Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
SIR GUS
O'DONNELL KCB
11 OCTOBER 2005
Q40 Julia Goldsworthy: You have talked
about capability assessments and the Delivery Unit heading them
up with external input. Are you able to elaborate a bit more on
what you mean by external input and why you have judged that a
totally independent assessment is not necessary? Following up
from that, if you are holding the permanent secretaries accountable,
how and with what mechanisms?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I have just
got into this and been able to announce this so could I give you
the great details. First of all on independence, I am very strongly
of the view that we have a large independent element to this but
what I do not want is a department saying, "It is an independent
review done of us, we do not believe it, we do not accept it,"
and just ignoring it. For me what really matters is that change
takes place so that means, yes, I want a strong external input—and
indeed I am delighted by the fact that permanent secretaries want
it as well—to work together on this. There could be external
leads of these teams that come in but at the end of the day, there
will be a report that comes to me and the permanent secretary
and we will sign it off. Then in terms of the accountability—your
second point—I will be holding the permanent secretary accountable
for improvements in the areas where improvements are needed. We
will agree an action plan and trajectories to get to a level that
we all believe that department needs to be at.
Q41 Julia Goldsworthy: How would
that then tie in with the roles that are already there for the
Ombudsmen and the National Audit Office and the Audit Commission?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: The Audit Commission
have been doing this sort of thing for local authorities so they
will play a key role. The National Audit Office has its own role
which is looking at value for money and auditing accounts and
all the rest of it. I do not want to stop them doing that. It
is a very important role and they do it very well. They have not
been doing capability reviews so probably the obvious place for
me to look is the Audit Commission. What was the other group you
mentioned?
Q42 Julia Goldsworthy: The Ombudsmen.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: The Ombudsmen
are slightly different in that they are picking up those cases
where there have been failures, where the internal systems have
failed, and they are more specific cases. We have published a
Consultation Document on helping the Ombudsmen work together to
try and learn lessons from them as to how that feeds back into
better customer service, but I am sure when we look at capability
one of the things we will be looking at is customer service capability
where that is relevant for departments, and clearly the ability
of them to learn from customer complaints is something where I
think you might well get some of the private sector who would
be very good to help you do that aspect.
Q43 Grant Shapps: Sir Gus, I wonder
if you would agree with me that it is a pretty good indication
of a Civil Service department which is failing when they have
to set up their own special helpline for MPs to contact them?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: No, I think
that is a very good example of providing a good service to you.
Q44 Grant Shapps: The way I am thinking
about this is if it were not for two categories of cases, the
Child Support Agency cases and Immigration and Nationality Directorate
(IND) cases, I would probably have half the number of people turn
up at my surgeries each week. That is probably the experience
of most of us round here. Those are two organisations which I
think you would probably accept are clearly failing. It seems
to me it is the failing ones which require special helplines for
Members of Parliament to contact you in order to move cases up
the chain. Is that the way it works, that there is a special helpline
when things are going wrong? I struggle to think of a department
with a special helpline where there are problems that cannot be
addressed via the usual channels.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: If you think
of the degree of difficulty of what both those departments are
trying to handle. For example, if you take the Child Support Agency,
this is something that is incredibly hard. In the past it was
dealt with by our courts and there were issues then about the
difficulty of it and lots of dissatisfied customers, but they
would not blame civil servants because they would be problems
with the courts. Now we have got a Child Support Agency, which
I understand had cross party support, they are dealing with people
who are generally in conflict and who are possibly not co-operating.
It does not surprise me that there are disputes in that area.
When you go to the IND there are also people who are quite often
in dispute. Those are the difficult areas and that is where you
are going to get lots of cases. I predict whatever system we have
in line for things like child support, you will be kept very busy
in your constituency dealing with people who dispute the cases.
Q45 Grant Shapps: I accept what you
are saying entirely, particularly about the CSA where clearly
it has come about through family breakdown which has much wider
issues than the Civil Service can possibly resolve. However, in
one of those departments there are six people—five people
when I called up because somebody was off sick—handling
30,000 cases and they were prioritised according to the person
I was speaking to, as green, amber and red, and one that no-one
was supposed to know about called a red star, and what an MP could
do by calling up and finally getting through was to move it up
one level in that, whereas ordinary members of the public would
be expected to wait around for hours on the helpline and usually
then not to get their response dealt with at all. They are self-confessed,
over-worked, over- whelmed civil servants and I am interested
to know what you think should be done about that.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: In all of these
areas where we are having problems—and this is an example
where a capability review would help us identify—
Q46 Grant Shapps: Or more staff possibly?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Exactly. There
will be various elements to solutions. There will be one about
is it policy changes, and I do not think we should shy away from
that. Is it that, yes, we just need to put more resources into
it. I know the newly appointed head of the CSA is looking again
at the IT systems and whether they are right for case-handling
in terms of the numbers they have got, but it is a difficult situation.
They start with some backlogs and it is a very complex policy
area.
Q47 Grant Shapps: Are you aware,
to draw out an example of the inefficiency within the CSA, that
if somebody's direct debit falls due on a Sunday, at the beginning
of the next week they will receive a letter telling them that
their payment is overdue even though it has been paid on that
day and it must mean that one in seven instances are sent reminders.
Can you even start to calculate how much that must be costing?
I would be interested to hear the figure. Obviously you will not
have it with you now.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Curiously enough,
I do not have that figure!
Q48 Grant Shapps: Were you aware
of the problem?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I am aware
that there are a number of structural problems at the CSA, yes.
Q49 Chairman: Perhaps you can find
out if what Grant is saying is true and then you can write and
tell us what you are going to do about it.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I will get
the head of the CSA to respond to you.[3]
Q50 Grant Shapps: Clearly you accept
there are problems in the CSA. We all know there are. We accept
that these are wide problems which go way beyond the Civil Service
and into society. When an organisation is set up and is so ineffective
and has failed so completely and utterly and continues to fail
years later, who should be taking the can for this?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Like I say,
they are dealing with a difficult area. I feel responsible for
all those civil servants who are operating, as you say, in very
difficult circumstances in that department, trying to do the job
as best they can, working very intensively, so it is for me to
support them, but in terms of can I help them do what they want
to do, which is deliver a first-class service, then, yes, I am
very keen—and there is a new Head of the CSA—to talk
to him about how he can ensure it will go up the route to DWP
to Leigh Lewis, the new Permanent Secretary, when he takes over
from Richard. This is one of the key areas we must address. I
am very aware of these issues. In the same way as you have constituents,
I have friends and other routes in to tell me precisely all these
sorts of stories.
Q51 Grant Shapps: This department
had only six people but there were only five on that day because
one was ill and clearly part of the solution I can tell you, without
going into any kind of comprehensive assessment of it, is that
there are just are not enough staff there. Whilst I have said
that more staff is part of the answer, surely somebody should
be losing their job over this kind of catastrophe? Perhaps you
have an opinion whether that should happen within the Civil Service
or at a political level, I do not know, but somebody should be
carrying the can.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Sure. I will
only go down that route if I could define precisely what the causes
of the problems were.
Q52 Grant Shapps: Because it is complex
we never really get to an answer then?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Because it
is complex if we do not know what the real causes are then I think
it would be wrong to blame anyone. You have got a new Head of
CSA coming in there and he is trying to sort things out. The staff
who are there are trying their best to implement policies.
Q53 Grant Shapps: A final thing,
I cannot stress, and I am sure other Members around here will
back me up on this, just what a mess it is in. It is incredible
the stories that people come back with, the amount of casework
taken up with the CSA, and I mentioned the IND at the beginning.
Without those two government departments I would probably not
need to run surgeries every other week.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Can I give
you one piece of optimism to look at. When I was at the Cambridge
court, they have a brand new court building that has excellent
facilities for disadvantaged witnesses, for example, one of the
things they have got there is a mediation service where if there
are couples in dispute, if it is an issue about finance or whatever,
they put them into mediation. They do not go anywhere near courts,
they mediate, and they have something like an 85% success rate
doing that without going near the system. I just wonder if we
could not find ways to use mediation more.
Q54 Grant Shapps: I am sure that
is right on a general note. Finally, is it within your remit to
say that this person has systematically failed and "I am
afraid we are going to have to ask you to leave the Civil Service,
in fact you will get the sack, because the computer system has
not worked or there is such appalling mismanagement within this
department"? Is that something you would ever do or consider?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: The Head of
the CSA reports to the permanent secretary for the Department
of Work and Pensions who in turn reports to me. If there were
something where there were systematic failings and I thought it
was individuals who should be held to account who were not fulfilling
their job then obviously—
Q55 Grant Shapps: I wonder how bad
an organisation would have to look before you would think it was
a systematic failure then?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: You have to
sort out the causes of failure.
Grant Shapps: More than just the MPs'
helpline.
Q56 David Heyes: Can I tease out
a little more this interesting announcement you have made about
capability reviews. You said that you expected a first pilot to
be launched around December/January, which suggests it is a well
thought out idea and that it is at a stage of development that
has given you the confidence to speak about it today. I just wondered,
if the essence of this is going to be based upon comparability
as between departments, what purpose can pilots serve?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: First of all,
what I have been spending my time doing is developing the idea.
Bichard's speech was a very interesting speech and I have noted
what you have talked about in terms of CPA in this Committee,
so I think the big idea is right. The question about how you implement
it, it took some time to sort out the methodology of how you do
these things at local authority level because you cannot just
wholesale translate them across to central government departments
because they are rather different, so we will spend some time
between now and December sorting out methodology. In terms of
pilots we have never done this sort of thing for a Department
of Work and Pensions or a Treasury or a Cabinet Office, so that
is why I think we might need to go to pilots, plus the point that
Mr Liddell-Grainger made about resources. We are not suddenly
going to be able to do all the departments at once. I would like
to do this as quickly as possible.
Q57 David Heyes: But there is a huge
plethora of inspection bodies in existence already. You have hinted
you might attach this responsibility to one of the existing ones
but you do not seem certain which that might be. Is there a risk
of yet another inspection body being created because of the very
special nature of this? I am doubting what you say about the huge
experience in local government and there being no transferability
of that experience into a Civil Service context. Surely that cannot
be true?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: What I am saying
is the people who have done it at a local authority level have
been the local authority and Audit Commission doing it together
and I want to exploit the people who have got that experience,
most certainly. I did not mean to imply that. What I am saying
is that the functions of, say, the Ministry of Defence are rather
different from the functions of—
Q58 David Heyes: Will it cover the
work of the agencies? Is that your intention?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I want to start
with central government departments. Then I think we can move
on to agencies.
Q59 David Heyes: That is where the
service delivery is, through agencies, and that is being excluded
from this regime.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: It will not
be excluded. We will get to it, most certainly.
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