4 Offices and staffing
51. There is no doubt about the dedication, commitment
and hard work of HM Passport Office's frontline staff. As Paul
Pugh told us:
I would like to put on record my gratitude and
admiration for the many thousands of staff across the organisation
who are exceptionally committed, who are very proud of the work
that they do. I receive examples every day of members of staff
who have gone the extra mile.[51]
52. We acknowledge that this crisis
placed a significant burden on the staff of HM Passport Office
and applaud them for their efforts, which have helped to minimise
the consequences of the unexpected surge in demand.
Staffing resources
53. When the problem of delays first emerged, it
was initially posited that this was due to a reduction both in
the number of offices and the number of staff. On 9 June, the
PCS union wrote to Paul Pugh blaming the delays on "major
job cuts and office closures during the past five years",
as well as the increased use of private companies. The letter
stated that 22 interview offices and one application processing
centre had closed in recent years, with 315 staff - a tenth of
the workforce - losing their jobs. The Union did not accept that
the current problems could solely be down to unusual demand and
was considering industrial action over the issue.[52]
54. Mike Jones, Home Office Group Secretary, PCS,
told us that the backlog was "clearly down to staffing",
citing the loss of 550 jobs and the closure of 22 offices since
2010.[53] Paul Pugh pointed
to the seasonal nature of the work and argued that under-employment
had been a significant problem in the past, when staff were forced
to fill their time "tidying the office, keeping things up-to-date,
filing, in some cases reading books".[54]
OFFICE CLOSURES AND STAFF REDUCTIONS
55. The Identity and Passport Service[55]
Annual Report and Accounts 2012-13 states that the Agency
was on course to meet its Spending Review target to be self-funded
on core operations, and had implemented plans to reduce administrative
costs by 33% by the end of the Spending Review period in 2014-15.[56]
In the CEO foreword, Paul Pugh states "The [passport] fee
has gone down by £5, a direct result of the efficiency measures
we have taken since 2010, which saw a reduction in costs by £80m,
decreased the space we occupy by nearly 30% and reduced our headcount
by 20%".[57]
56. When he gave evidence to us, Mr Pugh said that
the size of the organisation had in fact increased by roughly
300 people in the last two years,[58]
and that it was actively recruiting new staff above the levels
required to manage natural turnover.[59]
The Home Secretary told us that on 31 March this year, HMPO had
3,444 full-time equivalent staff, up from 3,260 in 2013 and 3,104
in 2012.[60] Mike Jones
described these figures as "very misleading", arguing
that, notwithstanding the increase in staff numbers between 2012
and March 2014, there had still been an overall net reduction
of 550 staff since 2010.[61]
He suggested that HMPO's business model, which he described as
being dependent on "copious amounts of overtime, which burns
out staff" was primarily to blame for the crisis.[62]
IDENTITY CARDS AND THE NATIONAL
IDENTITY SERVICE
57. Part of the complication with comparing staff
numbers in HMPO over a period of time is that it is a changed
organisation, with different responsibilities to its predecessor
body, the Identity and Passport Service, of 2010. The Home Secretary
told the House that, once the ID cards programme was terminated,
"it was possible to take action both in relation to staff
numbers and to the closure of certain premises.
Those measures
were taken because HMPO had too much office space after we scrapped
ID cards".[63] Mike
Jones, on the other hand, claimed that HMPO had to be staffed
at the 2010 level. He told us that the comparison was not accurate:
We need to go back to the 2010 figure because
we need that amount of staff
we are in a crisis now because
we do not have enough jobs; people are working excessive overtime
for month and month on end.[64]
STAFF NUMBERS AS AT JUNE 2014
58. Due to the confusion as to the level of staffing
over the years, we requested information on the number of staff
employed by HMPO from January 2010 to the present. This has been
summarised in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Number of full time equivalent (FTE)
staff employed by HMPO
Source: Extracted from letter from Paul Pugh,
Chief Executive, HM Passport Office, 20 June 2014 (WPO0002)
59. The data shows that between March 2010 and March
2014 the number of full time equivalent staff employed by both
elements of HMPO had fallen by 548. During this time the number
of staff fell steadily from 4,017.52 FTE in March 2010 until it
reached the lowest amount of 3,103.83 FTE in September 2012. This
amounts to a reduction of 913.69 FTE. Since September 2012, the
number of staff has steadily grown to 3,506.36 in May 2014, an
increase of 402.53 FTE.
60. Based on the figures of the
number of staff, we cannot agree with the statement of PCS that
the backlog in processing applications "is clearly down to
staffing". If that were the case, delays would have been
experienced in previous years when fewer people were employed
in HMPO. However, questions remain over whether HMPO have the
right number of staff, and the right mix to deal with peaks in
demand.
OVERTIME
61. Mike Jones claimed that HMPO had moved to a business
model which reduced staffing to a shoestring, and was supplemented
by using massive amounts of overtime to try to compensate.
[65] When we pressed
Mr Jones further on the use of overtime, he said:
We are obviously getting feedback from our members
dating back from January where overtime has been used to
an excess.
There have been [previous] backlogs and there
have been problems.
Our members have been working really
hard to manage a ship that has been sinking for years and it has
eventually come to a crisis point now.[66]
62. At our follow-up evidence session on 8 July,
Paul Pugh said that it was important to see overtime costs within
the overall context of the Agency's pay costs. Staff and pay costs
accounted for about 25% overall of HMPO's running costs as an
organisation, so overtime costs were a very small proportion of
overall costs.[67]
63. Similarly, we requested from HMPO the costs for
overtime from January 2010 to the present. This has been summarised
in Table 4:Table 4: HMPO overtime costs
| 2011
| 2012
| 2013
| 2014
|
January |
| £46,498 | £105,137
| £199,146 |
February |
| £84,342 | £67,582
| £400,812 |
March |
| £569,117 | £369,397
| £840,588 |
April |
| £436,686 | £407,202
| £793,559 |
May |
| £702,602 | £581,587
| £964,742 |
June |
| £682,474 | £477,902
| |
July |
| £229,527 | £342,479
| |
August |
| £466,549 | £227,851
| |
September |
| £138,918 | £123,480
| |
October |
| £109,030 | £94,474
| |
November | £196,538
| £73,558 | £93,127
| |
December | £61,035
| £78,017 | £84,145
| |
Total
| N/A
| £3,617,318
| £2,974,363
| £3,198,847
|
Source: Extracted from letter from Paul Pugh,
Chief Executive, HM Passport Office, 20 June 2014 (WPO0002)
64. The data shows that in 2014, more has been spent
on overtime in January to May than in the whole of 2013. Additionally,
when comparing month by month, the amount spent on overtime in
each month of 2014 is of a significantly greater than in the same
month in previous years.
65. Based on the figures for overtime,
it is clear that the use of overtime to deal with peaks in demand
has proved unsustainable this year. This again raises the question
of whether HMPO have the right number of staff, and the right
mix to deal with peaks in demand. We recommend that future additional
jobs should be located, where possible, in areas that suffered
from previous job losses in the Passport Office.
Management relations with PCS
union, and the prospect of a strike
66. Mike Jones was scathing about the way in which
HMPO responded to concerns raised by the union. He said that the
Union had "consistently been given the brush off" and,
although some discussions had taken place, there had been "no
genuine attempt to address the issues properly". He said
that two letters to Mr Pugh had not received a response or even
been acknowledged.[68]
Mr Pugh, by contrast, described his relations with many representatives
of the Union as "extremely good". He said that he regularly
met union representatives when he visited regional offices, and
he had invited national representatives to attend a management
board meeting in late 2013, where a constructive discussion took
place. He said that he did not recognise the picture of poor staff
morale presented by Mr Jones:
Now, clearly I am very happy to listen to the
views that Mr Jones has to put about the picture of our organisation
as he perceives it, but I do not believe that the PCS union are
the sole means by which the views of staff within the organisation
are legitimately expressed." [69]
67. Mike Jones told us that the Union had a number
of areas where it wanted to negotiate with managementstaffing
levels, the use of overtime, levels of pay, and privatisation.
In particular, PCS was looking to secure the creation of 600 new
jobs and for HMPO management to guarantee that there would be
no further privatisation. He said that the Union had no current
plans for industrial action, but that "if we are continually
ignored we will go out to our members and ask them whether they
are prepared to take action if they feel that that is necessary".[70]
68. On Monday 28 July, Passport Office staff went
on strike over staff shortages. PCS General Secretary, Mark Serwotka
said, "The staffing crisis in the Passport Office has been
obvious for everyone to see and it shouldn't have taken a committee
of MPs to force the chief executive to meet us to discuss it.
We are still a long way off getting a commitment from the agency
that it will work with us to put the proper resources in place
to ensure these backlogs do not reoccur year after year."[71]
- We are concerned that the PCS
Union invited its members in HM Passport Office to go on strike.
This would cause further problems and delays in processing passport
applications. We call on the Union and HMPO management to discuss
the issue of adequate staffing, so that a sustainable solution
can be negotiated, and call for the restoration of goodwill between
management and the Union in this area that is of great importance
to UK citizens.
51 Q 106 Back
52
Threat of industrial action over passport office cuts, PCS Press
Notice, 9 June 2014 Back
53
Qs 9 and 12-13 Back
54
Q 107-114 Back
55
The predecessor to Her Majesty's Passport Office. See para 3 Back
56
Identity and Passport Service, Annual Report and Accounts 2012-2013,
HC 275, p7 Back
57
Identity and Passport Service, Annual Report and Accounts 2012-2013,
HC 275, p4 Back
58
Q 166 Back
59
Q 245 Back
60
HC Deb, 18 June 2014, col 1143 Back
61
Q 25-26 Back
62
Q 47 Back
63
HC Deb, 18 June 2014, col 1143 Back
64
Q 25-26 and 31 Back
65
Q 47 Back
66
Qs 1 and 12 Back
67
Q 240 Back
68
Q 58-64 Back
69
Q 134-135 and 144-146 Back
70
Q 51-52 Back
71
"Passport Office staff strike over staff shortages amid applications
backlog", The Guardian, 28 July 2014 Back
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