Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 151)
WEDNESDAY 21 JUNE 2000
MR BRIAN
BENDER, MR
RICHARD CARDEN
AND MR
GEORGE TREVELYAN
140. Business plans now being in place, roughly
how long do you expect that process to take?
(Mr Carden) The objectives for individuals should
have been worked out by this stage in the year.
141. Finally, there is a whole set of commitments
which are made in the Plan which essentially relate to a more
open service, is the heading, including outside experience and
a whole range of laudable objectives. I just wondered if, in a
few sentences—these are from page 45 onwards; there is a
large number of them—briefly, we could be told how you are
getting on with implementing these commitments?
(Mr Bender) The honest and straight answer from me
on that is that I have asked for a discussion with my Personnel
Director in the very near future about the whole question of developing
internal talent, including therefore the opportunities for internal
talent outside. It is not a discussion I have yet managed to have.
142. These remain aspirations really rather
than achievements?
(Mr Carden) There is not such a large gap between
the present performance and targets; to take target 45, for example,
65 percent of MAFF's senior staff to have had experience outside
the Civil Service by 2005, the milestone column records that we
are already at 59 percent. I was very surprised at that figure
and I personally queried it before coming to this session, but
it is apparently so that 59 percent of our staff have had experience
outside the home Civil Service already and we are going to move
that percentage up. That is the aim.
143. You picked one which is one side of it;
may I pick one further? Commitment 46 says that you identified
MAFF as the key inward secondment during 2000. That is happening
now, is it?
(Mr Bender) That is happening now. As far as I am
concerned, I do not know again a precise answer of where we are
on that but that is the sort of issue I want to discuss. What
is our skills base? How do we improve our present crop of talent
by developing them outside the Department and what skills do we
need to import? Your session this morning on the Paying Agency
raises an interesting question about whether we need to bring
new skills in to help us develop that.
144. And there are a whole range of dates in
this, are there not?
(Mr Bender) Yes.
145. Some this year, some next year; and could
I perhaps simplify this finally if I may ask Mr Bender do you
see this as an important set of objectives which merit their number?
(Mr Bender) I see it as crucial and one of my aims
in the coming weeks and months will be not only to deliver it
but to see what needs building on further.
146. I look forward to asking you how we progress?
(Mr Bender) I look forward to it, too, Dr Turner.
Chairman: I am not sure I believe that.
Mr Marsden
147. I understand there is a Customer Satisfaction
Survey conducted, I presume, just for the RSCs in 1995 and that
there is shortly to be another Customer Satisfaction Survey, I
again assume just exclusively for the RSC but please correct me
if it is otherwise. Is that the case?
(Mr Bender) I am not conscious of a wider exercise
at the moment in MAFF. I think all public services should consult
their customers and stakeholders periodically and that is something
I will want to look at with the Ministry about whether it should
be done more widely.
(Mr Carden) If I could just add to that, it has been
standard practice for our executive agencies for some time. We
tend to have Customer Satisfaction Surveys every three years.
148. My final question is, I know that you have
been very keen to say how pleased you were, back on the 1995 survey,
how good the results were; over 80 percent of customers were satisfied,
so would you care to then say whether you think the next survey
will show an improvement on that customer satisfaction.
(Mr Bender) I would not like to predict that.
(Mr Carden) I do not know.
Mr Marsden: Okay. Thank you.
Chairman
149. Mr Bender, last question. You are facing
the AGM, you are the new Chief Executive, your predecessor took
early retirement, you have have a tight clash flow situation in
your company, you have a lot of non-discretionary areas where,
quite frankly, you have to follow events because you really do
not have the discretion to determine them. The consequence of
that is that where you do have discretion the financial sort of
leverage on those become very, very tight and you have a pretty
difficult market place. There is a problem out there in the market
place, you have to envisage some quite serious restructuring of
the business and I am your shareholder and I am just a bit anxious
about all this. In one minute, without hesitation, repetition
and deviation, what would you like to say in a one minute burst
as the new man put in the job to make me think as a shareholder:
"I am glad we have appointed him"?
(Mr Bender) First of all I would want to know what
my finance director—in this case the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Chief Secretary—will be allowing me to spend over the
next three years and until I know that I cannot be clear. I should
know that by the Summer. Second, I will want to ensure within
the Ministry a greater clarity of purpose through the new aims
and objectives in the next Public Service Agreement and then,
coming back to the earlier questions, try and improve our business
planning and performance management within that. I will want to
roll out across the Ministry tools for evaluating performance
and improving it, such as the excellence model, such as the programme
of better quality services which has already begun in the Ministry.
I will want to look at, improve and measure—coming back
to the earlier question—the services the Ministry provides
to the various stakeholders whether farmers or indeed taxpayers
in terms of value for money and I will also hope, coming in as
you put it as chief executive of an organisation whose reputation
has taken a bit of a battering in the past few years, fairly or
unfairly, that in the course of the period ahead we can help turn
that reputation around into the reputation I think the organisation
deserves.
150. Thank you very much. We have a few miscellaneous
questions. In fact, what I propose to do is to give you a sheet
they are written on and you can reply. It seems to me to be barmy
if we have to send a letter to you.
(Mr Bender) Reply in writing, Chairman?
151. Reply in writing. I realise there are probably
terrible constitutional consequences for what I have just done,
but I will live with those.
(Mr Bender) We will not take advantage of it.
Chairman: Mr Carden, we wish you well at the
DTI. We hope you cross our horizons again in one shape or form.
Mr Trevelyan, you also because you have, almost certainly depending
on funding coming through, a major restructuring to engineer in
the area of your responsibility and Mr Bender, we are happy to
see you this time. We would like to emphasise that we do think
that the improvements in this are clear and we are pleased that
in some respects we had a role in how this has come about. As
Mr Carden said, there is fine tuning and judgment to be made,
but we think it is a much better document than last year and we
wish you luck in your turning the business around, as you say
and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you very much
indeed for this encounter.
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