Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-118)
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MR
CHRIS WORMALD,
MS HUNADA
NOUSS, MS
CHRISTINA BIENKOWSKA
AND MR
RICHARD MCCARTHY
22 OCTOBER 2007
Q100 Martin Horwood: Would you be
able to write to us to confirm exactly what the amount is?
Ms Nouss: Yes. We are looking
at big changes in the government office network as well as the
central department.
Q101 Martin Horwood: Can I just stop
you a moment? In the parliamentary answer the question was about
the last 12 months. We are not talking about future change; we
are talking about the year completed.
Ms Nouss: These numbers do cover
both the government office network and the central department.
We reckon it is about 100 people within the central department
and slightly less within the government office network.
Q102 Martin Horwood: A couple of
hundred people incurring a cost of £21 million? What kind
of range of individual payments are you talking about? What is
the highest individual payment?
Ms Nouss: It ranges. It could
be around £100,000.
Q103 Martin Horwood: What is the
highest?
Ms Nouss: I would not be able
to tell you the highest. In some cases it will cover pension provision
for individuals who are over 53 but not yet reached 60. It is
the terms of the compulsory redundancy scheme that we use.
Q104 Chair: Would they be getting
£100,000 in a lump sum?
Ms Nouss: No, they do not. The
individuals who are over 53 will be making pension provision but
they will be getting some lump sum as well.
Mr Housden: When somebody leaves
on those terms they get their pension entitlement. It may have
been enhanced by the employer so they get those sums and we can
show you what those are at average levels. As the employer we
have to make a compensatory payment into the pension scheme so
the global sum comes to these sorts of figures.
Q105 Martin Horwood: So this is what
it has cost you as a Department?
Mr Housden: Yes. It is right to
say that it is not just the Department centrally. The government
offices, you will recall, in this spending review are committed
to a 30 per cent reduction in staff so this is a key tool in achieving
this.
Martin Horwood: It seems like a phenomenally
high average amount. I can understand if you cannot tell us now
and I can also understand that you certainly should not identify
the individuals concerned, but could you send us details of the
top five individual budgeted amounts and an explanation of what
those were?
Q106 Chair: It would also be helpful
to put this in context of the efficiency savings and staff savings
as to whether this is a blip, so to speak, or whether there is
going to be more and where it sits in the profile of planned voluntary
redundancies.
Mr Housden: Yes, we can do that.
Q107 Martin Horwood: How does this
compare with other government departments? Are you making exceptionally
long serving and senior people redundant or is this comparable
to other government departments of similar size?
Mr Housden: I have not seen comparable
statistics around but these payments are the standard terms to
which Civil Service employees are contractually entitled.
Martin Horwood: So there are no payments
in here that are outside the standard scheme for redundancy?
Q108 Chair: Are any of these to do
with people who might otherwise be expected to move out of London
and have chosen not to and have taken redundancy instead?
Mr Housden: I do not think there
are relocation aspects to this. To be clear from Mr Horwood's
previous question, there is to my knowledge one settlement where
we have made a discretionary payment and we will put that in our
response.
Martin Horwood: Can you tell us now what
type of discretionary payment?
Chair: Can we just be slightly careful
given that this is a personnel matter. Could we have it in writing
but personally I would prefer it if it were marked confidential
so that it is for committee members alone.
Q109 Martin Horwood: What kind of
discretionary payments might you be called upon to make in this
kind of situation?
Mr Housden: This was to do with
a circumstance of pension entitlement for somebody who had been
in and out of the Civil Service pension scheme. I will set it
out for you properly.
Q110 Martin Horwood: Are there other
kinds of discretionary payments?
Mr Housden: Not to my knowledge
but again we will check that and come back to you.
Q111 Anne Main: Can I have clarification
and assurance that these are absolute staff cuts, that they are
not made redundant here and shifted off to somewhere else?
Mr Housden: These are the people
leaving our employment.
Q112 Chair: Not being replaced or
not at the same level.
Mr Housden: That is correct.
Q113 Martin Horwood: It is an absolute
reduction.
Mr Housden: Yes.
Q114 Mr Betts: Have we got a certainty
that these people will not reappear to do similar jobs or equivalent
jobs in the future on a temporary basis or as a consultant? Have
we got assurances that that is not going to happen and is that
monitored?
Mr Housden: Yes. They leave our
employment and are not re-engaged in any way.
Q115 Mr Betts: It is quite possible
that you could suddenly decide you needed this work doing again
and employ consultants who might employ these people to do it.
Mr Housden: That is possible.
I am not aware of a circumstance but that is possible.
Q116 Mr Betts: Is there a monitoring
system to put in place to make sure that once you have made people
redundant because of your efficiency savings that there is not
then a need to go back and employ people or somebody by another
route to do the same job possibly more expensively in the future?
Ms Nouss: There are processes
within our system for hiring interims or consultants which are
designed to ensure that people who have been in the employ of
the organisation do not come back as consultants or as interims
in that way. The policy says you cannot come back. There are processes
in place to try to ensure that that does not happen and I am not
aware of any that have but clearly there may be exceptions.
Q117 Anne Main: I am not so concerned
about the actual person coming back to the job, it is the job
itself that I am concerned about. Is it a genuine getting rid
of a post that is not needed and that does not need to be filled
by some other person in some other way?
Mr Housden: Yes.
Q118 Anne Main: I think that is what
Mr Betts was coming to. I do not care who is doing it, it is the
actual post. You are saying that is not going to happen.
Mr Housden: No, these are real
reductions in the establishment.
Chair: We look forward to getting more
detailed information. I think we have covered most of the questions
that we wanted to cover. Thank you very much and we look forward
to seeing the ministers next week.
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