tata_transcript_aw reform research paper
TRANSCRIPT
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Open public servicesin a global marketplace
Reform-Tata Consultancy Services seminar series
Global solutions for open public servicesTim Jones, Chief Executive, National Employment Savings Trust Corporation Tuesday 11 September 2012
A flexible workforce: Improving skills mobility for economic growthMark Harper MP, Minister of State for Immigration
Thursday 6 December 2012
The role of the Civil Service in delivering open public servicesHon Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair, Public Administration Select Committee Wednesday 12 December 2012
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Reform
45 Great Peter Street
London
SW1P 3LT
T 020 7799 6699
www.reform.co.uk
Reform is an independent, non-party think tank whose
mission is to set out a better way to deliver public services
and economic prosperity.
We believe that by reforming the public sector, increasing
investment and extending choice, high quality services can
be made available for everyone.
Our vision is of a Britain with 21st Century healthcare,
high standards in schools, a modern and efficient
transport system, safe streets, and a free, dynamic and
competitive economy.
Kindly sponsored by:
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Attendees
Global solutions for openpublic services
Patrick Barbour
Matthew Burgess
General Secretary,
Independent Schools Council
Kate Blatchford
Analyst, Office of Fair Trading
Richard Bacon MP
Member, Public Accounts
Select Committee
Catherine Davies
Director, Cooperation andCompetition Panel
Tom Frusher
Director, Public Affairs and
Communications, McKesson
UK
John Godfrey
Corporate Affairs Director,
Legal and General Group
Savas Hadjipavlou
Business Director, Probation
Chiefs Association
Andrew Haldenby Director, Reform
Simon Hill
Head of Corporate Affairs,
Cerner
Richard Jeffery
Managing Director, AOM
Erica Jobson
Senior Advocate (Public
Services), Which?
Tim Jones
Chief Executive, NEST
CorporationTara Majumdar
Researcher, Reform
Gemma Norman
Policy and Research
Advisor, Business Services
Association
Jonty Olliff-Cooper
Director of Strategy, A4e
Neil Rutledge
Partner, Grant Thornton UK
LLP
Keith Sharp Vice President, Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
Kate Steadman
Director, Government &
Strategy, Sodexo Justice
Services
Damien Venkatasamy
Director Public Sector
UK and Ireland for Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
A flexible workforce:
Improving skills mobility
for economic growth
Robert Arnott
Director, Performance and
Compliance Unit, UK Border
Agency
Jo Attwooll
Policy Advisor, Universities
UK
Adrian Bailey MP
Chair, Business, Innovation
and Skills Committee
Richard Beamish
Interim Chief Officer, Alliance
of Sector Skills Councils
Jean CandlerInterim Head of Current
Affairs, Million +
Sophie Carter
Researcher, Office of Alan
Shelbrooke MP
Peter Cunnane
City Affairs Officer, City of
London
Andrew Haldenby
Director, Reform
Mark Harper MP
Minister of State forImmigration
Carrie Hartnell
Associate Director, Intellect
Mark Hilton
Programme Director for
Education and Employment,
London First
HE Thambynathan Jasudasen
High Commissioner, Embassy
of Singapore
Toomas Kull
NASSCOM UK
Tara Majumdar
Researcher, Reform
Ann McKechin MP
Member, Business,
Innovation and Skills
Committee
Julia Onslow-Cole
Partner and Head of
Immigration, PwC
Steve Radley
Director of Policy, EEF
Keith Sharp
Vice President, Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
Ceri Smith
Director, Labour Markets,
Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills
Damien Venkatasamy
Director Public Sector
UK and Ireland for Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
Glyn Williams
Head of Migration Policy,
Immigration and Border Policy
Directorate, Home Office
The role of the CivilService in delivering
open public services
Richard Bacon MP
Member, Public Accounts
Committee
Marcial Boo
Director of Strategy,
Communications and
Knowledge, National Audit
Office
Lee Bruce
Public Affairs and Campaigns
Advisor, Local Government
Association
Michael Burton
Director, The Municipal
Journal
Ian Dodge
Director, NHS Policy
and Outcomes Group,
Department of Health
Jane Dudman
Editor, Guardian Public
Leaders Network
Dr Chris Gibson-SmithChairman, London Stock
Exchange
Andrew Haldenby
Director, Reform
Hon Bernard Jenkin MP
Chair, Public Administration
Select Committee
Erica Jobson
Senior Advocate, Which?
Ed Jones
Account Director,
Hanover Communications
Stephen Kelly
Chief Operating Officer for
Government, Cabinet Office
Tara Majumdar
Researcher, Reform
Jonty Olliff-Cooper
Director of Policy, A4e
John Owen
Director, Strategic Markets,
Serco UK and Europe, Serco
Group
Zoe Paxton
Chief Press Officer,
Communications Directorate,
Cabinet Office
Charlie Pickles
Government Relations,
Accenture
Greg Rosen
Consultant Director, Reform
Keith Sharp
Vice President, Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
Mary Starks
Senior Director, Office of Fair
Trading
John Telling
Director, Group Corporate
Affairs, MITIE Group
Peter Thomas
Director, Strategy and
Change, Institute for
Government
Damien Venkatasamy
Director Public Sector
UK and Ireland for Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS)
Debra Willis
UK Government Relations
Manager, HP
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The challenge for the UK in coming years istwofold: to reinvigorate the economy and reform
the public sector and government. The recent Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS) / Reform series had
much to say on these overriding policy objectives.
Immigration policy is now recognised as being
an integral part of the growth agenda. As with
all regulation, businesses are just as worried
about uncertainty over policy as the policy itself.
The prospect of greater restrictions on skilled
immigration in future has been exercising the minds
of international businesses in the UK. For thisreason Mark Harper’s determination to stabilise
immigration policy, and his statement that the Home
Office is “signed up to delivering growth”, were
highly important.
The seminar also identified the importance of
delivery. Politicians will not be confident to engage
the public on the benefits of immigration if the
day-to-day management of the service is unreliable.
The seminar benefited a great deal from the
participation not only of the Minister but also keyParliamentarians and leading officials from a number
of departments.
Harnessing global talent will also benefit UK public
services in the future. The first seminar in the series
presented a valuable case study of global
partnership in public service delivery: the successful
administration of the NEST workplace pensions
scheme by TCS staff in the UK and India. The point
is not that all services should be delivered by private
operators or indeed by private operators overseas. It
is that competition from the widest possible range ofproviders will reduce costs and increase innovation
to the benefit of UK consumers.
The seminar discussed natural concerns over theaccountability of global partnerships that spend public
money. In my experience, one of the great benefits of
private sector delivery is that the process of agreeing
exact contracts greatly increases transparency
and accountability compared to the public sector
alternative. All private sector providers should aim to
be as open as possible about their contracting (with
the exception of their intellectual property).
Successful partnership requires intelligent clients on
the government side. The third seminar in the series
identified the success factors needed to spreadgood practice in that regard. The Chief Operating
Officer for Government, Stephen Kelly, made
absolutely clear his personal commitment to reform
and improvement. A number of participants
emphasised that the frequent rotation of officials
greatly hinders the ability of government to develop
skills, capability and competence. The discussion
supported the new urgency that Francis Maude, the
Minister for the Cabinet Office, has brought to the
delivery of civil service reform.
A country with the right immigration policy, with an
openness to global innovation in public services and
with excellent government procurement has much to
look forward to. The TCS / Reform series will help
policy makers move towards that vision.
Reform comment
Andrew Haldenby,
Director,
Reform
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On behalf of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) I amdelighted to provide this foreword and to have
supported this seminar series. At TCS we are
convinced more than ever that the current era of
public service transformation will require new
thinking and innovative global solutions, which utilise
a flexible, mobile and highly capable workforce. We
are grateful for the important contributions of Tim
Jones, Chief Executive Officer at the National
Employers Savings Trust (NEST), Mark Harper MP,
Minister of State for Immigration and Hon Bernard
Jenkin MP, Chair of the Public Administration SelectCommittee, as well as all of the other organisations
who participated. The seminars were very thought
provoking and topical, and I am pleased to have
contributed to the debates on these critical issues.
Our experience working with both governments and
the private sector globally is that where the challenges
are really understood and the solution energetically
embraced, transformation gives rise to service
improvement and cost savings. In many respects,
the challenges currently faced by governments all
over the world are similar to those that have beenfaced by the private sector for many years, whereby
organisations must evolve if they are to succeed over
their competitors. Although the same pressures do
not apply to governments, it is clear that other
parallels with the private sector hold true.
Technology-enabled business change has been at
the forefront of tackling the often conflicting priorities
of cost reduction and service improvement. Within
the UK Public Sector, TCS is partnering with central
and local government to deliver technology-enabledtransformation of: pensions administration services
for the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST),
casework management for the Child Maintenance
Group (CMG), back-office processes for Cardiff CityCouncil, grants administration for the Big Lottery
Fund, and criminal record and barring checks for the
Home Office’s Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
The Benefits of Leveraging Global Solutions
and Experience
The UK is not unique in needing to transform
services and reset the relationship between the
state and the citizen. Across the world organisations
are adapting and providing citizens with morepersonalised services, such as new mobile payment
systems for Indian farmers or the use of self-service
kiosks for probation management in New York. The
UK should look globally for the design and delivery
of new approaches and import expertise when it
does not exist nationally.
A key benefit of global delivery is speed – i.e. the
ability to scale up and deliver complex projects to
tight deadlines. Within this approach, the ability to
exploit skills availability and existing assets, suchas operational delivery centres, is critical, wherever
they may be in the world. By harnessing our global
delivery model to support our thousands of
permanent UK staff, TCS has been able to transform
public services in the UK. The Open Public Services
White Paper provided a clear indication that the Civil
Service is ready to embrace global solutions, where
they are appropriate to the needs of users. We heard
from Tim Jones, the Chief Executive of National
Employment Savings Trust (NEST), about how
adopting a global approach to delivery has helpedto ensure the effective administration of millions of
pensions’ accounts and hundreds of thousands
of employer-customer relationships to deliver
Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) comment
Damien Venkatasamy,
Director Public Sector UK and
Ireland for Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS)
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auto-enrolment for workplace pensions. It is clear
that there are an increasing number of examples
whereby a global sourcing approach has delivered
benefits to government departments within the UK.
The value of workforce flexibility and mobility
Businesses of all varieties consider international
labour mobility to be critically important for the UK
economy and creating growth. Clients demand a
blend of skills and experience that cannot always be
sourced from the UK’s existing workforce and global
solutions require access to the world’s best and
brightest people.
We welcomed the pledge from the Minister of
State for Immigration, Mark Harper MP, that the
Government will maintain a stable position onimmigration policy in this Parliament. Settled and
consistent immigration policy is vital for any
organisation seeking to invest in the UK.
A critical concern is the need for policy-makers to
accept the distinction between different kinds of
immigration. Economically active migrants are an
asset to the UK, providing tax, national insurance
and other revenues to the Treasury. Approximately
half of TCS’ workforce in the UK is made up of UK
nationals. On average, the remainder are resident in
the UK for less than a year, in which time theyimplant specialist knowledge, purchase goods and
services and contribute to the UK economy.
Businesses and policy-makers must support global
talent by clearly distinguishing and valuing this type
of labour mobility.
The role of the Civil Service
The fundamental question which needs to be
confronted in every government department is how
do you define its core function? What are the
functions that only the Civil Service can fulfil and then
conversely, what functions lend themselves toalternative forms of public service delivery?
Although these may be difficult questions for the
Civil Service to ask itself, once they have been
considered officials are in a position to assess a
range of delivery models – joint ventures, mutual or
cooperatives, outsourcing to the private sector or
engaging third sector organisations – to determine
which model will deliver the best outcome to
citizens. These questions of operational delivery and
capability should not be obscured by debates about
leadership and governance, which are important butdistinctly separate. It is clear that there are many
functions delivered by the Civil Service require
specialised knowledge and expertise that are not
available in the private sector. Equally there are many
areas of the Civil Service that could benefit from
alternative approaches and new delivery models.
Whatever the conclusion, it is clear from this series of
discussions that global delivery models and better
use of technology will be pivotal in the future.
At TCS we look forward to continuing to contribute to
this very important topic of transforming public services.
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Tim Jones, Chief Executive of NEST,
highlighted how NEST has collaborated with the Department for Work andPensions (DWP) and Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS) to deliver the NESTpensions scheme, a workplace pensionsprogramme.
He stated that, “we did a make/buydecision against our big problem which
was the scheme administration of
millions of accounts and hundreds ofthousands of employer – customerrelationships and determined it wasstupid to make it. It was better to buy it.”
Discussing the approach that NESTsubsequently took to nding a bidder forthe project, Tim said that, “we wanted
somebody whose distance from theirexisting estate of capabilities to ourrequirements was as small as possible”,
and that NEST were “completely global
in our outlook.”Reecting on the nature of the
collaboration, Tim stated that: “NEST isa pension scheme designed from theground oor up, which sits on an estate
of capabilities that TCS bring.”Damien Venkatasamy, Director
Public Sector UK and Ireland for Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS), observedthat underpinning the scheme is “a kindof global delivery model, in that much of
the front ofce or front of house pensionsadministration is delivered from
Peterborough where we have an existingfacility, and we actually have a whollyowned pensions subsidiary calledDiligenta which is based in Peterborough.
But a lot of the kind of back ofceprocessing is done out of Mumbai by oneof our delivery centres there.”
Setting out the argument for aglobal approach to public servicedelivery, Damien explained: “the reason
we’ve done it that way is not just aboutcost effectiveness. I think the reason
why NEST is interesting is that it is a
global approach to delivering these
services. Now you could say NEST isabout as close as you can get to a privatesector type endeavour… it just happens
to be under a Government non-departmental public body. But the
model works and I think the questionthat increasingly people need to askthemselves within the public sector is
where else could that kind of approach be replicated?”
“I think it would be wrong of me to
come here today and make the case for
outsourcing and global delivery ofservices given that I work for a company
whose core business is outsourcing andglobal delivery of those services. What I
want to do is to at least open up the
debate on this because with the OpenPublic Services White Paper I think it’s
very clear that this Government has a
view that the Civil Service, rightly or wrongly, is perhaps overweight in placesand could be made more efcient and
more effective.”“Where it leads to in the public
sector is probably a more difcult
question about ‘what is the core businessof a government department?’ Whatactivities does it need to preserve as its
own, i.e. those activities that no otherorganisation can do or it’s right for any
organisation to do. And once you’ve got
an understanding of that within agovernment department or an agency, Ithink the next step is to look at the
balance of activities and ask which ofthose could be provided more effectively,more cost effectively to a better quality
by another provider? And then I think the nal step
on that piece of analysis is to say if it is
something that we choose to get anotherorganisation to deliver, to what extent dothey have assets around the world that we
can leverage in order to increase the qualityand the cost effectiveness of that service?”
Simon Hill, Head of Corporate
Affairs at Cerner, raised the issue ofcomplicated accountability questions
which stem from global public-private
partnerships.“When you get a public-private
relationship that works well, it’s great. You don’t often really hear about it
because it’s not news. What you do hearabout is when it goes wrong. And whatare the problems? And you’ll nd that
Simon Hill, Tim Jones and Damien Venkatasamy
Global solutions foropen public services
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both sides tend to sort of blame each
other. And that’s true because actuallyinvariably when things go wrong thereis always blame on both sides.”
“One of the things that you willoften nd the private sector saying is‘who is the accountable person within
the public sector? Who has got the staragainst their name that if it goes wrong?’
And invariably what you nd is that the
star moves around from a number ofdifferent people, that the star is in onepost for a couple of years and then moves
to a different post, and when that star
appears in front of a select committeethey’ll say ‘well actually when I inherited
it, it was like this. Now I have done some work to make it like this, but I’m off in acouple of months to do this’. And that is
very difcult. You don’t tend to hear thesame of the accountable ofcer on theprivate sector side.”
Tom Frusher, Director of Public
Affairs and Communications at
McKesson, explained the role of
McKesson in the delivery of healthcarein the UK. He stated: “We provide the
world’s largest integrated HR and
payroll system. We’ve been doing thatnow for several years in partnership withthe NHS Department of Health. That’slooking at 1.4 million employees. So we
see that there are real opportunities in
partnering with the Government. I think
in the context of this discussion I have tostress we do that with no outsourcing oroverseas type stuff.”
“However, we’re very clearly
moving forward. McKesson being the world’s largest health IT provider, theoldest healthcare company in the United
States. There is expertise andcompetencies over on the other side ofthe Atlantic, and when we see those
being able to bring over some added value to the UK Government andEuropean countries, we will leverage
that wherever possible.”Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Director of
Strategy at A4E, discussed how theconcept of global delivery has impacted
on his own experiences of working infrontline public services.
“I work for a company which
provides frontline public services, mostlyin getting people back into work but alsogetting people off drugs and to stop them
reoffending and a variety of other things.I guess there isn’t an equivalent globalrole because you can’t do social work
overseas, for instance.”
But there are some wrinkles to that. We welcome more and more providers
coming to the UK even if they’re rivalsfrom overseas. We’re starting to seetherefore a couple of players that are a
little bit more global on the front of housestuff rather than just back ofce services.So Maximus which is a US welfare
company, they’ve invaded and stolenour contracts in Devon and Cornwall.”
Equally we work in Australia, for
instance. So there is a kind of knittingtogether of some issues of global bestpractice on this that’s happeningthrough a market mechanism.”
“It’s important to remember thatthere is a considerable export industry inthe UK, a growing, booming industry in
public services, both in back ofceservices, front ofce and mixed ones.
And actually British companies areleaders in this and are seen as globalleaders in this. And because Britishpolicy is leading in this area you don’t
need to give a kind of subsidy to supportthat industry.”
Neil Rutledge, Partner at Grant
Thornton UK LLP, argued that withregards to outsourcing, “it feels to us that
bringing in new players to the market is
absolutely critical. It’s most likely that your incumbent is not likely to beincentivised to offer the full breadth of
what’s available, and therefore there is a
real role in the Government aboutencouraging new entrants, and they have
to do a bit more than just slightly openthe door. They have to really say we aregoing to let everybody be clear there will
be new entrants coming into thatmarket. And most competitors will
welcome that, I think, as you’ve
suggested, because it helps enhanceeverybody’s capability.”
Richard Jeffrey, Managing
Director of AOM, commented that oneof the largest barriers to successful
outsourcing is the inherent condence of both sides.
“I think the Civil Service inparticular could do a lot to essentiallyaddress the concern of ‘are we just giving
away prot to nasty third party privatesector organisations?’ Well if we’re tand able, then essentially we’re
demonstrating that we are condentabout what we do and we’re offeringgood value to the taxpayer.”
“I think the barriers to those thingsare the things – we’ve got to get into whythose options at the moment, the most
theoretically attractive, pragmaticallyare not taken up.”
Simon Hill explained that: “we
need to have the necessary conditions inplace both legislatively and in terms of
Savas Hadjipavlou
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guidance because there is, I suppose, asort of fear factor that we don’t take itforward because of the history of other
public-private sector partnerships whichhaven’t worked out so well.”
Savas Hadjipavlou, Business
Director at the Probation Chiefs
Association, warned that: “I mean what I’ve heard so far is largely aboutthe large scale, transactional based
work which kind of lends itself to eachindividual component and it’s fairlystraightforward, can be automated and
so on. The other ip side to that is workthe public sector and the public services
are involved in which is complex,individually based, largely driven bylocation, locality. I think it does dependto a large extent on which area of the
public service you’re looking at.”“If we do look at something like the
justice sector or probation, there is a lot
of work and change going on. There is agood deal of challenge. And things are
changing. But I haven’t heard anybody
as yet put forward a proposition that youdo probation from Mumbai. It doesn’tmake any sense.”
Catherine Davies, Director of the
Cooperation and Competition Panel,argued in favour of: “reducing barriers toentry that enables people to come in and
stimulate competition, which is generallya good thing”, while also noting thepolitical difculties.
She said: “my impression isthat sometimes within the healthcaresector we talk about competition,
privatisation, private sector. It all becomes
a very emotive issue and it’s difcult toseparate those things sometimes. I think
outsourcing and asking the private sectorto come in and provide services issometimes very difcult for people. The
idea of the global dimension is just yetanother difculty on top of that. Butoverall the concept of lowering barriers to
entry is a good thing in my view.”
Kate Blatchford, Analyst at the
Office of Fair Trading, referred back tothe issue of accountability surrounding
the concept of global delivery, stating: “I wondered how much of an additionaldimension or problem it is potentially
when you’re looking at globalised publicmarkets and how you deal with theaccountability issues there. How are you
accountable when you are a global body,and what sort of levers and mechanismscan we think about in which that can be
made to work?”Erica Jobson, Senior Analyst
at Which?, observed: “when you look
at quite a lot of the open public servicesagenda, I feel that the Governmentand businesses are moving quite fast,and there is going to be quite a big lag
time for users to catch up with theexpectations. If you are having moreof a transactional relationship and there
are demands being put on you and youare being asked to be a consumer, that’s
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ne as long as you have what you needto be an engaged consumer, which isinformation, advice, guidance, choice,
and redress. When something goes wrong you need to have someone totake you through the whole process,
and an understanding that you’remaking a choice.”
Damien Venkatasamy, returnedto the question of accountability in
global delivery in stating: “I think as aglobal business we’ve been quite carefulto keep a relatively at structure so that
accountability is very clear.”“I would say on all of our
government contracts we’ve had issues of varying size and complexity. And theaccountability for that initially resides
with the client partner that’s looking after
the public sector. We then operate a kindof geographic structure. So there is aHead of UK. That would be the next port
of escalation. And then beyond him it’sdirectly into our CEO who runs the wholecompany. So there are only really three
points of escalation that we operate.”“The other aspect of it is we’re
quite careful to get into relationships,
whether it be in the public sector or
private sector, with people that we feel we can work with. And ultimately I think
that’s how issues get resolved. There hasto be willingness on both sides that
you’re going to x the problems and
you’re not going to kind of escalate themin perpetuity.”
Richard Bacon MP, Member of
the Public Accounts Select
Committee, spoke on the issue oftransparency, noting: “on our
committee, which is the value for moneycommittee, we don’t look at the policy.
We look at the results of where things –usually; not always – of where thingshave gone wrong. And accountability is a
very big issue for us. When you weretalking a bit earlier about the person
with the star on his head or her head whom you can follow around, that has been a huge issue.”
“I have a telephone provider athome in Norfolk that is constantly
winning the best value for money award
every year – at least they tell me they areon their bill. But they’re never winningthe best customer service award. I know
the reason for this is that every time I callthem, which thankfully isn’t too often,it’s always a 45-minute wait before I get
through to the person in Mumbai. AndI’ve often thought I would happily go to
another provider where I paid moremoney and I got a service that I liked.”
“The difference is I do have that
choice. If I’m going along to the JobCentre and I don’t get the service that I
want and they want to pay me by benet,
I don’t have the option of saying ‘give memy benet or I’ll take my businesselsewhere’. It’s just not like that. So
you’re always talking at one remove. You’re talking about an interlocutor ofsome kind, an intermediary of some kind
trying to provide the service on behalf ofa government vendor to the public thatisn’t going to change where there’s a
natural monopoly.”Tim Jones argued that: “ease,
transparency, and empowerment are the
three things that our customers askedfor. It had better be transparent so I cansee what you’re doing with my money.
And you better make it easy for me to get
as involved or as uninvolved as I want.That’s what the empowerment means.”
“We are very transparent in that we
are clear about the overall size of thecontract. But I’ve got to balance thattransparency against member interests. I
have not disclosed what we’re paying our
providers. I think it’s in my members’interests to keep condential the
fantastic rates I’ve got from those fundmanagers because I want them to getfantastic rates for my members again.”
Matthew Burgess, General
Secretary of the Independent Schools
Council, noted: “In my sector, the
education sector, the distinction isactually prot versus not-for-prot.There is a great customer, consumer
political opposition to bringing infor-prot providers into the education
sector. And what you’ve seen is globalmarket players. But they are doing itthrough not-for-prot entities. And as yet
we have not got to the point where the
public it seems accepts that in educationpeople should be making prot.”
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Mark Harper MP, Minister of State
for Immigration, began by layingout the Government’s current stance
on immigration. He argued that“controlling immigration is a veryimportant political issue. I think it is
worth saying because anybody who
thinks that by not talking about it, notdealing with it and not controlling it youcan have it swept under the carpet I
think is kidding themselves. Indeed, it’smuch better that we have a rm but fairimmigration system because actually
then it’s dealt with by rational, sensibledebate by mainstream political partiesrather than allowing extremists and
people who would use these issues in anunhelpful way to be able to lead and setthe agenda.”
“The last two and a half years hasreally been about getting policy in goodshape and moving to a system where wehad controls that would deliver a
reduction in net migration but also aboutdelivering more selectivity so we don’t
just have fewer people coming here but
we have the right people for benetingBritain and Britain’s economy.”
“I see, going forward, a position
where we have some policy stability, and I want to really focus in my time in this jobon working with our colleagues in the UK
Border Agency and Border Force toimplement that policy to listen to where
businesses and universities have got
issues about how it works and make that work better. I have had, just by way ofconclusion, very positive meetings with
UUK, looking to them about how we
can work more closely together in acollaborative framework where our job isto help their members comply rather than
catch them out, and to deliver growth.”“To some extent the Home Ofce is
a control department, so clearly we are,
by denition, trying to stop people doingthings they want to do. But we are verymuch signed up to delivering growth. I
want to make sure we deliver an ability
for businesses to bring in the rightpeople for Britain and to make sure that
we can do business and the education
sector can be successful.”Keith Sharp, Vice President,
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
responded: “saying that policy changesare largely done and we’re moving to astable implementation era is very
welcome news because one of the things
we’ve lived with over the last several years is future anxiety- what’s waiting for
us around the corner?”He went on to say: “International
labour mobility is absolutely key to how
we deliver value to UK PLC. We’re ableto bring in people on a temporary basisto supplement the staff that we employ
in the UK.”“I guess our concern going forward
is that although we see it as international
labour mobility, at the moment allmigration is dumped into the one
bucket, and we would welcome somekind of distinction or separation betweenthe types of migration.”
“But what the Minister said earlier
will alleviate some of the future fear thatI was going to talk about, and we doappreciate the way in which the
Government has approached its policytowards intra-company transfers”.
Damien Venkatasamy, Director
Public Sector UK and Ireland for Tata
Consultancy Services (TCS), furtherdeveloped the case for internationallabour mobility.
“We win these contracts because we’re able to hit the timeframes. We’reable to hit the timeframes because we
can take advantage of a global workforce.So for us this is not really about taking
A flexible workforce:Improving skills mobility for economic growth
Mark Harper MP and Keith Sharp
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jobs from UK citizens. This is aboutgrowing our business which, in turn, isenabling us to employ more UK citizens
by augmenting them with skills fromoverseas that we can’t readily access inthis country.”
He continued: “When these peopleare here in the UK they are renting ats.Sometimes they bring their families
across and their partners take jobs.They’re putting money into the localeconomy, buying food and things like
that. We also nd they bring thoughtleadership, new ways of doing things,methodologies that both our clients
benet from and also our UK workforce
benet from.”Julia Onslow-Cole, Partner and
Head of Immigration atPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC),argued for an exemption from thecooling-off period for very high earners.
“A couple of weeks ago we had a banking client that wanted to hiresomeone in New York. This is a very
rare occurrence now: very big salary,hundreds of thousands, and the bank inthe UK was competing against banks in
New York. And they could not bring himinto the UK because of the cooling offperiod. We had to actually try and look
at alternative routes including theinvestor route to try and bring him inas an independent investor to get him
into the UK.”“I think a very quick x is if you took
people, say, earning over £250,000 a year
out of cooling off, I think that wouldalleviate the problems for companies
looking at those very big hires.” Adrian Bailey MP, Chair of the
Business, Innovation and Skills
Committee, raised the importance ofnding a political position to underpinimmigration policies reecting the
economic needs of the country.“I visit local foundries which I
know if they had not been able to recruit
migrant workers from east Europe wouldhave gone under, losing a considerablenumber of jobs for the indigenous white
population as well. But unfortunatelythat is not a message readily understood
by the public at large.”
Adrian emphasized the economic
need to win the political argument forand subsequently implement a more
exible visa system that will “enableindustry to tap into the best global
brains. There is increasing evidence that
we now have global market in talent because clever people know that they cango almost anywhere in the world and
deploy their skills to the benet of thathost country, and we are missing out insome of those areas. Secondly,
universities are a huge export earnerfrom foreign students – we’re missingout on that. There has been a substantialdrop from India, one of our historic
markets, and we are underperforming interms of our relationship with Brazil.”
To deal with this, Adrian said,
“student visas should be taken out
of the net immigration gures. The
Government has got to nd a way ofmanaging this politically because I thinkthere is now a huge volume of evidence
to demonstrate that our future economicgrowth could be adversely impactedunless we get this issue resolved.”
Mark Harper MP responded:
“Trying to pretend that students are notmigrants I think is fundamentally justnonsense. If someone comes here to
work for two years, we count them.There is no logical reason why you
wouldn’t count someone who comes
here for three or four years as a student.
They are a migrant. They meet theinternational denition of a migrant.
They have an impact on the communitiesthey live in.”
He continued: “I want a system
where I can do exactly what Adrian wantsto do. So we need to go and make the casefor global talent, getting the brightest and
the best to come to the UK, allowing ouruniversities to get those students here. But
we’re not going to win those arguments if
people think we have a system that has nocontrols. We’ll lose that debate, and that
will be bad for Britain.”Steve Radley, Director of Policy
at EEF, observed that “despite the fact we’ve had fairly weak economic growth,
companies are already reportingsignicant skill shortages. The goodnews is that they’re getting on with
investing in apprenticeships and inretraining the workforce. But at the sametime they do need to bring in skilled
workers at some time.”“We’ve just completed a
submission to the consultation from the
Migration Advisory Committee
proposing that sunset clauses areintroduced on the shortage occupationlists after just a period of two years. But
the idea that after just two years we’llhave had a lasting solution to thisproblem and to introduce sunset clauses,
and then there being another year before we can get them back on again, just doesnot seem to be a sensible approach and
not a good example of the selectivity we’re talking about.”
Ann McKechin MP, Member of
the Business, Innovation and Skills
Committee, agreed, stating: “I think we do have to be careful about certain
niche areas where there are going to belong-term shortages, and if we want tomake sure if we’re in a global competitive
market that we’re not losing our edge.”
Julia Onslow-Cole
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Making a plea for post-graduateresearch, she noted: “I’ve got Glasgow
University in my constituency area. We’ve got very large postgraduatecentres in medical research. Obviously
half of the people there who workactually come from non-EU countries.That is a unique part about the university
sector in the UK is actually we have a very high number of people from all overthe globe, and we actually do gain fromthat knowledge exchange, from that
ability. That is why our universities areso attractive, and I think we just haveto make sure that we retain our edge in
that respect.”Jo Attwooll, Policy Advisor at
Universities UK , explained that: “What
we’re looking for is Government supportfor sustained growth in legitimatestudent numbers within universities, not
least because of the future links thatthose students, when they graduate,offer to the UK. I think there was a BIS
study earlier on this year which showedthat something like 78 per cent ofgraduating students wanted to build
links with UK organisations in future.That is a huge number and there issignicant potential there.”
Ceri Smith, Director of Labour
Markets at the Department for
Business, Innovation and Skills, raised
the issue of future challenges for policy.
“It seems to me the stuff that goes
on now will be setting the context forthat debate. And the debate at themoment is very much in terms of net
migration and the target around that.”“If the future policy debate
continues only to be around net
migration, then any government of whatever complexion is going to nd it very difcult. My question is how does
any government respond to that goingforward, given opportunities like theneed to increase our educational exports.
You can only do that if there is actuallyan acceptance out there in the public
that that is a good thing to do. How doesone build public condence that the
borders are secure if actually somehow you’re seen as changing the terms of
the debate?”“It seems to me what one needs to
do between now and the next election is
start laying the grounds for a newframework for debate – not necessarilyset out what that answer might be but
somehow change the terms of the debateso it’s not suddenly seen as a shift andsomehow fudging the numbers. I don’t
see, as an ofcial, how we could lay theframework for that going forward. Itseems to me it’s not just about
Government. It’s also about businesses.”Jean Candler, Interim Head
of Current Affairs at Million+, called
for a more positive narrative fromthe Government.
“The ‘brightest and the best’ sendsa very negative message externally tooverseas countries as well as here. We
don’t use these terms because who is the‘brightest and the best’? What we meanis talented people. We want people who
are entrepreneurial and talented and who can offer something. So narrative isreally important. If we want to move
forward we need to think about how weexpress ourselves, what messages those
words are giving to other countries and
to this country.”
Mark Harper MP responded: “Thereason why we use the language aboutthe ‘brightest and the best’, about
selectivity, is we do want our universitiesto be getting the best people to comehere. We’re talking about skilled workers
coming in. But we’re clear we don’t thinkit’s of economic benet to the UnitedKingdom for lots and lots and lots of
unskilled workers coming here whodon’t really bring anything to the party.”
Richard Beamish, Interim Chief
Officer at the Alliance of Sector Skills
Councils, observed: “I think the issuefor us is over the public perception. It’s
over some of the more extreme political views. People don’t think about netmigration. They don’t think about skills
and talent. They think aboutimmigration. And the challenge we haveis to get the message across to the public
as a whole so there is real support for theconcept of skills and knowledge transfer,for movement of skills throughout the
world because that is what we’re talkingabout as well.”
HE Thambynathan Jasudasen,
High Commissioner at the Embassyof Singapore, observed: “in Singapore
we come from the perspective that the
countries that have the largestconcentration of talent will create
wealth, and countries that do not have
enough talent will decline. And the gamenow is one of attracting the most numberof talented people. So I’m in competition
for talent. And all our countries are incompetition for talent.”
“I’m a major investor here, and Ithink one of the issues we do have is
bringing people here, not so much that it’simpossible to get them in, but just in termsof the time taken. Businesses tend to
operate at a much faster pace. And when Isit down and talk to them, their challenge isalways to get the processes done quickly.”
HE Thambynathan
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Robert Arnott, Director of
Performance and Compliance Unit at
the UK Border Agency (UKBA), notedthat immigration controls were needed“to get the operation right, both because
that then drives the credibility of thesystem which allows us to make thepolitical argument, but also because it
drives good selectivity in the way in which we do things.”
“But we then need very well in
operational terms to have adifferentiated approach to differentcategories of people. And we clearly need
to up our game substantially for those
cohorts of people who want to come tothe UK legitimately.”
He added: “On average 70,000people pass through Heathrow Airportevery day. Somewhere in the 70,000 are
some people who probably shouldn’t behere or who are certainly worthy of asecond look. So our operational
challenge is to know as much as possibleabout the 70,000 people before they gethere, try to prevent the bad ones evergetting on a plane in the rst place. We
have lots of international cooperation tohelp us with that – to spot them as theyarrive, and make sure we have a way of
realising that we won’t always get thingsright upstream.”
Mark Hilton, Programme
Director for Education and
Employment at London First, provideda case study: “One of our big four
accountancy members employssomething like 12,000 people. About 10per cent of those are non-EU. The
greatest proportion of that non-EU workforce are Indians. And theaccountancy rm is concerned about the
dip in Indian student numbers cominginto the UK because they sh from thatglobal talent pool.”
“And the reason that pool is soimportant to them is they employ them,they train them up in London, they
develop the skills, and then they exportthem out to support the work that they’redoing to build trade in the Indo-UK
corridor. So it’s not necessarily aboutemploying people to stay here, but it’susing people in that kind of global talent
ow way.”Sophie Carter, Researcher at the
Office of Alan Shelbrooke MP, said:
“it’s really good to hear UKBA isdeveloping, but the people on the frontline as far as the universities go are theadmissions ofcers. They see how well
the UKBA targets are met and whether
there is a problem. So obviously theLondon Metropolitan thing could have
been maybe discovered sooner by talking
to admissions ofcers.”Toomas Kull, from NASSCOM
UK , closed the discussion with a reference
to the importance of open debate andgood relations between government,universities and business: “We did make
some changes to the immigration rulesthat were laid before parliament a coupleof weeks ago. Clearly there will be tweaks
where people give us particular examplesthat we need to deal with, and we are very
open to looking at those. So it’s abouthaving that dialogue really.”
“Certainly those of you whoengage with ofcials will nd that we
want to listen. We won’t always agree, but I think we want to understand theissues and balance them out and try
and deliver that.”
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Hon Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair of
the Public Administration Select
Committee, began by outlining the
underlying factors that had led to thedevelopment of the Civil Service ReformPlan, explaining that it was “a nal
admission that the government needs
a plan in order to change the natureof government. It needs a changeprogramme. But it’s a plan that is
both a product of frustration and adetermination to do things. Thefrustration arises from the fact that
it’s very hard to get anything done in
government apparently, and the solutionseems to be to start questioning the very
basis on which the Civil Service was
established as we know today by theNorthcote-Trevelyan Report of 1853 asreinforced by the Haldane model of
accountability which has given us a Civil
Service that saw us through the 20thcentury, world wars, economic crises.”
“We ask Ministers to go into thisextremely highly charged, difcultenvironment and to assumeresponsibility in government
departments for direct command over
people whom they don’t choose. And it’s
not surprising how those people arechosen has moved up the agenda in theCivil Service Reform Plan because in no
other walk of life is the Chief Executive ofa company, for example, required to
work with the people that he’s taken over
from his predecessors.”“We’re dealing in a political
environment which has changed very
dramatically even from 20 years ago.There is far more scrutiny of what goes onin government departments. Ministers
and senior ofcials are trying to run
The role of the Civil Service indelivering open public services
Hon Bernard Jenkin MP
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government departments in a goldsh bowl where they are being looked at by
24x7 media, the select committees,freedom of information requests.”
“What we need to help Ministers
and ofcials do better is to understandeach other and share each other’sconcerns and information. What is
happening at the moment is that in toomany Ministers’ ofces and governmentdepartments there is mutual suspicion
between ofcials and ministers. They are
hoarding information from each other. And if things aren’t getting done andthings aren’t going well, then people are
working in secret silos.”
“The Prime Minister has becomea more superannuated presidentialgure with more staff. My favourite
statistic is that there are a thousandmore people working in the CabinetOfce and Downing Street than there
were when Margaret Thatcher left ofce. All sorts of things that are happeningoutside of government departments, not
least the Prime Minister has his ownprivate policy. You hear people ingovernment departments saying: ‘gosh,
you know, everything goes ne until theTreasury or Downing Street get involvedand then everything stops because there
is a bottleneck’.”
“If we’re going to address theproblems of structure, of trust, I think
we’ve also got to address the structureof governments.”
Damien Venkatasamy, Director
Public Sector UK and Ireland for
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
drew a parallel between the challengescurrently facing the public sector andthe driving forces which drive private
sector service delivery.“The rst observation that I would
have is that in many respects when I look
at the situation of the public sector andpublic service delivery, I see quite a strong
parallel in many respects to where theprivate sector has been for a long time. Soobviously the autumn statement recently,the budgetary cuts, and the year of
austerity lead you to a conclusion thatactually there is a need to reduce theoperational costs of delivering public
services. And then I guess counterintuitiveto that or contrary to that, there is also arising expectation from the electorate in
respect of the level of public service thatthey want to be receiving. And that issomething that the private sector has
grappled with for a long time.”Damien alluded to ways in which
the public sector could look to tackle this
problem in stating: “I think that leads you to a conclusion that something doeshave to change in terms of the way that
public services are delivered in thefuture, and I guess there is no oneanswer to that, and it depends on what
the function is. But I think there is a verydifcult question that every governmentdepartment, every government agencyand every local authority probably needs
to ask which is: ‘what is our core
function?’ By that I mean what are thefunctions that only we, the Civil Service,
can full, either because of a legalrequirement or because, frankly, there isso much knowledge embedded in that
function that it would be ludicrous foranyone else to even attempt to do it.”
“I want everybody to imagine a
spectrum which at the one end hasprivatisation and then at the other hascivil service in-house delivery. And then
in between you’ve got outsourcing, joint ventures, mutuals, co-operatives – allkinds of different public service delivery
models. Once the difcult question has been asked by a department of what theircore function is and therefore what things
are they perhaps not best placed to do,that spectrum I think needs to be applied
Dr Chris Gibson-Smith
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to the things that they don’t consider to becore, to say: well, what is the best deliverymodel for this moving forward?”
He concluded by arguing that thepublic sector should look to the privatesector’s embracing of technology to
enhance the quality of its serviceprovision: “what we see in the privatesector is people are very much milking the
back ofce, using technology to milk the
back ofce in order to feed the front ofce. And I think that is something that the
Civil Service could very much consider.”Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Director of
Strategy at A4E, observed: “I suppose
there are sort of two Ss which maybecover what we feel like we’re on thereceiving end of. I think one is about
bad structures, and the other is aboutinadequate skills.”
“There is a real problem that
aspects of commerciality are often justnot there. So one department estimatedfor us to do a programme we’d need £3million to do that in working capital. We
actually needed £38 million. That’s quitea big mis-estimate from them. And thedifculty of raising that money can be
sometimes, for some types of
organisation, quite extreme, particularly
for charities and so on.”Discussing the strengths of the
strategy: “I guess an additional S would
be strategy. Our biggest client is DWP andI think that they have been really fantasticin saying this is the direction, and giving
you a great deal of clarity. And it’s soimportant when you’ve got to raise a lot ofmoney, because investors will attach a
massive premium to what you’re doing ifthey think it’s all going to fall to piecesshortly. The DfE have been similar.”
John Telling, Director of Group
Corporate Affairs at MITIE Group,picked up again on the point of therotation of civil servants around
departments: “I’ve got a suspicion thatthere are some within the public sector
who thought that at this stage through
the parliament that things would be a lot better and therefore they didn’t reallyhurry much to do reform. And my plea
really is to say we’ve still got two and ahalf years left of this parliament andthere is an awful lot that can be done.”
“When the contractors at thestart of this government had to do amemorandum of understanding, we
dealt with eight different teams in theCabinet Ofce in relation to that. Every
time it comes out, it’s a different team.So that knowledge drain is enormousall the time. Our view would be stick
with the teams you’ve got, make themresponsible for delivering the projectsthey’re working on and seeing throughthe results.”
John Owen, Director of
Strategic Markets for Serco UK andEurope, was critical of the mutual
suspicion between public and privatesector providers.
“From Serco’s perspective I would
say the majority of our employees feelmore civil service than the civil servants.They get up and they spend more of their
time delivering great frontline servicesthan the average people in the Civil Service.
And that’s why they like coming across.”
“I’m just shocked why we havepublic sector/private sector as if one is
better than the other or vice versa. It’s
public services, and as a consumer I wantgreat public services at a low cost, digestedin a way I want to digest them, relevant for
me and my society. And I think the key forme is it’s this partnership.”
Stephen Kelly
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Mary Starks, Senior Director at
the Office of Fair Trading, highlighted
the signicance of the diverse range ofskills that must underpin the multipleroles government has to play in the
provision of services: “in particular oneof the things that has been a big focus forus is procurement and commissioning
and how that set of skills is reallyquite fundamentally different toprovision. We’ve had a focus on trying
to think about how procurement andcommissioning can work, not just sothat you get good value for the rstround, but such that in 10 or 15 or 20
years you’ve got a vibrant market witha multiplicity of providers and notdefaulted to two or three big incumbents.
Those questions are quite difcult, and Ithink it partly comes down to skills.”
Marcial Boo, Director of
Strategy, Communications and
Knowledge at the National Audit
Office, commented again about the
importance of ensuring continuity: “Withministers changing, with senior civilservants moving around departments as
has been outlined, there need to bemechanisms by which both layers – the
political layer and the administrativelayer – can work effectively together, setand monitor their driving through oflong-term change that’s not going to be
interrupted because of staff turnover orpolitical ghting.”
Dr Chris Gibson-Smith,
Chairman of the London Stock
Exchange, discussed the importance ofleadership and valuing the workforce:
“the competency of leadership cannot bedisrespected to the standard that it’scurrently disrespected. Society is more
complex than it has ever been in history.There is no component of society whichis not now a lifetime study. If the Civil
Service is to do something it has to be ofConfucian standards of capability in theface of that complexity, and it must bestable, self-condent, and well paid, and
superbly educated. You cannot changethe Secretary of State for Transport 16times in 18 years and imagine you’re
doing anything except take the mickey of we the people.”
He also highlighted the importance
of better nancial management: “the
second thing is we’ve got to get control of budgeting. I would have a national
balance sheet that had integrity. And I would have scal budget boundaries with criminal sentences if you broke
them in order to make sure that we
understood that they had a purpose and
were for real. I’d be very selective withexternal help. You don’t need a lot of it.
Make the people change themselves. Andit will take fantastic training and supportto get it to happen.”
Stephen Kelly, Chief Operating
Officer for Government at the Cabinet
Office, made the case for haste in
implementing the Civil Service ReformPlan during the current window ofopportunity: “Let’s not boil the oceanor have a kind of two-year sabbatical
Oxford Union debate about ‘is it the best
plan?’, but let’s just get on and do the 18points within it. And it talks about
leadership. It talks about capability. Ittalks about operational skills. And ittalks about pretty much all the right
things, and then at the end of thisParliament I think it will give us, if we’resitting here with the Civil Service at
380,000 people rather than in 2010480,000 people still collecting taxes, stilldelivering benets, still supporting the
citizens of this country, we’ll be on a whole lot better plane to actually look atthe next phase of the journey.”
Greg Rosen, Consultant Directorat Reform, argued that “the Civil ServiceReform Plan does talk about many of the
right things, but that doesn’t necessarilymean it will it achieve its goals. And Ithink it’s really important that if
government is serious about achievingits goals that it is open to the idea thatmaybe the reform plan doesn’t go far
enough and is open minded in assessingits progress towards those things.”
Hon Bernard Jenkin MP, gave the
closing view: “I think there’s a babies in
bathwater situation here that we’re indanger of, that because the system isn’t
working properly we’re in danger ofthrowing out some very good things aboutour Civil Service which isn’t necessary
to throw out because if you get theleadership right, everything will follow.”
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