Written evidence from Industry and Parliament Trust (WCS 02)

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

The work of the Civil Service inquiry

Summary

• This submission considers how the Civil Service could improve training and professional development. The Industry and Parliament Trust feels that, given feedback from our existing civil service training schemes, parliamentary training should form a key part of the civil service training offering in order to ensure that civil servants are equipped with the necessary skills to perform their duties as effectively as possible.
• The Trust also notes the statutory duty placed upon HM Government to ensure civil servants who advise Ministers have sufficient awareness of how Parliament and Government interact, and is concerned that this is not being fully met.

Submission

1. The Industry and Parliament Trust (IPT) is an educational charity, established by Parliament in 1977, which aims to promote mutual understanding between Parliament and industry. We are the primary learning mechanism in Parliament for parliamentarians and also offer training for civil servants, industry representatives and the academic community.

2. The emphasis of the IPT’s work is on the quality of learning outcomes and the provision of accessible and beneficial educational experiences to a cross section of individuals from all backgrounds. The Civil Service is a significant stakeholder in our work.

3. The IPT’s primary training offering to the Civil Service is our ‘Civil Service Attachment Scheme’. The Attachment Scheme provides a unique development opportunity to build upon civil servants’ existing parliamentary knowledge and experience the life of an MP or MEP. The scheme aims to provide civil servants with a grounding in how the UK Parliament or EU institutions function from first-hand experience in order to facilitate the smooth running and delivery of Government policy. Attendees typically spend two days with a parliamentarian on a one-to-one basis together with a half-day seminar in Westminster (MP attachment) or 2 day seminar in Brussels (MEP attachment). We generally place around 40 civil servants each year and have placed over 500 civil servants to date. The scheme enjoys cross-party support.

4. The IPT also offers a variety of other training sessions for civil servants, including a general ‘Introduction to Parliament’ seminar, as well as sessions examining supporting Ministers in Parliament, Select Committees, Legislation and Parliamentary Questions. The IPT can also organise bespoke training sessions for specific government departments or agencies.

5. Feedback from participants from both the attachment schemes and other training sessions has been overwhelmingly positive, and therefore the IPT would recommend that all Civil Service departments encourage their staff to attend parliamentary training. Attendees have commented that IPT training helps them to enhance their abilities to perform long term duties within the Civil Service, providing an insight into the complexities and nuances of the parliamentary process.

6. Given this feedback, we would recommend that the Civil Service ensures all relevant staff attend training on the UK parliamentary procedure (as well as the European institutions if relevant) in order to provide them with essential knowledge of the systems that frame their work.

7. For civil servants to be trained properly in the parliamentary process is in fact a requirement of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which imposes a statutory duty on the Minister for the Civil Service to have regard to the need to ensure that civil servants who advise Ministers are aware of the constitutional significance of Parliament and of the conventions governing the relationship between Parliament and Her Majesty's Government (Section 3 paragraph 6). Since we are concerned that this duty is not being fully met by the parliamentary training currently provided to civil servants, we therefore recommend that the Civil Service extend the availability of such training to its workforce to ensure that those who work for Ministers have a good grounding in the workings of Parliament.

June 2016