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30 Jun 2009 : Column 34WH—continued
But how do people get those departments to become private? They do not incentivise the scientists. They go along to the civil servants, some of whom in QinetiQ
had absolutely no qualifications to develop radar or invent some of the amazing things that have kept our country safe, and they give them huge amounts of money. I remember that the marketing director walked away from QinetiQ with more than £1 million, and I think that all she had ever been was a basic civil servant who had never been in the world of advertising or marketing or anything else. They said, “Have a bit of cash and off you go.” That was appalling.
It is the Ministry of Defence’s fault—there was no conspiracy here; it was the Government’s fault—that Ministers allowed the chief executive of QinetiQ not only to negotiate the terms of his and his colleagues’ pay package on the winning bid, but to do the negotiations. In the private sector, the shareholders do the negotiations and when they have decided on a preferred bidder, they hand over to senior management to negotiate. With QinetiQ, we had the chief executive recommending to the MOD, “My preferred bidder is the Carlyle Group, and by the way, I have just negotiated a wonderful package that made it important that I choose Carlyle.” Those civil servants got 19,000 per cent. in exchange, and who were the casualties at QinetiQ? The same casualties as there are about to be at FSS—the scientists. The casualties were the boffins and brain boxes who had invented so many important things that keep our soldiers safe, that keep our criminals off the street and that our police now use.
These matters cannot be rushed. I know that the Government have been criticised for the way they have handled things, and I am not ideologically opposed to the concept of privatisation per se, but I am a Conservative who believes in pragmatism. That is one of the greatest strengths of conservatism in the world in which I live. Whatever we say, the FSS is not ready to be privatised now or even in the next five or 10 years, and I can tell the House why. The Government have failed to make it a more efficient and better organisation before they have come to privatise it. They have done this the QinetiQ way, thinking, “Let’s get somebody in.” That person is Dr. Simon Bennett. I am not aware that he, as an individual, was among the equity snouts in the trough. He is a renowned scientist, unlike some of the people who were previously brought in, and I hope that will go some way towards giving comfort to the employees of the FSS. He understands science, and he is internationally renowned, so I hesitate to criticise him.
However, there are ways in which the FSS could be made better. We could encourage the better funding of our police so that they can use its service. We talk about serious crimes, such as rape and paedophilia, but it upsets my constituents that there is no longer any forensic investigation of boring and mundane crimes. If someone’s house gets broken into, or their car is vandalised, the response is either, “Do it yourself,” or, “Have a crime number for your insurance.” That is because the police do not get sufficient funding to allow them to engage in that forensic debate unless it is a murder or a terrorist event. That would help to make the FSS better value for money, and would mean that more of its facilities were used so that it would not be so much under threat.
Police procurement is another issue. We are looking in the wrong part of the Home Office. The way in which the police procure technologies is completely Victorian.
Each police force buy their own batons and bullet-proof vests. That is a total waste of money and I do not know why we carry on doing that. It would not be done in any other police forces and it certainly would not be done in the armed forces. We should look at saving money in that area. That would help the FSS to use all its skills, which I know that it does, and would give it a sound base on which to do business.
The reality is that the service is not ready to be privatised and it will not be ready for a long time. I have a number of constituents in Lancaster and Wyre who work in the lab in Chorley. In terms of the awful phrase, “Well, they’ll be offered a job in the new location, but if they can’t, they’ll be made redundant,” the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and I both know that relocating from Lancaster or Chorley is not an option—it is not like there will be a job down the road. Let us compare this situation with that of those who work for the BBC. When they were offered the option to relocate to the north—to Manchester—a large amount of public money was thrown at them. It is sad that, when it comes to the Forensic Science Service, we will leave these people out to dry.
I say to the Government that the service is not ready for privatisation and that the mistakes of QinetiQ are being repeated. In the end, the loser will be our scientific skill base, which cannot be reinvented or imported over night. If we lose that skill base, the winners will be the criminals.
11.50 am
Jessica Morden (Newport, East) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) on securing the debate. The matter is extremely important to my constituents who work at the site at Chepstow, which is actually in the constituency of the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies). He has kindly allowed me to make a few remarks on behalf of my constituents.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about the future of the site at Chepstow, which has been earmarked for closure along with two other sites in the west of the country. If Chepstow were to be affected, it could result in the loss of the only public sector forensic laboratory in Wales, which houses 170 skilled scientific jobs. The site in Chepstow provides a first-class service and serves the west of the country. Frankly, south-east Wales can ill afford to lose such high-quality skilled jobs in science. It would be a huge shame if Wales were left as the only part of the UK without a base for the Forensic Science Service. What discussions has the Minister had with the Welsh Assembly Government on the issue?
Staff in Chepstow tell me that the office has always performed extremely well within the service. That is demonstrated by the fact that they currently deal with overflow cases—in effect, lab work—from other offices, including from 10 boroughs in the Met, because London labs are often overstretched and cannot meet the turnaround time. That comes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley about there not being much spare capacity in the system. That certainly seems to be the case from the discussions I have had with constituents who work at the site in Chepstow.
I know that Welsh police forces like the local knowledge that results from the site being based in Chepstow and that they appreciate the ability of staff to be on site
quickly when urgent work is needed at sensitive crime scenes because time is of the essence when collecting evidence. For example, it is crucial that there are services on hand to deal with items that need to go back to the lab within a day. Such services would be affected if the changes went ahead in Chepstow. If the changes proposed in the consultation were to go ahead, presumably forensic scientists from London would be asked to travel to crime scenes in the west of the country—not just Wales—and attend court cases and case meetings with the police in the west of the country. That would add considerably to their travel times, costs and so on—not to mention the already explained difficulties with evidence.
In its presentation to staff, I believe that the FSS said it wished to see a good geographical spread of services, but if the proposals go ahead, that will clearly not be the case for wide sections of the west of the country. My constituents feel that the office in Chepstow has been singled out because it does not have DNA analysis facilities—even though they have explained to me that they could easily house those on site. As my hon. Friend said, there is plenty of room there and they already have the key factor: staff who are highly skilled in DNA analysis on site.
Finally, the constituents to whom I have spoken talk continually about the heavy work load that they have in Chepstow, which is demonstrated by the fact that, as I said, the lab takes on work from other parts of the country. They are also continually offered overtime. Given the excellent service that staff at the FSS provide, they fear that the consultation casts doubt on the ability of remaining staff to maintain the high standard of work because they would be so thinly stretched. Will the changes not simply result in the criminal justice system getting a worse service and more eventually being paid for the service, whatever happens to it in the future? That will be a huge loss, because at the moment we have a world-class operation with a reputation for excellence. I genuinely feel committed to my constituents who work in the service. They are not interested in profits, but are committed to public service and putting criminals behind bars, as my hon. Friend said.
[Mr. Martyn Jones in the Chair]
11.54 am
Mr. David S. Borrow (South Ribble) (Lab): I shall make only a couple of comments because my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) has made a good case for the preservation of the forensic science laboratory in Euxton in his constituency.
The point I want to make is that we have a skills cluster in central Lancashire formed by the university forensic science courses, a forensic team of 30 at Lancashire police headquarters in Hutton, and Euxton forensic science labs, which are a few miles away. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) made a key comment: we cannot simply close down the labs and assume people will move elsewhere. Forensic science is a specialist area and there are not many areas in the country where people live and do such a job. They cannot move elsewhere. Where there is a cluster of skills, as in Lancashire, it is completely nonsensical to throw that away as if it is meaningless and people can simply get other jobs.
The comment was made that the service is not ready for privatisation. The problem is that if it were privatised, in five or 10 years’ time, some accountant would look at it and would not care about the skill base anyway. They would simply say, “Well, eventually we’ll move everyone to one, two or three offices and they’ll do it all.” To them, it would not matter that people who have done 20 years service and who live in Lancaster, Leyland or different parts of Lancashire are not prepared to move several hundred miles away with their families. People do matter, and we must recognise that people who have dedicated many years of their lives to developing particular skills and using those skills to the service of the public have lives, families and partners. We cannot simply snap our fingers and expect such people to disappear from one end of the country because their place of work has been closed down and there are no alternative jobs in that area.
I cannot see any point at all in the closure of any of these sites. I am sticking up for my constituents who work at Euxton, and I will be doing all I can to stick up for the skills cluster that exists in central Lancashire.
11.57 am
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): I co-ordinate the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary groups. For the past six or seven years, I have been involved in some of the earliest meetings with Ministers to discuss the future of the Forensic Science Service, as have other hon. Members in the Chamber. The issue goes back to when my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was Home Secretary, and we have gone through a number of Home Secretaries since then.
The original problem occurred because of lack of investment in the Forensic Science Service. That was a long-term issue during successive Governments. A further problem was that deep in the heart of the Home Office there was an ideologically driven desire to privatise.
The Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Chief Police Officers lobbied to replicate the Forensic Science Service within police authorities themselves, partly for budgetary reasons and partly because of issues relating to practice. Our concerns then were to secure long-term investment and stability for the service. At the same time, we opposed the relocation of the Forensic Science Service within police authorities because of the potential conflict of interest and the professional issues that would occur.
We had successive meetings with Ministers and gained what we thought was a commitment to the investment and the development of GovCo, which would enable the Forensic Science Service to stand on its feet and demonstrate its value. Unfortunately, there were delays even in setting out the processes by which GovCo would be assessed. There have been subsequent delays in delivering the investment and ensuring that GovCo can operate effectively. It is really disappointing that we have yet another threat and another programme: the transformation programme. There will be large job losses and key strategic sites will be lost. I echo all that has been said about the potential loss of an important collective build-up of expertise in the area.
I urge the Minister to recognise the disappointment felt by members of staff—as well as by individual MPs who have been involved in the matter. I am grateful that
the Minister gave the PCS a half-hour meeting yesterday, and for his commitment to meet the PCS parliamentary group in July. However, I am worried about the attitude of management.
As has been set out, the management were appointed with the specific purpose of following a privatisation agenda. A human resources director—Nick Jones—has been appointed from Cable and Wireless, and I believe that the Burke Group has been appointed as a consultant on human relations matters. However, it has been exposed as a union-busting company. The TUC undertook a report on union-busting companies and included the Burke Group. The report claimed that
“the tactics used by union-busters are designed to frighten and intimidate workers away from any union attempt to recruit them at work.”
Such tactics were also used at Cable and Wireless to try to isolate the Communication Workers Union and to undermine trade union representation in that company. I am hoping that the appointment of the Burke Group is a rumour and not a fact, and I would welcome the Minister’s investigating the matter.
I am grateful for the meeting that the Minister had with the PCS yesterday, and for the commitment to meet us in July. I hope that we can establish a working relationship with him that maintains a commitment to investment in and organisation of the FSS in the public sector, and that we can now put aside the threat of privatisation that is undermining staff morale and the viability of the service itself.
12 pm
Paul Holmes (Chesterfield) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) on his coruscating condemnation of the Minister for the lack of consultation and for the way in which the recent announcement was made on a good day for burying bad news. We heard a tour de force exposition of the tremendous track record of the Forensic Science Service in general and of the Chorley laboratory in particular. We heard examples of the damage to crime detection that will result from closing three of seven centres around the country—Chorley, Chepstow and Birmingham—and from the loss of scientific expertise and the institutional memory of the organisation, as well as the individual job losses, the loss of geographical coverage and the effect of losing, in total, 40 per cent. of the FSS staff, or up to 800 posts.
How have the Government arrived at their position? As we heard, in 2003 they decided to take the competitive route. We heard comments about the ideological drive for privatisation, regardless of the merits in individual cases of going down that road. In 2005, the FSS was turned into a Government company—a GovCo—and, in 2009, a new chief executive was appointed.
The information provided to people applying for the job, part of which was quoted earlier, was not published, but it was acquired by the Public and Commercial Services Union. We have already heard an interesting quote from the notes for candidates, which stated that
“the FSS was in 2005 transformed into a Government-owned company. This is intended as a precursor to evolution into a private sector entity, the timing of which depends on FSS’ ability to transform itself into a viable, commercial entity.”
The document went on to say that among the key responsibilities of the new chief executive was a requirement to prepare the FSS
“for its successful transition to the introduction of private capital at the appropriate point if agreed by Ministers”.
Clearly, in 2003, 2005 and again in 2009, when the new chief executive was being appointed, Ministers saw privatisation as the end goal. There can be no question about that. The result, as we have already heard, was that in 2009 we got Dr. Simon Bennett of QinetiQ, and, as we heard in great detail from both the official Opposition and from Government Back Benchers, the track record of that privatisation is not one that we should be proud of or seek to emulate. QinetiQ is an example of a taxpayer-funded organisation that was already very successful—as the FSS is—being privatised at huge personal financial gain to the managers involved while the taxpayer simply lost out in every direction. Taxpayers lost out financially and they lost out on the quality of the service that the organisation had previously provided as a public sector body.
In the short term, the taxpayer loses. The Government would argue that in the long term, the public will benefit from the effect of the market and the privatisation of the FSS, which is why they set out on that road back in 2003. We have already had some debate about that. Clearly, the market is best at providing all kinds of goods and services. It is best at providing widgets, fashion clothing, designer jeans and mobile phones. I believe that no one would seriously argue that the telecommunications services we enjoy in this country today are worse than they would have been if we had left British Telecom as a monopoly, as it was more than 25 years ago. I do not believe that anyone would disagree that telecommunications services are better now than they were then.
Clearly, however, there are areas where the market has no place. There are areas where arguments about social equity, the social good and the public good are far more important than the profit-driven motive of the market. We have already heard examples, with which I concur, from health and education—as a former teacher, I have long made that case during the eight years that I have been in Parliament. The FSS is another obvious example where the argument that the market knows best, that it will produce the best results, is clearly a fallacy. It will be interesting to hear the Minister clarify exactly why the Government are so clear in their own mind that bringing market forces into the FSS will be of benefit to the public.
The driving motive of the market is profit. The driving motive of the FSS and the justice system should be catching criminals, as we heard eloquently expounded in examples in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Chorley. I have an example from The Times, a newspaper that is not exactly noted for its defence of the public interest and the public good, or of delivery by public services. As a champion of the free market, it would like to see the market operate in most areas of life. However, on 21 July, The Times gave an interesting example in an article about some of the market-oriented moves that the FSS is taking to try to keep business that it is losing to other areas. The article stated that it is now offering the police a service with variable fees so that,
for example, if a test on a piece of forensic evidence leads to conviction, there would be a higher charge than if the test were negative. The Times stated:
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