Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 11 JULY 2000
SIR DAVID
OMAND, KCB, MR
ROBERT FULTON
and MR STEPHEN
BOYS SMITH
Chairman: Good morning. We are sorry to have
kept you waiting, we had some business we had to deal with. We
are very pleased to see you. As you know, this is our annual session
on the Home Office Annual Report. We are going to keep, if this
will help you, to the 7 aims which the Department sets itself,
for convenience. If we could start off with Mr Howarth.
Mr Howarth
1. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, gentlemen.
Perhaps, on behalf of the Committee, I can, first of all, extend
to Sir David congratulations on his elevation. When he was last
here he was, like us, just a plain "mister" but he has
been properly elevated, so many congratulations on that. Can we
deal, first of all, with Home Office administration. You have
told us that there had been a 3 per cent productivity increase
achieved in 1999/2000, and we did ask you for some indications
of how that had been done. You told us that this was achieved
through all parts of the Department absorbing inflationary costs
without a cut in outputs. Can you be more specific and say in
what specific areas, or are you genuinely telling us that this
has been a salami-slicing operation right across the board?
(Sir David Omand) Our approach to productivity has
had two components. The first has been to look at the areas of
input expenditure, for example, accommodation, and see whether
we can make better use of the accommodation we occupy. That will
produce a clear productivity gain if we can use the same square
footage for more people, or otherwise reduce the running costs
of our accommodation. That is one example. Other areas of input
expenditure are on sickness, whereby reducing the levels of sickness—which
we are doing amongst our staff—we are able to achieve more
with a given resource.
2. Can you tell us how you reduce sickness?
Are you employing an army of doctors specially equipped to go
round and check staff?
(Sir David Omand) We are making a great effort to
make sure our staff are properly looked after and come back to
work as soon as they can, and following up sickness absences—which
is a very topical subject at the moment. That is one dimension
of the productivity campaign. The other is to increase the amount
of effort the Department is putting into the achievement of its
aims without a commensurate increase in the number of staff. That
has produced the biggest productivity gain. In comparison with
previous years the Office has now been dealing with more legislation,
has had more initiatives to handle and seen more new enterprises.
We have been able to achieve this, as I say, without a commensurate
increase in the number of staff.
3. Of course, in the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate, for example, you have had quite a substantial increase
in staff.
(Sir David Omand) Yes. That is a separate programme,
where we have deliberately increased the output very considerably—four-fold
in the case of the number of asylum decisions taken. We have not
increased the staff four-fold, but we have had a significant increase
in staff. The aim is to improve the overall productivity so that,
as the volume of output goes up, we try and contain resources
that are going into it at a lower level of increase.
4. If you have increased the volume of outputs,
greater than the number of staff in the IND, then, presumably,
you have made more than 3 per cent savings there? Maybe they have
been, as it were, compensated for by less dramatic productivity
increases elsewhere.
(Sir David Omand) I would like to think that all parts
of the Office have seen an intensification of their work. They
are doing more. It is not confined to the Immigration and Nationality
Department. That is, perhaps, the easiest area to measure because
there are specific deliverables—cases handled, backlogs
reduced. In other parts of the Office that are dealing with policy
work it is much, much harder to produce an objective measure of
what the output is. We all know, everyday when we go to work,
we can feel that we are actually doing more.
5. You identified four areas for specific targeting:
estate utilisation, procurement, staff management and use of information
technology. The IND does not form part of those four key target
areas. Why did you target those four? Did you think they were
the ones where you could make significant productivity savings?
(Sir David Omand) Yes. All four were areas that seemed
to us to be ready for change. If I can take the last of them,
in particular, information technology, the Office has only relatively
recently acquired a single network to cover its main headquarter
buildings. It is only very recently that we have had connectivity
to the Internet through the Government secure intranet. I hope
to announce tomorrow our selection of preferred bidder for our
major private finance/public private partnership to deliver infrastructure
and IT services to the Department, which would be a major step
forward. These are all areas where there is a great deal of productivity
gain to be had.
6. We are going to come on specifically to the
IT aspect of your Department, so I do not want to tread on the
territories of others. Thank you for pointing that out. In terms
of estate utilisation, we are presumably talking about prisons
and detention centres? What is the estate that you are referring
to here? Have you made productivity gains by flogging off land
or furniture, or what?
(Sir David Omand) Robert Fulton, the Director of Strategy
and Performance may want to add a comment on this, but if I can
just point out to the Committee that we occupy six buildings in
the Westminster area. We have a private finance project which
we hope to take to preferred bidder selection this month to rationalise
that estate to a single site. That is an example of planning ahead
for major productivity gains. Even within the existing estate
it has been possible, by open plan, for example, to get more people
in and in a more efficient configuration.
7. While we are on that, I understand from the
memorandum that you sent us the other day that you have responsibility
for that ghastly concentration camp complex called 2 Marsham Street.
(Sir David Omand) We do.
8. For which you are paying £1.08 million
a year. Is there anybody working in that building, at the moment?
(Sir David Omand) No.
9. Why is your Department paying for it, given
that it was the Department of the Environment, Transport and the
Regions' responsibility?
(Sir David Omand) We see that site as the key to the
future transformation of the efficiency of the Home Office. It
is the largest single site in the Westminster Area that is ready
for redevelopment—a mixed redevelopment of housing, commercial
development and offices. We have put forward a proposal to the
market to take that site and have it redeveloped by a private
developer to provide a single building for the integrated headquarters
of the Home Office and the Prison Service. That PFI programme
is now at a very advanced stage and we are in the process now
of selecting our preferred bidder from two excellent compliant
bids that we have received from the private sector. As I said,
we hope to make an announcement before the end of this month on
the selection of the winning bid to take that eyesore off the
London map and replace it with a first-class development.
10. When do you expect that building to be razed
to the ground and work started on the new one?
(Sir David Omand) Both our bidders believe we can
be on site within about four years.
11. Four years?
(Sir David Omand) Yes. The demolition of the building
will start as soon as we are through the necessary planning processes.
The removal of that building and putting up of a completely new
development will take somewhere between three-and-a-half and four-and-a-half
years. The major constraint we face is ensuring we have the full
planning consents and support of Westminster City Council. They
have been extremely helpful to us so far in this process, and
we are confident that they will support our choice of bid. Both
our proposals have world-class architects.
12. I was saying to my colleagues earlier that
when I was a PPS in the Department of the Environment when Michael
Heseltine was in charge, there were suggestions made that money
could be raised by inviting bids for the right to press the detonator
to blow up the building. I was wondering if you had considered
this.
(Sir David Omand) I have considered and suggested
to my staff we should have a ballot on the person who can press
the button that starts the process. The whole of London, I think,
will be pleased to see that eyesore removed and replaced by a
first-class development, which, as I say, will serve a wider range
of needs than just an office block for the Home Office. Both our
bidders have plans for full use of the site.
13. Mr Winnick is whispering in my ear. What
plans do you have for Queen Anne's Gate, which you would, presumably,
vacate in order to take up the new building in Marsham Street?
(Sir David Omand) We will vacate it. It is in severe
need of refurbishment, for which it has to be emptied. It is not
possible to conduct the degree of works required whilst the building
is in occupation. So the intention will be to see it refurbished
and then it will be re-let to a new tenant.
14. However, the Crown maintain the freehold
on that?
(Sir David Omand) No, it is leasehold.
15. So you will, effectively, get out of the
public—
(Sir David Omand) We will get out of the Queen Anne's
Gate building. We have six buildings in Central London; we own
three of them and, clearly, the future of those buildings is tied
up with the financing of the overall rebuild to get best value
for money for the taxpayer.
16. Mr Fabricant is suggesting that the Passport
Agency might relocate, might it, to the new building? Perhaps
you could tell us what you envisage on this enormous 2 Marsham
Street site.
(Sir David Omand) We would only take part of the site.
As I say, the proposals put forward by our bidders (on which I
am afraid I cannot go into details because they are, at the moment,
commercially sensitive to the two bidders until we have made our
decision) do involve mixed use of the site. We intend to bring
together the headquarters staff of the Home Office, who are scattered
over the six buildings, at the moment, together with the Prison
Service headquarters. That, I think, is an important psychological
step in bringing the work of the Prison Service and the Home Office
closer together.
Mr Fabricant
17. Does that include the Passport Agency, which
is an arm of the Home Office?
(Sir David Omand) It is an agency of the Home Office.
They occupy Clive House, at the moment, but their intention is
to move out of that.
Mr Winnick
18. To where?
(Mr Fulton) Bridge Place, the building near the back
of Victoria Station, which will provide better facilities for
the public.
(Sir David Omand) They intend to do that before—
19. And the Croydon office will remain for immigration?
(Sir David Omand) Yes.
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