Administration Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 193

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Administration Committee

on Monday 3 June 2013

Members present:

Sir Alan Haselhurst (Chair)

Karen Bradley

Thomas Docherty

Mark Hunter

Mr Marcus Jones

Nigel Mills

Tessa Munt

John Penrose

Nicholas Soames

Mr John Spellar

Mr Desmond Swayne

Mark Tami

Keith Vaz

Mr Dave Watts

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Joan Miller, Director of Parliamentary ICT, and Matthew Taylor, Director of Operations and Members Services, gave evidence.

Chair: We are now in public session. May I, as a courtesy, welcome the Secretary General and officials from the Iraqi Council of Representatives, who will be observing our proceedings.

Q71 Chair: I hope they will find that a beneficial experience. We are conducting an inquiry into the induction of new Members of Parliament, and we have in front of us the Director of PICT and the Director of Operations and Member Services of PICT, which provides the service of IT to both Houses of Parliament. We are trying to learn lessons from the past, and whether we can improve the reception of new Members who will be elected in 2015.

Joan, is there anything you would like to say by way of opening, or are you content to face some questions?

Joan Miller: We are content to face questions. We have given a full report.

Q72 Chair: Thank you very much. May I ask you then the lead question, which is what lessons you believe can be learnt from the last encounter in 2010?

Joan Miller: Some of the lessons were good. Getting the laptop to Members quickly was appreciated, and getting the email accounts set up on the first day they arrived at Parliament was appreciated, so some things went well. The availability of the wi­fi in the rooms that were allocated to Members who did not have a room when they initially arrived worked for many Members. Where we perhaps needed more time was to get rooms set up when they were allocated to Members. One of the ongoing issues is that the equipment we provide is pretty standard equipment, and there is not much choice available, so one of the big things that we aim to do by the time of the next election is to allow more flexibility in the choice of equipment.

Q73 Chair: Maybe more Members will be coming with their own equipment.

Joan Miller: That may also be true.

Chair: Are you capable of dealing with that?

Joan Miller: We are not at this minute capable. By the time of the next election, we would hope and expect to be capable.

Q74 Thomas Docherty: As you know, Ms Miller, this Committee will be bringing forward proposals for the level of IT hardware that will be made available. Currently it is five and two, is it not?

Joan Miller: Yes.

Q75 Thomas Docherty: What are your initial thoughts as to what this Committee may choose to recommend as to the level in the next Parliament?

Joan Miller: We observe, in PICT, that Members need a quite wide variety of equipment, and Members have different numbers of staff. There is an argument that having a piece of equipment that is mobile and a piece of equipment that is static may be a good choice for every MP. I have been doing some constituency visits to MPs to see what it is like in the constituency office, and I know that one of the MPs I was talking to uses their mobile smartphone for most of their communications. They need a laptop to write reports, but they also need an iPad for reading and carrying lightly documents around the place. There is an argument to be made that, for a full range of services, Members may not have enough choice within the five pieces of equipment in today’s world.

There is another point to be made. Members often have their own private equipment, and the ability to use that to connect to the Parliamentary network and services would facilitate the ability to receive messages in an appropriate way and an appropriate format wherever they happen to be without extra cost.

Q76 Thomas Docherty: That is very helpful. Your note that you sent in advance suggests the possibility of giving new Members an iPad or tablet device, rather than a laptop, as their first piece of equipment. Actually, I am not clear if it is just new Members or all Members who are returning. Could you elaborate as to what stage you are at, in terms of PICT’s thinking about how that would work?

Joan Miller: PICT are able to do that. The driving factor in the decision here is really what the Commission and Members decide to do. In the first stages of iPads-I think it was in September or August-we talked to Sir Alan about whether members of the Administration Committee would use iPads as an experiment to see if they would make a good replacement for documents. Bravely, the Administration Committee decided they would try that, and I note that there are much less papers than there were in those days in 2010 when we first made the suggestion. We are able to provide iPads with a security wrapper that makes it possible for Members to receive email and documents. What we are not able to do is provide full access to the office environment at the minute, so being able to access your stored files and folders is not available on an iPad at the minute.

Moving to Microsoft 365 in a cloud environment, we would expect that to also be available to Members by the time of the next election. We believe that the first piece of equipment being an iPad would allow Members to have documents they could read; emails they could read; to be able to see files in their folders that they could read, and to be able to see the documents and papers for the first meetings that they have. That might be an adequate first step for the first few weeks, and then we would take a longer time to talk through with the Member what their constituency and their office and they themselves would need available for things like creating documents: iPads are not that great for creating documents. We would probably be talking through the range of options that they may wish to take up for the allocation after the next election. That is for all Members, not just for new Members.

Q77 Nigel Mills: There is, of course, another player in this field, given that we may purchase extra items through IPSA. I think IPSA have some views on where this line will be between how many you provide and how many we can claim through them. Have you got any thoughts on how that is going to work after the next election?

Joan Miller: Not really. I think we can make good plans about what Parliament will provide in loan equipment. We have very little management control or advice for IPSA.

Q78 Nigel Mills: There has been discussion, has there not, about a much broader choice? I will not just have one of your standard desktops; I can pick a desktop of any spec that suits my needs within the budget. That would be a big step away from your pretty small list of choice on loans and closer to me choosing something within a budget, which is kind of what we have IPSA for. Can you foresee that your five allowance would just get rolled into an IPSA claim?

Joan Miller: We think that is probably not what will happen. Certainly in the short term-and I include the next election in that short term-we will be providing an allowance that would allow Members to have a wider range of choice of equipment. Matthew can tell you about some of our thinking in that area and some of the investigations we have done with companies that can provide a catalogue, where Members can choose what equipment they wanted from that catalogue, up to perhaps a capped allowance that is equal to the current cost of five pieces of equipment. We would make sure the catalogue had the right specifications so that it was compatible with the systems that we will provide. Matthew can give you more detail on that.

Matthew Taylor: I am not sure there is very much more to add, apart from that we are looking at companies that could create the framework that Ms Miller just described and provide it in an Amazon-type style, so you can go on and do a lot of self-service, order stuff yourselves, and have that equipment delivered directly.

Q79 Nigel Mills: That sounds encouraging. I just think we will be in a situation where I have an IPSA budget and a PICT allowance, and they will look very similar to me, because I will be choosing what I want and claiming it from somewhere. Are you sure you can manage to support all these different brands and styles of device? You will not just be having the ones you are used to; you could have every brand of laptop and tablet chucked at you by a Member at nine o’clock in the morning, saying, "It’s stopped working, help." Is that something you could feasibly deal with?

Joan Miller: The choice would of course take with it some responsibility for Members. We would advise that they bought a warranty with it, and the warranty would act very much as the warranty on the equipment we supply at the minute, where the supplier provides the first line of support if something breaks. What we would be looking at in a catalogue is not every range of equipment, but a safe range of equipment. Our focus would be on what equipment is safe and secure, rather than the current one model that you get at the moment.

Chair: Would colleagues allow me to take Karen next, as she has Bench duty?

Karen Bradley: No, it is fine. It was the point about PCs and equipment. That was why I wanted to come in now.

Chair: Oh, I beg your pardon.

Karen Bradley: I can wait until later. It is fine.

Chair: We will slip it in later, then.

Q80 Mark Hunter: I would like to turn to the subject of broadband services briefly, if I may. The installation of broadband in constituency offices has often been cited as one of the main frustrations-for newer Members particularly but also for those of us who have been here for some little while as well-due to the long timescales involved and the disruption. What are your views on how the system might be improved, if you have any?

Joan Miller: We are very reliant on suppliers for the supply of broadband, but we are sharing much of your frustration as we interface with the suppliers to try to get the deliveries made to different offices. Matthew, have you got specifics?

Matthew Taylor: A particular frustration for new Members is that they are taking on new accommodation, which often will need to have a telephone line installed first before we can start commissioning a broadband service. That takes time in itself. After that period of time, we then commission the service from a supplier, and that takes time. Unfortunately, we are in a position where it can take several weeks before a new Member gets a BT-based broadband service. If you go for a cable service, which we also offer, that can take longer. It requires a site survey; often, there are some minor building works that are involved in routing cables from the street to the premises, and unfortunately that takes time.

There are certain circumstances where we can intervene and make things work a bit more quickly, but to try to do that on the scale of all Members really would not be manageable. On the odd occasion when a Member truly has had a problem with some unexpected delay to the installation, we can offer a 3G dongle-which is a sort of mobile wi­fi-and we have used that successfully in a number of cases whilst people are waiting. That is something that we could look at a little bit more for the next election, to help new Members.

Q81 Mark Hunter: You seem to be suggesting that you sympathise with the problem that Members have with this, but that at the end of the day it is largely to do with the suppliers. Surely, with your involvement in this side of the business and having to deal with the frustrations of Members on such a regular basis, representations are presumably being made to the suppliers by yourselves. Have you made any progress with any of those?

Matthew Taylor: Yes, we have raised this several times-more times than I can recall-with the suppliers, and we have regular supplier meetings with them. We have truly looked at the process and the arrangement we have in place to see how sharp and crisp we can make that process. I think the way it works at the moment is pretty much as good as it can be. Clearly, sometimes issues arise, and sometimes installations go more smoothly than we expect. There is a sort of irreducible period of time that we cannot get by in terms of that initial setup. Unfortunately, the same often occurs when a Member moves office; if they move constituency office we have the same issues arise there. I think the 3G dongle is a means by which we can help people who are really in a predicament to get up and running.

Q82 Mark Hunter: So within the functionality of the system that we have at the moment you do not think there is anything else that can be done from your perspective to try to improve these matters above and beyond what you have already done?

Matthew Taylor: As of today, I think we have done really all that we can, but that does not mean to say that we cannot keep plugging away at this and see whether anything else can be done in the future.

Joan Miller: It might be helpful to say that we have asked Chairs of Committees to write to the suppliers before. It has only limited effect.

Q83 Mark Hunter: On a slightly different note, you have also questioned the current broadband service being provided to Members’ homes, and the suggestion is that that might well be removed. What impact would you foresee if that particular service were to be removed? Have you done an analysis of the impact that would have?

Matthew Taylor: We have looked at it, and at the moment Members are entitled to three services. Only 476 Members actually take a service in the first place; there are quite a lot of Members who are making their own broadband arrangements. Of that, 300 take one service-so by far the majority of those who take the service only take one service at present-and 48 Members take the full service, all three services. This raises the question, in relation to the thinking we have about the ubiquity of broadband, of whether it is still the case that it is really necessary to provide it to homes. The allowances were originally set up in the early 2000s when broadband was not generally available, was far more expensive, and you had to have combinations of ISDN lines and other things. It did not extend across the whole country and was a far more difficult situation. We are just raising that point in a fairly neutral way, and asking whether it is still valid.

Q84 Mark Hunter: Have the numbers of Members using the full three broadband services that they are entitled to gradually declined over time?

Matthew Taylor: I do not have that information. We could find out, but I do not know that today.

Chair: I take it, where a home has an office within it, as it were, then that is a different matter from a home that is just entirely separate. Nigel, you wanted a supplementary?

Q85 Nigel Mills: I was just going to ask, Matthew, about the issue of setting up a constituency office. One of the problems I had was that it was not entirely clear who I was meant to be ordering what from, and how. Could you produce a process or some advice about what I am meant to ask who of when, and what on earth some of it means, because it was a bit technical for me? One policy PICT had, which made things worse, was that you would not deliver any IT equipment to the constituency office until the broadband was up and running, which meant that my secretary had to keep using her own personal laptop and we had to try to piggyback wi-fi off the Wetherspoons pub down the road or the nearest BT OpenZone thing that someone may or may not turn on each day. If you had actually given us the equipment all we had to do was wait for the wi­fi. At least we would have had a proper computer and a proper printer to use, rather than our own personal stuff that we were having to try to bodge into an office. That, surely, is a policy you can change for next time.

Matthew Taylor: It is certainly something we can look at. The reason why we wanted to do it after the broadband was set up is that we can then create the office network. Without the broadband we cannot create the network; it is more difficult to establish that, so that is why we had the delay. Now that we are hearing that that caused difficulty-and we probably did hear it at the time as well-we could certainly look at that sort of thing in the future.

Joan Miller: One of the things that did go well after the last election is that we completed the refit of all new Members’ offices and constituency offices, and also existing Members’ offices and constituency offices, within a six month period. Previously, it had taken us a lot longer than that to do that, and of course that is about the efficiency of numbers of visits we make to the constituency offices. It may have been that we delayed some of your services because of trying to be efficient and quick. We will have to work out a better balance for that.

Q86 Keith Vaz: The issue of printers is very similar to the issue of computers. I must say that I am not in favour of giving us an allowance to buy our own equipment, because others may be experts in knowing the difference between a computer and a printer, but I am not. I think it is much better to have the system that you have at the moment. The trouble is the deal you have struck on printers, which is extremely expensive, and the consumables can only be purchased from the company that sells us the computers, which means that you have locked us into a deal-not you personally; you may not have been here-that means that we can go in there and order. I have never had a problem in ordering computers, and PICT staff have been extremely helpful, but we then have to buy the toners, which are expensive and which come separately, which then come out of our allowance, and also the cartridges, which are very, very expensive. The key thing on procurement is securing a deal that will mean that the consumables are not going to be a burden on our IPSA account. You can get everything you want free-you can get your five computers and laptops-but then it is the on-costs that are so expensive.

We do need these printers. I need a colour printer in London and Leicester, otherwise I find myself having to email stuff out to Leicester. It then comes back again, printed here and printed there. MPs could save a lot of money if we were entitled to a heavy­duty printer that would allow us to produce surgery leaflets ourselves, rather than using our allowances in order to go to printers who will charge us a very large amount of money.

However, I did want to say to both of you that I find the PICT service to be superb. As someone who, as I have admitted, does not know much about computers, you can ring them up day or night and they will talk you through things, including, "Why don’t you switch on the device?" You do not feel embarrassed, because they do it so politely. I do not know how much it costs the House, but whatever it costs it is worth it, because you do provide a huge amount of service. Please pass my thanks on. I know there are individual complaints about individual things, but I certainly have had only good feedback from the work that they do.

Joan Miller: Thank you very much. That is certainly something we will take back to the staff.

Mr John Spellar: I think you will get your upgrade, Keith.

Joan Miller: There are several ways that we can help. After the next election, we will have a different kind of service that we will be offering Members. This may help you, particularly if you are not certain of what equipment to buy. The service that we will have will be able to sit with you, ask you what you use your IT for, and help you to choose the right kind of equipment for you. If it is something that is easy to use, easy to plug in, and light and transportable, then they will be able to point you to the kinds of equipment that will be a better choice for you than other kinds of equipment. We will provide that personalised kind of service.

Q87 Keith Vaz: Sorry, but the problem is not the equipment; it is that the consumables are not compatible with other machines and other printers. That is the problem that we have.

Joan Miller: I was going to come on to that. I think we did underestimate the cost of the cartridges and the printers when we chose the range of printers that we did. Of course, the whole range of printers has very variable uses of cartridges. We have, however, been investigating a better contract for cartridges over the last couple of years, and we can now purchase for you cartridges at a much lower cost than the ones you had originally. We will come and talk to you about a different channel of buying cartridges, and I think we can halve your costs in that area. We have been aware of that and are looking at it. They are refurbished cartridges, but they do work really well and they are much cheaper to use.

We would like to test with the Committee our thinking on the ability to have very big floor­standing printers, scanners and photocopiers that might be used for whole sections of areas of the floor. Instead of having one big clumsy printer per office, it could be that we could very cost­effectively make bigger printers available that would do large rooms.

Q88 Keith Vaz: I think it has to be providing added value. I would not want my printer out of my office. You can provide additional support, but it should not be taken away from the allocations of Members. We have a very big photocopier at the end of our corridor where we can go and photocopy material-I think we can still do this, we could when we first arrived-but we have to have our printers. They have to be attached to our computers. I would not support anything that meant we were going to lose our printers.

Joan Miller: I think we will come and talk to Members specifically about this possibility. It is not about replacing or removing a printer; although some Members do not wish a printer, and we could do that for them. It is about a cheaper, lighter printer for the office, with a heavy-duty printer a little way down the corridor where you could do very heavy runs.

Q89 Keith Vaz: I know no Member who has said to me that they want to give up their printer in exchange for a bigger printer along the corridor. I would be astonished if any Member of Parliament said to you, "I want to give up my printer. I would like something bigger down the corridor." Has anyone said this to you?

Joan Miller: We will go and ask.

Keith Vaz: So nobody has.

Joan Miller: We have not asked yet, but we will test this.

Q90 Mark Tami: Just very briefly on this point: how would that work in terms of the toner and the paper? Would you put your own in, or would that be provided? If you shared it, and it was your toner and someone down the corridor just rolled off 20,000 copies, what would happen then?

Joan Miller: It would be a cost per page to the user. We can identify who is printing on the printer by the user number that you put in. The cost is somewhere in the region of a third-or maybe a bit less than a third-of the cost of printing through your own printers.

Q91 Karen Bradley: If I could just go back to the allocation of equipment at the beginning of the Parliament, I certainly had no idea at that point what staff I would need, or what the balance between my constituency office and my Westminster office would be. It is only now, three years down the line, that I feel I have any sort of feel for it. Have you considered having transitional arrangements where Members could maybe have a loan of a piece of equipment for a short period of time, until they find their feet and say, "Actually, what I need now is a tablet, not a mobile PC or a desktop"? Also, would that be something that could be available throughout the Parliament? For example, if you get an intern in, you do not want to have to go and buy a whole computer but you need something for them to work on.

Joan Miller: Being able to deal with the quantity is one of the issues. We do have the ability to provide loan equipment to people when something is broken, and we have used that ability. Also, when there is a temporary arrangement, we can do that and have done that in the past. It is very difficult to keep up with technology, too. Over a five year period, technology changes dramatically. For instance, the iPads came in after the election. They were not available to Members of Parliament until June 2010, and people were already ordering equipment in May 2010. It is quite difficult for us to keep up with technology over five years. We think that if we allow, encourage or permit a free choice for Members it at least gives Members the flexibility to pace their own procurement.

Q92 Karen Bradley: I think the problem is just knowing what you need. If you enter into something at the beginning of the Parliament you can end up stuck with something that does not work for you. I now have the mini iPad, which is my own personal one, because that works better for me than a big iPad.

Joan Miller: I do agree.

Karen Bradley: That is a personal choice, and you have no idea. Could you perhaps think about some ways of giving some flexibility to Members at the beginning? I would have found that quite helpful at the time.

Joan Miller: We will take that on board.

Q93 Karen Bradley: Just on constituency offices, I know that logging in from my constituency office is an absolute nightmare. It took forever to get sorted out, and they still have to go through Citrix rather than being able to just go straight onto the network. Is that something you are looking at?

Joan Miller: The new services will change the way you access them completely. As long as you have internet access it will be much easier to get into email and your office services. One of the big attractions of moving to the cloud services is that you are not punching through all of our firewalls to get on to the Parliamentary network before you get to your email. It will be better.

Q94 Karen Bradley: That is very helpful. Thank you. Going on to casework databases, at the moment PICT do not support casework databases. Is this something you would consider doing for the next Parliament, or perhaps even sooner than that?

Joan Miller: It is quite difficult, because Members have very many different views about casework systems. There is not one casework system that would satisfy every Member. Some of them are particularly favoured by some of the political parties, too, so we have not to date interfered in the choices that Members make about casework databases. Of course, if the Administration Committee asked us to look at the options, we could come forward with some proposals around that.

Q95 Karen Bradley: That is helpful, thank you. Finally, if I could move on to the Westminster offices-so away from constituency offices-we will all remember the hot­desking experience at the beginning of the Parliament, eventually getting an office allocated, and then waiting for services to be delivered to the office. Is there anything that could be done on either side that would help, once the office has been allocated, in speeding up the actual installation of IT in that office so that it is up and running? I had about a week and a half where was I still having to hot­desk, even though I had an office, in order that I could get to a printer and to the right equipment that I need. I am way over in Norman Shaw North, so I am a long way from the world.

Joan Miller: From civilisation. I think that was an unusual experience, because mostly we got offices up and running within two or three days of the allocation being known by us. One of the things that we could consider is when we move equipment, because when equipment is decommissioned at the general election we could perhaps consider leaving it there until the Member has made their choice about what equipment they want for their offices. We can consider these things that could make it easier.

Karen Bradley: If you were going for some sort of pooled arrangement-

Joan Miller: It would be old, though; it would be very old.

Q96 Karen Bradley: I do not think that would matter, actually. It is just a case of having something that works. I do not think the age of it matters at that point, as long as you know that at some point in the life of the Parliament you can change things. Just on the point of pooled printers: if that was to be the case, would you need offices to be allocated in such a way that it was done on a party basis? I am sort of seeing a problem there. Is that going to give a problem for Accommodation Whips?

Joan Miller: I do not believe it would have to be, because you would use your own private code to make the printer print.

Karen Bradley: So you would have some security.

Joan Miller: There would be confidentiality.

Q97 Karen Bradley: I feel like I have had lots of questions, but I put them all together. When your staff come to help in the offices and set up these new offices, what do you tell them about awareness of offerings? For example, I had no idea there was an opportunity to have broadband in my home. That was not something that had ever been explained to me, or that anyone had mentioned. What are you doing to make sure that there is full awareness of the different options available when Members’ offices are set up?

Joan Miller: I am going to refer that to Matthew. He has a whole project on training staff.

Matthew Taylor: We are hoping to do more things at the next election, but at the last election we sent out a welcome email that described what we had, and there is material available on the intranet. I understand that, in the busy few weeks of Parliament, maybe that does not get the full attention. It is a problem getting this information out to Members. We do try lots of different ways, and sometimes the information sticks and sometimes it does not. We would welcome any suggestions you have got about that.

For the next time, Ms Miller has talked about how we are going to deliver new services, and we are looking at a different way in which we will deliver support. We are actually doing a considerable reorganisation of our teams at the moment, which is blending a lot of the teams to have a wider range of skills. Hopefully the people who come out and see you at the next election-I should say not hopefully-by the time of the next election they will be coming out fully confident about the full range of services, and will be able to talk to you about that, discuss the full range, and make sure you are getting access to the services you need.

Q98 Mr John Spellar: If I could just come back to printers, Chairman, I am not sure if I am alone in the experience of just having one disastrous Dell printer after another. Is Dell, quite frankly, very good at making desktops and not particularly good at making printers? The impression I get from the service engineers is that I may not be alone in this.

Matthew Taylor: I can tackle that. Certainly the majority of the printers we offer now are not by Dell; they are by another company, HP, and the default printer that every new Member got was an HP multifunction printer. It turned out to be one of the higher-consuming toner printers, but it actually meets a lot of needs. The Dell printers are reliable, and they work well. You may have got some feedback from engineers. Their very first generation of printers were actually rebadged and they are a different model. They were not designed and made by Dell. They are now, and we get more than reasonable reliability out of them, but most people opt for the Hewlett­Packard products.

Q99 Mr John Spellar: I am not sure that that was necessarily the one on offer. In order to have Hewlett Packard you have to have a colour printer, is that right?

Matthew Taylor: No, we do a standard black and white.

Mr John Spellar: There is a standard black and white Hewlett­Packard?

Matthew Taylor: Yes. There is a range of six printers that Members can choose from.

Q100 Chair: Thank you. Can you tell us what your current plans are for the ICT provision in temporary accommodation following the 2015 election?

Joan Miller: We have improved the wi­fi availability across the estate. Members will be able to attach to the network in many more locations than they could in 2010. Most of the Committee Rooms, and a few other rooms where Members are located, are fitted with wi­fi now. It is now available in every Member’s office. There is more availability.

Q101 Chair: Thank you. Finally, could I ask you what training is offered on issues such as data protection and data sovereignty?

Joan Miller: Those are not strictly responsibilities of PICT, but of course the SIROs have put on some training courses and are thinking very hard about what other training they will be providing for Members and new Members at the Election on any of those issues. They manage the data protection and the other areas, like data sovereignty. We have some specific legal guidance on data sovereignty issues that we can help Members with.

Chair: Thank you very much. If my colleagues have no further questions, I thank you very much indeed for spending time with us. We appreciate your answers. Thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: George Mudie MP, former Accommodation Whip, James Robertson OBE, Director of Accommodation and Logistics Services, and Fiona Channon, former Members’ Accommodation Manager, Department of Facilities, gave evidence.

Q102 Chair: We now move on to the provision of accommodation services to new Members. I welcome our colleague George Mudie, who had responsibility for this at a previous occasion, with James Robertson and Fiona Channon. Are you happy for us to pile into questions?

George Mudie: That is fine, yes.

Q103 Chair: First of all, for those of us who do not know, could you perhaps explain what the division of responsibilities between Whips and Accommodation Services is, with regard to the allocation of-and move into-office accommodation?

James Robertson: Yes, surely, Sir Alan. The decision about who has which office is very much one for the Whips. I myself, and particularly the Members’ Accommodation Manager-which Fiona was at the time of the last election-are responsible for carrying out the instructions of the Whips in order to make the moves happen. The Accommodation staff control the resources that are being used to move Members out of offices and into offices, but it is very much on the instructions of the Whips.

Q104 Chair: How many actual units of accommodation are there? We all know how many Members of Parliament there are and they have a variety of needs, but how many actual spaces do you have to give you flexibility to shuffle around according to decisions that are made?

Fiona Channon: There are 997 rooms, Sir Alan. There are about 1,000 rooms for Members on the Estate, but not all rooms are the same. Some have more than one Member in them, and some have Members and their staff together.

Q105 Keith Vaz: Mr Robertson, do you not think that this power to allocate rooms should actually be something given back to the House, rather than given to the Whips on a party-political basis? I say this in the presence, of course-

Mark Hunter: What an appalling prospect.

Keith Vaz: I say this, of course, in the presence of our current Whip, and the former Whip, who was always very-

Mark Tami: The boxes will be delivered to your room.

Keith Vaz: -who was always very, very charming to me, as I remember, when I was asking for accommodation. I have always had a fantastic service from Fiona and colleagues, but there is the potential for frustration: "I’m sorry, I can’t connect your phone because the Pairing Whip has not sent me an email." Of course, this did not happen under Mr Mudie, but when I first got elected-way back in 1987-if you fell out with the Whips or voted the wrong way and you perhaps wanted a larger room, you did not get it.

Mark Hunter: Well, that is the moral, then, is it not?

Keith Vaz: I know you cannot express a view on whether you should be given this, but would there be a logistical problem at the start of a Parliament if the allocation of offices should be left to the House authorities? This would be on the basis of seniority, of course, so that those who have been here for a longer period of time would automatically get bigger rooms.

Mark Tami: Or the Chairmen of Select Committees would get bigger rooms.

Mark Hunter: You still would not get the jacuzzi, Keith.

James Robertson: I think, just in terms of manipulating the numbers, there would be no problems. In terms of some of the other associated issues, we would have significant difficulties.

Q106 Nigel Mills: Such as?

James Robertson: We sometimes find it very difficult to get to the bottom of some of the Member issues, which the Whips are possibly better placed to do than us. As far as moving an entrenched Member into or out of an office, we sometimes find it very difficult to achieve levers that are going to make the result actually happen.

Q107 Keith Vaz: The other issue that comes out of that for new Members is knowing what offices are on offer. For example, I am in Gwyneth Dunwoody’s old room. Until I visited Gwyneth Dunwoody one day and saw her office, and realised that my ambition in life was to have Gwyneth Dunwoody’s office, I did not know what the sizes of offices were. Until I visited Anthony Steen when he was here, I did not realise the size of his office. I think one of the problems is that it is not like going to Foxtons, where you can see the office and you can make a decision, because sometimes you do not actually get to see the office until after you have got it. Do you think, at the very least, the House authorities could have a little picture of the office or even a floor plan, so people knew the size? At the moment, that seems to be something that is just kept in the hands of the Whips, lovely though they are.

James Robertson: We certainly have floor plans. I am not sure whether it would be possible in the time to do it. We could have a look at it.

Keith Vaz: I mean, you have got two years.

Mr John Spellar: Are you full of territorial ambitions, Keith?

Q108 Chair: I do not see this as a matter of Members being able to pick through a catalogue somehow, with great respect to Mr Vaz. I wonder if you could say whether you have had or would think to have discussions with IPSA about the question that you face of pressure on accommodation of Members and the amount of staff they may have. There is a feeling that Members, in some cases, would prefer to have all or part of their staff accommodated in their constituencies, but have found that they have had difficulty-certainly in the early days-of getting the necessary finance put together for that to happen. The consequence is that there is increasing pressure on this estate. Is this something that you feel you could tease out?

James Robertson: Yes, Sir Alan. We are in fact having discussions with IPSA about staffing. They are currently carrying out a review of Members’ accommodation; not specifically on the estate, but they may, in due course, get round to looking at all the factors that tie together. The possibility that Members may want to put staff here rather than into constituencies is one of the things that we have raised with them, and they are thinking about it.

Q109 Chair: Is it right that Members can have any number of members of staff?

James Robertson: Theoretically the accommodation policy says two. The Accommodation Whips have written to Members at the time that the IPSA allowances went up and said that Members should not expect to have more than two staff here. Some Members’ accommodation is more than capable of taking more than two staff, and many of them take advantage of that, not unnaturally. Quite often, there is quite a lot of pressure from Members who want to bring more staff on to the estate for more accommodation, and that is very much a matter for the Accommodation Whip concerned.

Q110 Thomas Docherty: I am really happy with what you got me in 2010, George, and I am happy where I am, Mark-who does a great job, it says here. Could I ask George to just explain in a couple of minutes what that process is like? You had about 65 new Members to find rooms for and a whole bunch of ex–Ministers who lost their palatial suites. You had quite a cross section of people to shift around. How does it work from your point of view, and what did you pick up from the Government Whips about how they were finding it? What is that process like?

George Mudie: This time was difficult, as Mark would confirm, because there was a gap whilst the negotiations went on as to who was in Government. It was also made more difficult, from our point of view, by Labour waiting until September when they elected a new leader before they formed a Shadow Cabinet and shadow Ministers. That made it more confused and harder work for the staff. I think Mark actually had to pick up the second part of the exercise, the September part. I simply sent a letter to existing Members from a Labour point of view who were fighting elections and expecting to come back-all Labour Members who were not retiring-saying, "Are you interested in moving, and if so, give me your preference." I made it clear that if they did not respond they would stay where they were.

That was very helpful, because for those that responded you could work something out. Getting them was the first thing, and then the second thing was to meet Members and new Members and find out what they were interested in and then try to work something out. We had all sorts of side problems with ones that had more staff and ones that wanted this. Ones that were prepared to share in the first instance were very helpful, and they got help quicker, because if they were prepared to be that flexible it helped the exercise. You took care of them as quickly as you could to encourage others to do the same.

Q111 Thomas Docherty: It is like a big moving around of things. You would begin, therefore, by saying, "I have got 200 and something MPs in the group. Who is going to stay where they are? That is fine; they do not move. Who wants to move?" Then you sort them out, and then you deal with what you are left with. Is that a fair assessment?

George Mudie: That is more or less fair.

Q112 Chair: What communication is there with a Member freshly elected, which tells them what is likely to happen and perhaps might dampen their expectations if they suppose that they will arrive and a large office will be made available to them?

George Mudie: I discussed this with James and Fiona. I think we were insufficiently specific on accommodation the last time. They did not see any of the difficulty or were aware of the choices. I think it would be good to give new people when they are elected some choices of locations and ask them to list them in order, but also to explain that certain places on the estate are more popular than others. It is like choosing a council house, if you like. Everybody wants one of the best estates, but they will wait longer and maybe even be unsuccessful. It is just very pragmatic, based on the relationship and dialogue between the Whip and the people he or she works with.

James Robertson: If I may, could I just add that I think it is an interesting idea about setting out what the basic parameters of the accommodation are, and we could certainly look at that. We did actually communicate reasonably clearly to Members that they should not expect very good accommodation very quickly. It was done by referring to the New Members’ Guidebook, which was issued to all new Members with a letter from the Clerk, and the accommodation section was pretty well towards the front of that guide. We did say in that that Members should not come with large numbers of staff and that there would be a delay in the process in order to get them into their permanent accommodation.

George Mudie: Can I just say that I did it in 1997, and because of some of the personalities involved-none sitting at this side of the table now-it took six months. This took six weeks, and it is James and above all Fiona who did it. It took six weeks, and it would be useful to make clear that if they expect to come and get an office immediately, it would almost be impossible. If we are putting forward expectations, Members should be warned that they are not likely to get it-I think the Committee took the view that, after 2005, they wanted it done within a month. I think Fiona did a magnificent job, with the staff actually doing it within six weeks. Considering the date of the election, the day we come here, and the day we actually start work here with the Queen’s Speech, etc., they all really got in very quickly afterwards, and I do not think that was unfair on them or created any real hardship.

Q113 Chair: Taking your point that you just made, and whilst respecting the fact that the Queen’s Government has to go on, is there a case for encouraging the governing party to keep a certain gap between the date of the election and the actual formal summoning of the new Parliament?

George Mudie: I do not think it is worth holding up the machinery of Government for the inconvenience to the new Member. By the time they arrive here and actually start working a lot of time has passed, and if the Whips have got together and there are no complications, the division of the offices-the exchange of offices between the parties- should have taken place. I would ask you to be much harder on Members who are here and are expected to come back and are asked to be made aware that their office is going to be refurbished. There is all sorts of business of being gentle with them-or with Members who are beaten and come back. A Minister does not go back to his office when he is sacked; it is cleared for him. Of course it is brutal, but it is a fact of political life. The Committee, I think-speaking as a brutal ex-Whip-should be fairly hard and brutal. They have had time here. It is a wonderful experience and a great honour. If they are beaten, they should be told that their stuff is in boxes awaiting collection whenever they are ready. Government goes on as Ministers go on, and so should Back Benchers. We should take every step we can possibly do, but to start interviewing when Parliament restarts-why?

Chair: Thank you.

Mark Tami: As someone who has the pleasure of doing this, along with Desmond, I wanted to return to the point-because I do not think we should lose sight of this-that there are not spare offices all over the place. We are really up against it in terms of juggling what we have. I know that IPSA has been mentioned, but from a Labour point of view there are an increased number of London Members and Members from various parts of the country where rents are very high. These people often cannot afford to maintain their office under the current system, and therefore they are bringing staff here. With interns as well, the pressure is getting more and more. Fiona and Liz do an excellent job in trying to help ways that we can juggle what we have, but there will become a point where that is just not going to work anymore, and I think we have to recognise that. I know that was a statement, more than a question.

Thomas Docherty: Do you not agree?

Q114 Nigel Mills: I think the reason why this matters is that our constituents, quite rightly, do not accept that it is going to be seven weeks before we are fully effective because we cannot get an office to have any proper resources. Frankly, I think it is a little disappointing that we are sitting here saying, "Well, actually, six weeks is really quite good." In any other job that you started, if you did not have a desk and filing cabinet and a phone reliably, you would be outraged if it took six weeks. I do think we need to find ways of making it better. It would be baffling to people if we told them that what happens is that some guy is made a Whip, who has never done this before and then gets the job of allocating 300 people into an office over a few days while doing all their other duties as well. It cannot be a sensible way of doing it. Surely it should be done by somebody who has skills and training and the time to actually achieve that.

James Robertson: In practice, a lot of it is done by somebody with exactly the characteristics you are describing. It is the Members’ Accommodation Manager whose job it is to provide the Accommodation Whip with the sort of information they would need to make those decisions. However, in practical terms, you do have to prepare as many offices as you can for Members who are standing down. As Mr Mudie says, I suspect we need to be harder and to move some people out quicker to get those offices ready so that we are well placed to do the moves when the House returns. We need to deal with the Members who are defeated, and clearly that is a double edged sword. We and the new Members would like them out as quickly as possible. A defeated Member-not unnaturally-feels rather hurt about the whole process, and many are not particularly keen to move out, but we do need to get them to move as quickly as possible. Then there is all the juggling around, and the issue about swapping the Ministers if a new Government is formed, and so on and so forth. There are practical difficulties in doing it.

What we are starting to look at at the moment-and it would be very interesting to hear the Committee’s view-is whether we would look at putting new Members into serviced accommodation for a short period immediately after the general election. The costs of this are potentially quite high. The cost of a desk is about £700 a calendar month. We would probably need to take the accommodation for something like three months in order to get it set up, get people in, and then clear it down at the end, so there would be a cost. It is difficult to say until you get to the date what the cost would be, but say £2,000 a desk per Member. If we were looking at 200 Members, you might be looking in the order of £400,000. Would it then be worth it? Is that just for the Members, or is it for the Members and their staff? We do get Members who arrive with a fully kitted set of four or five staff. It is managing the expectations.

The current plan is to repeat what we did last time, which was, from our point of view, reasonably successful. The pledge we made was to move the new Member into their accommodation within a week of their being allocated that accommodation by the Whip. We heard what you were saying to Joan Miller and Matthew about the issues of getting the IT in. I think there were some lessons learned at the time. We did not then have the off­site consolidation centre up and running in the way we have at the moment. We are now in the position-should PICT so decide-to put quite a lot of IT straight into the off­site centre and to then just ship it in as it is called off by the PICT staff. We could do that better, but it seems that we ought to be able to do some of those things, possibly to shorten down the time from the allocation by the Whip. However, the Whip is eventually going to take some time to make his or her mind up about who is going to move in where.

Q115 Nigel Mills: I found the hot­desking Committee Rooms quite a helpful procedure at the start, because you got to know some people, having come here completely fresh. I think where it got particularly difficult was that, once people got staff, there was nowhere for them to go or nowhere that they could work with their staff. That did become quite a strain after five or six weeks. From distant memory, I think it was about seven weeks when I got my office. If there is one learning point, I think it is that hot­desking works for a while for the Member, but when staff got involved it became a nightmare.

Fiona Channon: If I could add one thing, Mr Mills, it is almost as if there are two streams of work, especially when there is a change of Government. There are Members that are in the previous Government coming out of Government accommodation, and then all those new members of the Government going into Government accommodation, and that is happening in parallel with new Members trying into get into accommodation that is vacated. Frankly, if you have been in the Upper Committee Corridor South for five years in the 2005 Parliament and you get the opportunity to move into Portcullis, the Whip does that, and then you are offered the Upper Committee Corridor South. Those choices are how it works.

Honestly, I am really aware that your constituents want you to be able to be effective the day after polling day and want you to be working from your office. The only way to be able to do that is if we had separate accommodation purely for new Members. New Members would have it allocated in the way that the temporary lockers were, or something like that. We would have X amount of new Member accommodation for X amount of new Members plus their staff, and they would go in there, and then new Members would have to be prepared to move out of that after two months or three months when the accommodation on the estate is ready. It would be at a cost.

Keith Vaz: I think that that is a very good idea. I would be against the idea of serviced accommodation, because there would be a tendency for people to hang on until they got something they wanted, and it would cost a lot of money. My sister used the hot­desk method, and I actually think it is a good way of knowing who other Members are. Even those of us who are Norman Shaw North know each other, but actually I have no clue who is in Norman Shaw South apart from Ed Miliband, because you do not tend to meet the new Members. If you could expand that idea and perhaps have a hot­desk for one member of staff at least in one of the large Committee Rooms, then at least people will know they have got somewhere. That is a big improvement on what we had, which was literally wandering around without anything. If is down to six weeks, George, that is incredibly fast compared to the six months it took someone like me to be allocated.

However, for new Members, it is a terrible, terrible thing. You have got to set up your own office in your constituency. You have got to get to grips with this place. The more that we can do in advance, the better, but the starting point is that when Members announce they are retiring and you know they are going, they should be encouraged to leave as soon as the election is called. If that happens, and they pack up and go, at least you know that the first strand of all that is worked out. Of course, you know already that a number of Members have announced they are standing down. You obviously cannot get them out until after the election, but you at least know that. The crucial point is, Alan, that we do not know who the Pairing Whip is going to be after the next election, and we do not know who the Accommodation Whip is. That is very important.

Q116 Mark Hunter: Just picking up where Keith left off, I do not see any reason why the Pairing Whips in the current Parliament could not-as the general election approaches-contact those colleagues of their own that they know are retiring at the next election and try to prepare some of the ground in the way in which Keith is saying. At least one strand is then being developed in advance, rather than waiting until the day after the general election before we start this in any way. I am sympathetic to what Nigel says. I think there would be an expectation amongst the public at large that Parliament can surely organise these affairs that bit better, but that applies to so many aspects of parliamentary life. I speak as the person who is responsible for the Lib Dems as Accommodation Whip, both at the time of the new Government and still now. It was George, myself, and Mark Francois, who was dealing with it before Desmond.

It does take time. We had an unusual situation at the start of this current Government of two parties forming a Government. I do not believe it delayed the process very much at all, frankly, but clearly Mark-as Desmond’s predecessor-had a larger number of senior people who had to be offered that full range of senior offices. I am not just saying Ministers; the more difficult ones are the ones that did not get into government jobs, because they feel they should be still looked after as well. It does take time. My experience of this, for what it is worth, is that it is very often not the colleagues you expect to be most precious about the size and location of their office, but the people who are some way down the hierarchy that perhaps say, "I am better than him, because I signed in 10 minutes before."

This is why it cannot be done as quickly as Nigel and others would aspire to, because it all depends on seniority. If you have 100 new Members come in at a general election, the person who took the oath first will forever be 100 places above those others that come in at the time. It is very difficult to explain that to Members of Parliament, let alone to members of the public. I do think George was right when he said 20 minutes ago that six weeks was, given the complications of all of this, probably not bad going. Then again, I would say that, because I was one of the people responsible for it.

George Mudie: I think there are three things you could do. One is that Members who are going should either pack their stuff up and take it, or collect it when they like from the boxes that the staff fill. We could store that. That is Members who are leaving; there is no reason why, if they are leaving, they do not do the normal thing of packing up and taking their stuff, or asking for it to be stored and pick it up later. For the Members who lose-tough. I am really sad for them, but if they were Ministers we would think nothing of it. The staff should have the authority from the Committee to pack their gear up in boxes, very civilised. It is done, stored, and ready for collection when they are ready to come back and collect them.

The other thing that you could do to strengthen the Whips’ hands and the officials’ hands is make it clear to any new Member who is coming with five staff that we are only providing-as a rule backed up by this Committee-two secretarial spaces. If they wish more they will have to negotiate with their new colleagues to take up empty spaces, because they do turn up with five or six and demand this room or that room. It is unfair on the other colleagues who are coming in and playing the game.

Q117 Tessa Munt: I think that sounds very sound. I have some experience from many, many years ago of having done some accommodation booking for a large college with 8,000 students. I find it completely incredible that we are where colleges were 20 years ago, where parties have this bit of room and that bit of room. As far as I can see, having walked across some of the areas of the estate, there are complete muddles of different parties on different floors next to each other, and I do not quite understand why there is all this hoo­ha. I just think it is something that should be done by the House and just sorted out. I find it a completely obscure way of going about things.

Nonetheless, I had two particular questions. One is about additional staff-APPG staff-and what the rules are about that. I also wanted to know, out of the 900 rooms you have referred to, how many of those are fully accessible for people with difficulties of movement or whatever.

James Robertson: I wonder if I can take the one about APPG staff. We have difficulty with APPG staff, because we do not know who, in fact, is APPG staff. As far as I am aware all APPG staff come in here as a Member’s staff.

Q118 Tessa Munt: That is extraordinary. I find that completely extraordinary. Surely we have a list somewhere of people who are truly staff and people who are hosted?

Thomas Docherty: No, there is a list. The Speaker’s office publishes the list, but they do not have offices as a rule of thumb.

Tessa Munt: They have desks in some people’s offices, do they not?

George Mudie: Yes, but that is the Member’s allocation. If the Member is Chair or Secretary they will make one of their spaces available. That is the theory. You do not get it as a right. You use up your two secretarial spaces for the APPG. Of course, this is where all the difficulties arise, because that is ignored by so many people.

Q119 Tessa Munt: I would suggest, Sir Alan, that maybe we should address that point, because I do not think that is acceptable. People who have Parliamentary staff who are working for the Member should have utter, absolute priority over hangers­on and interested groups, in my view. Could I ask about disabilities and people who have access problems? How many of the 900 rooms to which you have referred have the capacity to be fully accessible?

James Robertson: I cannot give you an exact number at the moment. We could go away and work it out.

Q120 Tessa Munt: I think it is probably something we should know. I appreciate there are difficulties with the building, but it is something we should absolutely know, and I would be quite interested in knowing what the numbers will be in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, and how your programme is to move forward to make sure that we do make more offices more accessible.

James Robertson: The work that is going to be done to do that is being considered as part of the work being done on the R&R at the moment, which is the big opportunity to do the development and to address some of the more difficult issues in the Palace. We can certainly provide the numbers that are currently accessible, which we will do.

Tessa Munt: That would be quite helpful. Thank you.

Fiona Channon: Certainly before the 2010 election, via the Whips’ Office, any Member’s mobility issues, hearing issues or whatever were raised with the Accommodation Office. We looked at specific areas-either Portcullis House or ground floor offices-to be able to facilitate those Members.

Q121 Thomas Docherty: If this responsibility was taken from the Whips and given to you, Mr Robertson, and you, Fiona, would it fundamentally change how this operates, or is it because of the nature of a general election and a churn? Secondly, relating to speeding up things, we have a fixed term Parliament now. We know when the general election is going to be. Why do we not actually require all Members, prior to prorogation in 2020 to pack up their offices? Even if they are coming back, all they have then got to do is unpack. I take George’s point; why can we not require all 650 Members to, on the date of prorogation-because it is fixed-have packed everything away?

George Mudie: On the latter point about everybody packing up, I would not impose that, because it is quite clear that a fair proportion of Members will come back. Electoral history teaches you that. If you had a majority of 20,000 and I came and said, "Pack your bags", you would not want to, unless there was a good reason like Fiona wanting to spruce the place up. That would be fine. There is good reason for saying to people who are leaving, who have been defeated, or whose offices you want to spruce up, "Pack up or we will do it for you, and you will have to unpack, etc." However, to impose it on the likes of you, Tessa, would be unfair.

Tessa Munt: I disagree.

Chair: Tessa, do you want to come back on that?

Q122 Tessa Munt: May I? I actually think it is not unreasonable. Again, if I go back to my life in a further education college, the summer holiday was the time when you had six weeks during which you could decorate every room, do all of the work that needed to be doing, and make sure there were enough boards and God knows what else. No­one should assume. I realise that, in practicality, there are safe seats, but unless somebody is absolutely specific about not requiring any decoration to that room, I do not think it is unreasonable. If they want to stay in that room for the next five years and they do not want it decorated at any point in the next five year Parliament, then fair enough, they might stay, but I do not think it is unreasonable at all for everybody else. I think Thomas has got a good idea there.

George Mudie: I would agree with you if Fiona wanted to decorate the 900 rooms. If that is not the programme-if the programme is 200 or 300-then it is different. That is the point I am making; if you have a good reason for telling someone to pack their bags, I would back you all the way. But if there is no good reason-

Tessa Munt: Forgive me, but I think there is a very good reason, because you have come to the end of a Parliament and that is a good enough reason. Frankly, you should be able to put your stuff in a box. I would rather pack up and unpack boxes briefly to facilitate a swift movement into an office, rather than faff around waiting for people to sort themselves out. I am right with you on your comments about people who are retiring or people who have lost. I think we should be far more brutal and it is perfectly all right to get everybody to pack up their baggage.

Chair: The point is on the record, and the Committee will decide what it wishes to say.

Q123 Thomas Docherty: Am I right in thinking that fundamentally, if this was handed from the Whips to yourselves, it would not particularly speed things up? It is the same challenge of "There is a general election, there is a churn, and we do not know who the Government is or how many of each party". Is that correct?

James Robertson: Fundamentally, I think that is correct.

Fiona Channon: I actually think it may be more difficult.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed. We appreciate your time and your evidence.