Kevin Barron
Main Page: Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)BIS Sheffield/Government Departments outside London
Kevin Barron Excerpts
Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
May I, along with the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) for getting this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee for giving it time? I start with the response that the Minister, who I am pleased is here, gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) when she posed an urgent question on this issue earlier this year:
“We are having to ensure that we spend public money wisely. Unfortunately, that means that we have to reduce the number of people who are working for us.”
The question of whether cutting jobs is necessarily wise is a debate in itself. It might be a few years before we know whether the decision was wise. The Minister went on to say:
“We must make sure that we use the money to best effect, which is why we considered the decision so very carefully, as I hope that she understands we would.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2016; Vol. 605, c. 562.]
Most of us would like to know whether the Government took the right decision. The sad fact is that, on this subject, there are many things that we just do not know. The so-called McKinsey report that the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) mentioned, costing some £200,000, has not yet been published, yet we are all this way down the road towards a decision that we think will be taken. Why can we not have that report, so that we can see whether the decision stands up to proper scrutiny?
Indeed, do we actually have a report? When the permanent secretary gave evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said, at question 72,
“If there was more than one paper, we could probably look at them all, so if you could share those with us it would be helpful. Can you also share the McKinsey report with us?”
The permanent secretary replied:
“The McKinsey report was about a set of actions to validate internal calculations, both quantitative and in terms of the strategic vision.”
He contradicted himself two questions later; in question 74, my hon. Friend said:
“So you will share those papers with us.”
The permanent secretary said:
“There is not such a thing as a McKinsey report, but there is McKinsey input into a set of different aspects of the work that we were doing. I will see what further information we can usefully share, because the process is one where we have come to a very clear business conclusion in terms of a sustainable model for the Department delivering”.
That is as clear as mud. The proposal, which will affect my constituents and those of many other Members, is beyond the pale.
We have to look at the proposal against the backdrop of a recent Financial Times report that 20% of civil service jobs had been lost in the regions since 2010, as opposed to only 9% in London. That is an extraordinary figure which seems to go against the main thread that we have had—or should have had—in Government thinking, not for the past five or six years, but for decades. I well remember when the Labour Government built the advanced manufacturing park near Sheffield— it is actually in Rotherham, but it is often said to be in Sheffield—and it is a glowing example of what Governments can do if they have the will. It is a centre of excellence now. Minister go there every other week, smiling for the cameras and saying how wonderful it is.
On the Sheffield BIS closure, I was contacted by a person now in their third decade in the civil service, who said:
“I’ve worked in the civil service 10 years in London and the rest in Sheffield. For the majority of that time, I have worked in teams that have been split between Sheffield and London. To my knowledge, there has never been any issues regarding the quality of work or negative impact on policy decisions/policy work due to operating split site teams.
Aside from the obvious impact on me personally with respect to having to find another job, I am concerned about the effect this decision will have on the City of Sheffield and surrounding areas. I am still trying to understand why the Department for Business would take such a step.”
Not only will the closure be devastating for south Yorkshire, but it will lead to a huge loss of expertise for the Department—for example, the person I have just quoted, who has been in their job for decades. It is difficult to imagine that such people could uproot themselves and come down to work in London, even if they could afford to buy a property in London. The absence of any relocation programme speaks volumes about the intention behind the closure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central pointed out. The intention is to get rid of those staff and not to relocate them to London. Surely a package would be presented if the Government’s intention were to relocate them.
My hon. Friend spoke about Nick Hillman who, as we know, was a special adviser to David Willetts during his time as Universities and Science Minister. Nick Hillman has described the closure as
“a genuine tragedy for good public policymaking”.
He says that the Sheffield civil servants
“hold BIS’ institutional memory on HE and often know more than the policymakers who are nominally closer to the centre of power”.
The staff in Sheffield work closely with external organisations, such as employers and education providers, visiting them to explain policies on funding, deregulation, further and higher education, and Government strategy on rail, as well as listening to their issues so as better to inform policy. A purely London-based staff will mean additional costs, particularly as a result of pay differentials, and a less prompt service for organisations based in the midlands and the north. Gone will be the knowledge and understanding of localities, sectors and industries that can make a difference to effective policy making and allocation of funding.
Sheffield staff are responsible for applying ministerial policies and strategies on the ground. BIS sites such as the one in Sheffield ought to be in the vanguard, helping the Government to rebalance the economy and supporting rebalancing in the sectors based in the regions. It seems particularly strange that BIS, with its supposed ambition to create more geographically balanced growth, should take this decision, when other Departments, such as the Department for Education, plan to remain in Sheffield. It is nonsense and the concept of a northern powerhouse is weakened by such decisions, which undermine what this Government and previous Governments have said for years—that Government Departments should be relocating out of London.
The people who deserve to see the information that is largely absent from this debate are the 247 people who have a cloud hanging over their heads. As I stated previously, the Government must publish all the facts. I support the motion calling for the National Audit Office to conduct a cost-benefit assessment of the BIS Sheffield proposal, so that we can properly review the decision. I hope that when the Minister replies, she will respond to that call and to the four questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central.
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing this debate through the Backbench Business Committee. It has been a very good debate. A number of hon. Members from both sides of the House have raised a number of very good points. I know that the clock is against me—that is the rule of Parliament. The last time I said that people seemed to think it was my choice. It certainly was not. I will of course write with an answer to all those hon. Members whose questions I do not answer in my response. That may include the hon. Gentleman, in this respect: his questions were quite long, and I do not have time to answer them all at length. I will deal with the points he made, but in the time allowed to me I will not be able to answer them all in the sort of length that I would like.
It is very important that we have as the focus of this debate the 247 people who currently work in the Sheffield office. I make the point that, yes, we have put forward the proposal, but a final decision has not been made. It has been out for consultation, and I very much hope that a number of hon. Members took part in that consultation. A final decision will not be made until 23 May. Everyone on both sides of this House will know that Governments of whatever colour have at times to make very difficult decisions, but we have to be sure that we make the right decisions for the right reasons.
I also make this point, which is very important. Whatever the decision on Sheffield, 83% of the people who work for BIS will continue to work outside London. To some extent, I take a little exception to the suggestion that we in BIS are not in touch with what is going on in the rest of the country outside London. The Secretary of State and I do not represent London seats; as hon. Members might imagine, we return to our constituencies. Most importantly, we still have an exceptionally fine team of local BIS civil servants working throughout the whole country, who feed in—indeed, I have at least a monthly meeting with them—when they give me a round-up of everything that has happened across the country.
By way of example, the Green Investment Bank is proudly based in Edinburgh. UK Trade & Investment exists throughout the whole country. Today, I have been on a visit in Leicestershire, where I opened the marvellous new extension of an excellent business. Not only did I then meet the Leicester Asian Business Association, but, as I often do, I met the local enterprise partnership. I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) that when I come to Sheffield on 23 May, it will be a pleasure to meet him and have him there at my visit to those steel mills. I will also meet the LEP, because getting that feedback is so essential.
I turn now to the reasons behind the proposal. It is really important to set this in the right context. That context is a mixture, of course, of the financial position that we are in and the decisions that we have rightly made to make sure that we have a budget that we can cope with and that BIS plays its part in reducing overall spend. But it is not just about cutting money. It is about making sure that this Department works as efficiently and effectively as possible. The situation that the Secretary of State and I inherited was the frankly historical problem of an abundance of sites. A decision has been taken, against that financial background—I hope that this answers the questions of the right hon. Members for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) and for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg)—
Anna Soubry
It is not as simple as cutting costs. The right hon. Gentleman, with his great experience in and out of government, should know that. It is a question of making sure that we have an efficient and effective way of working in BIS, set against the financial restraints that we have quite properly put upon our Department as part of our overall requirements with regard to the deficit.
Our current HQ office locations are based on the legacy I mentioned, and have resulted in a complicated map of management relationships, with work in policy teams spread across 14 different locations. We are committed to reducing our headcount by 2020. That will involve becoming more flexible and redeploying fewer staff quickly to new priorities. We need simple structures that allow staff to interact through quicker, less cumbersome means and stay close to each other in flexible teams. We rightly put a strong emphasis on staff engagement, excellent management, visible leadership and developing and coaching our staff. Those are harder to achieve if teams are not collected together or are not working under the same roof. We believe that having a single-site BIS policy headquarters is the best way to preserve our effectiveness. Given that our teams serve Ministers in Parliament, those headquarters have to be in London.
I want to make this point absolutely clear. Whatever the decision, we will continue to provide good and full support to the 247 members of staff who have had this proposal hanging over them—we are very conscious of that—since 28 January. If the decision is made to close the Sheffield office, that support will continue, because this Department takes its duty of care to each and every one of our staff extremely seriously, as I hope hon. Members would imagine.
I have said that tough decisions have to be made. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) and his colleagues on the Scottish National party Benches will understand that, for Governments of all colours, there are times, set against a difficult financial background, when tough decisions have to be taken. I make no criticism of the SNP’s decision back in 2013 to close 10 sheriff courts and seven justice of the peace courts, with operations transferred to other locations. Those are the difficult decisions that have to be made. Of course, the SNP closures were justified as cost-saving measures, but, to be fair, as part of a wider reform of the justice system as well. We can all take away from that the fact that the SNP was not just cutting things for the sake of savings, but was doing so as part of a broader strategy.