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Phillip Hammond is at it again

12 February 2010

The Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is collecting data to attack civil servants.

In a previous posting we showed how Mr Hammond was submitting standard Parliamentary Questions to all departments concerning the numbers and cost of managers in the civil service.

He is doing the same again but this time he is asking for information on the numbers of unsatisfactory performers.

The DfT answer was given on the 9 February (Hansard 9 Feb 2010:Column 844W).

Departmental Manpower

Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport how many performance reviews were undertaken in respect of staff of (a) his Department and (b) its agencies in each of the last five years; in how many cases performance was rated as unsatisfactory or below; how many staff left as a direct result of such a rating; and what percentage of full-time equivalent staff this represented. [313824]

Chris Mole: The number of performance reviews undertaken in the Department for Transport (including our Agencies) is shown in the following tables. Statistics on how many staff left as a result of an unsatisfactory marking are not held by the Department.

  2005-06 2006-07 2007-08
 
  Reviews Unsatisfactory Reviews Unsatisfactory Reviews Unsatisfactory
 
DFT(C) 1,944  27 1,837  14 1,769 25
DVLA 7,050 30 7,174 7 6,913 27
HA 1,829 5 2,189 11 2,691 4
DSA n/a n/a 2,230 13 1,979 5
MCA  1,355  5 1,438 1 1,362 0
VOSA 2,644 9 2,472 9 2,448 10
GCDA n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
VCA 125 0 130 0 135 0

        
 

  2008-09 2009-10
  Reviews Unsatisfactory Reviews Unsatisfactory
DFT(C) 1,596 18 In progress In progress
DVLA 6,335 22 In progress In progress
HA 2,971 22 In progress In progress
DSA 2,027 9 In progress In progress
MCA 1,466 1  In progress In progress
VOSA 2,627 13 In progress In progress
GCDA n/a n/a n/a n/a
VCA 140 0 In progress In progress
  

You can almost see the headlines now: the civil service is full of slackers and dead beats, yet only a fraction of these feather bedders are being classified as unsatisfactory or being dismissed.

No fair comparison

As part of this attack Mr Hammond may compare the dismissal/unsatisfactory rates in the civil service to that of the “perfect” private sector. If such a comparison were made it would be false as you cannot say private sector = Civil Service.

The great bulk of the private sector is made up of small companies. The last ONS estimate is that there were 4.8 million private sector enterprises at the start of 2008 (no doubt that figure is smaller now).

Of these, 99.9% were classified as being small to medium. The ONS defines a small enterprise as an enterprise with 0 to 49 employees, a medium-sized enterprise is an enterprise with 50 to 249 employees, and a large enterprise is an enterprise with 250 or more employees. Therefore there are about 4,800 large enterprises in the UK (0.1% of 4.8 million).

Now 99.9% of private sector enterprises in the UK are much, much smaller than DfT which has over 19,000 staff; in other words the department is very different to the 99.9% of private sector enterprises. You cannot compare DfT with these enterprises.

The proper comparison

If Mr Hammond wanted to make a legitimate comparison, he would compare dismissal rates in the Civil Service departments with organisations that have tens of thousands of staff (i.e. a fraction of the 4,800 large enterprises). Moreover he would have to factor in trade unions.

The civil service unions ensures that rules are followed; the same is true in those private sector organisations that recognise unions. Without unions employers can more easily and unlawfully dismiss staff.

Conservative plans for the Civil Service

On 27 November Francis Maude, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, set out more details as to how the Conservatives would run the Civil Service.

One of these proposals is to:

Enable Civil Service managers to remove employees who are not performing by establishing more rigorous appraisal and appeals systems

No doubt the Conservatives will say the data they have collected on the numbers of unsatisfactory performers in the civil service shows why “more rigorous appraisal and appeals systems” are needed. We reject that proposition as the vast majority of staff in DfT do a good job. Still we are now aware of a possible battle line if the Conservatives are elected into Government. Now more than ever we have to build up the union and recruit more members.
 

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