Select Committee on Administration Minutes of Evidence


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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