Memorandum from the Public and Commercial
Services Union
INTRODUCTION
PCS welcomes the opportunity to make a written
submission to the Public Administration Select Committee. PCS—a
union representing over 300,000 members, the majority of whom
work in government departments, agencies and public bodies—also
welcomes the invitation to give oral evidence as the inquiry topics
are issues that are of concern to our union.
OUTSIDE APPOINTMENTS
TO THE
SENIOR CIVIL
SERVICE
Although the bulk of PCS members are concentrated
in middle and lower civil service grades, we have some members
in the Senior Civil Service (SCS) which means that we organise
at all levels except for specialist professional grades. PCS negotiates
on training and career development from workplace to national
level, and has had particular success in setting up a network
of union learning representatives and in providing learning through
our Learning Centre.
PCS also supports the work that the Government
has been doing towards developing a highly skilled civil service
and, through the Council for Civil Service Unions (CCSU), sits
on the Board of Government Skills.
We welcome the fact that the Select Committee
is reviewing outside appointments to the SCS, as we believe that
this is long overdue. Whilst external recruitment into the SCS
is nothing new, there has, over the last decade or so, been a
consistent growth in external recruitment to the SCS accompanied
by an alarming use of external consultants. Proponents of this
drive have argued that it was a necessary response to the increasing
professionalisation of certain corporate activities in the service
such as Human Resources, Information Technology and Finance. But
more importantly, external recruitment would also raise the pace
of making the SCS more diverse.
Despite the extensive investment that has gone
into recruiting from outside, emerging evidence suggests an increasingly
high turnover in the SCS. Whilst there are various reasons for
this phenomenon, anecdotal evidence suggests that turnover is
highest amongst women and ethnic minorities. Furthermore, as the
2007 Review Body on Senior Salaries report noted, external recruitment
has led to a pay differential between internal and external recruits.
PCS believes that there needs to be a shift
in terms of the perceptions attached to skills possessed by external
recruits and to those of internal recruits. Whilst we acknowledge
that certain SCS posts may have to be filled through external
appointments, this should be done only where it is absolutely
necessary, and for the Civil Service to consider ways in which
the massive untapped potential that exists amongst staff in lower
and middle grades can be developed. As well as widening the skills
pool available to the public sector, this would also help address
the diversity gap at senior levels, since the majority of women,
ethnic minorities and staff with disabilities employed by the
Civil Service is currently concentrated in the middle and lower
echelons.
March 2009
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