Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
15 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR ROGER
SANDS AND
MR ANDREW
WALKER
Q60 Mr McLoughlin: But you are a member
of the Commission.
Mr Sands: The issue did not come
up in the Commission in those terms, Mr McLoughlin.
Mr Walker: Chairman, I can only
add my perception from sitting in the Finance and Services Committee
debate that the origin of the idea that we ought to be trying
to be more efficient in catering and not allow the subsidy to
keep growing, arose against the background that some new facilities
had recently been opened—I did not perceive that that had
been driven by modernisation as such.
Q61 Joan Ruddock: I want to clarify something
that Roger Sands said, which is that the trends are over a 10
year period, which would encompass the changes that occurred more
modestly before the real change in sitting hours, which were that
we had stopped going so late into the night when people were here
habitually well past 10 o'clock. Those changes obviously came
much before the most recent changes in sitting hours, so would
it be right to think that that would be part of the trend and
also might it be, as you suggested, new waves of Members of Parliament
coming in over the years who would perhaps be changing their culture
and their attitude to sitting in dining rooms?
Mr Sands: The second one would
be purely a guess. On the first part of your question I can only
draw on my own experience as a regular Night Duty Clerk until
I became Clerk of the House. Undoubtedly what you might call the
steady state use of the Members' Dining Room did drop off quite
markedly during that time, which was before the change in sitting
hours. If there was a running three line whip then it might well
be very heavily used, but it was quite routine for me to go into
it at 7.30 and find I was the only person there.
Q62 Chairman: Anything to add to that,
Andrew?
Mr Walker: No, thank you.
Chairman: Thank you. Peter Pike.
Q63 Mr Pike: Of the staff who have to
stay on after the House has finished, about how many are there,
what type of categories and how long, because for different categories
it would be different. Are you able to give any indication, or
would you want to send us a note on that?
Mr Sands: We did a survey of departmental
establishment officers, and it mainly affects the Clerk's Department
and Hansard. It is very varied; last night, for example,
because we have an abnormally complicated Order Paper today, my
colleague, the Clerk Assistant, was here until 11 o'clock producing
it, making sure it was going to come out correct. So it is very
difficult to generalise, but we reckon that most of the people
whose attendance is linked to the sittings of the House would
only be here on average between half an hour and an hour beyond
the rise of the House. For some people in Hansard it would
be considerably longer because they have to put Hansard
to bed and make sure it is off to the printer before they go,
and of course there are certain members of staff, particularly
the editorial supervisor of the vote, who routinely work through
the night to produce the vote bundle, but that is different because
they work a shift system and so that is programmed into their
conditions of work.
Q64 Chairman: And they always did.
Mr Sands: And they always did,
yes.
Q65 Mr Pike: With Hansard, even
they do not have to stay as late as they used to because obviously
their new printing methods and how they are now set up with speech
fed in straightaway, it is much more rapid, assuming they are
clearly on top of what they are doing.
Mr Sands: I think that is correct,
yes, and of course if the sitting ends at seven they are not staying
as late as if the sitting finished at 10. I am not sure if the
times after the rise of the House have changed greatly as a result
of the new technology—I do not get the impression that it
has in the case of Hansard.
Mr Walker: No. Chairman, some
survey work we did a few weeks ago in the context of trade union
negotiations on what we ought to be paying people for the changed
hours—we are still hard in negotiation at the moment—established
that in the Clerk's Department, in Hansard and the other
areas where people do work late—the Serjeant's Department,
doorkeepers, people like that, the Library to some extent—the
average that people stay is about half an hour after the rise
of the House. Some are able to go straight away, including some
in Hansard, but others have to stay a bit longer. In the
Table Office it would be normal for people to stay for an hour,
sometimes more, but in other offices like the Journal Office they
might be able to finish within half an hour quite normally. So
there is a very mixed picture with an average of about half an
hour.
Q66 Mr Pike: At the other end of the
day, coming in in the morning, with some committees starting at
8.50, is there a problem for some staff? I met one of the Hansard
people at the bus stop last week and he was very late because
the traffic was absolutely appalling, but as a general point how
many people does it cause a problem to, is it a real difficulty?
Tied in with that, finishing late and coming in early, does it
cause any difficulties with our liabilities under the legislation
on hours and things like that?
Mr Sands: Dealing with your first
point, Mr Pike, I think that the early start for some staff who
have been here a good many years has been a big shock to the system—if
you have been used to working basically a 10 to six working day
and you suddenly find you have got to be up and around at eight
o'clock—certainly for some standing Committee meetings at
8.55 a.m. people have to be in at half past seven.
Q67 Chairman: There are not many meetings
at that time in the morning.
Mr Sands: They have tended to
come back a bit, but that was the situation before. On the legislation,
the Working Time Regulations prescribe various demands on us,
some of which are capable of negotiated flexibility. The one that
causes us the most difficulty is the requirement for an 11 hour
gap between working periods: obviously there are many, many days
when that cannot be met. If the House rises, let us say, at 10.30
on Monday and there are committees meeting at 9.30 the following
day then people have to prepare for them. We cannot comply with
that rule, but we have a flexibility agreement negotiated with
the Clerk's Department and in the other departments to cover that.
Q68 Chairman: It is right that the Library
stays open until 10 even when the House is rising at seven.
Mr Sands: That was a management
decision, in part based on what Mr Cook said; I think the Library
felt that they needed to provide a service for Members who were
not going home straightaway. That is their management decision
and they may perhaps review it.
Q69 Mr Pike: Has any assessment been
made of how much it is used?
Mr Sands: Not, to my knowledge,
yet.
Mr Walker: Informally, Chairman,
Mr Pike, the Library management have certainly been looking at
whether they need to keep as many staff on as they do. They do
not keep a vast number even now, but they are reviewing that and
they are looking at whether they might reduce the numbers of staff,
given the relatively low levels of usage, on some nights of the
week.
Mr Pike: Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman: Before I bring Martin Linton
in, Joan and Patrick have a few supplementaries.
Q70 Joan Ruddock: Yes. One is about the
Standing Committees. Perhaps you have not thought this one through,
but would it be useful to have Standing Committees meet, for example,
on Monday afternoons and on a Wednesday morning? This Committee
is open-minded, we could change the whole shape of the meetings.
I know you have not had time to think about that, but it would
be very useful to us, if you cannot do it now, if you would write
to us. What we believe has happened in modernisation is we have
moved the day forward by three hours, thinking that that does
not mean that anyone should work longer hours or shorter hours,
but maybe we have not done enough to make everything run as smoothly
as possible.
Mr Sands: I do not think Standing
Committee meetings on a Monday afternoon would cause staff any
difficulty at all. Wednesday morning—it would depend on
decisions of this Committee and subsequently the House on the
pattern of sitting on Tuesday. At the moment the changeover from
the one pattern to the other occurs on a Monday night, so we have
had this problem of late sittings on a Monday and then early starts
on Tuesday. One attraction, which the Public Bill Office in particular
have noted, with the possibility of reverting to the old hours
on Tuesday, is that actually at the moment not many Standing Committees
meet on a Wednesday morning and so that would be less of a problem—except
for the clerks who at present do Standing Committee C, the Private
Members' Bills one.
Q71 Joan Ruddock: May I also check on
the issue of the staff who used to have to work late. The staff
who still work late were clearly working late previously, but
they were working late after 10.00 p.m. Was there any salary enhancement
that was present for staff working beyond, say, 10 o'clock at
night or some other time which they automatically lose with the
new hours?
Mr Walker: Yes, there is, but
it is not quite as simple as that. The arrangement we have is
that apart from those specifically on night work such as the editorial
supervisor post and those connected with printing and publishing,
many of our staff who have to work in the evening and whose work
is related to the sitting times of the Chamber work on what we
call night duty allowances. Those automatically reduce if the
pattern of the House's sitting late into the evening itself reduces,
but it is a damped reduction—it takes account of the sitting
times in the previous five years so it reduces gradually but automatically.
The disadvantage of course of that system, and one of the reasons
I am talking to trade unions at the moment about how we pay staff,
is that if the House decides to start sitting later again on some
evenings, there is also a damper effect in the other direction
and the rewards do not increase immediately either.
Q72 Mr McLoughlin: If it was decided
that we should have a single day for Committees and the Chamber
itself would not actually meet, do you think that you would have
serious staff problems with manning up committees? If one looks
at the Order Paper now you see a great glut of Select Committees
meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday and hardly any at the moment
meeting on a Thursday, for whatever reason. One of the things
I have been asking about for a little while is whether it would
be better for us to have just one day where the House devotes
itself to meeting in Committees so that all Standing Committees
and Select Committees met. Could some work be done on that as
to what the staffing implications would be in the Clerk's Department
and how would you feel about that?
Mr Sands: I think we could cope
with it, Mr McLoughlin. I cannot work out the details off the
top of my head, but I do not have any doubts that we could cope
with it, because already there are days when there are huge numbers
of committees meeting, sittings of the House or not; for example,
when we are in the peak Standing Committee season (if I can put
it like that) in February, March and April, and Select Committees
are going on as well.
Q73 Mr McLoughlin: So you would not be
saying to us that there would be a big problem, on initial reaction,
as far as the Clerk's Department is concerned on this particular
item?
Mr Sands: No, I do not think so.
I can see hideous problems of business management. What some parliaments
do—in fact quite a number around the world—is have
committee weeks rather than committee days; they say this week
we are in but just having committee meetings.
Q74 Chairman: On accommodation, just
as a supplement to that question, given the pressure on committee
rooms would we be able to find room for all of them to sit on
one day?
Mr Sands: I think the pressure
would be felt by the fringe organisations who seek to use our
facilities. Committees of the House take priority, and it is right
that they should do so. So there would be pressure on all-party
groups and other meetings arranged by Members, but it depends
what importance one gives to them.
Q75 Martin Linton: I just wanted to come
back to the issue of morning sittings of committees. I appreciate
that the committee staff have to prepare for committee meetings
and if they start prior to nine they may have to start at half
past seven, but if they find that too early what is there to stop
some of that preparatory work being done the day before—other
than the problem of Monday night and Tuesday morning?
Mr Sands: Certainly that is alright
with select committees, that is not a problem. We reckon to have
got the papers out well before the day and so it is reasonably
straight forward to adjust to an early meeting of a select committee—one
sees committee clerks with their chairmen drinking coffee in front
of the Despatch Box at 8.30 in the morning. With the Standing
Committees the difficulty is this, what paper is one going to
do one's preparation on? At present the arrangement and the understanding
is that amendments to appear on a Standing Committee paper for
a Tuesday, let us say, can be handed in up to the rise of the
House on the Monday. So the definitive paper that the Committee
is going to be working on is not available before 7.30 on the
Tuesday morning.
Q76 Martin Linton: How do you get them
then between 10.00 p.m. and 7.30 a.m.? The amendment has to be
handed in at 10 o'clock—
Mr Sands: They can be. They do
not have to be, but you can have amendments handed in right up
to the rise of the House on a Monday evening which, on our expectations
up to now, have to be on the paper that the Standing Committee
considers the next morning. They are not normally called by the
chairman for debate as quickly as that, but that is the paper
the Committee is using.
Q77 Martin Linton: I accept that that
is a Monday night/Tuesday morning problem, but it is not a problem
for the rest of the week.
Mr Sands: It is still a problem,
with respect, Mr Linton—and this is a general problem about
notice which is an important point to make to you. The understanding
of the House as to what "notice" means, unless the Standing
Orders specifically say otherwise—which they do, for example,
in relation to non-sitting Fridays—is something handed in
to the Table Office or the Public Bill Office at any time during
the previous sitting day. So the Order Paper can be changed up
to but not after the rise of the House on the previous day—the
Government can change it and put down extra motions. Although
the whole sitting day has been brought forward three hours, that
is not relevant to the production of our papers, because it is
no help to anyone bringing out a paper at 4.30 in the morning
rather than 7.30, so we have never changed our printing schedule:
our printing contract still requires the Stationery Office to
deliver our papers to us at 7.30. So that is the first time one
gets them, the first time one can work on them, and it is hard
to see how you could change that time; it would be quite absurd
for modernisation to get one into the position where people have
to come in at 4.30 a.m.
Q78 Martin Linton: New technology does
offer some solution to that particular problem, does it not?
Mr Sands: One possible avenue
to explore in relation to Standing Committees—I leave the
House out of it because I think that that will always be different—is
actually to alter our understanding of what notice means. I think
that that would be absolutely essential if we were to try to follow
up the recommendations which this Committee has made in its other
report about connecting Parliament to the public to try to provide
more user friendly papers for Standing Committee consideration.
There is a huge amount of extra work involved in doing that sort
of things.
Q79 Martin Linton: I very much hope you
do find it better, but I just want to focus on this particular
point because in paragraph 8 you make a point about there being
less time for amendments, but then you say "This situation
would be improved if the notice period . . . was increased. Selection
lists could be issued earlier . . ." It is not for this Committee
to get down into the details of each notice period, but if you
are saying these things, why have you not come forward with proposals
because as I understood it the whole point about these new hours
was that with moving the sitting hours forward there would be
other consequential changes that would need to be made and you
are identifying the ones that need to be made here. You are the
Chief Executive, why are you not coming to us with the consequential
changes that need to be made to make the current sitting hours
work more smoothly, both for your staff and for Members?
Mr Sands: I do not think that
it is for an officer of the House to make proposals which would,
to some extent, restrict the rights of Members, and I think Members
expect to be able to table amendments flexibly.
| 
