Examination of Witnesses (Questions 153
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 28 OCTOBER 2009
MS LESLEY
STRATHIE, MR
SIMON BOWLES
AND MR
RICHARD SUMMERSGILL
Q153 Chairman:
Good afternoon, can I welcome you back to the Sub-Committee; could
you introduce yourself formally, please, and your colleagues?
Ms Strathie:
I am Lesley Strathie, I am the Chief Executive of Her Majesty's
Revenue and Customs, I am the Principal Accounting Officer. On
my right is Simon Bowles, the Chief Finance Officer, who joined
the Department in March this year and on my left is Richard Summersgill,
the Director of Benefits and Credits.
Q154 Chairman:
Thank you very much. The Capability Review in 2007 that we referred
to in our last Report identified eight areas where you needed
to improve, four of them urgently. You have issued your new document,
Purpose, Vision and Way, you have got a new board, are
you now fit for purpose?
Ms Strathie: We are very much
fit for purpose but we have just gone through a pretty rigorous
self-assessment at the two year stage. We are having our two-year
re-review early and the Cabinet Office capability team have been
with us until the end of last week. We currently await their findings
on our self-assessment and we will issue in due course the results
of that. We feel that we have moved forward enormously but we
still recognise that there is a lot more to do and we have plans
about what we will do.
Q155 Chairman:
Two years after that Capability Review are you warning us then
that there might still be some areas for improvement?
Ms Strathie: Yes. If we consider
the ratings in terms of urgent development areas, development
areas right through to strong in green, then our self-assessment
has not given us all green, there are many areas where we recognise
that we have got more to do and, as I say, we await the capability
review team's findings on our self-assessment, and then there
is a moderation process beyond. We still think that in most areas
we have moved forward at least one level and in a couple of areas
we think we have moved forward two.
Q156 Chairman:
You carried out a staff survey back in February which showed that
70% of your staff did not think change was well-managed; 67% thought
the changes would not be for the better and 64% felt as a whole
the service was not well-managed. What can you say to convince
us that you are taking your staff with you?
Ms Strathie: In short the survey
tells us we are not and we take that incredibly seriously. One
of the points that you have not mentioned is that the survey also
tells us that amongst our managers many of them do not think they
need to change. If we look at the challenge facing the department
in terms of the head count reductions that we face, the degree
to which our workforce has had to change job, change location
and the uncertainty that has been created for many we have a very
strong message in the survey of people who want to stay with the
organisation but do not feel that they are clear about their future
or that they would recommend HMRC as a good place to work. We
are re-reviewing now, the survey is live at the moment, it finishes
at the end of this week. The survey that is being carried out
now is civil service wide—we were part of a pilot of 11
departments then—and it is a slightly different set of questions
based on what we learnt from the pilot. Those results will be
published in January but we recognise that clarity for our workforce
about whether they have a future in the department, what that
future looks like and how we are going to manage those people
where we do not have a job for them in the future is going to
be an on-going challenge for us.
Q157 Chairman:
My colleagues will certainly pick up on that survey later on.
I understand by the end of the next financial year you are going
to cut a further 3,811 staff; how are you going to do that without
further reducing morale?
Ms Strathie: I cannot promise
that there is not a danger in morale but given how low our scores
are there is not much further to fall. We have a very disengaged
workforce if we take it purely on the survey, but I actually think
it is part of a basket of measures. My job, I believe, is to be
absolutely honest with our people about how many jobs there will
be, where they will be, what the opportunities are in all of the
support package we have put in in terms of paying for people's
transport, laying on different means of them getting to work,
covering their extra expense and retraining them, but if at the
end of the day there is not a job then we need to be clear and
terminate that employment. Everything we are doing at the moment
is to avoid compulsory redundancies, to take every step that we
can do and currently we have a lot of volunteers. My approach
will always be to try and find another job for someone if we can
and actually we have managed to find jobs for 1750 people across
other government departments and so far less than 7,000 people
have been severed, all on voluntary terms.
Chairman: Andrew Tyrie, you had a question
on this.
Q158 Mr Tyrie:
You just said you have a "very disengaged workforce".
Ms Strathie: According to the
survey.
Q159 Mr Tyrie:
What is your estimate of the effect that is having on the yield?
Ms Strathie: One could speculate.
Very simply, my entire career has been leadership-driven with
very large battalions of people and very similar challenges in
terms of the balance between what modernisation offers us versus
the impact on people and jobs. I would say that every week I visit
a part of HMRC and every week I see people working incredibly
hard, incredibly proud of what they do and working flat out to
close the tax gap or hit any of our other priorities, but at the
end of the day we are asking them how they view their department,
whether they are proud to work for the department and how they
rate senior managers. It shows us very clearly in the survey that
people are proud of their own job, they are usually relatively
happy with their immediate line manager and then when you ask
what do you think of your line manager's line manager it is less
popular and it goes right up. I do not take the survey as the
only measure of morale, that is my point, but I do take it really
seriously that people want to stay with us but do not want to
recommend us or say that they are proud to work for us.
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