Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
MR PETER
EWINS
23 MAY 2006
Q180 Mr Jones: To me it seems pretty
fundamental if you go for a joint venture and you set a business
up, what you do not do then is set up a competitor, which sounds
exactly what the Met Office did in this case. I accept you have
moved on and you were not there but £1.5 million of taxpayers'
money was put into this joint venture. At the same time, clearly
Met Office civil servants or the people who were now making the
decisions were actually pulling the rug from under this company.
Did they ever feel, as I said earlier on, that there was a conflict
of interest between on the one hand representing the Met Office
and on the other hand being on the Board and being the representatives
not just of the Met Office but also the investment of the £1.5
million?
Mr Ewins: My recollection at the
time is that MoD was not particularly keen on joint ventures not
as a matter of principle but more generally. They expressed that
to me at the various Met Office Owner's Board meetings that I
attended. As these Board meetings they would quiz me quite deeply
about weatherXchange. The external members of that Board were
very pro; the MoD officials rather less so.
Q181 Mr Jones: So they were quite
happy to kill off this company and write off £1.5 million
of public money?
Mr Ewins: I do not think they
would ever be happy to write off £1.5 million but they might
have been slightly happier about the outcome. Could I just make
one point about the £1.5 million. It is important to recognise
that our truly commercial business, that is the bit that was non-government
and competed, was about £20 million a year. Very much more
than that was competed but competed inside government if you will.
The bit that was competed in the private sector outside government
was in excess of £20 million. In a typical year that would
offset the cost to the taxpayer by about £4.5 million. If
you judge that over seven years and then look at the £1.5
million, whilst it is very unfortunate and nobody wants to do
that, it is not a disaster—
Q182 Mr Jones: Well—
Mr Ewins: The taxpayer is still
coming off better as a result of the commercial work that we are
doing. The point I am making is that if you take the experience
of the joint venture and say on that basis the Met Office should
cease to do its truly commercial work, then the taxpayer is going
to lose to the tune of £4.5 million a year or more.
Q183 Mr Jones: I am not saying that
but I also think if you are going to put investment like that
in, what you do not then do is try and pull the rug from under
the company once you have set it up, which I think is bizarre.
Mr Ewins: And I agree with you.
Q184 Chairman: Let us move on to
a completely different issue, namely the Met Office and the Hydrographic
Office. The Chief Executive of the Met Office told us that those
two offices were looking at making savings by sharing accommodation
and corporate functions. Do you think there is a case for going
beyond that and merging the two organisations completely?
Mr Ewins: It is only a personal
view, it is not a view that I have as an ex-Chief Executive. I
would say, yes, there is a case for merging the two organisations
completely.
Q185 Chairman: What would be the
advantages and disadvantages and do you think that one would outweigh
the other?
Mr Ewins: I think that the kinds
of work that the two organisations do scientifically are quite
close or complementary. Certainly the support services that they
need would be shared better. The downside might be that they do
not have quite the same perspective of the customer and that might
be difficult. So far as I am aware, the Hydrographic Office is
going through a substantial period of change as the technology
changes and moves away from maps to digitisation, et cetera. It
does seem to me in principle that there is a pretty good fit in
terms of the science and the technology, which indicates to me
that they could be closer together than simply being collocated.
If you ask me on balance what my view is, I would say it is in
favour of merging the two together in the longer term. That would
have to emerge. I do not think you could make that decision now.
I think you would have to get them working more closely together
and maybe collocated geographically. I just need to mention to
you that when we were looking at the design of the building in
Exeter, we deliberately had as part of that design the ability
to add a fifth office block to the four that exist. It is part
of the design. That would increase the accommodation by 25%. That
is not very far away from the amount that you would need in total
for the two combined organisations. There would be terrific scope
for putting the Hydrographic Office on the site at Exeter. Once
you do that I think you start to dissolve the objections to a
full merger. Scientists will always claim to you that the thing
they are doing is slightly different from the thing that somebody
else is doing. Put them into the same office to work together
and threaten them both with their future and they suddenly find
a way of working together much more efficiently and much more
effectively and that is what they should do.
Chairman: Moving on to the management
generally of the Met Office, Kevan Jones?
Q186 Mr Jones: Can I ask your opinion
in terms of the current Chief Executive post which has now been
downgraded, as we understand from evidence we have taken, from
a three-star level to a two-star, and the fact that they are going
to look to recruit a Chief Executive who is—and they use
the term—world class or a world leader; do you think that
is going to be inhibited by the downgrading of the role?
Mr Ewins: Yes I do.
Q187 Mr Jones: Would you like to
expand on that?
Mr Ewins: I think certainly internationally
and to some extent in dealing with the MoD, it is necessary for
the Chief Executive not just to have the title but to be seen
to have this wretched phrase "grade equivalence" with
the people with whom he does business. If we want to be successful
in our relationship, particularly with the United States, then
it is not sensible to downgrade the post of Chief Executive to
two star from three star. When I was Chief Executive my entrée
into the States, what determined the level at which I interacted
with the States was determined by my grade, not by who was running
what. As a three-star officer I was able to negotiate, talk and
discuss with the Head of NOAA. You downgrade that and discussions
will take place with only the Head of the National Weather Service,
which will rule out things like climate change, et cetera, et
cetera, so I think it is a bad move. Internally to MoD it is less
important, but it does not take officers long before they start
to realise you have been downgraded and they do treat one differently.
The last point I would make is that in operating in the international
arena, particularly in the World Met Organisation, whilst it is
undoubtedly true that the principal reason the Met Office gets
a good hearing is because of the quality of what it does, people
are also conscious of the level at which the Chief Executive has
been appointed. All those things add up and it saddens me that
the post has been downgraded.
Q188 Mr Jones: Do you think it is part
of a broader change in management? Reference has been made to
the MoD taking more hands-on control of the Met Office. Do you
think this is part of this process that by downgrading the Chief
Executive, that the mandarins along the way in the main building
at Whitehall will be able to have more direct control of what
happens in the Met Office?
Mr Ewins: It would be tempting
to suggest so but I doubt it. I do not think that would be a concern
I would have. The concerns I have would be more the ones I have
outlined than that issue.
Q189 Chairman: Why do you think it
is being done then?
Mr Ewins: In all honesty, I do
not know why it is being done because if the claim is correct
that it will have no bearing on the salary that is offered, the
question is why do it. I genuinely cannot answer your question
because I do not know the answer and I am not really happy to
speculate.
Q190 Mr Jones: In terms of recruiting
people to this field and the future Chief Executive, will that
deter some people from applying for it on an international stage?
Mr Ewins: Those people who understand
the grading structure and how it operates in the MoD and what
doors it opens and what doors it closes, et cetera, will be put
off by it. Others will not know any different and will not be.
Q191 Chairman: But the implication
of what you are saying is that the entrée to various people
particularly in the United States is provided, at least partly,
by the grading as opposed wholly by the quality of the service
that the Met Office provides to the world?
Mr Ewins: What gets you into the
organisation is the quality of what you do. The level at which
you hold the discussions is determined by the grade that you go
in at. In order to have a proper relationship with the United
States, which is a key element not just for weather forecasting
but the current push on climate change, et cetera, I believe it
is, in my view, a pity that we have lost the three-star interaction.
Chairman: On a general point, Mr Ewins,
I would like to thank you for the clarity of the answers that
you are giving us. I think when we pose questions you try to answer
specifically the questions that we ask you and I am grateful for
that because it is extremely helpful. Now the issue of the move
to Exeter, you have already covered a bit but Linda Gilroy would
like to ask a question.
Q192 Linda Gilroy: The move from
Bracknell to Exeter involved around 500 posts at the Met Office.
What sort of posts were they?
Mr Ewins: It was nearer 1,000.
Q193 Linda Gilroy: I am sorry a reduction
of 500, it was 1,000 people who moved but what were the jobs that
did not transfer?
Mr Ewins: There were a number
of things going on at the same time as the move to Exeter. There
was the rationalisation of the forecasting operation. There would
be the greater efficiency of the new building in terms of support
staff, et cetera. When we took the decision to move to Exeter
we believed that it was only necessary to take some 80% of the
workforce with us. In the event, we took rather more than that,
which was not a difficulty, but we used the opportunity of moving
geographically to rationalise much of the way the support services
in particular had been done and to some extent the forecasting
operation.
Q194 Linda Gilroy: So was it predominantly
in the support staff that the reductions were made? What sort
of proportion would you say of the 500 would have been support
staff?
Mr Ewins: I am not sure I quite
recall the figure of 500.
Q195 Linda Gilroy: Around 500.
Mr Ewins: I think 500 would have
been the number we were reducing by over a period of three or
four years not just at the point of moving to Exeter.
Q196 Linda Gilroy: But that would
have been predominantly support staff?
Mr Ewins: No, that would have
been a mixture of support staff and rationalisation of the forecasting
process.
Q197 Linda Gilroy: Right, so the
forecasting process would have been a significant element?
Mr Ewins: Yes, but I would not
like to make a conjecture as to what the proportions were.
Q198 Linda Gilroy: But it was significant;
it was not just 5%?
Mr Ewins: Yes it was and of course
in moving to Exeter and rationalising, it gave the opportunity
to rationalise those parts which were not moving to Exeter. I
can elaborate on that if you would like me to. Broadly speaking,
what we are saying is having got the Exeter operation we were
able to save the staff effort in the outstations or the regional
centres.
Q199 Linda Gilroy: Can you describe
how that is?
Mr Ewins: This is quite a tricky
issue. I am not a meteorologist so I need to be a bit careful
about how I express this. It seems to me that we have reached
the point with the technology where it is not necessary to be
in the location that you are making the forecast for in order
to make a good forecast. The public's perception is that you do
need to do that. It is rather like closing the local hospital.
People think that a local hospital is going to be more efficient
than a big one 10 miles away. The same is true for forecasting.
You can forecast from Exeter for anywhere in the world now with
a good accuracy but the public perception is "if I want a
forecast for Birmingham I need to know that forecast came from
Birmingham so there has to be a regional weather centre in Birmingham."
We moved to Exeter and subsequently the decision has been made,
as I understand it, to rationalise that further. Increasingly
the operation is being sucked into Exeter, so although the numbers
are not falling at Exeter as fast as you might have expected,
they are falling overall in the Met Office and that was the plan.
So it is working, but what needs managing is the customers' perception
of the forecast.
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