Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1040
- 1045)
THURSDAY 31 OCTOBER 2002
MR DOUGLAS
ALEXANDER AND
MS HELEN
GHOSH
1040. So the ball is in our court?
(Mr Alexander) As I say, I am not saying
anything at the end of the day that we have not said before this
Committee and indeed before Wicks previously. I hope I am correct
and not neglecting evidence I gave before Wicks, but certainly
it remains the case that we look forward with interest to the
work of this Committee and indeed the Wicks Committee as well,
and I hope that that will inform the general process in the months
to come.
Chairman
1041. Let's get back to the major point in this
inquiry. Could I ask you two final things. It seems to me that
we have moved from talking about public appointments in terms
of patronage and cronyism, which is how it has dominated things
for the last ten years or so, to one about public appointment
as a form of public service. I think we have turned the thing
round completely. I wonder if you were thinking about some of
the time off provisions that we might be able to encourage, for
example across business as well as the public sector, so that
we build some incentives into organisations and to people to take
part in public service. Is that an area that you are looking at?
(Mr Alexander) I will ask Helen to speak
on the specifics in a moment but let me address the general point
that you have raised. Of course, it is the case I am keen to see
us move from a nation of passive citizenship, which I think has
dominated this country for too long, to a notion of active, contributory
citizenship. That may find expression in service through public
appointments, it may find expression in volunteering, it may find
expression in involving community organisations, but I think entirely
consistent with the thrust of Government policy over the last
five years has been that evolution towards what I hope is a more
optimistic and contributory view of the role that the citizenry
can play in the life of our country. It was therefore intriguing
to me, I have to say, in preparing for this appearance today to
see the word "patronage" in the title of your inquiry
because in some ways—and I hope this is an accurate reflection
of public opinion—that speaks to where concern existed at
a greater level in years past. That is not to say there is not
a continuing level of noise in the system and concern around particular
issues which people may raise, but I believe very significant
progress has been made since Nolan. One of the areas—indeed
we were talking about it in the office earlier—where we
can feel very legitimate pride, and it often is not ventilated
enough when discussions take place about issues of public appointments
and patronage, is the degree to which internationally Britain
is leading in terms of this area. If you look at some of our fellow
major industrialised countries and the operation of public appointments
elsewhere, then I think we can take a legitimate pride (which
of course should not lead to complacency) in the progress that
we have made in recent years. In that sense there is real scope
in terms of my responsibilities for the civil service to the kind
of talk that is being given to time off for volunteering and engagement
in wider issues around participation beyond work and the whole
issue of work/life balance. This sits comfortably within a far
broader political agenda of rehabilitating the public realm. It
was a very different political philosophy that suggested that
somehow there was an absolute demarcation that could be established
between a failing state and an aspiration of private citizenry.
We are coming to a far more sophisticated understanding that we
alone who are serving in a professional capacity in public life
are not equipped to build the kind of society we want; we need
to build it together.
(Ms Ghosh) To be more mundane, one of the issues the
Short Life Working Group has been looking at is this one, this
question about time off from work. There are similarly issues
raised for self-employed, who are giving up the capacity to earn
by joining a public body. The group has had a look at the current
statutory requirements, for example on business relations to Magistrates
and jury service, obviously. It is recognised that there are difficult
issues there in terms of burdens on business, and so on, and that
possibly a more constructive route is to identify some good employers
who currently do encourage their staff to take up these kind of
opportunities and use that as a sort of best practice model to
try and spread the word about how being involved in a public body
helps everybody, it is not just that it serves the public as a
whole it gives the individual skills and experience they can bring
back to their professional life. It is most likely we would want
to look at that approach, best practice, what the best companies
do, spread that model round and emphasise the benefits to the
companies concerned.
(Mr Alexander) Helen is absolutely right. In a previous
life the DTI had the responsibility for corporate and social responsibility.
It seems to me that part of the opportunity that we have in corporate
social responsibility is to win the argument with companies that
they personally benefit as individual organisations from giving
their staff that level of exposure and experience. I can well
remember a conservation I had with the senior manager on the Board
of Directors at the Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the most profitable
and successful Scottish businesses at the moment, where he said,
"I cannot tell you how valuable it has been to my frontline
managers to be working with credit unions, because if you want
to see people who understand credit control go and talk to volunteers
who are running credit unions across Scotland." In that sense
that seemed to me a key insight. One of the arguments we need
to get up is persuading a range of organisations that it is in
their own interest in terms of motivation of the workforce and
productivity of the workforce for people to be involved. I certainly
believe those arguments hold in terms of the kind of experience
that we have, experiences in the public bodies.
Chairman
1042. I would like to go beyond the moment of
appointment, it is not enough just to appoint somebody to a public
body and then wave good-bye to them and think about appointing
somebody else to another public body. If we are putting lay people
on to public bodies to perform public functions for us, particularly
scrutiny functions, that, surely, requires a continuing support
system. I declare an interest because I chair a new body called
the Centre for Public Scrutiny, which is entirely about trying
to support the scrutiny function of public bodies. I am very conscious
having been a layperson on a number of public bodies the continuing
need for some kind of support function or support activity for
people like that. I hope that is something that we could interest
the government and the Cabinet Office in, particularly across
government. As I say, there is no point in having this system
of getting lay people into public bodies to perform these functions
for us if we are not tooling them up to make sure they can do
the job we want them to do. Again I ask, is that an area that
either of you are looking at or might I persuade you to look at?
(Mr Alexander) I am interested in the
work that you are undertaking and look forward to receiving your
thoughts in the future in this area. Until we are clear of those
recommendations it is difficult to be more prescriptive than that.
I would certainly be interested to have sight of anything you
uncover. I think it also speaks to the earlier point you were
making, about the need to make sure we get the right people into
these organisation, on the one hand we have a challenge of making
sure that we tool-up and skill people with the skills required.
It also requires a degree of honesty in saying, many of these
bodies have highly, highly important public responsibilities and
it is vital that we make sure that people are both qualified and
motivated to discharge those functions. The idea that somehow
you randomly select a group of people on the street to serve on
what are highly influential organisations that perform vital scrutiny
functions you have identified with the question and I think that
is something that should give the Committee cause for consideration
before its final report is published.
(Ms Ghosh) Certainly this issue about the post appointment
world is something which anecdotally is obviously fantastically
important and we want to get more to the bottom of what we can
do about it. There is no point in appointing a wonderfully diverse
team into a NDPB if the chairperson is not welcoming, if the system
is not welcoming, if they are treated like the token women/person
from an ethnic minority, or whatever. One of things we are very
keen to do in my team is to focus more activity on this whole
question of NDPBs, training for chairs who also play a very large
role in selection, looking at governments, to use that umbrella
term, do they welcome these people. If there is a problem, if
anyone encounters a problem, is there someone identified they
can go to to talk about it? Are they mentored? A mentoring kind
of structure might be very valuable for people from different
backgrounds, and over the next year this is something that my
team will be looking at very closely and talking to partners about.
1043. Thank you very much for that. It must be
very alarming being on a Short Life Working Party; it sounds quite
threatening.
(Ms Ghosh) It sounds like we are about
to expire.
1044. What would be very useful is if it is possible
to see the conclusions of that work.
(Ms Ghosh) Certainly.
1045. It would help us. When do you think that
might be?
(Ms Ghosh) Very shortly. We are only
held up by the fact that, as you know, Dame Rennie is away on
sick leave at the moment. Because she was such a leading player
on this what I am hoping to do is to produce the report of the
group in the next month or so and then have an agreed report around
Christmas time to put to the Minister.
(Mr Alexander) The Short Life Working Group sends
it report to the group who are worried that they have a short
working life!
Chairman: We are very grateful to both of you
for coming along. Thank you.
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