enough would seem to show that we were right. However, we
recognise that it is expensive to create new offices, or to bring
them back once they are gone. All the more reason, in our view,
why MAFF should not now be considering reducing its offices. If
there were scope for enhancing the current RSC structure with,
perhaps, a number of smaller satellite offices over a wider locality
then PCS would probably support that. But at the moment our priority
is to defend the current RSC structure on the basis of its proven
track record as a cost-effective, efficient and respected organisation.
PCS is not opposed to change, but bad change should always be
opposed. We hope that, after its deliberations, the Committee
will agree with us that MAFF's RSC structure is something which
should be built upon and supported, rather than destroyed in a
spasm of faddishness.
3 May 2000
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