19
Examination of witnesses
Justin Madders, Jayne McCann and Simon Claydon.
Q250 The Chair: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the House of Lords Select Committee on Home-based Working. I am very pleased to say that we are joined today by Justin Madders MP. He is the Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets in the Department for Business and Trade. Joining him are Jayne McCann, Deputy Director for Participation and Individual Rights in the Department for Business and Trade, and Simon Claydon, Director of Civil Service Pay, Policy and Pensions from the Cabinet Office. You are all very welcome. Thank you for coming to talk to us. This session is being broadcast. We will send you a transcript in a few days’ time to have a look at and check for transcription errors. Please feel free to provide any supplementary evidence in writing after the session, when you have those “I wish I’d said that” moments.
Justin Madders: Heaven forbid that we would ever do that.
The Chair: I just want to kick us off with a general question. We have been hearing about this significant change in the shape of the UK workforce with the number of people working from home some or all of the time. I wondered what your thoughts are as a Government about what, if any, is the role of Government in this, given that it is a significant change in the way our employment market is working.
Justin Madders: First of all, thank you for inviting us today. This is a really important question that you are asking—not just that question, but more broadly. Clearly the pandemic had a significant impact in accelerating home working in particular. It has always been there to some degree, but the requirements of lockdown forced everyone to think about whether other arrangements could work. Clearly there has been some ebb and flow since then, but there is no doubt that home working is here to stay.
Our department’s role is slightly broader than that. Obviously, my ministerial title is Minister for Employment Rights, Competitions and Markets, so we come at this from the employment rights perspective, and we are looking more broadly in terms of flexible working, which covers a whole range of different arrangements of which home working is one. The Department for Work and Pensions looks at the issue in terms of disabled workers and reasonable adjustments, and the Health and Safety Executive looks at it in terms of the individual requirements for safe workplaces. So we are here in that broader policy context. We are of the view that ultimately it is a matter for businesses and employees to decide what works best. What we want to do is ensure that the framework does its utmost to facilitate that conversation, and encourages flexible working where that is appropriate.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We will come back to some of those points in a moment. Before I hand over to a colleague, we have heard quite a lot about the fact that it is the shape of our economy, dominated by the service sector, that has to a large extent enabled the level of home working that we have seen. We have also begun to hear evidence that these are the sorts of jobs that are more susceptible to being done through AI as we go forward. I am interested in what your department’s take is on these sorts of service-sector jobs and the development of AI, and how you how you see that going forward.
Justin Madders: I would always say that these kind of predictions are very difficult to pin down. I first got elected to the Commons 10 years ago, and every week there was a report of some description with doom-laden messages about the number of people who would be out of work within five years or so because of automation and AI, and it has not really happened that way. A lot of people would argue that, over the course of history, technological advancements have tended to create more jobs. That is certainly the position of a number of the commentators, and people at the World Economic Forum have that view as well. I suppose the question this time is whether the pace and scale of it is going to be different to what we have seen in the past.
We tend to still hold the view that it is likely that there will be a net creation of jobs. Those jobs will be very different, of course, and our role is to make sure that we actually are encouraging the skills development and the proper strategies, through our industrial strategy, to make sure that we are ready to meet those demands. There is no doubt that the whole world is alive to the benefits and risks of AI, and lots of international companies are already adopting this. We have got to make sure that we are at the forefront of taking advantage of that.
Q251 Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. I want to ask how you think existing legislation concerning flexible working requests is operating in practice—for instance, in enabling open conversations between workers and employers. Also, how are people dealing with a situation where an employer feels they cannot agree to what is being offered?
Justin Madders: That is a very good question, because that leads us into what our plans are for this through the Employment Rights Bill. The legislation is, what, roughly 20 years old now. It was pretty ground-breaking at the time. As we have moved forward, it has been gradually extended. I think it has limitations within it. One of the difficulties that we have with the legislation at the moment is that there is no set sort of process for the dialogue that needs to take place. If I recall, one of the witnesses that you had was Stephen Ratcliffe. He was a lawyer, was he not? He said, “it is important not to be too fixed in your position, if possible. You may have a starting point—every one of us has our own particular viewpoint on this issue—but it is important to address each request on a case-by-case basis, particularly in circumstances where you think you might say no. Part of the obligation to consult is to see whether there is a halfway house”. That is a really insightful comment on where we need to go further because, at the moment, that dialogue does not necessarily happen. There is no process for that to take place.
The worst of all worlds for the business and the employee is for the employer to have a request, to say no, and to end the conversation. That does not send out a very good message about how that employee is valued, and does not send out a very good message about their willingness to adapt and change. Clearly, when in some job sectors it is a key part of attracting people, having that conversation, finding common ground and finding a way through this is really important. That is going to be a big change that we see with the legislation—encouraging that dialogue. Actually, if you look at what happens at the moment, there is a very small number of tribunal claims—it is about 0.1% of the total, so it is not a big issue. But if you are going to an employment tribunal because your flexible working request has been refused, that says a lot about where your relationship is with your employer—if you are lawyering up and going to litigation to sort out something that, really, with a bit more dialogue in the first place you might have been able to find a compromise on. There has got to be a better way than we are approaching it at the moment.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: I will come back a bit on that. Larger employers probably find it easier to accommodate. Do you see there becoming an almost two-tier system where people choose to work for big employers because of the opportunity for flexibility? I am thinking, you know, about a small garage or a small care home that has an absolute need for certain hours to be covered. Can you just talk just a little bit about that in relation to the legislation you propose?
Justin Madders: The statutory grounds for refusal are going to remain the same as they are now. Obviously what we are adding[1] is a new process for the requirement for consultation, but also a requirement to not unreasonably refuse those requests. Actually, that is where part of that dialogue is going to be very important, because you can have two identical businesses coming to completely different responses to a flexible working request, and we need to really have a proper understanding as to why that might be the case.
I think it is inherent in some jobs that you cannot work from home. People understand that. When you go into a particular career, you will realise that, by dint of what you are going into, you are not going to be able to do much work from home. But there will be other jobs where actually, with a little thought and encouragement, you will be able to find that compromise where there is some flexibility. I take your point that large employers quite often have the scale and the IT set-ups to be able to facilitate that, but I have also heard quite a lot of smaller employers saying that, actually, the informal discussions and conversations work better in a smaller team because everyone knows what their role is and they can fit together.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock: Thank you. The final part of my question is about whether you have got any data on how many people have flexible working formally, as opposed to informal arrangements with their employers.
Justin Madders: The data is pretty patchy. There have been some DWP surveys. There are also the ONS labour workforce surveys. But in terms of how many requests specifically deal with home working, it is pretty tough for us to put an actual figure on that. I do not know if Jayne may be able to say a little bit more about the research and what we are thinking about in that area.
Jayne McCann: I think the headline point to be aware of is that employers are not required to record or report how many flexible working requests there are and whether they are informal or statutory, and therefore Government does not have good data to be able to give hard numbers on that. What we do get from time to time, and you will have heard evidence on this, is survey data. When ONS or DWP run their surveys, they will ask sometimes samples of employers whether they offer flexible working. There is some survey data, but it is not the same as recording absolute numbers. In the survey data, it is often very difficult to distinguish between flexible working as a general category and home working or hybrid working, which are subsets of flexible working. It is even more difficult to know whether that has been agreed informally—in the way that the Minister just described—or whether it is the result of a statutory flexible working request.
Some data is therefore available, but it might not be in the form of the hard facts and figures that you are asking for.
Q252 Baroness Featherstone: Minister, I have four questions for you; I will ask each in turn. How will existing flexible working requests be changed by the Employment Rights Bill? To what extent will the provisions in the Bill meet the Government’s objective of making flexible working the default?
Justin Madders: The change that we are seeing is twofold. The first part is the requirement for an employer to engage in consultation with an employee, when the employer is thinking about rejecting a request. We have taken a power through the Bill to say that, if an employer wants to reject a request, we will specify the process that the employer must follow to have a collaborative discussion about the reasons why the request is being rejected.
The statutory grounds that were in the original legislation remain the same, but there will be an added requirement for that dialogue. We will launch a consultation—I hope towards the end of this year, but possibly early next year—about how that will work in practice. We are planning to have this enacted by secondary legislation in 2027.
The second measure, which I have touched on already, is the reasonableness test. I do not think any employer would want to put up their hands and say that they have acted unreasonably, but, through guidance, we need to help businesses understand what would be considered reasonable and how they can approach that for the requests they get.
Baroness Featherstone: Based on that guidance, and on each side’s interpretation of “reasonable” and “unreasonable”, my second question is about your design of the legislation. Are you considering the potential for litigation and the impact on employment tribunals?
Justin Madders: That is a fair point and, more generally, a fair challenge to the Employment Rights Bill. As I have already mentioned, the number of cases that currently go to tribunals for flexible working is about 130 per year on average—0.1% of the total tribunal workload. We feel that this is not an area where employment tribunal claims will be a big factor—and we hope that they will not be. As I have already said, I believe that, once people get to that stage, there will have been a serious fracture in the employment relationship. We hope that the requirement to consult and engage will divert people away from the tribunal process.
We are aware that there is considerable pressure on employment tribunals currently. People are waiting several years for claims to be determined. That situation has not happened overnight; it has built up over a number of years. We recognise that that is not satisfactory for anyone. That is not acceptable for the employee, who may be looking for justice or compensation, and it is not helpful for the employer to have that hanging over them for a lengthy period of time.
We are therefore thinking about how we can improve access to dispute resolution; we are talking to ACAS and other stakeholders about that. We are looking at how the Fair Work Agency may be able to deal with some types of claims that currently go to tribunal even though they probably do not need that kind of judicial determination. We are also working with the Ministry of Justice to see how we can make the tribunal process a little speedier.
Baroness Featherstone: In the road map, you deferred the flexible working provisions until 2027. What impact will that delay have on employers and workers? What do you expect its ramifications to be?
Justin Madders: Currently, there is still the ability to make an application under existing legislation. The reason it will take a couple of years to come into force is because an awful lot of work needs to be done to make sure that it is ready.
I have already set out that there will be several rounds of consultation[2] on the process. Codes of practice and secondary legislation will need to be drafted, and it is important that we take the time to take on board all stakeholders’ views when we are drafting them. The code of practice on what is reasonable will be very important, because we have to make sure that it is common sense and practical and that it also delivers the policy outcome. It is therefore right that we take our time to get that right.
Baroness Featherstone: I agree that getting it right is important. Lastly, you dropped from the Bill the right to disconnect. What is your intention, going forward, on that issue? A lot of people have talked about retaining flexibility with the right not to respond. Where is your thinking going on that? It was a flagship idea.
Justin Madders: The right to disconnect was never intended to be in the Employment Rights Bill. We are working on what will be a statutory code of practice on that. Because it is a novel development in our legal system, trying to get that shoehorned into a Bill that has an awful lot of other, very important things in it was probably not the optimal way of approaching it. We will consult on it. We have already started having discussions with civil society, businesses and trade unions about how this will work in practice. It is our intention to bring in the code of practice.
Baroness Featherstone: Is it fair to say that you want it to happen, but you do not know how yet?
Justin Madders: The “how” is through a statutory code of practice. Because it is a novel development for us in this jurisdiction, it will take a little while to get that right.
Q253 Baroness Nye: We have heard evidence—and you yourself have said this—that businesses and employees need to take decisions that are best for them in their own interests and that disputes need to be avoided. Guidance can play a role in that. What guidance do the Government currently offer on best practice for remote and hybrid working? Do you have plans to expand it to employer responsibilities for employees?
Justin Madders: That is a very important point. We sometimes hear that people will get one of these requests, or some other employment issue, but will not really know where to turn to deal with it. Quite a wide range of guidance is available already. We are obviously referring people to the current ACAS code of practice on flexible working. There is also the Health and Safety Executive guidance on an employer’s responsibilities to deal with that.
We are thinking about other considerations for having a single point of contact, via the web, for employment-related advice. That will be important moving forward, so that businesses know what to do. We know that most businesses want to do the right thing; they want access to that information and support. We want to be able to give them that information at the start, rather than point out, later on, where they have gone wrong.
Baroness Nye: What other guidance could the Government provide? We have been hearing about, for instance, how to measure and improve productivity, or the importance of including working arrangements in job adverts. Some job adverts do not mention that hybrid working is a possibility until people get to the interview, which stops many people from applying for those jobs. We have also heard about addressing the specific needs of SMEs, which might not have large HR or IT departments. Do you think that that is an area that guidance could cover?
Justin Madders: That is a very important point. One of your previous witnesses very clearly said that advertising flexible working was an important part of their recruitment process. We do not think that mandating that in the job adverts is necessarily helpful, because it would become a little too prescriptive. I believe that businesses that already see the benefits of flexible working will put that as a lure to the most talented candidates. When I recruit staff, there is inevitably a conversation about their expectations—and we then set out what our expectations are. It is about finding middle ground. It is more and more commonplace, because the best employers understand that it will help them to get a broader pool of talent.
On additional support, the Business Growth Service was recently announced by the Secretary of State, which we think will be helpful. It will be a national service, but it will be delivered locally. It will be part of wider plan to provide business support for SMEs.
There will be 41 local growth hubs across England. An SME strategy will be released later this year, which will also touch on this. We all understand that SMEs are a big engine in our economy, and we want to make sure that they have access to the best support and advice possible.
Baroness Nye: I will go back to that point. Part of the Government’s aim is to have economic growth and to make inactive people active. Those people would be more likely to go for a job if they thought that there was some degree of flexibility. We would hold back a whole cohort of potential new employees from the workforce, if they do not know that flexible jobs are out there. That was in some of the evidence that we have heard.
As part of our evidence, we have also heard that different management skills are needed to deal with hybrid working and the change that has come about because of it. Do the Government have any plans to promote or incentivise training for managers, so that home working and hybrid working are optimised?
Justin Madders: Again, that is a very important point; over the past five years, we have had to begin to grapple with it, as managers and as individuals.
There is work out there. There is the Help to Grow programme, which is specifically designed to help SME leaders enhance their leadership and management skills. That has been going on for about four years now, and it has helped about 11,000 small business leaders. It encourages them to recognise what will grow their businesses. It helps to improve management skills and responsible business practices—all the key ingredients that you would expect a good leader in a workplace to follow.
Baroness Nye: Finally, even the best codes of practice or guidance will not make a difference if people do not know about or use them. You mentioned the new website. What are the most reliable ways for the Government to get this advice out there, so that it is easy for employers to find it?
Justin Madders: We are in a world where the web and AI et cetera are the first port of call when both businesses and individuals want to find out something. An ongoing piece of work will involve us digitising as much information as we can, to make it user friendly and to get the knowledge out there. Knowledge is the key to understanding how to deal with these situations.
The Chair: Baroness Manzoor has a supplementary question. Before I bring her in, I will come back to the point about management and the capacity of managers to adapt to this new way of working. I wondered whether I could put Simon on the spot. Can you describe to us what is happening within the Civil Service around recognising the issue of management capacity?
Simon Claydon: There is little question that the key to this is managers on the ground. While each employer needs to decide the overall framework, the quality of the line management—and the quality of the experiences and relationship between the line manager and the individual—is key here. In the Civil Service, where individuals have good-quality conversations across a range of issues—particularly on the issue of hybrid working—we do not see any issues. However, where the quality of that relationship is less good, we start to see those issues.
We have put a lot of focus on line management in the Civil Service. We are in the process of rolling out a brand-new suite of arrangements for line management capability across the Civil Service, starting with the Senior Civil Service. That has been the success in every department where we have relationships operating at line manager level.
Clearly, this is a matter for each department to issue guidance on—they are separate employers—but we at the Cabinet Office provide model policies and guidance. I would be very happy to share with the committee some examples of the material we put together.
The Chair: That would be very helpful.
Q254 Baroness Manzoor: Thank you very much for joining us today. My question is a follow-up on job adverts. I want to better understand your thoughts on this. If employers are advertising hybrid working, are there any contractual implications for the employers?
Justin Madders: I am not quite sure what you are driving at there. Adverts are obviously published before any contract is formed.
The businesses that have given evidence to your committee—and others that we have heard about—often now advertise flexibility as part of their recruitment package to encourage more people to apply. There is no doubt about that. One of the witnesses said that, for telephony, if people take out the morning and evening trips into work, they have more time when others might be available.
We know that if people have caring responsibilities, if they are an older worker, or if they have a disability, they may well find that home working suits them better. I have to add that other forms of flexible working are also important.
I think that most employers understand that there is a positive aspect: they will increase the pool of applicants when they advertise flexible working. However, that is only the start of the process. Once someone has entered the workplace, they may have a different view on how best to fit their time around the job. It may be that, on some days, they need to get in earlier or they need to be in the office for particular functions. The key to that is having a dialogue with the business about what works best.
Baroness Manzoor: I will clarify my question—I apologise if I was not very clear. My question was not so much about the importance of hybrid working and flexible working; it was more about guidance. Will there be an opportunity in the guidance to tell employers what they have to do if they advertise that a particular job is pertinent for hybrid working? Obviously, flexible working is currently available by statute. A person applying for a job advertised as having hybrid working would expect to be able to work in a hybrid way, and so there will be contractual implications. Do you have any thoughts about how you may help businesses to unlock that a little, so that they understand their rights and responsibilities, as part of the guidance that you are considering?
Justin Madders: That is a very useful suggestion. The key point is around expectations. If people are applying for jobs and the expectation is that there will be some form of flexible arrangement, I would expect most businesses to want to highlight that. When we draft the code of practice, perhaps we can think about encouraging businesses to make that explicit at the start of the process.
We do not want to get into the business of mandating that at the outset; that actually causes more problems than it solves. However, if we can encourage that, most businesses will see the benefit. That is the case only if it is suitable for them, because we of course do not want businesses to advertise flexible roles when it is probably not what they want.
The Chair: I think what prompted Baroness Manzoor’s question is something that we have been grappling with. Most of the businesses we have spoken with recognise the positive sides, in the way that you just described, but we have also heard that only about 12% of job adverts are advertising that a hybrid option is available. We are therefore trying to get our heads around why businesses would, on the one hand, be positive about it, but, on the other, not advertise it. That is why we were speculating as to whether there is a reluctance to do so, in case they find themselves contractually bound in a way they had not originally intended to be. That is the background.
Justin Madders: Your report will be very helpful for us when we frame our code of practice on this. I look forward to your conclusions on that point.
Q255 Lord Stevenson of Balmacara: My question has a slightly wider impact than just your department, so I appreciate that you will be limited on what you can say, but I hope that you will be able to pick up the idea behind where we are. It has been very interesting, stepping back and looking at the broader picture, to recognise that we are looking at a change in the social behaviour in our country that is probably equivalent to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Going from virtually no one to, let us say, 25% of people doing some form of flexible working or hybrid working is a major change in the way we live our lives and our social activities. How are the Government capturing some of that?
There must be tempting areas that you might want to go into. For instance, we heard that burglaries have dropped by 20% as a result of changes in working practices, perhaps mainly since Covid. That means that there will be a change in policing. Funds available in different parts of the country, such as those for housing—and even local economies—will also change. Are you picking any of this up? What do you have to say about that?
Justin Madders: You are right that this has ramifications that are broader than my department, so I can touch only lightly on other areas of responsibility. As a politician, it certainly makes canvassing in the day a bit easier. This is an absolutely serious point: we are getting far more people in than we ever used to, when we knock on doors in the daytime.
There is a whole range of issues here. Who could have predicted, 15 years ago, that we would be getting billions of parcels delivered to homes every day and that we would get our media content, news and information from our phones in the way that we do? There are so many ways that this could develop; it is very difficult to predict. There is obviously a temptation to think that this will lead to less transport use; that is partially the case, but because of Covid it has been very difficult to discern any long-term trends.
As someone who represents a northern town, I believe that this is a big opportunity for those kinds of places. People who might have ordinarily had to commute into the big city five days a week will instead spend a couple of days in their local area, spending money in the local community and saving goodness knows how much time and money on the commute. That gives them more opportunity to do things that may be better for their mental health and well-being; they can spend more time with their families and undertake caring responsibilities.
Something I am really keen on is seeing more remote work hubs in town centres; the Barclays Eagle Labs is a good example of that. They are open to anyone who runs a small business or works from home. It is a great place for people to exchange ideas. It does not work for everyone; people can dip in and out when they want. However, it provides a suitable working environment, which means that people do not have to travel all the way into the office every day, but they are mixing with people, which may facilitate a very good exchange of ideas. Particularly for small businesses, that kind of cross-fertilisation is very important.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara: You recognise that these things are happening, so where do we turn to find out who is measuring that and getting data and policy initiatives going on that group of activities?
Justin Madders: Perhaps Jayne would like to help us with that, because she is our data expert.
Jayne McCann: The main point I would make is that it is very early days. We put some of this in our written evidence to the Committee. Obviously, home working and hybrid working peaked during the pandemic. Now that we are post pandemic, it seems, as the Minister said, to include around a quarter of workers. Some of the emerging trends and new behaviours still feel like they are very early days.
The Government are of course keeping an eye on these things and tracking the data where we have it. I think it is fair to say that responsibility is split across government departments. Our written evidence included information from the Department for Transport and MHCLG alongside our own information. As we said in our written evidence, we really welcome the committee inquiry, because we think it is early days. Therefore, beginning to build a better evidence base around all this, and learning how the different bits of the picture fit together, is really welcome.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara: We are narrowing it back down to departmental responsibilities. One of the Government’s targets is growth. Growth must mean bringing more people into the workplace and having more productive activity. The evidence we have so far suggests that home working has a particular way of working for those who might otherwise be excluded from the workforce, particularly the disabled, but not necessarily restricted to them. Have you any thoughts about how that might be promoted?
Justin Madders: That is a really important point. We know that 63% of responders to a Carers UK survey said that working from home helps them, and 80% of disabled workers said the same. There are also surveys on how it affects women, young children and older workers. There is a challenge in getting older workers back into the job market. We have a piece of work going on at the moment with Charlie Mayfield, with his Keep Britain Working study, which I hope will report in the autumn. That is about how we get many of the people who are currently economically inactive back into work and staying in work. There are lots of things that employers can do in respect of that. One is thinking a bit more creatively about how we arrange ourselves and our lives so that we can fit our various responsibilities in. There is a tremendous opportunity here to get growth and get more people engaged in the labour market.
Q256 Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Building on those questions, you will have seen from our transcripts that we are really keen to get to the bottom of the effects of hybrid working on productivity and those kinds of issues. What work are the Government doing to look at the impact on well-being, productivity and inclusion? What data are you using to get to the heart of those issues?
Justin Madders: The challenge is pinning down exactly where the baseline is for this. The evidence you have had has been pretty mixed. Overall, you would probably say that there is a net benefit for productivity, particularly on a business-wide scale. We think this is potentially a good thing for productivity. It is certainly a good thing for labour market inclusion. But we accept that it is very difficult to put a figure on it.
There was a proper randomised study in China about 10 years ago that showed that it has a benefit. Of course, because we are talking about so many different arrangements and workplaces where there has been quite a rapid change in arrangements, going both one way and the other over the past five years, it is difficult to get a baseline of evidence that we can truly rely on, but we would like to find a way of getting more data on this. Again, I ask Jayne whether she can add anything on that.
Jayne McCann: I agree with those points. The evidence and data available so far are quite mixed on the productivity impacts of home working and hybrid working. There is some evidence to suggest that hybrid working may have some productivity benefits, but the high-level message is that we need more evidence and research before we can make a call on that one way or another. We would certainly be happy to provide the committee with more information about what evidence we think is available, pointing in which directions. We have, obviously, been looking at that, and we have some summaries we can share.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon: That would be useful. Given the need for data in these really important outcomes, what are the Government doing to collect more data and to link it better, such as supplies of employee data, survey data and employer data? How are we going to get all this data into one place and be able to analyse it?
Justin Madders: That is a very good question. At the moment, obviously, we do not ask every employer to set out their particular working arrangements; if we mandated that, we would probably get quite a lot of pushback in terms of the regulatory burden of that. Of course, this is something that spans several government departments. It is a very important question. We would be pleased to hear any recommendations that the committee may have on how we can best do this, because it is certainly something that the officials are thinking about as well.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Do you work with the Office for National Statistics to talk about how to make sure that the UK’s statistics are comparable to other countries’?
Jayne McCann: We work with the ONS. We make use of the surveys that it does; you will have seen ONS survey evidence feature in our written evidence to you on the proportion of people working from home or on a hybrid basis. We also talk to it on occasion about the types of question it is asking in order to make sure that it is giving us the types of information we need to answer policy questions.
Baroness Freeman of Steventon: Have any of those questions looked at particular demographic groups, such as the disabled or people with caring responsibilities?
Jayne McCann: I would need to check that and get back to you on it.
The Chair: It has surprised the committee, I think, how little we know about this. Although I take your point that it sits across departments, Minister, it feels pretty big to us as a government responsibility in terms of really understanding what is happening here. As Lord Stevenson said, this is a fundamental change in the way we go about business. I am sure that there will be something in the report about this.
Justin Madders: I look forward to it.
The Chair: Lord Fink is with us online.
Q257 Lord Fink: I thank all of you—the Minister, Jayne and Simon—for coming to speak to us today. I want to ask about the Civil Service’s own practices. The Civil Service has, we believe, a 60% office attendance mandate. Why have the Government chosen to introduce this?
Justin Madders: First of all, what a fantastic demonstration of hybrid working we have before us today. The 60% figure is one that the Government inherited, so it is probably appropriate for me to ask Simon to explain how it was arrived at in a bit more detail.
Simon Claydon: The main reason why we elected to have the figure of 60% was to make sure that we have a single, simple and straightforward expectation across the Civil Service. It is a set of completely separate employers and, in terms of our workforce issues, in a system where we have separate employers, we often end up with very different things happening. There are good reasons for that with certain issues but, for some issues, it is better to have a consistent approach.
In the summer of 2023, a couple of years after the pandemic, we, like other organisations, began to look at how office attendance and other home-working patterns were operating. Together, the heads of department—the most senior civil servants—reached a consensus that, if we were going to set a single figure, on balance, from looking at the evidence that we had in front of us, much of which was varied, the figure of 60% was a helpful step forward. That is the reason why we went for 60%.
It is clear, I might add, not only that the Civil Service has a long history of valuing flexible working but that hybrid working is working really effectively in the Civil Service because, of course, not everybody in the Civil Service is in an office; some people are doing wildly different things in the Civil Service. So this measure is aimed at an expectation that departments will adopt it for those people who are office-based.
Lord Fink: I have a couple of supplementary questions. We have heard that there are concerns that a blanket mandate may not achieve the benefits of in-person collaboration in the context of limited desk space and teams not necessarily being co-ordinated. How are the Government addressing those concerns?
Simon Claydon: At the time that the original decision was made, we made an assessment of the office availability. We are not untypical to other organisations in that you do get a bit of centring in the week, but there is enough office space across the working week to accommodate that.
It is really clear that as we continue to develop and build our government hubs and estate, we need to take that into account overall. We are alive to the concerns that have been raised by some, including the FDA, about this as an issue. It is one of the considerations that each departmental leader and Permanent Secretary needs to take into account as they are thinking about how they work with that 60% expectation. There will be some variation across different sites and across different parts of the Civil Service, but it is an issue we are alive to and carry on monitoring. At each point that we look again at office attendance, we look again at space planning.
Lord Fink: My final point is that there are possible opportunities here for the Government to lead by example with a hybrid-working policy reflecting latest evidence, which is possibly tied to you retaining 60% or coming out with more specific guidance. Do you have any views on whether the Civil Service should be leading in this way, and how?
Simon Claydon: We should always seek to lead as a set of employers. We directly support the Government of the day, and we pride ourselves on a being a best-practice set of employers. As I have said a couple of times already, we are separate employers, so that can sometimes complicate our arrangements.
There are some good examples. This afternoon, the committee has already talked about job adverts. Civil Service job adverts, unless there is a reason not to—a business case generally needs to be made locally for that to be the case—carry flexible working. That covers the arrangements someone might need to have for hybrid working.
We also use workplace adjustments passports for disabled colleagues and carer’s passports for those with caring responsibilities so that people do not have to renegotiate that set of issues as they move around the system. We are looking to lead the way. We want the very best people working in the Civil Service. We want the most talented people from every sector of our society and to make sure those opportunities operate well across the Civil Service.
One advantage of having a broadly common expectation is, as people move around our system, they can have a broadly common experience, not just on things such as carer’s passports, but generally of the way things operate in the Civil Service.
Q258 Lord Monks: What is the position regarding any disputes you might have with the unions, perhaps PCS in particular? It has not all been rosy. I am absolutely staggered by how much progress this country made on doing this exercise and the scale of the change we have been able to achieve so far. I guess that there have been some local difficulties somewhere. Can you say something about that?
Simon Claydon: I will not comment too much on individual disputes, but it is fair to say there are some disputes at the moment. The Office for National Statistics is one example, MHCLG is another—that is about office estate more generally—and Land Registry. Obviously, it is a matter for those individual organisations to resolve.
We fundamentally respect the right of trade unions to raise disputes and take action if they wish to do so. The key for us—and the Government are pushing this very hard—is coming together to resolve those disputes and doing that quickly through meaningful dialogue. I know Ministers and my team happen to have responsibility for industrial relations, and the Civil Service will always stand ready to help support anyone who is looking to move those disputes forward. But, yes, there have been one or two examples so far.
Q259 Lord Parker of Minsmere: I will ask the Minister something about digital and cyber. There is your advance warning. Before I do that, I ask Simon: if the Civil Service is to lead to by example—to be one of those big employers that can lead by example nationally, as you were saying—how does the learning get out to other employers?
Simon Claydon: That is a very fair question. There is more that we could be doing to share with others. There are examples of where we pull together other employers, round tables and so on. It is fair to say that through our contribution, perhaps through this committee and others, there is more we could be doing to share our learning. We could do so alongside trade unions and other partners, including other organisations we work with in the Civil Service, to look at ways we could do that. I would like to take that away and give that some thought. But if we are being in any way successful, then we have something to contribute to the debate.
Lord Parker of Minsmere: We are very much up for getting supplementary answers in writing afterwards. If you feel able; that would be very helpful.
Minister, on digital, obviously the Government have plans and commitments for digital infrastructure support and rollout. Can you talk to us a little about where those plans sit currently and what the investment commitment is from government, both on infrastructure and digital skills? I am asking partly because it links directly to what you said about how this is the way that these increased and new patterns of working can lead to greater labour market inclusion and regional development.
Justin Madders: First, DSIT has the primary responsibility for infrastructure and digital skills. That is not to say we are we are not interested in it at all; of course it is very important. I reflect on how, when I first tried home working 20 years ago, I could not really do it for more than a day at a time because I did not have the IT support. In contrast, we saw during the pandemic that some of the technology was getting to the point where it was able to allow more dialogue remotely, but it also opened up people’s eyes to the potential of this. But it is important that potential is realised in an inclusive way.
I know that DSIT has the Digital Inclusion Action Plan, which will be really helpful in making sure that everyone has the skills that they need. As we think about some of the earlier questions about how the job market is going to change, it is important that we equip people with those skills from the get-go so they can use them throughout their lives, because we know that this world is going to keep changing, and that is important.
So I think more work is being done. In fact, a report was published fairly recently on the digital skills gap and some more research is being done on that, which I think will come out next year. There was an action plan off the back of that, which identified five broad demographic groups which are most likely to be digitally excluded, NEETs in particular, and clearly there is an important job to do there to ensure that they have relevant skills.
In terms of the infrastructure itself and the figures that you are seeking, I think we will have to refer to colleagues in DSIT to get you an answer on that. But this is obviously an important part of making sure that broadband in particular is available to all, because you can have a home-working wish, but if you are in a black spot where you do not really have much connectivity, it is not going to be of any good to you at all.
Lord Parker of Minsmere: We heard that from quite a few witnesses. On cyber—I know your department is not the lead but you have a strong interest in this—government already provides some services out to the country and to the economy on cybersecurity. Could you say anything about what plans there are to step that up as cyberthreats increase, proliferate and become more hostile? In the more distributed working economy that we are talking about, potentially there could be more vulnerabilities.
Justin Madders: We absolutely recognise that this is becoming a bigger issue up the agenda, not just because of what we have seen in the press but from what we are hearing from businesses, in particular about how they are ramping up their focus on this area. As regards the detail and action plans, perhaps Jayne can help us on this.
Jayne McCann: As the Minister has explained, DSIT leads on this area, but I know that the Government’s new Cyber Governance Code of Practice sets out how business leaders can manage their digital risks, and the Government’s Cyber Essentials scheme also sets out technical measures that organisations should have in place to prevent common cyberattacks. I also understand that the National Cyber Security Centre publishes a range of expert guidance, including some that is specifically aimed at small businesses, with practical and affordable advice to improve their cybersecurity. If the committee does not already have access to those, we can certainly collate the links and get them over to you.
Lord Parker of Minsmere: Thank you. I think we have seen what is out there now; I am really asking if you know of any plans to step up any of that.
Justin Madders: We will have to speak to colleagues in DSIT and get back to you. I would be interested to hear what you have been hearing from the witnesses about the cybersecurity angle of all this, because we tend to think about home working as being about making sure that the arrangements work, but actually the security angle is a huge issue.
Q260 Baroness Manzoor: As a fellow northerner, I have some sympathy with what you said earlier regarding digital infrastructure. Will the Government be pursuing a co-ordinated investment strategy in digital and transport infrastructure? In particular, how will they provide better transport and digital links outside city centres? When we are talking about hybrid working, it is always very London-based. We have heard from witnesses that about 85% to 95% are still commuting, particularly in northern regions.
Justin Madders: There is a role for the Department for Transport in that. It has recently made some announcements about how there will be more investment in road and rail in the regions to improve connectivity. Obviously, it is important that people are able to access good work. It is about not just having that service available, but having it at a reliable interval and at time that recognises that work patterns do not always fit the nine-to-five. I can think of an industrial estate near me where there is quite a lot of night working and the public transport offer there is not good enough. That is probably better done at a local level, and obviously we have combined authorities, and mayors to do a lot of that. The spending review has put aside a significant sum of money for increasing and improving rail and road infrastructure in this country. I will ask for a formal response for you from the Department for Transport on that issue.
Baroness Manzoor: That would be very helpful. Thank you very much. Can I ask a further supplementary? We have heard that since the pandemic there have been various recovery paths in different parts of the country. How will the future long-term plan for transport infrastructure take that into account? If you have AI, we have problems digitally, certainly in the north in terms of having access, and if we are really serious about hybrid working we must not perpetuate those inequalities. I know you have to leave promptly and you have two minutes, but would it be possible to get an answer to that in writing?
Justin Madders: I will get you a fuller answer, but I suspect that what will be key to this is going to be making sure that when rail services are all brought back into public ownership we co-ordinate things in a much better way than we have done recently. I will ask the Department for Transport to get you a full response on that.
The Chair: We have spectacularly managed to ask all the questions and have come in with about one minute to spare. Minister, thank you very much. Thank you to Jayne and Simon for talking to us today. I will bring this session to a close. Thank you.
