Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
TUESDAY 16 MAY 2000
SIR JOHN
KERR, KCMG, DR
PETER COLLECOTT,
MRS DENISE
HOLT AND
MR DAVID
REDDAWAY
Chairman
60. Sir John, there is a time to sell and a
time to buy and there may be a time to buy when the value of sterling
is particularly high. Are you able to move or would we expect
to see a shift in the balance of rented property and owned property
as a result of the current value of sterling?
(Sir John Kerr) Well, there are several answers to
that question, Chairman. One, the operation of the OPM system
with the Treasury, the Overseas Price Mechanism, means that as
sterling rises and we buy more foreign currency with our sterling,
we pay back to the Treasury the additional sterling we do not
need. If sterling falls, they pay to us. That is answer one. Answer
two is that a bigger determinant of the right time to buy and
sell is the state of the local property market. We have some over-scale
property in Asia which we would probably be selling now had the
Asian property market not fallen steeply as a result of the Korea/Thai
crisis of 1998. That is not a knock-down argument because it could
be that that was the right moment to buy while the market was
right down, though I think that would have been a mistake. I hope
we will be making some more changes in Asia. But I do not think
the level of sterling now is a central consideration because of
the OPM.
61. Therefore, the OPM may work at the moment
against our interests in investing in property which might have
a considerable return in the future?
(Sir John Kerr) Well, to be honest, the balance of
advantage between renting and buying needs to be looked at in
every case and I think it has a good deal to do with local conditions
in property markets. I should have said in answer to Dr Godman
that we do take professional advice each time.
62. You have opened, I think, six overseas posts
during the last year. Were any closed?
(Sir John Kerr) Yes. In the last year, I have forgotten
when, but we closed Chiangmai, we closed Seville, we have closed
Pusan and we are downgrading in Naples where we have a building
which we shall wish to sell. I think these four, three and a downgrading,
are on the closures side. On the positive side, there is a list
in the Report, page 114, but basically we have opened the six
mentioned here and a new—
63. That is page 114?
(Sir John Kerr) Yes, we have opened a new post in
the middle of China, Chongqing, so we now have Beijing, Hong Kong,
Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing. We have opened a third post
in Japan, Fukuoka, we have reopened in Conakry and Bamako and
we have got our little offices in Pristina and in Dili in East
Timor. We have also got the Banja Luka office and we have turned
Gothenberg from being locally engaged only to UK-based staff,
and we are building up in Tripoli where I went the other day.
We now have an ambassador back in Tripoli, so we are building
up a real embassy there again. So we have been doing openings
as well as closures, and we have also been doing some thinning
out of some of our bigger posts. So it is quite active management.
Sir Peter Emery
64. Sir John, if you look at the comparisons,
the Foreign Office has more Grade 1 officers than the Treasury,
the Home Office, the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions and the Ministry of Agriculture put together.
How can you possibly support that?
(Sir John Kerr) Sheer quality. Seriously, the job
of being the negotiating ambassador in Brussels or the negotiating
ambassador in New York or the bilateral ambassador in Paris or
Moscow or Tokyo or Washington or Berlin, these are heavy-weight
jobs. There is real responsibility there. Some of them have quite
a considerable management function. I supervised quite a lot of
people when I was Ambassador in Washington, including 700 locally-engaged
and 150 British-based staff. But it is the policy content that
matters most, and compares relatively well with permanent secretary
jobs in London. I am having an extraordinarily easy time now compared
to what I used to do abroad. Seriously, Sir Peter, I do not think
there is an unreasonable disparity.
65. Taking your point, which is real, that those
in overseas posts have very considerable and great responsibility,
how many of those Grade 1 posts are ambassadorial and how many
are London-based?
(Sir John Kerr) There is only one London-based now,
and that is me. There are also Diplomatic Service officers who
are heading the Ministry of Defence as Permanent Secretary, GCHQ
as Permanent Secretary and British Trade International as Permanent
Secretary, but I am the only Grade 1 home-based FCO officer.
66. It is important that that should be made
clear when these sort of figures are being talked about.
(Sir John Kerr) Thank you, Sir Peter. That is a much
better answer than the one I could have given.
Mr Illsley
67. Sir John, can I turn to entry clearance.
The aim as set out by the Foreign Office and the aim as I have
always understood it in relation to visa fees is that the fee
income should simply cover the costs of administering the system
and yet it would appear from the Report that for 2000/01 and 2001/02
the visa fee income is likely to exceed the total cost of the
entry clearance operation. This obviously causes concern in places
like the Asian Subcontinent where the relative income compared
to the visa fee is quite low and the fee is regarded as substantial.
Is that money to be ploughed back into the entry clearance system
or will there be adjustments in the future to take account of
that? What is the reason for the excess over the expenditure?
(Sir John Kerr) I do not know the reason and I will
ask David Reddaway in a moment. In future, the exercise will absolutely
balance; the costs of the operation will absolutely equal the
revenue taken in. We have established a Joint Entry Clearance
Unit with the Home Office and if the Committee would like to visit
its new premises on the Albert Embankment, I would be delighted
to arrange that. It is a good example of joined-up government,
half staffed by the Home Office and half staffed by the Foreign
Office. It is not into its new building yet, but it will be on
the 5th of June and if, before the House rises, the Committee
would like to go and see how the entry clearance work is run from
London, I would be very pleased. The intention is that the revenue
will balance the costs, and it will be put on a strict net revenue
system as soon as we have systems sufficient to satisfy the Treasury
that we can do that. David, what is the answer to the historical
question?
(Mr Reddaway) I am afraid I do not know the answer.
The aim is that it should be covering the costs. I would rather
find out and write to you with something.
Chairman
68. Will you write to the Committee on that?
(Mr Reddaway) Yes.
Mr Illsley
69. I personally would be happy to take up the
invitation to visit the new joint operation. Turning briefly to
page 100 of the Annual Report, you tell us that 91 per cent of
non-settlement applications were resolved within 24 hours. You
then go on to say that 90 per cent of posts met the target of
ten working days for interviewing non-settlement applications.
Is there a figure for what percentage of non-settlement applicants
were interviewed within ten working days and what is the reason
for using applications as a measure in one figure and measuring
the posts' achievements in another?
(Sir John Kerr) Because, Mr Illsley, in 91 per cent
of such applications, they did not require a formal interview,
because the case was straightforward, and our aim is that when
it is straightforward and the person clearly entitled, he should
get his papers within 24 hours. I hope we will do better than
91 per cent in future. The second figure concerns when we are
on to interview and there is a requirement to see him or her and
talk about it and look at documentation, and the target of ten
days is quite a searching target, particularly at particular times
of the year and in particular countries where the queue is long.
Of course the queue for settlement applicants will be much longer
than ten working days in many, many countries, so there is a third
target, or there should be a third target which we have not given,
which is to try to so staff ourselves that the queue for settlement
application interviews is not too long.
70. I think the worry of the Committee there
was that the 10 per cent of posts which did not meet the target
of ten working days could account for a huge number of applications
in those posts and it is just a fear that the applications in
posts were being used to give the best possible view.
(Sir John Kerr) I now see exactly what you mean and
I think the answer is touché.
Chairman: Are you satisfied with that, Mr Illsley?
Mr Illsley: I think so, Chairman.
Ms Abbott
71. One of the most sensitive issues that Members
of Parliament write to the Foreign Office about has to do with
visitors visas and other types of visas because often people are
coming for funerals, weddings, family occasions and they put themselves
under a great deal of pressure. I have to say that the Annual
Report reflects my experience in relation to this in that the
Annual Report records that as far as responses to letters on visa
cases are concerned, the target of 90 per cent response within
15 days was met in less than half of the cases and only 71 per
cent were responded to within 25 days. What is being done to address
this issue?
(Mr Reddaway) We are restructuring and have started
restructuring our Correspondence Unit. I think one of the weaknesses
we identified is that we were putting people into the Correspondence
Unit who did not have adequate entry clearance experience so that
they did not know enough about the work to turn over the letters
as promptly as they could. We also needed some additional staff,
so we have now put in a Home Office entry clearance expert as
the head of our Correspondence Unit and we are bringing in people
with more experience to answer the correspondence.
72. It is not the quality of the correspondence—the
quality of the correspondence is another issue—because all
too often you write and get a response back upholding the FCO's
decision and one gets the impression that the Correspondence Unit
does not ever look into the case and it is just turning over paper,
but it is the speed of the response which is a management problem.
(Mr Reddaway) Well, I think the answer is that people
who know what they are doing can do it faster, and that is happening.
73. Are you telling the Committee that next
year you will be meeting your own targets?
(Mr Reddaway) I hope we will be meeting our own targets.
The objective is to meet our own targets. I am afraid I cannot
say now that we will meet our targets, but we intend to.
Ms Abbott: I understand that is the objective
because that is the nature of a target. Can you tell the Committee
in twelve months' time that you will have met your own targets
because you are not actually that ambitious?
Mr Mackinlay
74. It is what Parliament expects frankly.
(Mr Reddaway) To be honest, I cannot say that we will
meet our targets. What I can say is that we are making changes
to the structures and putting a lot of extra resources and effort
into doing our very best to meet the targets. I hope we will meet
the targets.
Dr Starkey
75. Staying on this, as Diane has pointed out,
many of these letters are time-specific in that they are related
to a particular family event. Do you have within your procedures
a way of fast-tracking those letters where frankly a response
even delivered within a target is more or less useless?
(Mr Reddaway) Yes, we do. We have set up a special
handling unit within the Correspondence Unit that will identify
and fast-track letters requiring faster handling.
Mr Illsley
76. The figure quoted here, the target of 90
per cent, is that correspondence actually going to the Correspondence
Unit or does that include correspondence which actually goes to
the individual posts because my experience is that there is quite
a substantial volume of correspondence which is sent straight
to the actual entry clearance post rather than going through the
Correspondence Unit?
(Mr Reddaway) Well, we certainly expect posts to respond
at least as rapidly as that, but the figure is for the Correspondence
Unit. We like to have the Correspondence Unit engaged in correspondence
so that it can monitor whether the answer is satisfactory.
77. This is always one of the difficulties,
that the delay in the Correspondence Unit tends to prompt MPs
to write directly to the posts.
(Mr Reddaway) Perhaps I could just say on that one
of the factors in saying that the targets are not very ambitious
is that we do have real problems with things like time differences,
with posts in London working different days of the week, and you
can lose a number of days simply because you are not actually
able to contact the posts at the same time, but I do accept that
the service has not been as good as it should have been and we
are putting a huge effort into making it better.
Ms Abbott
78. As somebody who has been dealing with correspondence
for 13 years, time differences alone do not account for the huge
delays in getting replies. Often replies arrive after the event
for which you have put in for a visa. I want to ask you one more
question on this matter which is what is being done to ensure
that named day parliamentary questions are answered substantively
on the named day? Can anybody tell us?
(Sir John Kerr) A huge amount of effort is being put
into this, a huge amount, and the answer is that 83.5 per cent
of PQs received a substantive answer on the named day in the current
session up to the end of April. In the last session, this time
last year, we were running at 66 per cent, so a huge amount of
effort has taken us from two-thirds to nearly 84 per cent. We
will try and do better.
Chairman: And we will be back possibly next
year with the same question.
Mr Illsley
79. Turning to information technology, I just
wondered if you could tell us a little about how the Department
is achieving its targets in relation to information technology.
I think the target is to increase the proportion of business undertaken
by at least 25 per cent by 2002 and that you are aiming to have
a seamless global network. Are you happy with the way the Foreign
Office can do business around the world electronically and within
this country?
(Sir John Kerr) No, I am not at all happy. I am very
happy with the plans we have got and if the Chairman will allow
me, I will explain very briefly what they are. We at present have
in our posts separate systems for IT and communications, communication
from out there on the circumference of the circle, down the spoke
to the hub at the centre, the FCO. They are two completely separate
systems, one for IT in the building and one for communication
to the centre, which is conceptually at least ten years out of
date. We also have a hub and spoke concept which will not do.
We need to be one seamless online organisation where the installation,
the terminal on the man's or the woman's desk, enables them to
make contact with London, enables them to see what paper is being
written in London to feed in their views on it so that it represents
the collective best view. We are now three-quarters of the way
through an £85 million programme to put better kit on desks
around the world. We are installing, we have already installed
9,000 new terminals, the Firecrest terminals that you see as you
go to our posts around the world. We will upgrade Firecrest of
course, but the sine qua non of a working IT communications
system is something that is standardised on desks so that people,
when they fly in from one post to another, can use it straightaway.
And it must put them in touch with London. That is for the second
half. I last week signed the contract, a £165 million contract,
for the Global Telecommunications Project which is the biggest
single investment the Foreign Office has ever carried out and
will be the biggest advance ever in our communication system.
It will turn us from a headquarters with out-stations into a single
online global organisation.
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