Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
40-59)
RT HON
ALAN JOHNSON
MP, SIR DAVID
NORMINGTON AND
CONSTABLE ADRIAN
PARSONS
15 DECEMBER 2009
Q40 Chairman: In effect, you, as
Permanent Secretary, have a responsibility for the White Paper.
Obviously, it is the Home Secretary's idea, but you had to write
it up and place it before him. So you were telling yourself you
must spend less on consultants, in effect.
Sir David Normington: We are determined
to bring down the spend on consultants, year on year. The Government
is committed to bringing it down over the whole civil service
by 50%.
Q41 Chairman: Do you still think
it is too high? Peter Neyroud talked about reducing his bill from
£71.4 million to £19 million. You are still at £115
million.
Sir David Normington: It is partly
because we have been asking him and everybody in the Home Office
and its agencies to do that. Yes, I am committed to bringing the
consultancy bill down; it is essential.
Q42 Mrs Dean: What assessment have
you made of the impact of the proposal to reduce overtime payments
by £70 million a year by 2013-14? What is the assessment
of what the impact will be on the delivery of services?
Alan Johnson: The assessment I
make is that it can be done; we spent £413 million on overtime
in the year before last; that came down to something like £393
million in 2008-09. It is a large chunk of the bill, and in any
organisation, going into the more strained economic times that
we are facing; you would be crazy if you did not look at that
element of your bill. It is also the case that overtime has increased
since 2001 by about 41%. At the same time, staffing has increased
by about 12.5%, so there are more people coming in—more
jobs—but overtime is still urgent. Lots of that overtime
will be absolutely necessary: the Lancaster House meeting that
is going to take place in January, as the Met Commander was reminding
me, is going to require overtime. However, a lot of it—and
it is not peculiar to the police—becomes systematic because
it gets kind of woven into the system and you should always be
looking to be aware of those dangers; to see if shift patterns
can be changed to ensure you reduce the amount of overtime. You
asked me about the assessment: the White Paper was the result
of the widest consultation with the police themselves, and this
figure of £70 million off a £398 million budget by 2012-13,
I think, is realisable, and came from those discussions.
Q43 Mrs Dean: Do you expect the police
to be doing unpaid overtime?
Alan Johnson: No.
Q44 Bob Russell: Home Secretary,
there has not been a serious look at the way the Police Service
is structured since the Royal Commission report of 1962. Let us
look at 1962: I was a teenager, the swinging sixties had barely
started; England had not won the World Cup. To put that time frame
into context, it is the equivalent of the Government in 1962 looking
at the police force pre-First World War. Surely, things must have
happened in the last 48/50 years which warrants a Royal Commission.
Alan Johnson: That presupposes
that Royal Commissions have to be a periodic feature of every—
Q45 Bob Russell: Fifty years is not
periodic, is it?
Alan Johnson: There is no rule
that says you must have a Royal Commission every so often; you
should have a Royal Commission if you think that that is necessary.
Politicians ask for Royal Commissions—or used to—like
children ask for sweets, but the number of Royal Commissions that
were absolutely necessary, given the expense and the depth in
which they deal with it, is questionable. I know this Committee
has recommended one.
Bob Russell: I was going to remind
you of that.
Q46 Chairman: So has Sir Ian Blair.
Alan Johnson: So has Sir Ian Blair—I
know. The second issue is it is as if there have not been any
reviews. You can have reviews that are not Royal Commissions,
and there have been plenty of reviews—most recently the
Flanagan review, the Green Paper and the review that led to the
proposals that Mr Streeter was talking about earlier. It is whether
you need an all-singing, all-dancing Royal Commission. At the
moment, I remain to be persuaded about that.
Q47 Bob Russell: That was the considered,
unanimous view of the Home Affairs Select Committee and it is
also the view of the Police Federation, as I understand it. Earlier
on, Home Secretary, in reply to Mr Streeter you were referring
to the need to, perhaps, revisit the police force mergers, etc.
Surely, so much has happened in the last 48/50 years with policing
in this country that a Royal Commission is necessary now so that
you can discuss everything. That was the considered view of the
Home Affairs Select Committee.
Alan Johnson: Which I very much
respect, and I respect the view of the Police Federation.
Q48 Chairman: Right answer.
Alan Johnson: That is why I have
given it some thought. It cannot just be an argument: "We
want a Royal Commission". I will go back and look at the
report that you made. There has to be an argument why a Royal
Commission is necessary, as opposed to other things. We could
have a Royal Commission on the way Parliament works; you could
have a Royal Commission on Members' expenses—I see a shudder
run round the room! The argument would be, do you really need
one? Is there another way to deal with the issue? Policing has
not been frozen in aspic since 1962; it has moved on to an incredible
degree. In fact, someone going back to the swinging sixties, when
you had your Beatles' haircut—
Q49 Bob Russell: I have still got
it!
Alan Johnson:— would not
recognise the police force then. Whatever you want to look at,
Ashes to Ashes or its predecessor, policing has changed;
they did not need Royal Commissions to change and adapt.
Q50 Bob Russell: I was just puzzled,
Home Secretary, at your total resistance to a Royal Commission
which could well deliver the things that you would like to see
come forward impartially, independently and fully in accord with
the unanimous view of the Home Affairs Select Committee, for whom
you have the utmost regard.
Alan Johnson: It is not total
opposition; I remain to be convinced on it, but playing Devil's
advocate.
Q51 Bob Russell: I will stick with
the Police Federation. Home Secretary, Sir Ian Blair told us that
the primacy of the Metropolitan Police and terrorist operations
should be clearly enshrined in law as opposed to the informal
relationships that currently exist. Have you received representations
on this matter?
Alan Johnson: It is discussed,
but we take our lead from the professional view of ACPO on how
we should deal with this. It is a bit like the Royal Commission;
I cannot see an obvious argument as to why the situation would
be improved by enshrining it in law. I know the views of Sir Ian
Blair, who I also respect, but it does not mean you have to agree
with everyone you respect. I will be guided by the professional
judgment on this. Sir Ian Blair is one part of that—now
a retired part—professional judgment.
Q52 Bob Russell: So you are neither
in favour nor against it, at the moment?
Alan Johnson: If someone said
to me: "Here's the positive: here's what we could do and
here are the problems that we can solve by enshrining this in
law", fine, but it seems to me to work very well at the moment
without another Crime and Policing Bill.
Q53 Chairman: Let us now turn to
immigration. In response to the publication of our report into
the work of the UKBA, your Minister for Immigration said that
his staff deserved their bonuses because "they were risking
their lives on the front line". Do you know any of the case
workers at Lunar House, or senior management, who have been shot
while considering applications for indefinite leave?
Alan Johnson: No, but I know of
UKBA staff that have been shot and killed, and one was just a
month ago, in Nigeria. I know of UKBA staff working—
Q54 Chairman: Did he get a bonus?
Did his family get a bonus?
Alan Johnson: I will let David
talk about that.
Q55 Chairman: The point that the
Committee was making, Home Secretary, was that we were considering
it odd that where you have an agency which you yourself have admitted
has serious problems, where your predecessor said it was not fit
for purpose, bonuses of almost a third of a million pounds should
have been paid to senior staff and, most recently, as you know,
40,000 files that had gone missing suddenly appeared. Are you
really satisfied with the operation at the UKBA?
Alan Johnson: Yes, I am. The point
I was answering before was your question about whether they were
in danger. Yes, lots of UKBA staff are in danger. Am I satisfied?
More satisfied than I believe previous Home Secretaries would
have been. My point about the maladroit way we have dealt with
immigration—governments of all persuasions—is that
we were not ready for the huge surge in international movements
that came after Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq, and so
we had an antiquated, if you like, mid-20th Century system trying
to deal with a potential 21st Century problem. The fact that those
40,000 cases that you mention are now out of cardboard boxes and
being dealt with as part of the legacy demonstrates how UKBA are
now on top of this; in fact, they will have the legacy cleared
completely.
Q56 Chairman: It has taken 12 years
to get files out of boxes.
Alan Johnson: Not 12 years, but
files have been in boxes.
Q57 Chairman: For how long?
Alan Johnson: That was the "not
fit for purpose" comment that John Reid made.
Q58 Chairman: These 40,000 files
have emerged because they were in a box somewhere in Lunar House?
Alan Johnson: They have been there
since William Whitelaw was the Home Secretary.
Q59 Chairman: But 12 years under
this Government.
Alan Johnson: And 12 years under
the previous—
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