Examination of Witnesses (Questions 45
- 59)
TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2005
DR CHRIS
POND OBE, MS
ANNE FOSTER,
MR PETER
VINES, MR
RUSSELL CARTWRIGHT
AND MR
ANDREW TUGGEY
Chairman: Thank you for the submissions
which you have all made and for coming along today to give evidence
in this important inquiry. It is the first major inquiry this
Committee has undertaken. Welcome.
Q45 Mr Jones: I know we have submissions
from different organisations, and they vary. What are the main
complaints? We heard the Press Gallery saying they have dining
rights, how many people have dining rights? What are the main
concerns? I know from week to week there are gripes about particular
things but is it quality of food; is it price; is it hours? What
are the main complaints?
Dr Pond: From the Trade Union
Side's point of view the complaint we get mostly is overcrowding,
and you have already alluded to that in your discussions with
the Press Gallery. Also, there has been a certain amount of discontent
about the general rising nature of prices. Overcrowding I think
is the worst part.
Mr Vines: I would agree with that.
Overcrowding is the main concern that has been raised. The quality
of food in certain outlets also is mentioned.
Q46 Mr Jones: Which ones?
Mr Vines: The quality of food
in the Terrace Cafeteria. It is not as good, we have heard from
members of staff, as they would like which means they often go
to Portcullis House and also to the new Bellamy's which is doing
very well.
Q47 Mr Jones: Something I have raised
already is the issue of the summer recess where the Terrace cafeteria
seems to be descended upon by every contractor in London. Is it
only at certain times of the year, because I have seen it first
hand in the summer recess, or is it generally?
Mr Vines: The Terrace cafeteria
has general accessibility for those who are in the main building
which is the aim of those in the building where all passholders
can eat there.
Dr Pond: It is not just in the
summer recess, as we pointed out in our memo, there are sometimes
particular difficulties in recesses but it is throughout the year.
It is very often the case if you go along there between 12.30
and 1.30 it is impossible to get in.
Mr Cartwright: The Whitley Committee
point 16 about opening hours on Saturdays, there is a concern,
also, about opening in the recess and on Friday afternoons. If
one outlet can be open until 5.30 on those days it would be helpful.
Q48 Mr Jones: Mr Tuggey, your submission
is slightly different in that you are bringing guests into the
building. What are the main concerns from the CPA's point of view?
Mr Tuggey: On your behalf, the
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK branch entertains visiting
parliamentarians from across the Commonwealth. The effect is that
I appear for you as you because I work for you. We put in our
forecast this year in excess of £20,000 into the refreshment
departments, largely in the House of Commons and all our guests,
who are your guests, come here and they hold the Houses of Parliament
in the UK and you and your colleagues in the highest esteem. In
the short time I have been doing the job something which has very
much come through to me is that this place and the people who
work here—all of us who work here—are held in the
highest esteem by the Commonwealth parliamentarians. As such we
consider we should be reflecting and delivering everything that
we do of the highest standard of excellence because we are the
shop window for UK plc. We consider the Refreshment Department
should be adequately resourced to enable them to do that because
we feel at the moment perhaps they are not adequately resourced
and some of the service that we receive on your behalf is not
quite of the standard which perhaps you might like it to be.
Mr Jones: Can you give a specific example?
Q49 Mr Gerrard: Where would you take
them?
Mr Tuggey: We use most of the
dining facilities. We use dining rooms A, B and C, we use the
Churchill Room, we use The Adjournment and we use Strangers Dining
Room. The service in the Churchill Room in particular is woefully
slow. We tend to use that at lunchtimes when even if we ask for
a prepared set menu, which we do frequently in order to try and
hasten things, we still struggle to get through in the time provided.
We have as our hosts your colleagues and they have other things
to do. They have tight time schedules and, indeed, so do we within
the programme for our guests. In The Adjournment, where the menus
are much lighter and easier—although the service is sometimes
quicker, it is not always quicker—the extraction system
is particularly poor. We consider that should be fixed. You come
out of there with your guests smelling as though you have been
doing the cooking yourself. Menus generally in the older restaurants
perhaps could be made of a lighter variety and, therefore, perhaps
quicker to serve. We would like to see that reflected in the menus
and in the service that is provided.
Q50 David Lepper: On the subject
of access by contractors, can I assume that generally you draw
a distinction between the access that should be available to those
people who are directly employed by the House or by Members of
Parliament and those who happen to have another employer and happen
to be working on the premises?
Mr Vines: Yes. In the submission
from the Secretaries' and Assistants' Council we put in that it
would be useful to have somewhere designated for full passholders
to eat that is restricted for them so there is not a question
of guests or contractors coming in. A point has been made that
it is taxpayers' money which is being spent and in our work here
as employees we view it from that line but if there is to be an
element of subsidy it would be one we would enjoy.
Q51 David Lepper: How do you feel
about the subsidy of the Press Gallery facilities?
Dr Pond: We do say in our memo
that there has to be a certain amount of prioritisation in the
allocation of space on the Estate. I think we all feel—I
cannot speak for the SAAC but I would be surprised if they
did not agree with us—that individual compartmentalised
facilities are inefficient. For instance, if you were going to
take the analogy of the press facilities to their logical extreme
you would have a serjeant's cafeteria, library dining room and
maybe a speakeasy for the clerks! You cannot do that, begging
your pardon, Clerk. In order to maximise the use of the space
they have to be open to, and used by, as large a proportion of
the people who work in the House of Commons as possible.
Q52 John Thurso: Is there a difference
for staff between those staff who work for the House and those
staff who work for Members or other non-House organisations? Is
it blanket across the board?
Mr Vines: In what context?
Q53 John Thurso: In any context as
to any of the points which have been raised?
Mr Vines: There is not any difference.
Q54 John Thurso: Are there differences
of view or is it straight forward?
Mr Vines: It is straight forward.
The comments Dr Pond made earlier about the Press Gallery I would
thought would be okayed by Members' staff as well.
Dr Pond: There is very little
difference. The one area where there might be some difference
is that one or two of the outlets are open to Members and Officers
of the House. Jo Willows and I touched on that in our evidence
to your predecessor committee in 2002 and, perversely, although
we are rather against "first-class" dining rooms, you
might say that does relieve overcrowding in some of the very
overcrowded outlets we have elsewhere.
Q55 John Thurso: For my sins, I have
been responsible for providing staff food in numerous businesses
in the past. It is one of the most thankless tasks I know. Part
of the reason is that there is a degree of familiarity breeds
contempt to a certain extent, and partly because, very importantly,
it is perceived as part of the remuneration package and, therefore,
there is this question of what is the perceived value. I hear
this in the question about subsidy. If it is very highly subsidised
obviously it has got quite a high cash value. The great difficulty
is to find a way of comparing it, or to use the modern jargon
benchmarking it, to what people's real expectations are rather
than a general run. Have you done anything on this? For example,
if you were comparing prices and quality, how does it compare
to a Pret a Manger or to a good quality sandwich bar or Tesco
City sandwiches or something like that? Is there any factual
consideration or is it an emotional thing?
Mr Vines: In the submission of
the Secretaries' and Assistants' Council, we did go out to Caffé
Nero and buy their food and compare it in volume with that of
the House of Commons. As we put in the submission the Americano
from Caffé Nero was £1.55 for 350 millilitres, from
the Despatch Box it was £1.60 for 400 millilitres. We feel
with that and the cost of the food from there, it is very much
on a par with items purchased from a coffee shop on a high street.
There are fluctuations up and down. Then we compare that with
the speed of service that you would expect from Caffé Nero
and the speed of service that you get from the House of Commons.
In many respects we look at food from the cafeteria from the point
of view of what it will cost us to produce at home.
Chairman: I will have to stop you. There
is a division in the Commons.
The Committee suspended from 3.56 pm to
4.06 pm for a division in the House.
Q56 John Thurso: Can I just refresh
your memory, what I am driving at is in the ideal world what would
you pick from outside to be in here? What is the benchmark? What
would make you say "That is what we would like to have"?
Mr Vines: Fresher sandwiches,
certainly. We put down in the submission certainly prepared salads
and desserts could be better. You can find better quality outside
for the cost of it. You may wish to look at, say, the question
of franchising of certain things like that. The hot meals do vary
in quality depending on the outlet but in general they are good
value. We have no complaints on that side.
Q57 John Thurso: Would it be fair
to say that there is a distinction between the appreciation of
the hot meals, which generally seem to be okay, and the sandwiches
and pre-bought or other stuff which is viewed as not being okay?
Mr Vines: Yes.
Q58 John Thurso: On the "not
okay" sandwiches and so on, is there an external name that
jumps to mind as being what you would like: M&S food or Tesco
or Pret a Manger?
Mr Vines: There is an extremely
good independent sandwich maker on Old Queen's Street, I cannot
remember the name, I quite often travel down there myself, something
like that where there is a bit of an independent drive. There
are sandwiches made to order at 7 Millbank, there are no Members
or Members' staff based there and we would like to see something
of that flexibility and quality north of Bridge Street.
Q59 John Thurso: If I have the message
correctly it is that you want the really good, small, well-run
independent sandwich bar where you say: "I will have that,
that, that and that between two bits of bread" and they do
it for you?
Mr Vines: Yes.
Dr Pond: Taking the original point
that you made about it forming part of terms and conditions, my
memory takes me back to the time of the Mikardo Committee when
prices were relatively high. It has to be acknowledged that reasonable
dining/eating facilities are implicitly part of the terms and
conditions of the staff. In the seventies prices, as I say, were
relatively high and the lower paid people at that time were supplied
with luncheon vouchers to compensate for the higher prices. There
is an element of subsidy, we all understand the element of subsidy.
I have been in numerous outlets in large institutions and the
prices are slightly variable but the subsidy element for covering
the staff costs is generally there. If the catering system was
radically altered such that the full economic price was charged
it would result (a) in a massive pay claim and (b) in much lesser
usage both by Members and staff of the facilities which all add
to the corporate life of the House of Commons.
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