Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-144)
DR CHRIS
POND AND
MS ANNE
FOSTER
9 MAY 2006
Q140 Mr Ainsworth: This is House
staff, is it?
Ms Foster: This is House staff.
Q141 Helen Jones: We have tried to
discuss which members of staff need to be in this building and
which do not. Do you have any views on members of staff who do
not need to work here or do not need to work in the buildings
very close by (Norman Shaw or Parliament Street and so on). I
will be blunt: Members feel very strongly that there is not enough
suitable accommodation for Members. The place would not exist
without Members. While I am anxious to see staff have proper,
decent working conditions, the question really is how we can best
shuffle this accommodation around. Do you have any views on that,
please?
Mr Pond: We touch on that in our
memo. We do not think the House of Commons management have thought
laterally enough about where services might be provided. There
are examples of services whose efficiency has been limited by
poor accommodation. Although I would not like to make too much
of an example of this, I think the House of Lords Record Office,
which is a shared service between both Houses, is one of those.
Members used to leave their political papers to be preserved in
the House of Lords Record Office. The House of Lords Record Office
cannot now preserve them because of space constraints. The staff
are very much crammed in. The Public Record Office a few years
ago was moved out from Chancery Lane, where it used to be, near
the Law Courts, to Kew in Surrey and it is a great success story.
The Essex Record Office used to be in County Hall at Chelmsford.
That has been moved out to a purpose-built building, still in
Chelmsford but near enough to be near the county administration,
and much more accessible to the public without all the security
constraints of getting them into the building. We think that management
ought perhaps to be a bit more proactive in considering the location
of these services and making proposals, which obviously we would
look at as staff representatives, for providing service elsewhere.
Q142 Helen Jones: Do you have any
specific suggestions for services which might be relocated?
Ms Foster: Possibly the PICT help
desk. PICT have done a lot in their refurbishment of hot-desking
because they do not have enough space for the amount of staff
they have. The people who work on the help desk itself are purely
on the phone. They have field engineers who come out and see—
Q143 Helen Jones: So they could be
anywhere.
Ms Foster: Yes.
Mr Pond: Some years ago I was
Head of the House of Commons Public Information Office and there
was then a half suggestion that the Public Information Office,
which was basically a telephone bureau, might be provided elsewhere
in London simply to ease pressure in the Estate. In the event
it was decided to convert the top floor of the Norman Shaw North
building for the Information Office and the Education Service.
I think we simply feel that management have not been proactive
enough in considering this possibility.
Mr Harper: So do we.
Helen Jones: Thank you. That is very
helpful.
Q144 Mr Harper: Very specifically,
following that, one of the questions I asked the Chief Executive
was on the report that was conducted identifying the number of
staff from the House who might be able to work off site away from
Westminster, which would obviously free up space at Millbank and
Derby Gate. My question was, of the staff who were then based
in the Palace, how many and which roles could therefore be located
on the Estate but in those other buildings that were a bit further
away thus freeing up space in the Palace? That work has not been
done and yet your note was very helpful because clearly for staff
who are not based here the trade-off is that it is possible to
provide them with better accommodation at a more sensible cost
elsewhere, and obviously there would be appropriate negotiations
over terms and conditions. I just wondered what your views were
specifically on people in the Palace and whether they need to
be here.
Mr Pond: Perhaps a parallel to
that, Mr Harper, is the House of Commons Library which until 1991
was virtually entirely based within the Palace of Westminster.
In the late eighties the Library took the decision that it would
be possible to provide virtually all the backroom services in
a building on the parliamentary estate and old Number 47 Parliament
Street was converted for that purpose. It is now Number 1 Derby
Gate, so there probably are other services like that but I think
management would probably be in a better position to make the
suggestion than we would. If management do make the suggestion
we would be very happy to look at it. There may be constraining
factors but, as I said, I do not think management have devoted
enough attention to that sort of thing.
Mr Harper: I think we would agree.
Chairman: Thank you very much. That has
been extremely helpful. Apologies again for keeping you waiting
so long.
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