Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MR
PETER UNWIN,
MR JOE
MONTGOMERY AND
MS CHRISTINA
BIENKOWSKA
27 NOVEMBER 2006
Q20 Sir Paul Beresford: What was
wrong before?
Mr Housden: My sense in both the
government departments I have worked in is that they work most
effectively when you have a very strong, vibrant connection between
ministers and their priorities in the broad mass of the department.
We have slightly more than 2,500 staff. The more strongly their
work is connected to ministerial concerns, priorities and ambitions
the better. I wanted to be sure that we had at the centre of the
department a small team who could make that connection effectively.
I think it is particularly important because of the cross-cutting
dimension of our responsibilities, a jargon phrase, but the way
in which you cannot deliver, for example, properly on housing
and planning without having local government and its capacity
in your mind. You cannot deliver on estate renewal and regeneration
without having housing and planning.
Q21 Sir Paul Beresford: From my memory
of being a minister, that connection was done through whoever
was in the position that you are in now.
Mr Housden: Yes.
Q22 Sir Paul Beresford: Why do you
need somebody else?
Mr Housden: This is giving me,
through Christina and her team, some capacity to do that. One
of the criticisms that is often levelled at government departments
and local authorities and other public bodies in general is that
they are silo-ed, that their individual components work in a vertical
way without much lateral intelligence. My sense was that our department
had to add a very high premium on getting this right. It needed
some more capacity in that way so that was the logic behind the
appointment.
Q23 Sir Paul Beresford: Does this
individual go to the ministerial meetings for the department?
Ms Bienkowska: Shall I say a word
about my role and how it fits with Peter Housden's role and the
rest of the board? That may help answer your question. As Mr Housden
said, essentially my role and the role of my team is to make sure
that across the department's business we are always thinking about
whether we have a clear, over-arching sense of direction, whether
the different elements of what we are doing and how we do them
fit together in a powerful, strategic way; and in that conversation
we are always focused on ministers' priorities and connecting
those priorities through to what the department is doing day to
day. The manifestation of that is thinking about the organisational
structure of the department, trying to make sure that that gives
us the most effective way of doing the business in that cross-cutting
way that we have talked about. As you all know, we restructured
the shape of the department earlier this year so that, for example,
Joe Montgomery has a cross-cutting role on places, so organisational
structure, delivery structure, how we monitor progress and performance
across the business that we need to deliver day by day, where
again, as I think the Committee is aware, we put in place this
year a set of nine programme executives which sit above the detailed
programme boards that deliver particular tasks. Those programme
executives are designed to be and are cross cutting, think about
the big picture and are all chaired at board level. Finally, thinking
about the board's role and the governance structures within the
department and connecting those throughout with ministers' priorities
where we do take on, on behalf of the Secretary of State and the
ministerial team, a range of flexible work to reinforce the department's
capacity in areas where things have become more difficult, more
urgent or where there are obviously risks and pressures.
Q24 Sir Paul Beresford: You have
more chiefs. Do you have more Indians as well? Is anyone doing
a like for like estimate of the total staffing level?
Ms Bienkowska: Across the range
of the department's business?
Q25 Sir Paul Beresford: Yes.
Ms Bienkowska: We have a very
small team of something like 20 or 25. What we do day by day will
flex between thinking about organisational structure delivery
and—
Q26 Sir Paul Beresford: Does anyone
do an estimate on a like for like basis of the change in staffing
level over the last few years?
Mr Housden: Yes. We have Gershon
headcount targets set in SR2004 which we are securing. That is
predicated on the reduction in our staffing over that period.
Q27 Sir Paul Beresford: Could we
have a copy of that?
Mr Housden: Of course.
Q28 Chair: If you need more analysts
and economists and senior staff as you were saying, how are you
going to find them? Are you going to get rid of some of the senior
staff you have?
Mr Housden: We always will have
to work within the quantum. We have a reasonable level of turnover
so we do have the opportunity as that happens to rebalance. If
you take analysts, we have economists, statisticians and social
researchers. We have those three disciplines and thereby we have
the opportunity to change the balances as we go. It is also possible
to increase the share of the overall staffing resource that is
devoted to analysis. We could have slightly fewer policy staff
and recruit more in analytic areas.
Mr Unwin: We have a Gershon target
for staff reductions and the latest figures we have on that are
that the headquarters department is about 190 staff down from
our June 2004 baseline. I think we discussed last year the voluntary
exit scheme which was just about to go through. That went through
and about 100 staff left the department on voluntary terms. We
are in the middle of a similar exercise now and we will be coming
to the results of that in another month or two but we would expect
probably between 100 and 150 staff going out through that exercise.
With that and other means we are confident that we will meet the
Gershon target which is to reduce by 400 staff by 2008, of whom
at least 250 have to come from the headquarters department and
the government offices.
Q29 Anne Main: Our previous report
heavily criticised the fact that you could not communicate your
message outside the department. Having heard a lot of people still
talking within the department, what concrete steps have you put
in place to communicate the message and the delivery to other
departments that you rely on to get your vision through?
Mr Housden: There are two things
that we have done. We have recruited externally a new director
of communications who is reviewing our overall internal and external
communications effort. The launch of the Thames Gateway Interim
Framework last week I think was a good example of the way in which,
with key stakeholders in that area, we were able to make, through
our ministers, a good impact across government. You are right
to say that is particularly important. The Local Government White
Paper process that produced a new performance management system
for local services through local area agreements with a reduced
number of targets was the result of consistent engagement across
a number of government departments who are engaged in local services
to secure the agreement and support of their ministers and officials.
That was an important proving ground for us in making the improvement
you refer to.
Q30 Anne Main: You are confident
things are going to be different now?
Mr Housden: I think we are making
progress. We had a brief exchange on this when I first came to
your Committee as Permanent Secretary. The culture of public service
here—you and Sir Paul were making this point to me—over
a long period has been relatively centralising. I mentioned before
the tendency in government and at national and local level and
in other public bodies for organisations to work in rather silo-ed
ways. We are working against both of those tendencies. We are
working hard to ensure that government gets it right across the
different spatial levels and that we can get it right across the
different disciplines that we work in. We are committed; we are
determined; I think we are making progress but it is not going
to be made in one bound, I would suggest.
Q31 Greg Hands: How many staff are
still being seconded to the ODPM or its new guise, the Deputy
Prime Minister's Office? How many of those are press officers?
How many staff have you lost to quangos or related quangos in
your sector?
Mr Housden: On the number of staff
seconded to the DPMO, it is about 15 or 16 I think.
Q32 Chair: Perhaps you could clarify
afterwards the precise number.
Mr Unwin: It is something between
15 and 20.
Q33 Greg Hands: How many are press
officers or in media relations?
Mr Unwin: At least one of the
ones we have seconded. Again, we will confirm this.
Q34 Greg Hands: I did ask that specific
question to the Minister, who claimed that people were going to
get back to me and did not. There is at least one, we think, in
media relations?
Mr Unwin: Yes.
Q35 Greg Hands: What about loss of
staff to quangos?
Mr Unwin: Do you mean staff that
we have transferred?
Q36 Greg Hands: Yes, exactly, either
secondment or as a permanent transfer.
Mr Unwin: I do not have a figure
for that. Again, we can come back to you and let you have that
figure.
Mr Housden: The basis of the transfer,
the secondment of staff, to work for the Deputy Prime Minister
reflected the fact that whilst he was a departmental head in ODPM
his private office did both of those things. It supported his
role as Deputy Prime Minister and as departmental head. He has
carried on the former. That was the basis of our seconding staff
and they are on secondment to his office over that period. We
will let you have the precise numbers.
Q37 Martin Horwood: This is a staffing
question and it may come under performance as well because it
seems to have implications that are wider than just the specific
example. I found on page 44 of the report a reference to 93 posts
being relocated to government offices—for instance, work
on the community housing task force, regional resilience and so
on—and then the amazing statement underneath that this policy
also necessarily results in new local service-facing posts within
London and the greater south-east. I cannot see why that necessarily
results in new posts. Does that imply that when you relocate a
post you need to replace them with someone in London to tell you
what the person in the relocated post is doing, or what?
Mr Unwin: That possibly could
have been drafted more clearly. What that is saying is that some
of those posts will be in the government offices in London, the
south-east and the east so they are not posts in headquarters.
Under the Lyons relocation target we have, we have to relocate
staff out of London, beyond the greater south-east. One of the
things we are doing is to try to move work wherever possible closer
to the front line by moving it to government offices. When we
do that we will obviously move work out to all the government
offices to reflect what is happening in each of the regions. Obviously,
some of those posts will be in the three regions that count as
part of the greater south-east.
Q38 Martin Horwood: Are the 93 posts
relocated outside London and the greater south-east?
Mr Unwin: They are relocated to
government offices. This is probably 93 going out of London and
the south-east with some others going into the three government
offices in the south-east. If that is not the case, we will confirm
with you.
Q39 Martin Horwood: Perhaps you could
write and clarify that.
Mr Unwin: Yes. That will be 93
out of London and the south-east.
Chair: This demonstrates the point we
were making at the beginning which is that the report is not clear.
Since the point of the annual report is to try and make the department's
work clear to lay persons and MPs, the fact that we are having
such difficulty in understanding it demonstrates it is not doing
what it should do.
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