Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-124)
MR CHRISTIAN
BISHOP, MR
GLENN FORD
AND MS
NORINA O'HARE
24 APRIL 2006
Q120 Chairman: I presume that all
of this sea of people flowing in on a temporary basis, the concerns
the staff had for the way which things were going were not exactly
making the RPA the happiest place to be working. Did you do any
surveys of staff morale during this time?
Mr Bishop: Not a survey as such.
Certainly, as Glenn referred to earlier, at quarterly TUS meetings
we were getting regular reports back from branches around RPA
and offices at the TUS, and on visit sites we were getting first-hand
information about morale at that time. An honest assessment is
it fluctuates. Certainly in some of the sites that were closing,
morale was quite high, but on some of the sites where there was
maintained work, it did vary. Certainly, what we have seen, as
Norina was referring to earlier, is there has been this climate
of fear. If you look at the customer service centre fiasco, we
had senior managers going up there threatening to close the site,
but currently some of the sites live in that fear. If you speak
to any one of the six RPA sites, they are all fearful of closure.
Q121 David Taylor: I think we can
deduce or infer your attitude to the agency work of different
kinds, but taking this much more broadly, what is the PCS's general
position on outsourcing activities like ICT?
Ms O'Hare: As we represent most
of the IT staff who have been transferred into the private sector
as a result of Civil Service IT outsourcing, we have been opposed
to it. We have been opposed to it on the basis that prior to the
start of that whole move to buying in from private sector IT companies,
we had staff within the Civil Service across all the ponds who
had IT skills in both software design and hardware and what that
meant was you also had managers at senior levels who were able
to talk with knowledge to IT providers about what the salesmen
were telling you. The biggest problem, from our point of view,
is that you have lost that skill in the Civil Service so you do
not have a big enough career-base now for IT staff in the Civil
Service to be able to ask the hard-nosed questions and the candid
questions and to say, "You are talking rubbish, sorry, but
why would you propose a web-based system for this particular sort
of payments scheme?" It is because they could talk with the
detailed technical knowledge that they could then ask those hard-nosed
questions. I think from our point of view, from the PCS point
of view, all of the major fiascos in terms ICT outsourcing—and
there have been so many—have been because you are transferring
specialist staff to the private sector and you are losing your
ability to be able to then purchase those services and to get
the right product back. It seems to me that is fundamental. That
has been a fundamental problem with central government IT procurement
and we believe it is because of the outsourcing process we have
lost that sort of ability to manage.
Q122 David Taylor: Has this significant
scepticism towards the principle of outsourcing trickled down
so that your members working in the RPA with Accenture staff have
impaired the cordial working relationship? In fact, is there a
working relationship in any way?
Ms O'Hare: I cannot answer that,
Glenn or Christian would be better placed.
Mr Ford: When we talk about our
members and the RPA staff working with Accenture staff, as I said
earlier, you have got the computer programmers, the Accenture
people, who are the technical people, and then the RPA staff,
who are user-testers to see if that works. The working relationship
between the two sides of staff has caused problems because, of
course, they work on different levels. You have got a group of
civil servants who are being paid their rate of pay and then you
have got very expensive IT consultants who are working opposite
them and working with them and there is very much a case sometimes
that rather than RPA running the show, that it is Accenture who
is putting it forward as to, "This is what you will have",
and, "Yes, okay, we will go with that".
Q123 David Taylor: Finally, Norina's
point is that they should directly employ a core of people that
have ICT knowledge or special confidence to challenge decisions
that are made either by top management or by Accenture but that
critical mass is disappearing?
Mr Ford: Yes.
Q124 Mr Drew: We could look at the
dispute in Exeter in some detail, but I am just surprised with
this level of ill-feeling, which has obviously built up over a
number of years not just since the RPA was created, there was
not more formal industrial action. I know the pay dispute has
been rumbling on for some time, but this is, in a sense, more
important than pay; it is about people's dignity at work. We heard
all the evidence from two colleagues who visited that this was
a very unhappy place to work, people may have hung in there, but
may not hang in there for any other reason than this was a job
and not one that gave a great deal of satisfaction.
Ms O'Hare: When you have more
agency, casual, fixed-term appointee staff than you have permanent
staff, that is going to destabilise the workplace in that people
will live in fear of whether or not they are going to have their
contracts renewed, whether they are going to have a job. Some
of the sites are in areas where there is no other kind of work
of a similar nature so those people are and were very unhappy.
We did have a pay dispute in the RPA which ran on for both 2005
and 2006 where staff's unhappiness is reflected in the fact they
were willing to reject pay offers and were willing to lose a day's
pay to take action. They were also conscious that what they are
doing is making payments to another group of the public, who are
the farmers, and if the farmers do not get their payments then
they are creating misery for another group. I think they have,
despite the fact they have worked in very difficult circumstances,
acted professionally as civil servants and are keen to know they
are going to have a future. At the moment the Hunter Review is
looking at the RPA in detail and their fear is that RPA will either
not exist in the form it does at the moment or that it will outsource
its problem; that Ministers and Defra will decide the problem
has to be dealt with in some way. We know, despite your interim
Report's recommendation that RPA should give some indication to
all the temporary staff what their future might be, staff who
are on fixed-term appointments who have been continuously employed
by the RPA for four years are being told they will have their
contracts extended but they will not be made permanent. They are
using the current situation over the Single Payment Scheme to
argue there is an objective justification for not making them
permanent, and that seems to fly in the face of both your recommendation
as a Committee at the interim stage and it goes against the regulations
on the employment of fixed-term employees. It is against that
background that they have a fear of not having a job if they make
too much complaint, if they raise their concerns, or indeed if
they take industrial action. We have always had to balance up
those things all the time in dealing with disputes and the problems,
both the processes and pay within RPA.
Mr Bishop: In terms of the industrial
action, it is worth making this quite important point, particularly
in relation to pay. Our pay as an executive agency of Defra is
less than Defra. That is an unsatisfactory situation given that
this is Defra's number one priority. We are now being managed
by Mark Addison who is a Defra member of staff and it has caused
problems. It is also worth reflecting on the fact that over the
last couple of years RPA was the only civil service department
to issue formal redundancy notices on top of threats to pensions
as well. This is important background information in terms of
setting the scene.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed
for giving us an insight from the staff's standpoint about what
has been going on. It will be very helpful when we come to talk
to the IT partner and indeed the senior management to have had
the insights you have provided this afternoon both in your oral
evidence and indeed in your earlier submissions. Thank you very
much indeed and thank you again for your patience in waiting.
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