HL Deb 13 July 1994 vol 556 cc1882-90

7.38 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 3rd May be approved.

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the order will make provision for the management of the Northern Ireland Civil Service broadly corresponding to the effect of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Act 1992 in respect of the Home Civil Service. The latter legislation was examined in great detail during debate in your Lordships' House. It may nevertheless be helpful to the House if I comment briefly on the order and then say a few words about the detailed provisions.

The purpose of this order, and I would stress its only purpose, is to enable the Department of Finance and Personnel to allow managers in individual Northern Ireland departments and agencies to take more direct responsibility for the management of their staff. Under the Civil Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, the Department of Finance and Personnel is charged with responsibility for the general management and control of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, an organisation of some 30,000 people.

That workforce includes not only administrators dealing with almost the whole range of government, but also engineers, lawyers, economists and scientists. It has a common objective in its responsibility to serve the public of Northern Ireland. Otherwise the Northern Ireland Civil Service, like the Home Civil Service, is a group of discrete businesses with varying purposes and modes of operation; yet it is managed in such matters as pay and grading, allowances, promotion, probation, staff appraisal and so on as if it were a homogeneous unit.

The Government believe that the public service should be organised so as to allow its component parts to focus on their objectives and thereby provide a coherent management framework and offer a more responsive and cost-effective service to the public. That is why nine executive agencies have been created already in Northern Ireland with clearly defined aims, performance targets and budgets.

If we are to build on the progress already made in our reform of the management of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland, it is important that managers in these agencies, and in other business units, are allowed the flexibility to take the necessary decisions to achieve results within a proper framework of accountability. Within the present legislative framework, the Department of Finance and Personnel has been able to give departments and agencies only a measure of discretion in the management of their staff and then only within its responsibility to exercise general management and control. This order will permit the central department to delegate personnel functions and allow civil service managers the flexibility to meet quality of service targets and appropriately to reward and motivate staff, rather than having to apply centrally agreed conditions of service, which are recognised more and more as unsuited to the diversity of circumstances in which the Civil Service now operates.

I want to stress, however, as did my honourable friend in another place, that this order does not facilitate market testing and privatisation of civil service functions. It is concerned only with the management of Northern Ireland civil servants, not with a change in status.

The draft order was published as a proposal to give interested parties, and in particular Northern Ireland Members of Parliament and the Civil Service trade unions, the opportunity to comment. The comments received were very carefully considered and responded to in detail but did not result in any changes to the draft order.

Among the comments made, the view was put forward that delegation of personnel functions is inappropriate to the small scale of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. The Government believe that the diversity to which I have already made reference makes it appropriate that managers in the Northern Ireland Civil Service should be able to have flexibility in personnel matters where that will help them to meet their business objectives. The order does not oblige the Department of Finance and Personnel to delegate its management responsibilities, and departments and agencies will decide where delegated authority will help to improve the performance of their organisation both in terms of efficiency and service to the public.

The Government recognise that in the difficult circumstances of Northern Ireland its Civil Service has been a force for stability and that it enjoys a reputation for impartial service to the public, for promoting equality of opportunity and for high standards of conduct. I can assure your Lordships that departments and agencies will be required to exercise delegated authority within the basic principles of government policy and that essential standards of conduct will continue to be subject to whatever central rules are deemed necessary.

I want also to emphasise to those who may have a concern about the effect of this legislation on the morale of the Northern Ireland Civil Service that the order does not in itself change terms and conditions of service. Changes will come about only if departments and agencies see a need for them, and then only after consultation or negotiation with the staff concerned and their representatives.

I shall outline briefly the main provisions of the order. Article 3 permits the Department of Finance and Personnel to delegate functions related to the personnel management of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to other servants of the Crown. This defines the application of the order and ensures that it cannot be used to move the management functions or staff out of the public service.

It is intended that where a department or agency takes a delegation it should be given maximum flexibility, but only within a proper framework of accountability. The order provides that the Department of Finance and Personnel may attach conditions to the exercise of the delegation and may withdraw the delegated authority at any time. Furthermore, the right of Parliament to raise questions about the management of the Northern Ireland Civil Service is unaffected by the order.

Article 4 of the order deals with the management of civil servants who are appointed, and have their terms and conditions determined, under statutory provision. Thus their management is not governed by the Royal Prerogative, which is the subject of Article 3. Examples are the staff of the Land Registry and the Public Record Office in Northern Ireland. Typically the Department of Finance and Personnel is required to approve their terms and conditions of service, and the order permits the waiver of the statutory requirement for such approvals. It would be inconsistent if provision were not made to permit the same flexibility in the management of those bodies, as would be available under the order to the rest of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

Those are the main provisions of the order. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 3rd May be approved.—(Baroness Demon of Wakefield.)

Lord Holme of Cheltenham

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the extremely clear and helpful way in which she introduced the order to the House and for some of the assurances which she gave in the course of her remarks.

It is a coincidence that we should be discussing this order on the same day as the House debated a Statement on the White Paper on the future of the Civil Service —The Civil Service Continuity and Change. That prompts one or two observations on the order, which we do not intend to oppose from these Benches.

First, as the noble Baroness said, the Northern Ireland Civil Service is some 28,000 strong and is responsible for a budget of £700 million. That is a much higher ratio of civil servants to population than in the rest of the United Kingdom. The Northern Ireland Civil Service is not perfect and I dare say it is not always efficient and responsive, but we should recognise the extraordinary job which it does in difficult circumstances.

I was struck by the remarks of the noble Baroness on morale. I believe that there is an ethos in the Northern Ireland Civil Service which it is important not to destroy in the quest for efficiency. It is important to try to retain a sense of a particular role in Northern Irish society and not to allow the Civil Service to become too fragmented. When I hear the Government talk of market testing (and I recognise that the noble Baroness said that there is no question of this order relating to market testing) I sometimes think that if they did a little more test marketing and a little less market testing we should all be better off.

My question for the noble Baroness is, who is answerable for the actions of the agencies in relation to delegated powers and subcontracted activities? Her honourable friend Mr. Ancram in another place drew the following distinction: Recipients of delegations will be made clearly responsible for the exercise of a function, but the ultimate accountability of a Minister to Parliament remains intact". —[Official Report, Commons, 30/6/94; col. 979.] In the White Paper that was discussed earlier today, the words appear, delegation to and within properly accountable organisations". One of the anxieties that people have who welcome the move to executive agencies, as we do on these Benches, is how accountability operates day to day and year to year. For instance, should the executive agencies have to set such clear objectives that deviations from those objectives can be discussed by Parliament annually? The answer is, yes probably. One could say of the old-fashioned Civil Service department that the Minister was responsible. How can ordinary citizens in Northern Ireland who feel that in some way they have not received the service which they expect and who wish to raise matters through their constituency MP receive a satisfactory answer if the line of delegation is so strung out? How does the noble Baroness see that system operating in practice?

I have one final question about personnel. It is envisaged that there will be more recruitment from the private sector. That will probably be a good thing. However, can the Minister assure us that legislation to ensure fair employment, which is so important in Northern Ireland, will be rigidly adhered to? The report of the Fair Employment Commission reveals that the proportion of public sector appointees who are Protestant men is still greater than the proportion of applicants who are Protestant men. That is an important factor. I do not say necessarily that there is anything wrong with that. However, it is important to know in the context of Northern Ireland. Will such monitoring continue under the new agency structure? Will affirmative action such as has been so notably progressed in Northern Ireland be maintained? At the same time, will positive discrimination be resisted? I shall value the noble Baroness's response.

Lord Morris of Castle Morris

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining so pellucidly the order. But I regret that we on these Benches cannot welcome it at all. Is it not ironic, as the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, said, that it comes to us on the very day when we have heard the Statement about the strange future predicted for the British Civil Service—a future for which many have not been slow to predict a dismal doom?

We are opposed to the provisions of the order because they will, in our view, have the effect of dismembering and dismantling the Northern Ireland Civil Service for which we have a great regard, endangering the pay and conditions of its members, and severely undermining their morale which we are concerned to retain. They will be living in an atmosphere of steadily increasing uncertainty at a time when certainty, stability and assurance are more than ever vital to the work that they do.

These changes appear to have been brought forward with very little regard paid to the views and fears of the civil servants themselves, consulted though they have been, and they strike us as manifestly unnecessary. The Civil Service in Northern Ireland is unquestionably small by any standards —some say that the number is 30,000; some say 25,000 and one at least says 27,661. That is no larger than a small government department in Great Britain. Why, then, is this Irish devolution required so insistently? Is it not wasteful of taxpayers' money to insist that every department, every agency, whatever its size, must be given the right to set up and manage all its systems without benefit of any larger structure? Where, above all, is the evidence that managers in the Northern Ireland Civil Service want this new flexibility, which is being pushed down their throats?

What the order will certainly do is to contribute to what has been called "a culture of insecurity" in the terms and conditions of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Public service is not best given in an atmosphere of fear and greed, and constant uncertainty about the operation of the system is a threat to the civil servants' efficiency.

Perhaps I may ask the noble Baroness—I do not ask her to do so when she replies tonight because it is not easy to give such answers off the cuff; if she does so I shall be even more grateful—to do two things. First, perhaps she will demonstrate how this order does not make Ministers less accountable. I contend that it must do so because there will always be other new people who can be blamed and circumstances beyond normal control which can be taken into account.

Secondly, will she define precisely what is meant by the phrase "servant of the Crown" in Article 3? When this question was asked in another place, the Minister replied that, The term is limited to those in Crown service".—(Official Report, 30/6/94; col. 988] To my simple and untutored mind, that signifies no more than that a servant of the Crown is one who is in the service of the Crown. I should be grateful for any further enlightenment that can be offered.

We do not like this order. We wish it were not here. I shall not, of course, delay the noble Baroness's dinner and disarrange everyone else's by asking the House to express an opinion, but I am obliged to state that we on these Benches —both of us—are very resolutely Not-Content.

Lord Blease

My Lords, I join with the noble Lords, Lord Morris of Castle Morris, and Lord Holme of Cheltenham, in thanking the Minister for the clear and precise manner in which she outlined the order. I wish to say, too, that I wholeheartedly support what the two noble Lords on the Front Benches have said in opposition to the order, and indeed in probing the real objectives of the order.

The absence of objectives clearly defined in the order is one of the matters on which I express concern. There is no precise objective of seeking to obtain efficiency, management control or parliamentary responsibility. We have to note that the order was debated in another place on 30th June and agreed only after a Division on which the Northern Ireland elected Members joined the official Opposition in the Division Lobby. As was stated, the Statement debated today in this House about the Civil Service reforms does not make the order any more acceptable to the vast majority of the Northern Ireland Civil Service employees.

I wish to put two points to the Minister. They are both relevant to the discharge of duties regarding management efficiency and overall accountability in performance and financial terms. As has already been stated, the total number employed in the Northern Ireland Civil Service is equal to some of the smaller departments of the Home Civil Service, as it is described. The professionals, specialists, and management lines of communication are spread throughout Northern Ireland in different departments, as has already been outlined by the Minister. Here all those aspects would be employed in possibly one ministry.

The strengths of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to deliver services are the current span of command and lines of communication between divisions and departments. The manner in which the order proposes the discharge of duties, and for the Department of Finance and Personnel to issue authority and responsibility, takes away the great opportunities for, and awareness of, career prospects which already exist. We ought to foster and promote such opportunities in Northern Ireland. The breakdown into smaller units that the order proposes will destroy that upward movement and morale, and the incentive to complete the task with regard to delivery of services to the public. I believe that that destroys the position that exists in Northern Ireland.

To shorten what I have to say, I feel that what we are considering here is a total disruption of the pyramid structure of command within the existing Northern Ireland Civil Service. The Minister has outlined what is a cellular form of structure where each department or service would work isolated in a set compartment or cell. There would be no mobility, no lines of communication or of co-ordination. There would be no quick return if a parliamentary request were made for accountability of a particular service. The proposal destroys that. That is what I feel ought to be addressed in the order.

In essence, the Department of Finance and Personnel is the department at the top of the pyramid and it would take on the duties. Why should we have all these different departments and permanent secretaries in Northern Ireland? We want an efficient Civil Service there. The present one is quite able to adapt to the needs in Northern Ireland, which are different from those here. Much more could be achieved financially by management structures and in the services, provided financial services took over one department and let the other permanent secretaries fall into line in that management structure.

There is no need for the cellular development with little components of management accountability. It destroys the real thrust that Parliament can have on accountability and prolongs the line of communication and the response to what Parliament needs in this procedure. For those reasons, I oppose the order as it stands, verbally, but not in any way in the Lobby.

8.2 p.m.

Baroness Denton of Wakefield

My Lords, I thank those who have participated in this short but involved debate. First, perhaps I may say how delighted we are to see the noble Lord, Lord Blease, with us today. I am sorry that since I have had the privilege of being appointed to the Northern Ireland post he has not been able to be with us. I am also sorry that he should return to business which gives him considerable displeasure.

I believe that noble Lords have less faith in the Northern Ireland Civil Service than we have. I think that there will be no lessening of standards, and standards and fair employment principles will be maintained. The ethos and ethics are in the people, not the structure. That allows the people to have greater flexibility. Those closer to the staff and to the people whom they serve will be able to make the decisions. They will be able to help their young people to grow, which I know will give the noble Lord, Lord Blease, pleasure. We are not looking at a structure of command but at nurturing the staff and working with them to enable us to deliver the best possible service.

I am delighted to say to the noble Lords, Lord Holme and Lord Morris, that it may be ironic that we are discussing this on the same day as the Civil Service White Paper comes out, but it is no more than a coincidence. Had it been possible not to take the business on a Northern Ireland public holiday I am sure it would have been much appreciated.

I thank noble Lords for their tributes to the Northern Ireland Civil Service. They are well deserved. The service carries great responsibility in difficult situations which will not become easier. However, we believe that it will be possible for people in the service to work in a manner which will deliver a better service. I assure noble Lords that the accountability does not change; there is no risk. The Department of Finance and Personnel, as a delegator, remains responsible for the performance of the delegation. The Secretary of State retains ultimate responsibility, both in the right of the DFP and also in the right of the other department to which the function has been delegated, because both departments are subject to his control and direction.

Perhaps I may assure noble Lords that if they, as a Minister, were to ask a chief executive in an agency to agree the objectives for the coming year with them as Minister, they would watch closely to see that the objectives were being maintained. The order will give such people the right not only to have objectives but the right to be able to make the necessary decisions to achieve them. There is no question of delegating ultimate accountability. Furthermore, it is the intention to provide Parliament with an annual statement of the delegations granted.

The noble Lord, Lord Morris, questioned the meaning of the words "servants of the Crown". The term is limited to those who are in the service of the Crown. The easiest way to look at the definition is that it cannot apply outside the public service; it refers to the public service and not to the private sector.

I shall look carefully at Hansard and if I have not replied fully to any points raised I shall write to noble Lords. I am grateful for their contributions to the debate this evening. I commend the order.

Baroness Seear

My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down perhaps I may ask one question, as a matter of interest and for information. We on these Benches support the delegation but the noble Baroness said that the Department of Finance and Personnel has ultimate responsibility. What guarantee of minimum standards is there? How absolute is the delegation on pay and conditions of work? Are minimum standards laid down with which people have to comply although they can be varied within certain limits? How does it work?

Baroness Denton of Wakefield

My Lords, I am pleased to tell the noble Baroness that the delegation is within the Government's policy on such matters. The issue is that where one delegates something which is visibly not working there is the right to take the delegation back in order to ensure that it meets the standards in general. The individual detail will have to be worked out and proposed between the same civil servants who work together today.

On Question, Motion agreed to.