Adventures Of A Civil Servant (Part 5):
After over 5 years in Brussels, I returned to work in London.
I managed to extend my stay in Brussels to five and a half years, a record stay in UKREP at the time. (The record was beaten by Keith Masson, who succeeded my successor, Bob Niven.) We came back on leave to our house in Bushey, which had not been well looked after. We had already decided that we wanted to look for a bigger house and decided on a house in Watford. We left Brussels on the first Saturday in September. Our belongings had been put on a removal van and were due to be delivered on the Monday. We travelled in two cars with two teenage boys. We were booked on a hovercraft from Calais to Ramsgate, but the seas were exceptionally rough and nothing was leaving Calais. (One ship had left early in the morning, but had been unable to get into Dover harbour and had returned to Calais some twelve hours later – Jennifer’s worst nightmare.) Calais was gridlocked. Eventually, we drove in convoy and found a hotel a short distance from the sea at Cap Blanc-Nez. This was a Logis de France. At that time the accommodation in two-star hotels was very primitive, but the food in the Logis de France was always excellent.
We stayed there until Monday, when we finally got a hovercraft over to England. When we got to customs, we had to import two cars, which we had bought duty free and about 35 opened bottles of spirits and liqueurs, which we had also bought duty-free. Importing the cars was relatively straightforward, as there was no duty to pay. Duty was payable on the booze. The Customs Officer was very friendly, but spent ages assessing the contents of each bottle and the duty payable. It was dark when we left Ramsgate in convoy. The M25 was not yet open, so we had to find our way from the Dartford Tunnel to Bushey via North London. This took several hours, not least, because I took a wrong turning at one point. When we got back we discovered that an enormous removal van had been driven round our estate several times before we arrived.
I was entitled to ten weeks’ leave, which I insisted on taking. I was determined to take it anyway, but I did not realise until I received my first pay statement, that I was still on the FCO’s books and therefore entitled to a resettlement payment – so I was actually paid more for not working than when I went back to work!
By this time (1983) there was much more scope for negotiation about postings than there had been twenty years earlier. I was offered a job in the Industrial Relations Division of the Department of Employment. My section was called IRA3. It was a proper policy job. We had policy responsibility for many of the individual rights under the Industrial Relations Act 1971. This included, in particular, unfair dismissals. We also had policy responsibility for the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) and the Industrial Tribunals in both England and Wales and Scotland. My boss, Douglas Tallintyre, was also line manager of the Secretaries of the Industrial Tribunals in London and Glasgow. I had one SEO (Geoff Bobker) three HEOs, an EO (Executive Officer), a Clerical Officer and a Clerical Assistant.
I arrived at the entrance to Caxton House on 17 October 1983 and travelled in the lift with Tom King, who was also taking up his new post as Secretary of State for Employment on the same day – he was taking over from Norman Tebbit.
I worked there for three years. During that time I had regular contact with ministers. Tom King was Secretary of State, followed by Lord (David) Young, with Kenneth Clarke as Paymaster-General, also in the Cabinet. Other ministers included the Hon. Peter Morrison, John Selwyn Gummer, David Trippier, who was small firms minister and Peter Bottomley, who was a very nice man and with whom I had the most contact.
My friend, Brian Smith, had worked with Ken Clarke, when he had been in the Ministry of Health, and always spoke very highly of him. I only recall one meeting with him and I also was suitably impressed. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was always looking for ways to reduce the burdens on business. By the time of this meeting in 1986, she had already had six years of purges, which, in our case, meant trying to reduce workers’ rights. One day, Jim Galbraith, my Under-Secretary, called a meeting to say that the Prime Minister had called for a further review of all employment legislation with a view to getting rid of anything that could be abolished. The civil servants responsible were required to produce a single sheet of paper in respect of each right, saying why it had been introduced and justifying (or not) its continuing existence. These sheets were to go in Ken Clarke’s Red (ministerial) Box that evening and to be discussed with him the following morning. A large number of sheets were produced. Ken Clarke is (or was) a barrister. Somewhere in this mass of paper, there was a small mistake or weak argument. (I don’t think it was on one of my sheets!) Ken Clarke seized on this and sought an explanation.
Under the Industrial Relations Act the Secretary of State was required to review each year the upper limits on the amount of compensation the industrial tribunals were allowed to award, for example, in respect of unfair dismissal. I carried out this review. It involved writing to the CBI and TUC and then submitting a report to ministers (normally Peter Bottomley) with a recommendation. I usually put the limit as high as I could and I think each year my recommendations were accepted. I had to learn a new bit of parliamentary procedure. Orders had to be drafted (by the DE Solicitor) and adopted by a Resolution of both Houses of Parliament.
There was never a debate in the House of Commons, but always one in the House of Lords. This was tricky. DE did not usually have a Minister in the House of Lords. Two of the most prominent industrial relations lawyers in the country – Lord McCarthy and Lord Wedderburn were members of the House of Lords. Although this was a very minor piece of legislation, it was technically quite complex. The first year I was there the Government found an obscure Lord to take the Orders through the House of Lords. Fortunately, I don’t remember his name. He was very nervous and I told him at least three times what he had to say, but when the time came he completely fluffed his lines. On most occasions the Lords are very gentle with their colleagues (or were then) and this was no exception, so the Orders went through without further ado. The last time I did this review, Lord Strathclyde was the Minister responsible. He was very young, but was already a Minister in the Board of Trade (or whatever it was called at the time!) He was very able and took the issues on board without any problems.
My responsibilities in relation to the EAT and industrial tribunals introduced me for the first and last time to the English and Scottish judicial system. I had regular contact with the Lord Chancellor’s Department. There were two big and perennial policy issues. The judiciary was independent of the Executive and fiercely defended its independence. Nevertheless the taxpayer paid their salaries, which were not insignificant and the Permanent Secretary of DE had to account to Parliament for his expenditure. The industrial tribunals had been inefficient and it was our job to try to make them more efficient. This was not an easy task, but one that we had to keep plugging away at.
The other big issue was summarised in the word ‘legalism’. The tribunals had originally been set up with the aim of providing a relatively cheap and informal mechanism for settling disputes (usually in relation to dismissal) between individuals and their (former) employers. But, as time went on, a considerable body of case law had built up. As losing a case of unfair dismissal was detrimental to the balance sheet and reputation of employers, many companies briefed barristers to argue their case. This in turn meant that workers and trade unions also needed to brief barristers to argue their case. The ‘simple’ procedure had become expensive and long-winded. I remember writing many policy papers on ‘legalism’, but I’m not sure that we made much progress.
One area where we did have some success was in the development of the role of individual conciliation officers within the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). Their role was to try to reach an agreement between the parties, before the complaint was heard by an industrial tribunal. Where this could be achieved it was beneficial to the employer (time and legal costs) to the worker (quicker settlement) and the taxpayer. (Conciliation Officers were much cheaper than tribunals.)
The DE had no power in relation to the enforcement or interpretation of the legislation. This did not prevent people writing to their MP or the Secretary of State. On the contrary, we received hundreds of letters each year, mostly from members of the public who considered they had been maltreated in some way. When members of the public wrote to their MP, the normal practice was for the MP to forward the letter to the Secretary of State for his comments. Such letters were put in an orange folder – an ‘orange jacket’ – and sent to the relevant Head of Section (in these cases me) to draft a reply.
The orange jackets had a strict deadline of about ten days. I usually gave them to one of my HEOs, usually Ian Drummond, to draft the reply. This went back to the Minister (usually a junior minister) under my responsibility. Ian Drummond was one of the most competent officials at that level that I ever came across. In one of his annual reports I described him as the ‘Ian Botham’ of the Department.[1] Ian Drummond had an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the Industrial Relations Act and the ensuing case law. He was hard-working and good at drafting letters. Even he struggled to keep up with the flow of correspondence, for the orange jackets were only the tip of the iceberg. Most members of the public wrote directly to the Secretary of State. These letters were sent directly to the HEO responsible (in our case Ian Drummond) for him to reply on behalf of the minister. I rarely saw these, but it was a constant cause for concern, that there was always a backlog of unanswered letters.
[1] Ian Botham (later Sir Ian Botham) was an England cricketer with a strong personality and immense all-round talent as bowler, batsman and fielder, who was in his prime in the early eighties.
Something different: TVEI
The Industrial Relations job was a ‘proper’ job, which I enjoyed and which I think I performed competently. Nevertheless it was the tradition in the Department that one did a job for about three years and then moved on. I still had ambitions for promotion and I thought I ought to get some management experience. (I had had practically no management responsibilities for 17 years and none at a more senior level.) Following discussions with Personnel, Ruth Le Guen got in touch with me. Ruth had been coming out to Brussels in relation to a Commission proposal on equal opportunities for men and women. (The lead spokesperson for the Commission on this proposal, incidentally, was Odile Quintin, who was to become my Director later on – see later chapter.) Ruth had been promoted to Assistant Secretary and was now the number two in the TVEI Unit in the Training Agency of the Manpower Services Commission.
The Technical and Vocational Education Initiative was a programme that had been set up to introduce an understanding of the world of work into the curriculum of secondary schools. It was an ambitious (and expensive) project. Hitherto, it had been run as a pilot from offices in Grays Inn Road in London, but it was now being extended to all Local Education Authorities who wished to participate. A dozen or so Advisers had been appointed throughout Great Britain to ‘sell’ the initiative to local authorities, to advise schools and to monitor progress. These Advisers were mostly people who had already been secondary head teachers. I was 48 at the time and most of the advisers were about my age. They were paid as Senior Principals, which was one grade higher than me. They were all dedicated, enthusiastic and articulate.
These existing advisers, though reporting to Ruth in London, were based around the country. It had been decided that more advisers would be appointed later in the year (September 1987) and that they would be based in eight English regional centres (normally in or near the Training Agency Regional Office) and in Cardiff and Glasgow (not Edinburgh!). It had also been decided that Regional Team Managers (SEOs) should be appointed to run these offices (control of budgets, etc.) and the Project Managers posts (HEO) providing the support to the Advisers should also be expanded and based in the regional teams. What Ruth wanted was someone to manage these regional teams. (I use the word ‘regional’ as shorthand – Scotland and Wales are of course not regions!) I took the job.
My first job was to appoint the Regional Team Managers (RTM). The posts had already been advertised and a large number of applications received. Michael Jennings, who had been doing the job for the whole of the UK had already been appointed as RTM for the South East and was moving to Basingstoke. Willie Robertson had been the Project Manager in Glasgow and he was expected to be a shoo-in as Scottish Team Manager. I insisted on interviewing him first, but did appoint him. There was, however, a man doing a similar job in Wales. After interviewing him, I decided to look at the other candidates and eventually appointed someone else. I took the applications for the other posts home and drew up a short list for each one. Having just come from Industrial Relations, I ignored all the rules of best practice and interviewed nearly all the candidates on my own! Apart from the RTM for London, which took a fair time to sort out, all the RTMs took up post fairly quickly.
We also had to appoint Project Managers (HEOs) in each location, usually about two in each location. I left Michael Jennings to organise this in cooperation with the new RTMs. Nearly all the existing Project Managers based in Grays Inn Road decided to leave, so that, within the space of a few months we had an almost completely new administrative team. In addition to the regional teams, I had to set up a support office in Head Office in Grays Inn Road. This took some time, but eventually I appointed an SEO (George Anderson), two HEOs (Simon Attwood and Peter Drummond), an EO and one or two clerical workers. So in the end I had about 100 staff in 11 different locations and an administrative budget of well over £1 million. (The Programme Budget - the money given to schools - was over £100 million, but I was not accountable for that.)
In my previous job, a project was established to set up a paperless office! (I don’t think it ever materialised.) When I moved to TVEI, I thought it should be possible to set up an electronic system of communication between my ten offices. (We could have called it email, but that would have been too fanciful!) I discovered that the Training Agency was working on such a system. I was told that I would have to buy in to their system. The problem was that they had already been working on it for two years and it had run into all sorts of technical difficulties. We discussed the communication issue at one of our early RTMs meetings. Ian Popham, the East Midlands RTM, said there was a new device called a Fax machine, which we could purchase for about £20. So, we introduced the Fax to the Training Agency.
The relationship between the career civil servants and the Advisers was potentially a difficult one. We, the civil servants, were responsible for ensuring that the money was well spent, but we were all, apart from Ruth, junior to them. On the whole, I had good relations with the advisers. Some of the regional teams worked well, others less well! I decided from the beginning to have a meeting of Regional Team Managers every month, usually in Grays Inn Road. With hindsight these must have been quite expensive, but I do think we created a good team spirit and that these meetings contributed to the coherence and success of the operation.
One of the attractions of the job for me was that it involved a lot of travelling. Although I had travelled widely in Europe and in Africa, I had done relatively little travelling in the UK. First of all, I had to manage the 9 teams that were based outside London. I visited each of these offices at least once a year.
Secondly, each Local Education Authority taking part in the scheme had an ‘Annual Review’. These reviews were chaired usually by someone from Head Office and were designed to monitor how the money had been spent and to make suggestions for improvements. I was supposed to chair some of these meetings. I did this, but I never liked doing it, because I never felt confident about the educational aspects of the review. These reviews, of course, took place in the Local Education Authority area that was being reviewed.
Thirdly, the Powers That Be in TVEI were great believers in conferences and I attended several during my period in TVEI. The first one was held in Bawtry in Yorkshire. It was a very intense conference. Part of TVEI was about the management of change in education, but at that time the ‘regionalisation’ and expansion of the programme created a good deal of tension within the organisation. This boiled over at this conference and I remember driving back from Bawtry wondering whether I had done right to join this strange organisation! The next of these conferences was in Derby in September 1987. It was the first time all the new and old advisers had got together. On the whole, I think that Conference went rather better than the previous one (which wasn’t difficult!).
At dinner one evening, we were discussing the location of the conference. One of the new advisers (Keith Greenwood) joked that it would have been better and cheaper to hold the conference in Majorca. I replied: “It probably would, but who is going to answer the PQ?” This amused the advisers and every time I met Keith Greenwood afterwards he said “Who is going to answer the PQ?” The background to this exchange was that, as a Whitehall civil servant my immediate reaction to anything out of the ordinary was that it would provoke a Parliamentary Question (PQ) from some MP or other and some civil servant would have to draft a reply. To an outsider the abbreviation ‘PQ’ was completely unknown and my reaction a source of great amusement. Throughout my career and afterwards I have tried to avoid acronyms and abbreviations. This was not true of all my colleagues. I have to say that the worst offenders were in the fields of education and training, where much of what was written was incomprehensible to the uninitiated (and me!).
So, during these three years, I went to all the places where we had out-stationed offices: Basingstoke, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow. In addition I also went to Warrington, Inveraray, Melrose and Hawick in the Borders and Edinburgh, as well as Bawtry, Derby, somewhere else in Derbyshire, Sunningdale and Carmarthen. The two visits to Inveraray were particularly memorable. Our host in the Borders was a retired Scottish Rugby Union international. The hotel we stayed in had ‘lottie’ on the menu, which was the dialect word for ‘monkfish’ (‘lotte’ in French).
Judith Black, one of the most senior advisers (in terms of length of service, not age!) also managed to arrange two visits to France – to Caen and Lille – to see how the French arranged things. On the back of these visits I applied successfully for a Western European Union bursary to spend a lengthy period of time in France studying arrangements in France for the transition from school to working life. However, the process for awarding the bursary was protracted and, by the time I was told I had been successful, I had moved on to my next job and I couldn’t spare the time to do it.
Continue to Eastern Europe