For
further comment or information please call Paul Blomfield MP’s
office on 0114 272 2882.
Parliamentary Questions
Shared Services Connected Ltd –
Westminster Hall – 9 April 2014
I’ve sought this debate on
behalf of 239 DWP staff at the Kings Court offices in the heart of my
constituency.
But I’d like to start by citing
the words of the Prime Minister.
Back in January, speaking at the
World Economic Forum at Davos, he said that Britain had the potential
to become the “reshore nation”
If I can quote him directly, he
said that “There is now an opportunity for the reverse,” said Mr
Cameron on offshoring. “There is an opportunity for some of those
jobs to come back.”
And shouldn’t the Government be
taking a lead on this?
Setting the example through its
own employment policies?
Yet last week I received a letter
from the Minister for the Cabinet Office, replying to one from me,
all but confirming that the work lost in my constituency was to be
off-shored.
Let me explain the background.
Shared Services are those parts of
individual civil service departments, Arm’s-Length Bodies and
agencies that provide corporate services for IT, human resources
management, pay and payroll, procurement, and finance to deliver
their business outputs.
In December 2012 the Cabinet
Office set out its Next Generation Shared Services Strategic Plan.
This aimed to create five shared
service centres. Two Independent Shared Services Centres (ISSCs) 1
and 2 would be formed of a number of departments and ALBs. The
remaining three to be standalone Centres based on the Ministry of
Justice (covering MoJ, the Home Office and National Offender
Management Service), the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and HM Revenue and
Customs (HMRC).
The first of these Independent
Shared Service Centres (ISSC1) was based on the Department for
Transport shared services centre in Swansea. As well as providing
corporate services for DfT ISSC1 also covers the DCLG, the Treasury,
DCMS and DfID.
ISSC1 was outsourced to German
multinational Arvato in June 2013.
The Public and Commercial Services
Union, representing the majority of staff, engaged positively in the
transfer process to secure the best possible outcome. This
consultation led to agreements which included a ‘no compulsory
redundancy agreement’ for at least a year and that staff would
retain their civil service status.
ISSC2 was to consist (initially)
of the Shared Services functions of the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP), the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (DEFRA) and the Environment Agency.
This was turned into a “Joint
Venture” company called Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL) in
which the Government retained 25% of the shares ownership, with the
French Multinational Steria’s UK subsidiary (Steria UK) owning and
controlling 75%.
The creation of SSCL involved
civil service shared services sites in York, Alnwick, Cardiff,
Blackpool, Newcastle – as well as the one in my constituency in
Sheffield.
SSCL became “live” in November
2013. 1,000 civil servants were privatised and TUPE’d across.
PCS secured agreements with the
Govt including - a six month no compulsory redundancy agreement and
one-year guarantee of no site closures.
However, on 4 March 2014 SSCL
announced 500 job cuts, office closures and the off-shoring of work.
As well as Sheffield, by October
2014, the DWP office in Cardiff will close with a loss of 105 staff
and the Environment Agency office in Leeds with a loss of 68 staff.
I met some of the staff from
Cardiff last week. Like those in Sheffield, they are loyal civil
servants, who’ve contributed years of public service and feel
betrayed.
In other SSCL offices, 68 of 222
staff in DWP Blackpool will go, 13 out of 209 in DWP Newcastle will
go, 6 out of 86 staff in Peterborough and 35 out of 150 staff in
Defra York.
The Defra site in Alnwick,
Northumbria only has a temporary reprieve with staff being told that
the site is secure until June 2015. The future of the site after that
is dependent on SSCL/Steria sending more work there from NHS SBS (the
NHS shared services organisation). If Alnwick closes it is very
difficult to see how the staff there will find alternative work
nearby given the rural location.
The government has not conducted
Economic Impact Assessments of the closures of offices in SSCL. The
closures of these offices or loss of jobs would have a severe impact
on local employment and on UK growth. Will the government be
conducting such an assessment and if so, when is this likely to
happen?
The speed at which SSCL intend to
cut 500 jobs is unprecedented. They aim to have all redundancies
dealt with by the end of October – exactly one year after the
transfer of staff. This does not allow enough time for staff to be
re-employed or reinstated back into the civil service and means that
compulsory redundancies are likely.
Indeed the staff in Sheffield, and
also Cardiff, told me that the redeployment opportunities have been
limited, because there is no joined-up approach across Govt – with
most other Govt Departments not offering vacancies to those losing
their jobs.
Does the Govt think that this is
the right way to treat staff? Particularly those who have given
decades of public service?
Will the Minister commit to
providing redeployment opportunities across all Govt. Dept’s?
SSCL are not acting in accordance
with the special commitments given to the staff before transfer
...... which stated that transformation would take place over a two
year period and everything would be done to avoid compulsory
redundancies.
The government has a 25% stake in
SSCL. Should it not use that position to challenge the speed of job
cuts to allow a thorough on-going programme of redeployment of staff?
If I can now return to my opening
point .....
What makes these cuts even harder
for staff to swallow is that all of the work for the 3 sites under
threat of closure has been earmarked for being off-shored. Currently
SSCL intends to off-shore 200 jobs.
PCS tell me that SSCL have
explicitly told them that deciding on what sites are to close is
determined by what work can be off-shored.
How does this fit in with the
Prime Minister’s assertion at the Davos World Economic Forum in
January that he wants the UK to become “the re-shoring nation”?
There’s also the issue of the
data being handled.
Civil servants based at these
sites handle the personal data of tens of thousands of civil
servants. They also deal with commercially sensitive information
relating to government contracts and tendering.
Despite the sensitivity of the
data dealt with, when the Cabinet Office advertised for bidders to
become majority partners in SSCL in April 2013, all selected bidders
has a significant element of off-shoring jobs and functions as part
of their bids.
And the concerns about off-shoring
aren’t restricted to the staff.
They’ve been raised at Cabinet
level.
The Secretary of State for the
Environment wrote to the Minister for the Cabinet Office last July
raising concerns about Defra joining ISSC2 and a “possible staff
exodus”.
He asked for a stand still period
on “estates and off-shoring.” And he raised concerns about data
security.
In June 2013 Lynn Phillips, Head
of Service Improvement for DEFRA, wrote to the then DEFRA Minister,
the Rt Hon Member for Somerton and Frome to raise concerns that
bidders for ISSC2 had all suggested off-shoring.
She informed him that the DEFRA
Executive Committee considered “significant (or any) element of
off-shoring” to be unacceptable, and that there was “significantly
increased risk to service continuity from loss of current expertise”
upon transfer; and also pointed out the plan’s “incompatibility
with UK growth objectives” because of the “loss of jobs in
regional locations”.
She also raised concerns about
“employee and detailed financial data transmitted, stored and
processed outside the UK”.
Why is this government sanctioning
job losses, office closures and the off-shoring of sensitive personal
data and commercially sensitive information?
As referred to earlier, the
remaining three shared service centres were to be standalone.
However, the strategic plan has now been fundamentally revised. Peter
Swann, who heads the Crown Oversight Function of the Shared Services
agenda, has confirmed that that MoJ are now considering transferring
its shared services to one of the outsourced ISSCs instead.
If the MoJ was to join one of the
already outsourced ISSC contracts then the sensitive data they
handle, including criminal records, the details of police, the
judiciary and security service personnel could also be privatised and
even off-shored.
Why has the strategic plan been
changed?
In conclusion, let me return to
the words of the Prime Minister.
At Davos he underlined his
ambition for the UK to become the “re-shore nation” by announcing
the establishment of a new body - Reshore UK - to sit within the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Will the Minister commit to
arranging for Reshore UK to meet with SSCL and the Cabinet Office
with the aim of considering how the jobs they plan to offshore, can
stay in the UK.
If not, will he accept that the
PM’s statement will be seen as nothing more than empty words?
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