General Matters

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who is a personal friend. We have campaigned together on many things over the years.

I am saddened by the issue I have to raise this afternoon. As a Member with reasonably long service, I have been very disturbed over recent months about the low morale among the people who make this place work. For the information of the House, over the past few days I have talked to chefs, kitchen staff, cleaning staff, visitor assistants, maintenance men and women, Library researchers, Doorkeepers, Committee staff, procedural Clerks, finance and legal workers, human resources staff, drivers, porters, attendants, curatorial staff, Hansard reporters, members of the media and events teams, accommodation staff and so on. I have done my homework, and I have never met a group of people so demoralised by what they have to put up with as employees of Parliament.

We all rely on the staff in this place; we cannot provide a good service to our constituents without their support. This Parliament should be an exemplar of the best kind of employer, but I am afraid we are not the best employer. As I talked to members of staff, they constantly said, “It isn’t what is happening, it’s not knowing what’s happening.” There is poor communication.

I am keen on management and I chair the all-party management group. I know a little about good management. If managers do not keep in touch with their stakeholders—all the people who make this place a success, and make it amenable to good working for Members of Parliament—and if they do not keep communication open and tell people what is happening, staff become disillusioned and unhappy in their role.

Over recent months—perhaps longer—there is every sign that certain people who are influential in the management of this place believe that it is a business. It is a funny old business where people do not know quite when the House will be sitting. In 2007, we sat for 151 days, and in 2008 it was 150 days. In 2009, we sat for 134 days, in 2010—election year—128 days, and in 2011, 149 days. This is a hard-working House, but it works funny hours, because a lot of our job is done out in the constituency, where we look after our constituents and find out the information that we need to be effective parliamentarians. We cannot run this place as though it were a commercial undertaking; indeed, the House voted by a majority for changes in the sitting hours, which will make it even more difficult to run this place.

We speak to members of staff who say, “All of us in this department, after 20 years of service, have been asked to reapply for our jobs”, and to people in catering who say, “We all hear that they will privatise this, and we will all be out of employment.” That is either true or false, but whatever is happening should be communicated to our members of staff, so that they have some assurance.

[Helen Goodman]

I am appalled and amazed by what my hon. Friend is saying. Does he have any sense of which departments are involved, and how many staff are being treated in this way?

[Mr Sheerman]

The research is quite difficult, but there are 78 senior managers involved in one way or another in the management of this place, and a range of interesting people are involved. We have in the House a business change manager, a director general of human resources and change, an assistant corporate risk management facilitator, and an implementation manager. We have an awful lot of managers—and I am sure that, according to their lights, they are doing a good job. What I am saying to the House is that we should take the welfare of the people who make this place work very seriously indeed.

There is another really worrying thing, apart from the welfare of the people who work here and have, over the years, put so much into their work. I am not talking about well-paid people, or people who have the most comfortable life in this country, in terms of their pay and conditions. I am also talking about the people in the Palace involved in security, who believe that security is threatened by the lack of morale here. They are trying to do the job with staff cuts, and with a declining number of people involved. I had a hand in improving the education offering in this place. It is so nice to see many more people visiting, and lots of children on educational visits. Interestingly enough, as was pointed out to me when I tried to do my research, the downside—if there is a downside—is that this becomes a busier place to manage, in terms of numbers and security. It cannot be all one way.

The reason I asked to speak in this debate is that there are very grave concerns about security, if some of the voices that I have listened to are right. Is it not about time that the management of this place got better, so that we can communicate with people in all the jobs that I enumerated? We serve our constituents best if we are served well by those people. We now have time to reflect on what we are doing to the people in all these departments, and to communicate and manage better. We Members of Parliament are the ones who will benefit from that change.