Civil Service: Training and Development

Debate between Baroness Tyler of Enfield and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of reductions in Civil Service numbers and training budgets, and the closure of the National School of Government, what steps they are taking to ensure that civil servants receive the necessary training and development to provide high-quality policy advice to Ministers.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the House will be aware, we published the Civil Service reform plan on 19 June, which set out recommendations on training and development, among other proposals. Civil Service Learning is now in place to provide greater choice, flexibility, quality and value for money. It ensures that the current and future skills requirements of civil servants are met. Civil servants can access more than 130 e-learning resources, 75 classroom-based courses and 4,000 learning resources through the Civil Service Learning website. The new policy curriculum is also available through Civil Service Learning. It provides a comprehensive range of policy training and was developed in consultation with people currently working on policy and with subject matter experts in specific policy areas.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. Given that these reforms are coming at a time when the Civil Service is reducing in size by some 23%, thereby putting a premium on sharper and more agile policy advice, which as the reform plan itself says should be clearly based on “robust evidence”, will the Minister explain what evidence exists to show that opening up the policy development process to external competition, including from the private sector, will lead to higher quality, more cost-effective and, above all, impartial policy advice?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not entirely the case that all Civil Service training was provided by the public sector before this. The evidence is to be found in particular in the rather critical NAO report of last year. Among other things, it quotes the Civil Service people survey of 2010, which said that,

“only 48 per cent of civil servants said that the learning and development they had received in the last 12 months had helped them to be better at their job”.

A lot in the NAO report was critical of the inefficient and divided provision of training, particularly between different departments. It discovered among other things that the cost of comparable courses in different departments varied by a factor of four.