Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-138)
MR
JOHN GIEVE
CB, MR MARTIN
NAREY AND
MR WILLIAM
NYE
15 JULY 2003
Q120 Bob Russell: Mr Gieve, going
back to one of the earlier questions that Mrs Dean raised about
the higher charges for the Criminal Records Bureau, on 5 June
the Home Secretary announced that the charges would go up on 1
July 100%, or more than 100% in one category. That was little
more than three weeks" notice, no consultation. At what point
did you know that there was a financial black hole that needed
to be filled in?
Mr Gieve: We have known for some
while that the costs were running ahead and last year we had prolonged
negotiations on how to meet the costs.
Q121 Bob Russell: There was no consultation.
It was three weeks" notice or thereabouts. A category of
users was encouraged not to apply, as has been pointed out. They
kept faith and now the Criminal Records Bureau is going to whack
up their charges by more than 100% because they kept faith. That
is not fair, is it?
Mr Gieve: With any price increase
there is a limit to how much you can consult in advance because
what you do is draw forward lots of applications, and indeed that
happened in the three weeks that you are talking about. On the
fairness, we agreed with the Department of Health and with the
whole sector that the Criminal Records Bureau could not provide
a service over the last year. We are hoping to bring it in from
the autumn. It is not as though they are putting in applications
two days after the price increase. We are hoping to bring in these
new sectors in the autumn and, of course, we can understand people
will feel hard done by but there is no free lunch here.
Q122 Bob Russell: But the voluntary
sector also have been hit by keeping agreements. I am not talking
about volunteers where the service is free. I am talking about
the voluntary organisations, the paid side of it. The hospice
movement, for example, is going to have to find the best part
of £100,000 a year extra because of these charges being whacked
in at three weeks' notice.
Mr Gieve: Yes. The voluntary sector
will be hit by this, we know that.
Q123 Bob Russell: And you are also
aware, of course, that there were heated questions at a committee
of this House last week when this came before it and the Government
had to rely on some arm-twisting to get it through in place of
an Opposition vote from the two Opposition parties? You are aware
of that?
Mr Gieve: I could not comment
on parliamentary tactics.
Q124 Chairman: Do you think the compensation
payable by Capita of just under two million pounds out of a total
spend by the end of the last financial year of £71 million
is a fair figure given what you describe as the disastrous performance
of the Criminal Records Bureau?
Mr Gieve: We are in negotiations
with Capita now and I expect I will be appearing before other
committees about this in detail when the NAO report is available.
I think Capita would say that the service credits and so on, the
withdrawn payments, are only a relatively small part of the losses
they have incurred over the last year and would also say that
the mistakes that were made were made by both partners and I think
that is true.
Q125 Chairman: I am sure you will
be appearing in front of another select committee about the same
thing, but is there any sign yet that we are beginning to learn
any lessons about how the public sector procures these types of
projects and makes them work?
Mr Gieve: Yes. At government-wide
level this was one of the last projects not to go through the
full OGC gateway process which has been set in place for all major
investment procurement projects, which requires independent inspectors,
in effect assessors, to come in at various key points during major
investment projects to give an independent assessment of whether
things are on track. In the Home Office we are using that but
we have also introduced our own additional mechanisms for improving
project management. Three things. First, we have set up a centre
which monitors all our major projects (and we have quite a lot
of them) on an ongoing basis monthly assessing whether they are
still hitting their milestones and alerting the Board if they
are not. We have hired two of the most experienced OGC consultants,
because they use consultants with a broad project background,
to look at ours on a systematic rolling basis over the year. Third,
we are in the process of recruiting a group of experienced project
managers and trying to boost the numbers of our senior civil servants
who have experience of major investment projects. Both at the
government level and at the Home Office level we are taking action
and I should point out that there are some projects which we have
delivered over the last year which have in fact run to time and
successfully.
Q126 Mr Clappison: Can I ask Mr Gieve
some questions about Home Office internal management, and particularly
some staffing changes which you have had recently? Could you comment
on the fact that the Home Office now has three Permanent Secretaries
and could you comment possibly as well on the significance of
the promotions of Mr Narey and Leigh Lewis to that rank?
Mr Gieve: This has been a deliberate
strengthening of the Home Office senior management. The Treasury,
the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence have customarily had
second Permanent Secretaries as well as the Permanent Secretary,
but the Home Office has not. I think the change reflects the fact
that our task is as difficult and wide-ranging in many ways as
theirs and we have wanted to get the best possible people in to
do the job. As to the particular significance of getting Leigh
and Martin into the centre, and Martin was promoted to Permanent
Secretary while Director-General but has moved into the centre
of the Department, apart from the fact that it gives Martin a
broad overview of all the correctional services which we were
discussing recently, it brings into the centre of the Department
two people who have real operational management experience: Martin
in running the Prison Service and Leigh in running Jobcentre Plus.
That reflects a wider change which we are trying to bring about
in the Home Office to turn it from what I think was still a pretty
classic Whitehall department of people with great experience of
presentation, policy advice and legislation into a department
which has a real balance of those skills but also operational
management skills.
Q127 Mr Clappison: Could I ask Mr
Narey a question arising out of that, particularly as we are rolling
in new resources? I notice from the Departmental Report that one
of the human resource aims of the Department is to recruit, retain
and motivate people with the skills and experience needed, but
I also notice that as part of the changes you have brought in
in your new role there have been a number of redundancies, over
24 staff at the senior Civil Service grade and 40 at grades just
below the senior Civil Service grade who will be leaving the Civil
Service. How does that fit in with the stated desire to retain
and motivate people?
Mr Narey: The Department has changed
enormously in recent years and we are now much more focused on
making a real impact on the front line and improving services
and reducing crime and re-offending and so forth. The staff in
the Home Office have not really kept pace with that and I think
most healthy organisations, certainly if you look at organisations
outside the public sector, from time to time need to refresh their
staff and bring in more people. We identified some people who
it was difficult to find postings for or who were coming to the
end of their career and were willing to go and we were able to
deal with them decently and give them packages to move on, and
behind that we have been able to bring in a lot of new people.
For example, a lot of the traditional people who have gone and
who perhaps had old-fashioned mandarin skills have been replaced
by people with real project and programme management experience
who are better able to make sure that we do not have some of the
disasters which Mr Denham was asking Mr Gieve about.
Q128 Mr Clappison: Are there going
to be changes in training to reflect this shift which you have
described to us in management and operational terms?
Mr Narey: Yes. There are some
huge deficiencies in HR in the Office which we are working on
fast. One of the things we have to do a much better job at is
bringing on talent, preparing and training people for the challenges
that they have. I think the Department has been weak in doing
that and we are trying very hard to catch up on that at the moment
and are developing a training strategy. I have got a particular
individual who has been talent spotting the very best people and
has been working with them to bring them on. I am looking, for
example, at the moment to taking our bright young fast-streamers
and as part of their initial period in the Office having them
working outside the Home Office away from Whitehall, perhaps with
the Prisons Trust and so forth, to try to get a much better focus
on what happens at the front line. Finally, we are trying to take
70% of our staff out of the Office, and we will make it a target
for them as part of their personal development every year to spend
at least some time on the front line, whether that is with a policeman
or a prison officer or a probation officer, in order to get a
real recognition of what it is like out there. I think there are
still some people in the Home Office who do not really know about
it.
Q129 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you
about the people you are hoping to draw in from outside? What
particular areas of expertise are you hoping to enhance by external
appointments and from which employment sectors are they coming?
Mr Narey: We have had a very gratifying
response to the advertising campaigns we have had. We have three
main campaigns. First of all, we are bringing in more direct entry
people at grade 7 or principal level so that we will have in that
middle rank a lot of people with outside experience from industry
and other parts of the public sector. Secondly, we are bringing
new heads of group into the senior Civil Service who will bring
their experience in. Specifically, we have had a separate competition,
for which we have had about 400 applications, from people who
have delivered major projects, IT projects and similar projects,
and who have real skills in delivering complex programmes. I think
their arrival—and they will start to arrive later this year—will
significantly broaden the skill base in the Home Office and make
us much better equipped to make a real difference on the front
line.
Q130 Mr Clappison: Currently a person
who was carrying out an operation like that, delivering a large
project in the private sector, would presumably command quite
a high salary. How do salaries fit into this picture as far as
you are concerned?
Mr Narey: For some of the really
big jobs we have to meet what the market is offering. We have
to be much more flexible in offering people the right sorts of
salaries to get them. Along with that we sometimes have to move
away from the assumption that people are in jobs for life. My
personal view is that, as the Office moves on, there will be more
people coming and working for shorter periods of time and then
moving on to other jobs. I have just brought in a very good HR
specialist to try to improve customer focus in HR, which is sadly
lacking at the moment. He is coming from wide experience in customer-based
areas in the private sector. He is very impressive. He has made
it very plain that he has no intention of being with us for more
than two or three years because he will then want to move on and
do something else, probably back in the private sector, and I
think that is an encouraging model.
Mr Gieve: One of the real traditional
faults of the Civil Service has been that people have been promoted
because of the breadth of their responsibilities rather than the
depth. The private sector has been much better at promoting and
giving big rewards to people who stick with fairly narrow responsibilities
but really understand those, that is particularly true of project
management. At the top level we have brought in some people who
are paid very much more than me or Martin and I think we will
continue to have to do that for particular jobs, not to run the
Department but to manage major new projects or programmes. I think
that is part of the modern Civil Service.
Q131 David Winnick: Will the three
Permanent Secretaries all be on the same pay scale?
Mr Gieve: We are all on the same
pay scale but I do not think we will all be on the same point
of it.
Q132 David Winnick: Is your salary
in the public domain?
Mr Gieve: Yes.
Q133 David Winnick: Can you put on
the public record now how much your annual salary is?
Mr Gieve: I cannot remember.
Q134 David Winnick: Would you have
any objection to that?
Mr Gieve: No, not at all. I think
we publish this in our Annual Report by range.
Q135 David Winnick: If you would
rather not put it on the record I will not pursue it.
Mr Gieve: I will let you know
afterwards. I just do not want to give you the wrong number and
I cannot remember what it is. I will send the Committee a note
on my personal pay.[4]
Q136 David Winnick: And the other
two Permanent Secretaries as well?
Mr Gieve: I would have to ask
them.
Mr Narey: The same with my pay,
Mr Winnick.
Q137 David Winnick: The tradition
is that you retire at 60. Does that change at all as a result
of the legislation which will be coming about in two years"
time?
Mr Gieve: I do not expect it to
at the top level. Indeed, very few senior civil servants these
days survive all the way to 60. That is also part of the modern
Civil Service.
Q138 David Winnick: Do you have an
option of doing so with your senior colleagues or not?
Mr Gieve: Whether I have the option
to stay on for another year or two depends on my performance.
Chairman: Mr Gieve, thank you very much.
On the point of salaries, if you wish to write to us please do
so but I would not want to ask you to do anything which would
not be normal practice in the Civil Service. That is entirely
in your hands. Thank you, Mr Narey, Mr Gieve, Mr Nye, very much
indeed.
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