GOV0086

Written evidence submitted by Sir Robert Rogers KCB

Introduction

1. I was the Clerk of the House and Chief Executive of the House of Commons Service from 2011 to 2014. Among my previous postings in the House Service I was Secretary of the House of Commons Commission, and Clerk of Domestic Committees, 2001-04, and I led the in-House team supporting the Braithwaite inquiry into management and services, 1998-99.

Challenges for the House Administration

2. As your inquiry has demonstrated, the management and governance challenge in the House of Commons is a very unusual one. The House Administration must operate successfully in an environment where:

     Members determine the provision of services but have no formal accountability for the resources required;

     This is reflected in the disconnect between the House of Commons Commission and the Management Board (see paragraph 7 below)

     Long-term strategy is always at risk from short-term political pressures and reactions;

     The House Administration has to provide the operating framework for what are effectively 650 small businesses, where the Member-proprietor is (rightly) the expert on what he or she wants from the organisation – and there is a great variety of requirements;

     Much of the work of the institution is carried out in the largest Grade I listed building in the country, in the middle of a UNESCO World Heritage site, with all the planning and heritage constraints involved;

     Parliament is a major visitor and tourist attraction, with hundreds of thousands of visitors throughout the year;

     Parliament is also a so-called “picture postcard” terrorist target, and serious security measures must be balanced with the access of the public to their Parliament;

     The House of Commons shares the Estate with the House of Lords, which not only has a different Parliamentary culture but a separate Administration;

     Complaints about services can be given an immediate national profile through the media or being raised on the Floor of the House;

     The House is a trophy institution for the media, with perennial stories (many based on FoI requests to which the House is punctilious in responding) about catering prices, fig-trees, Christmas trees, select committee travel, alleged privatisation of this and that, the Portcullis House roof, misuse of IT, and so on and on.  The House usually has a good story to tell, but it doesn’t get told in the media, and it is not good for staff morale in the areas affected (and neither is the habit of some Members of taking stories to the media or raising them on the Floor rather than discussing them with the staff responsible);

     At the same time, of course, the House Service must deal successfully with the basic requirements of any organisation, including: pay and reward; staff recruitment and retention; training and development; diversity; and health and safety.

3. Some organisations in the public and private sectors face some similar challenges; none faces all, or even a majority of them.

4. This catalogue is meant to be realistic. The fact that it is not pessimistic is due to the quality and commitment of the staff of the House Service. Many of the services they deliver are world-class, reflected in the respect for Westminster among the Members and officials of other Parliaments. To take one unsung example: the extraordinary performance of the Parliamentary Estates Department over many years has kept a failing building running, and has bought more time for Restoration and Renewal (R&R) than anyone would have thought possible. 

Achievements

5. I know that the Committee will be aware of the recent achievements of the House Administration. In the three years during which I was Clerk, we:

     Brought the Savings Programme to a successful conclusion, with no diminution of services to Members or the public;

     Greatly improved financial management (remarked upon approvingly by the NAO)

     Introduced a comprehensive risk management system

     Created a single procurement and commercial division, replacing three separate units

     Reduced the catering subsidy

     Set in hand the creation of the Digital Office, bringing together PICT and the Web and Intranet Service, with the aim of making Parliament digital by default, not by choice

     Introduced the paperless Q&A system for the transmission and web publication of PQs and answers

     Made the majority of select committees, and most official groups and committees,  paperless

     Slashed the 80M printed pages a year which we were producing in 2011

     Substantially improved environmental performance

     Initiated the R&R process, gripping the future needs of the Palace for the first time in well over a century

     Increased our engagement with constituency staff (for example, increasing the number of constituency days, with very high take-up)

     Achieved IiP re-accreditation

     Introduced the Parliamentary studies module in partnership with 13 universities

     Developed and implemented plans for the Education Centre

     Introduced pro-active media briefings on key procedural issues

     Facilitated the Cockerell observational documentary

     Developed a major programme for the 2015 anniversaries

     Built on the success of Parliament Week, greatly expanding activities

     Brought together the visitor-facing services under unified management

     Launched the Parliament Guidebook, the Elizabeth Tower Guidebook, audio tours, and “touch tours” for visually impaired visitors

     Established four Workplace Equality Networks: Parliout, Parlireach, Parliable, and Parliagender

     Founded the Clerk’s Apprentices Scheme: the first cohort of young people with poor employment prospects, 80% women, 80% BME, all found jobs in the House Service after their apprenticeships

     Engaged with the Stonewall Equality Index, with much improved ranking in second year

6. The list above shows, if it were necessary, that the House Administration is active and successful. But there is no doubt in my mind that the central governance is in need of radical reform.

The Management Board

7. The Management Board, unconstrained by a legislative framework, has raised its game. The key achievement of the Tebbit changes, from 2006-07 onwards, was to create the concept of a single House Service, and the Board now to a great degree reflects that in its corporate style.[1] The Board has a proper work programme, devotes time to strategy, and has much improved its use of management information. It has also engaged with the NAO in assessments of its own effectiveness, from which it emerged with credit. It is well supported by the Office of the Chief Executive.[2] Its activities are fairly transparent (publication of minutes, articles by each Board Member reporting on each meeting, senior leaders and all-staff events, &c) but it could have greater visibility and engagement across the House Service.

8. The contribution made by the external non-executive members has been of a high order. I added an additional non-exec to the Board as I greatly value the role that they can play. With their different perspectives, experience and constructive challenge, the external non-execs have made an invaluable contribution.

The Commission

9. By contrast, the Commission is trapped in the legislative amber of the 1970s, when there was no expectation of corporate governance as it is known today. Its business is a mixture of:

     Established points in the annual cycle, such as the pay remit when required, approval of the Administration Estimate, approval of its annual report, receipt of the report of the Audit Committee, &c;

     Providing political approval or cover for plans and policy proposals from the Management Board; and

     “Left-field” issues which appear on the agenda with little warning, and are often arguably way below what should be a threshold for Commission business.

10. The Secretary of the Commission tries to maintain a long-term programme, but for understandable reasons there is little engagement with the issues confronting the Management Board, and too much short-termism. The agenda appears only a short time before meetings[3]; and the style owes more to a Star Chamber than a modern collaborative approach: officials with an item on the agenda queue on benches outside waiting to be called in, or not if the meeting overruns. The minutes are not published, although somewhat uninformative Decisions are supplemented with a fuller Bulletin.

11. Perhaps oddest of all, it is in effect an executive body composed of non-executive members; and it has no outside non-executive member.

12. These necessarily critical remarks do not detract from, nor undervalue, the great contributions made over the years, and still made, by individual Commissioners.

13. However, I suggest that the time has come to bring the Commission up to modern standards of corporate governance, with a mix of executive and non-executive members.

14. In such a body there will be a tension between keeping the body small (and so more effective) yet large enough to represent the various elements, but I would suggest the following membership:

     The Leader of the House and the Shadow Leader; authoritative evidence has been given to you as to the party links they bring to the Commission in addition to their House roles[4]

     Three, or possibly four, executive members: the Clerk/Chief Executive, the Chief Operating Officer (see paragraph 37 below), the Finance Director, and probably the Director General Facilities

     The Chair of the Finance Committee[5]

     The Chair of the Administration Committee

     Two external non-executive members

     A third back-bench Member of the House

15. This produces a Commission of 10 (or 11) members, almost double the present size, but I think manageable. Rather than specify three back-bench Members of the House in addition to the Chairs of Finance and Administration (thus further expanding the Commission), Standing Orders could limit eligibility for election of one Chair to Members of the largest party in the House, and of the other to Members of the second largest party. The third back-bench place would be the preserve of the third largest party.

16. Three of the members of the new Commission would be elected to their posts; although the House could of course elect whom it wished, it would need to be understood that high-level management, organisational and/or commercial skills, experience and awareness were essential elements of the skillset.

17. The Commission would be equipped to take a strategic role, and I presume that it would become thoroughly professionalised, with a proper work programme, measures of its own effectiveness, and so on. The mix of executive and non-executive members would synthesise the present executive proposal/political decision relationship, which is outdated and ineffective.

18. The present Management Board would then become an Operations Board, responsible for the day-to-day delivery of services, but relieved of much of its high-level work. It could be chaired by the COO rather than by the Clerk/Chief Executive, especially if the former assumed responsibility for performance, VFM and other supra-Departmental issues. To minimise duplication of membership, the DG Facilities and the Finance Director could be represented on the Operations Board by their deputies.

19.   The great success in the present Parliament of the engagement of the House Service with the Finance and Services Committee, and especially with its Chair, leads me to suggest that the Member in that post should chair the Commission.

20. This would mean that the Speaker was removed from membership of the Commission (although of course he or she could attend by invitation). However, the present role of the Speaker in the Commission was conceived in the 1970s when the administration of the House was almost unrecognisably different.  The burdens placed on the Speaker today by the Chamber and a range of House/Committee business issues are as great or greater than ever they were; and the Speaker’s important international role has expanded with meetings of G8 and European Speakers, and the Quadrilateral meetings of the UK Speakers/Presiding Officers. The present Speaker has to his great credit opened up Speaker’s House to a dramatically wider range of events, charities and other bodies than ever before, rightly requiring his personal involvement.  And equally to his credit is the vastly expanded role of the Speaker in outreach and education, two key (but time-consuming) areas in which the House and especially its presiding officer should be fully engaged.

21. The Director of the Institute for Government noted in evidence to you[6] that in the 2009 election to the Speakership none of the ten candidates said anything about how they saw the House Administration. This is not surprising; administrative ability and governance experience is not, and has never been, one of the criteria on which the House makes a choice – in sharp contrast to the appointment of Chairs of Boards of significant organisations in the public or private sectors.

22. So if the governance of the House is really to be modernised, the changes of the last 35 years suggest that greater specialisation in the running of the House Administration is required, as reflected in the proposals above.

23. I hope that in any changes the opportunity will be taken to achieve greater diversity. At 31 August the Commission (6 members) had 17% female representation, and no BME member. The Administration Committee (16 members) had 13% female representation, and 6% BME. The Finance Committee (11 members) had no female or BME members.  By contrast, the Management Board (9 members) had 44% female and 11% BME membership.

The Clerk and Chief Executive

(i)                 Clerk of the House

24. Reading the evidence so far given before, or submitted, to your Committee, it seems that, in many cases, nomenclature and outdated preconceptions have conditioned the debate. Many of your witnesses describe the Clerk of the House simply as “a proceduralist”, conjuring up images of dusty Standing Orders being pored over, and rather sterile pedantry. Once, maybe, but, in my experience, not for many years.

25. During my time as Clerk of the House there were a couple of dozen more able and knowledgeable “proceduralists” than I. I used their expertise and advice, of course, in the same way that I used the expertise and advice of my Finance Director, Director of Public Information, and of many other expert colleagues.

26. Where I felt that I had a special role as Clerk of the House was to have a profound understanding of the interests of the House and of its Members. Combined with my professional experience in the business of the House this allowed me to speak with (I hope I may say this without immodesty) the “unquestioned authority” referred to in evidence by the Chair of the Liaison Committee[7], whether on the biggest issues (such as the effect of Lords Reform on the House of Commons) or the problems brought to me by individual Members. I do not believe that anyone other than the most senior official of the House could aspire to quite the same “unquestioned authority”.

27. Reading the evidence before your Committee, I have been surprised at the rather narrow view of the Clerk’s role (qua Clerk) assumed by some. I felt strongly that the role of the Clerk of the House was to make the House as effective as possible in all its roles. That went very much wider than the conventional areas of Chamber business, legislation, and select committees, to embrace research for Members, support for constituency staff, education, outreach, web and digital services, media engagement, and many other aspects. There are those who would see these as the province of a separate Chief Executive function, but I cannot conceive of any sensible division: they are all ways in which Parliament, and the House of Commons in particular, can be supported more effectively and successfully, and they are all essentially Parliamentary in nature.

28. Some point to the time spent by the Clerk in the Chamber as being inimical to the CX role. As my “Diary Dip” paper makes clear, I took the opportunity of Chamber time (and my I-Pad!) to be productive on administrative matters. But there is also an important issue of visibility, which Members value. Where better to be visible than in the core business of the institution that you are serving? How would a CX who was not the Clerk be visible and informally accessible to Members in the same way?

Clerk and Chief Executive

(ii)               Chief Executive

29. As you will have seen from the “Diary Dip” paper that I submitted at the start of your inquiry, over the period analysed some 44% of my time was spent on “Chief Executive”-type work, and some 31% on “Clerk of the House”-type work – although, as I emphasised in paragraph 3 of that paper, so much of my activity engaged both roles that any distinction is pretty artificial.

30. Indeed, I would be hard put to it to identify more than a handful of CX-type decisions that did not involve specifically House/Member considerations as an integral part of those decisions.

31. Just as there have been misconceptions about the Clerk role, so too there may have been a mixture of expectations about the CX role:

     There have been frequent references to the prospect of R&R needing a beefed-up CX role. I find this hard to understand. There should be, to my mind, no question whatever of the Administrations of either House trying to run this project themselves. Whichever of the options Parliament chooses, I would expect it to need an external delivery authority (probably established by primary legislation). The role of the two Administrations will be to maintain the “intelligent client” function, drawing on outside resources as necessary. There will of course be a major challenge in maintaining the continuity of Parliamentary business of every sort while restoration work proceeds (and especially so in the case of either of the decant options) but it will be an essentially Parliamentary challenge, requiring a real understanding of the needs of the House and its Members, and standing up for those needs.

     The CX role has been portrayed in much of your evidence as the management of facilities. The House already has an excellent Director General Facilities, recruited from outside for his experience in delivery, among other things. But if some more co-ordinated, or otherwise different approach to facilities management is required, it does not need major structural change to achieve it.

     Your consideration of the CX role has also been in the context of shared services with the House of Lords, possibly leading to some separate authority delivering services to both Houses. It is worth recalling the current extent of shared services. When I retired there were, I think, 23, including the recently created single Procurement and Commercial Services Division. I was keen to go further if we could, and I had in mind Finance and HR as offering considerable economies of scale (and the latter as facilitating staff moves between the two Administrations). But I think that, certainly for the time being, other opportunities for further jointery are limited. Catering is often mentioned, but there is already much joint ordering of raw materials, and I do not foresee significant delivery savings, even if unification were acceptable to Members of either House. I do not think that combining the Libraries/Information Departments of the two Houses is a starter: I am sure that Members of the Commons would not, for example, wish their research resources to be shared with a very large number of working Peers.

Splitting the roles

32. It will be clear from this paper that I strongly support maintaining the single role of Clerk of the House and Chief Executive. The arguments have been extensively rehearsed in your evidence, so I need do no more than to list the issues briefly:

     Single point of accountability (“where the buck stops”)

     Single point of (official) authority

     Single interlocutor with the House of Lords Administration

     The Parliamentary context and the essentially Parliamentary nature of most decisions

     No possibility of the House and Members being played off against each other by two senior officials

     Avoiding the appointment of an additional official at a high salary

33. I would give special prominence to one issue, and that is the House Service. I said earlier that the key achievement of the Tebbit changes was to create the concept of a single House Service. Making this a reality has been hard work but has informed all the activities of the Management Board. My predecessor was titular Head of the Department of Chamber and Committee Services as well as Clerk of the House, but on my first day in the job I made it clear that I would not be, explicitly because Departments had to see the Clerk of the House as the Head of the House Service and not beholden to any one Department.

34. Splitting the roles would return us to a federal structure, this time of two House Services (because the Clerk of the House would necessarily be in charge of the staff supporting House and Committee business), and the real benefits of a single House Service (community of purpose, unified management, shared stewardship of the institution, and increasingly easier movement of staff from job to job) would be blunted or lost.

Equipping the Clerk for the combined role

35. If the Clerk of the House is to remain Chief Executive as well, then he or she must be able to demonstrate the capability of discharging both roles. It is perhaps worth saying that I came to the post with relevant outside experience. I spent three years as Chair of a medium-sized charity that had got into difficulties, and turned it round. I was part of a project team that turned an 800-pupil girls’ school on a split site into an 800-pupil coeducational new-build Academy on a new site. I was on the Court (the Board of Directors) of one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies, a major charitable and educational institution. I had an insight into other governance systems in political environments through being for nearly a decade a co-opted member of a county council, a police authority and a fire and rescue authority. As Clerk of the House I drew in various ways on this experience (and had also run the DCCS, with 550 staff and a £70M budget).

36. I combined my outside activities with my previous day jobs, but this was not easy. I thoroughly endorse Dame Janet Gaymer’s view expressed to you that for the future there needs to be “sophisticated long-term planning and training”[8].

37. But to fill the immediate requirement, and for the long term, I believe that the circle can be squared by the appointment of a Chief Operating Officer. I see the advantages of such an appointment as:

     providing a House-wide focus for Members and Committees on facilities matters

     Supplementing the Clerk’s role, and supporting the Clerk, with management experience and expertise acquired outside the House

     Taking responsibility for some supra-Departmental issues, such as risk, performance, delivery, VFM and environmental issues

     Chairing the Operations Board (see paragraph 18)

     Avoiding the creation of an additional high-salary post. Although there are arguments for recruiting afresh from outside, the post could as well be filled by competition among the existing executive directors.

November 2014

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