Civil Service: Training and Development

Lord Peston Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, do we not have to be extremely careful in going down this kind of path? We have a first-class Civil Service that is actually the envy of the rest of the world. Certainly, when I was a special adviser, although I had my disagreements, they were disagreements at a level that enabled me to appreciate both the integrity of civil servants and how excellent they are. Are we not in danger of undermining the Civil Service with this kind of approach, rather than appreciating the excellent people who work for us?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would have loved to have met the noble Lord when he was a special adviser to observe his skills. We are working with Ashridge, Roffey Park, Westminster Explained and a number of other providers. As we have been working with them, we do not see that this in any sense endangers the impartiality or quality of the Civil Service. Roffey Park, as noble Lords know, is a non-profit making organisation that provides top-class skills. We think that there are advantages in having central control of the Civil Service buy-in, which is Civil Service Learning, but with a variety of provision by a variety of providers.