Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
60-79)
SIR PETER
RICKETTS KCMG, JAMES
BEVAN AND
KEITH LUCK
9 DECEMBER 2009
Q60 Mr. Purchase: From time to
time, the Government arrange for the sale of unwanted and unused
assets to assist the national picture. Are you in some way, other
than for this cap, exempt from that?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I think that
the Treasury recognises that, given our budget pressures, if we
can help to meet some of them by selling some assets, it will
allow us to do that. If we sold an enormously valuable asset,
I am sure that we would then have to have a discussion with it
about what proportion we kept and what proportion went back to
the Exchequer. At the sort of levels we are talking about, it
accepts that it recycles to us.
Chairman: We now move to some staffing
questions.
Q61 Andrew Mackinlay: We have
all been slightly embarrassed. We are politicians who vote this
money and expect it to work the diplomatic equivalent of the miracle
of the loaves and the fishes. That is what is happening. We should
acknowledge that we MPs vote for this money or the type of resources.
Earlier this morning, we touched on the locally engaged staff
and you indicated to us—we were aware of it; it is really
embarrassing—that we have even had to ask some staff to
take unpaid leave to square the books. That is a real embarrassment
to us. Flowing from that, it begs the question whether it would
be tolerable in any comparable situation in the United Kingdom.
I put it to you in the sense that it would not. At the very least,
there would be one hell of a row with the trade unions, and possibly
industrial action. Yet local staff are, if you like, taking the
burden of our foreign policy, our desire to project. Putting it
simply, it seems unfair. The question that flows from that is
about rights. I do not mean only the rights of those the people
who are hit by the need to take unpaid leave and so on, but rights
generally. The domestic industrial relations law would obviously
apply, but presumably we have our UK standards. There are two
questions. The first is the economic one. The second is about
rights, and about representation and protection for staff around
the world. They should be entitled to UK industrial relations
norms, grievance procedures, rights of appeal, representation
and so on. Discuss.
Sir Peter Ricketts: First, I share
your uncomfortable feeling at some of the measures that have had
to be taken. I accept that absolutely. The factual position is
that when we employ local staff, we employ them under the local
labour law of the different countries of the world. That varies,
of course. What would be possible and perhaps appropriate in one
country would not be the same in other countries. For instance,
the four-day working week in the US network is under US labour
law. I gather it is something that has happened quite widely in
the US economy over the last year or two. In other parts of the
world, people are taking other steps. I do not think that we can
operate on the principle that our staff around the world are all
employed under British labour law. What we must provide is appropriate
protection for staff in each of the countries where they are employed.
For example, in the US and I think in most other countries, there
is an active local staff association in the embassy, which provides
representation for the local staff, has full access to the ambassador
and the management team in the embassy, and which works with the
embassy management board. They are part of the running of the
embassy, and involved in decisions on resource allocation around
the US network. That is the norm now around the world, and we
would certainly want to fully involve our local staff in decisions
about allocation of resources. There are different ways in which
we can provide for proper staff representation, but it is important
that we do so. Again, I admire the loyalty and commitment shown
by our local staff through these very difficult times. I want
to get to a position as soon as I can where posts have certainty
about their budgets in local currency for the year ahead, so that
they are in a sense protected from movements of sterling during
that year. Then post management, in consultation with local staff,
can plan the year.
Q62 Andrew Mackinlay: Thank you
for that. I understand that the United States has good industrial
relations law, although it may be different from ours; our colleagues
there also have critical mass. In some of the more obscure parts
of the world we have fewer locally engaged staff because they
are smaller missions. Will you consider finding ways, at minimal
cost but nevertheless maximum effectiveness, of giving those people
some protection? I am not talking about cutbacks but simply good
grievance procedures, discipline and so on. It seems to me that
it is very difficult to give them what they are entitled to in
terms of natural justice. How is it done? Can it be improved?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Mr. Bevan,
will you answer this very important point?
James Bevan: In addition to the
basic provisions that we are obliged to provide under domestic
legislation where we are, we also try, as the permanent secretary
says, to ensure that local staff associations are encouraged and
supported; that they flourish and are given time and support to
form and operate. We make sure that our ambassadors and senior
UK management know that it is part of their job to consult the
local staff on any issues, including those that affect their terms
and conditions. Beyond that, in addition to the monetary offer,
we try to offer a better package than some local employers. As
for the job itself—the challenge and the reward—we
have been much more innovative in the last few years. We are now
promoting people from local staff into some really challenging
senior jobs. On investment in learning and development for local
staff, we invest far more in our staff generally than a private
sector company does. We have increased the amount of investment
in training and development for local staff, including bringing
some of them back if necessary. At its most basic level, we are
creating an environment in which local staff are treated with
dignity and respect and get the recognition and reward. Many local
staff say to me when I travel around the world, "I am not
working for you for the money, but because it is a great job,
I am treated well, and I feel that the overall package is a good
one."
Sir Peter Ricketts: If things
go wrong, we would certainly want our local staff to have access
to all the opportunities of whistleblowing and raising complaints
at any level necessary.
Q63 Sir John Stanley: Sir Peter,
it is clear that the Foreign Office is now hugely dependent on
its locally engaged staff. An answer that the Foreign Secretary
gave our Chairman showed that over half of the Foreign Office
staff—10,000 out of some 16,000—are locally engaged.
It is also becoming clear that in some countries, the governing
regime is using bullying, intimidation, threats and worse against
our locally engaged staff as a means of exerting pressure—coercion—on
the British Government. Having seen this tactic being used blatantly
in Russia, why, when the same tactic was employed by the Iranian
regime, were no steps taken by the Foreign Office to confer diplomatic
immunity under article 38(1) of the convention on our locally
engaged staff in Tehran?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I would need
to respond in writing to the detail of that. Our local staff in
Tehran have behaved magnificently under the unacceptable pressure
that they have been put under. As you know, one member of staff
has been sentenced to four years in jail for doing what we regard
as normal activities. Others have been prevented from returning
to work and have been subject to what you rightly described as
bullying and harassment. May I write to you on the specific issue
of the application of the Vienna convention, because I am not
informed about that? But I think that it has shown that in one
or two countries, there is a particular problem. I don't think
that that invalidates our approach of relying significantly on
local staff in many countries around the world. I mentioned my
visit to Madrid last week. Some 80% of the staff working for us
in Spain are local staff. There are some British staff of course,
as well as many Spanish staff, and they do a fantastic job. In
many countries of the world, that model works well. But problems
that we have had in the two countries you referred to show that
there are limitations.
Q64 Sir John Stanley: Whilst we
will of course be very glad to have your response to my question
in writing, I am, if I may say so, somewhat disappointed that
you cannot respond to my question, given the fact that I posed
that very question in the debate we had in the House of Commons
on Iran on 9 July, and given that the issue was followed up in
the letter on 22 July that I received from the Minister of State.
I am disappointed that you cannot offer the Committee any response
as to why, given the experience the Foreign Office has had in
Russia, no steps were taken, as is permissible under Foreign Office
rules—it is a power given to the head of post—to try
to provide protection through diplomatic immunity to our staff
in Tehran. I also want to say that I am disappointed that you
cannot respond to the Committee, given the very clear statement
made by the Minister of State in his letter to me, in which he
said: "I must emphasise that I am confident that none of
the locally engaged members of staff who were recently detained
in Iran have engaged in any illegal or improper behaviour."
So here we have a case where our locally engaged staff, in Foreign
Office Ministers' views—those words would not have been
written lightly—are 100% innocent of any impropriety or
illegal behaviour. Yet you cannot give an answer to my question
as to why steps were not taken in the light of what happened in
Russia to give some of our locally engaged staff the diplomatic
immunity that could have been sought for them under article 38.1
of the convention.
Sir Peter Ricketts: I apologise
for my inability to respond in detail to that. I do not want to
mislead the Committee by giving it an answer that is not properly
prepared. I absolutely endorse the words in the letter from the
Minister of State that we are entirely confident that our local
staff behaved properly. That is why we have been urging the Iranians
throughout this period—and we continue to do so—to
accept that they did nothing wrong, to pardon Mr. Hossein Rassam,
who is facing a prison sentence, and to allow the others to return
to work in the embassy. I would like to come back to you in writing
on the specific point about the application of the Vienna convention.[3]
Q65 Sir John Stanley: Could you
respond to a more general question, which I would suggest is now
the key policy issue for the Foreign Office? Given our experiences
in Russia and in Iran, what is Foreign Office policy to try to
provide, under the convention, a greater measure of diplomatic
immunity to others of our locally engaged staff round the world
who may face the sort of treatment that our staff have experienced
in Russia and Iran?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I don't have
evidence that pressures have been applied to our local staff of
the kind that have happened in Russia and Iran—most particularly
in Iran.
Q66 Sir John Stanley: Do you rule
it out in China?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I can never
rule anything out.
Q67 Sir John Stanley: Should we
be thinking about China or other such countries?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Always ready
to reconsider.
Q68 Sir John Stanley: Zimbabwe?
Sir Peter Ricketts: In Zimbabwe,
which I visited recently, there was a strong, vigorous presence
of local staff in the embassy, who I did not sense felt under
any particular threat from the regime. Of course it is possible.
In countries such as China, we have a large, local staff community
who do excellent work for us, not just in Beijing but around China.
I would like to be clear about the possibility of taking the steps
that you have described, without the agreement of the receiving
state under the Vienna convention, which I suspect would play
a part in decisions about what to do regarding immunity. On the
legal position, I need to do further research and write to you.
I recognise the risk that you raise, but in my experience, I don't
think that we have found it a problem, apart from the specific
case of Iran, and to some extent Russia. However, in Russia, there
has been as much pressure applied to our UK-based staff as there
has been to locally engaged staff.
Q69 Sir John Stanley: In your
letter, will you indicate whether you are thinking ahead and trying
to anticipate locally engaged staff elsewhere being exposed to
such risks?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Certainly
I will.
Q70 Mr. Hamilton: Sir Peter, may
I carry on with the theme of our staff? I echo the remarks that
you made earlier about the excellence of Foreign Office staff,
and the pressures that they are under given the current financial
climate. I have one or two questions relating to points that you
made earlier about recruitment. Has the recruitment of staff of
graduate level coming into the service been affected by the financial
crisis and the squeeze on your budgets?
Sir Peter Ricketts: In terms of
quality of staff, no.
Q71 Mr. Hamilton: And numbers
of applicants?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Actually,
in the last year in which we were recruiting, last summer/autumn,
we took in almost a record number of graduate-level entry staff—what
we call our C band staff. We took in over 40 people, which is
more than we usually take, because we find that there is an increasing
demand in the FCO for staff of that level. We are taking fewer
staff at lower levels, and for the next year or two, we will need
to look carefully at how many we take in the light of budget pressures.
Until now, we have continued to recruit our graduate-level entry
staff at an even faster rate than we have in the past.
Q72 Mr. Hamilton: That is encouraging.
To continue with the excellence and quality of staff that you
normally have, you need to have a flow-in from the starting point.
Sir Peter Ricketts: Absolutely.
We must not have a gap in our human capital for the future. I
agree with that.
Q73 Mr. Hamilton: May I move on
to promotion and career prospects within the Foreign Office? Do
you see the budgetary constraints forcing people perhaps not to
be promoted and there being fewer posts that they can apply for
and a general slow-down for people in the possibilities for promotion
within the service? Would that, in turn, lead to some of your
brilliant staff looking—we touched on this earlier—for
careers outside the Foreign Office if they become frustrated because
they cannot see their careers develop within the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I have a number
of reflections on that, and my colleagues may have as well. I
think that over time the FCO will get a bit smaller, given the
budgetary pressures. That will be true of other Departments as
well. I saw the Prime Minister's speech on Monday talking about
reductions in the size of the senior civil service across the
civil service. But, in comparison with other Departments, we shall
go on having more senior staff than most, because we have this
range of ambassador posts. Some of the ambassador posts have come
down in their level of seniority, but none the less we have a
large number of senior civil service posts because of our ambassadorial
spread. So, the career prospects for staff joining us now are
very good. I think that they will go on being very good. The shape
of the organisation will change over time and we are finding that
we need fewer operational level entry staff—what we call
our B band staff—because of the sorts of jobs that they
were doing around the world, some have been localised and the
UK Border Agency is doing the work in different ways. The shape
of the organisation will change, but the career prospects for
bright graduates joining us now are still very good. We will still
need a broad spread of ambassadors and senior officials well into
the future.
Q74 Mr. Hamilton: You mentioned
the numbers of graduates that are coming in at entry level and
that the quality is still very good. Are you increasing the diversity
of people coming in, from all backgrounds within the United Kingdom?
Is that continuing?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Absolutely,
we are. Mr. Bevan, do you want to say a word about that?
James Bevan: Yes, but not as much
as we would like. If you look at the figures over the past 20
years, there is a significant increase in terms of women and ethnic
minorities coming in. We still do not attract as many applicants
from those currently under-represented minorities as we would
like. We make very active efforts to go out and find people to
recruit at graduate level. We also look at the talent pools elsewhere
in Whitehall, and more widely. We opened our senior management
structure to external competition a couple of years ago, so we
have another opportunity to bring in fresh talent that way. But
we are not satisfied where we are and will keep going aggressively.
Q75 Mr. Hamilton: That is really
good news. May I just continue from the theme that Sir John started
and developed so well, and express my own concern about the pressures
on some of our locally engaged staff? Obviously, I am not going
to repeat what Sir John said about Tehran, but I certainly agree
with every word he said. When we were in Israel and the Occupied
Territories earlier this year, we were with Richard Makepeace,
our consul-general in East Jerusalem, and met some of the locally
engaged staff. It is a slightly different pressure on them—no
pressure from the authorities in terms of what they do or in the
possibility of arrest or pressure through those staff on the British
Government. But their inability to travel from where they live
to where they work was having a huge impact, so we were told,
on the work that they could do in the consulate-general in East
Jerusalem. Is there anything that you can do from London to put
pressure on the Israeli Government to allow those locally engaged
staff to get quickly to their place of work without harassment,
so that they can carry on doing the excellent job that they do
for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and for our important
diplomacy overseas in the Middle East?
Sir Peter Ricketts: I think you
signal an important issue, which applies of course to Palestinians
more widely, and our local staff are caught up in the wider restrictions
that Palestinians are under in terms of access to East Jerusalem
and, indeed, from one part of the West Bank to another. I do not
know if we have specifically pressed the Israelis to allow for
improved access because they are local staff members working for
the consulate. I can certainly make inquiries to see whether we
have done so or whether there is the possibility of doing so,
but I think we are equally concerned about the restrictions that
apply to Palestinians generally in their access to East Jerusalem.
This is a part of that wider problem.
Q76 Mr. Hamilton: We would agree
with that, of course. Sorry, my last question. The point that
Sir John made about diplomatic status—the Israeli authorities
would not stop diplomats going through the various checkpoints.
If our staff were able to have that diplomatic status under the
agreement—I can't remember which particular international
agreement it was—surely that would help them quite a lot.
Sir Peter Ricketts: Let me look
into that as part of the answer I've undertaken to give Sir John
and I will cover that as well.
Q77 Mr. Moss: Given the increasing
share of locally engaged staff and your desire to integrate those
staff with the UK-based staff, and given that locally based staff
probably have a lower level of security clearance, have you assessed
any potential increase in risk, considering the greater access
now of all employees to the new IT system—the F3G system?
We're told that, now, locally based staff have access to confidential
material through their own terminal. Have you made an assessment
of increased risk here and what are you going to do about it?
Sir Peter Ricketts: Most certainly,
we keep that in mind very much as part of the considerations.
There will always be some jobs in embassies that local staff can't
do for security reasons, as you say, but we are becoming increasingly
an organisation that is open and where much of our work does not
need to be at a high security classification. The design of our
new F3G computer system is intended to reinforce that, because
we have two completely separate parts of it: a part that is what
we call the universal tier, which is up to restricted level, and
then the confidential tier, which is completely separate from
it. So it allows many members of staff, including local staff,
to have access to a modern, flexible IT system that allows them
to do their work, but it doesn't give them access to the confidential
tier, which has to remain for fully DV-cleared staff, UK-based
staff. But more and more of the work of more and more of our embassies
can be done in unclassified areas of the embassy, using the unclassified
part of our computer system, so we're trying to minimise the barriers
that security creates between local staff and UK staff. We've
been running a campaign that we call "One Team", which
is to try to emphasise how much we can work together and minimise
the areas where inevitably there will be differences.
Q78 Sandra Osborne: Could I ask
you about staff morale as far as bullying, harassment and discrimination
is concerned? In the staff survey of 2008—I know that Mr.
Bevan referred to the 2009 survey, which has not yet been published—17%
of all FCO staff reported experiencing this, and it was only 11%
on average across Whitehall. Also, 20% of locally based staff
reported this, as opposed to 14% of UK-based staff. How do you
explain this relatively high level of reporting of harassment
and bullying?
Sir Peter Ricketts: First, can
I say that I find it absolutely unacceptable? It's something that
we are worried about and working on. We are very, very keen to
see that we get to the bottom of it and root out whatever the
problems are. Mr. Bevan can give you details of where we are in
the 2009 staff survey. To our real disappointment, that number
has not come down very significantly. It has come down from 17
to 16%, which is not good enough, so we have to continue to tackle
this problem seriously. Part of it is understanding exactly what
is going on here. We put together bullying, harassment and intimidation,
and I need to understand more about what are the actual problems
that staff are reporting there, because any suggestion of bullying
or harassment is completely unacceptable. Indeed, we are prepared
to take staff out of positions abroad and bring them home if we
see evidence of behaviour that is bullying or harassment, and
we have done that, so we're trying to send the strongest signal
we can, which is taking people out of their postings and bringing
them back to London if we see evidence of that. I don't know whether
Mr. Bevan wants to add more detail.
James Bevan: On the question of
why it's so high, I have three answers. I think the main reason
it's high is that it's happening. There is enough evidence to
confirm that there are significant and completely unacceptable
levels of that behaviour going on in our organisation. I think
a second reason why we're getting those high figures, though,
is that we're actually going out and encouraging people to talk
about it and put it on the table, rather than hide it away, as
may have been the case in the past, so people are more prepared
to say, "I'm experiencing bullying." The third reason
it's happening—we have quite strong evidence for this—is
that as we strengthen the way in which we manage poor performance,
which we have not been good at in the past but are getting much
better at, there is a recognised phenomenon where an officer who
for a long time has been underperforming is tackled for the first
time in the right way by a line manager and asked to improve their
performance will turn around and accuse the line manager of bullying.
When that happens, we investigate, and often we find that it is
not bullying but professional, correct management of poor performance.
I think it is very important to disaggregate the data and do the
studies, which we will do on the latest data. In terms of what
we are going to do about it, as the permanent secretary was saying,
we have reaffirmed the policy of zero tolerance, and we expect
all the leaders in our organisation—heads of missions and
our directors in London—to make sure that that is what happens.
We are providing help and support to staff who experience such
behaviour to deal with it, and we have just introduced a new arrangement
which will come alive at the beginning of next year where, if
the line manager is unable to help the officer who is experiencing
unacceptable behaviour, there will be an independent person, either
abroad or in London, whom they can call for advice and support.
Finally, we are actually pursuing hot spots of very high reported
behaviour of this kind. We did that last year and will do it this
year. We will pursue the matter with the individual posts or directorates
concerned and establish what is happening. In some cases, we have
pursued that to the extent of withdrawing staff from post if we
are convinced that they have been guilty of unacceptable behaviour,
and in some cases it has led to disciplinary action against staff.
We will stick with a very tough approach to dealing with this.
Q79 Sandra Osborne: The trade
union does not agree with the explanation that allegations are
resulting from tackling poor performance, for example. Can you
tell me how many formal grievances have been raised by staff in
relation to that?
James Bevan: I would need to check
that and write to you.[4]
We have not, as far as I am aware, had very many formal grievances
raised in the case that you are describing.
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