Public Duty Costs Allowance
Baroness Prosser Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is up to past Prime Ministers, including Gordon Brown, to submit invoices in accordance with the rules of this scheme. I am sure they will continue to do that.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, noble Lords should bear in mind that questions and answers should be about the principles being posed. Finger-pointing at individuals, from whichever side of the Chamber, is deeply unhelpful and does nothing to enhance the status of this House.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I agree with the noble Baroness. That was exactly what I have been saying, in slightly different language. This allowance has been the subject of cross-party consensus. It is important to maintain the special position of former Prime Ministers in public life. I started with my mentor, Baroness Thatcher, who certainly needed this allowance in her latter days.
Public Bodies: Appointments
Baroness Prosser Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Prosser
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether recent appointments to public bodies have adhered to (1) the spirit and rules of the Governance Code on Public Appointments; and (2) relevant legislation, and of whether all such appointments have been made on merit.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the Governance Code on Public Appointments was introduced in January 2017. Ministers make appointments in accordance with the code as well as the relevant legislation. In addition, the Commissioner for Public Appointments provides independent assurance that the governance code is followed.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply. However, despite his comments about the Commissioner for Public Appointments, in recent years there has been a reduction in the number of employee or trade union representatives appointed to public bodies, despite those people having demonstrated appropriate knowledge and experience. An employee representative was not appointed to the Institute for Apprenticeships, despite the history and recognition of the role that trade unions have played in developing the apprenticeships programme with the Government. TUC candidates have been sidelined from the ACAS council, the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and the Social Security Advisory Committee. Do the Government fear the knowledge and experience that union reps will bring to the table? Are the Government not supportive of a partnership approach to developing our public services?
Lord Young of Cookham
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Perhaps I may make a general point and then come to her specific question. If the Government are to make real progress in tackling some of the challenges that confront this country—low productivity, reskilling the workforce, getting underrepresented groups back into the labour market, driving up the quality of apprenticeships and reducing the gender pay gap—we will make faster progress if we have a positive and constructive relationship with those who represent the workforce; that is, the leaders the noble Baroness has just mentioned.
On the specific issue of appointments, until I spoke to the noble Baroness last night I had not appreciated that behind her Question was a concern about the perceived—in her mind—bias against trade union appointees to public bodies. I should like to make some inquiries on this. It is the case that Paul Nowak, deputy general-secretary of the TUC, was reappointed to ACAS last year; Sally Hunt, the current president of the TUC, was reappointed to ACAS in November last year; Michael Hayes, who sits on the Unison national executive, was appointed to the HSE in November; and David Chrimes of the FDA was appointed to the Social Security Advisory Committee in October. However, I should like to do some more work on this and write to the noble Baroness.
Trade Union Bill
Baroness Prosser Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Baroness Prosser
“Codes of Practice: employee engagement
In section 203 of the 1992 Act (issue of Codes of Practice by the Secretary of State), after subsection (1) insert—“(1A) The Codes of Practice issued by the Secretary of State for the purpose of promoting the improvement of industrial relations must encourage all employers, in both the private and public sectors, to have due regard to the establishment of mechanisms via trade unions that encourage and enable effective employee engagement in industrial relations.””
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will have noticed the slight but significant change of wording in this amendment. Despite my cogent and—I thought—very persuasive argument when I moved my amendment in Committee, I clearly failed to move the Government Front Bench. The Government’s argument was that currently there are a variety of ways in which employers can and do engage with the workforce. Quite so—there is no disagreement between us on that. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, said:
“It is not right that we restrict how employee engagement can happen”.—[Official Report, 25/2/16; col. 462.]
Nothing in my previous amendment nor in this amendment would or could restrict ways in which employee engagement can take place. Indeed, the thinking behind the amendment is to encourage involvement, participation and voice, and for a thousand flowers to bloom. The amendment asks that employers are encouraged,
“to have due regard to … mechanisms”—
in other words, to establish systems which suit themselves and the workforce.
Back in 2009, David MacLeod and Nita Clarke, director of the Involvement and Participation Association, in which I declare an interest as a member of the board, produced a report for the then Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills entitled Engaging for Success. A number of subsequent events took place. In March 2011, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, gave his backing to the newly established independent employee engagement task force during its launch at No. 10 Downing Street. In November 2012, 43 CEOs, from a wide range of organisations, signed a letter inviting UK businesses to embed employee engagement in the ways in which they work and quantified the loss to the UK from low levels of employee engagement.
Later that month, 300 practitioners gathered in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. In May 2013 the job design and engagement White Paper was published and in May 2014 the well-being and engagement White Paper was published. By August 2015 more than 600,000 visits had been made to the EFS website—around 27,000 a month—and 1.4 million hits had been made on the EFS pages. There has been lots of interest and lots of activity. Then just last month a White Paper on further evidence was published showing, via new sector case studies, the links between employee engagement and business performance.
When I spoke in Committee I mentioned the report produced by the IPA entitled Involvement and Productivity—The Missing Piece of the Puzzle?. I remind your Lordships’ House that the report examined the evidence from large surveys, behavioural experiments, academic studies and employers themselves and went on to show that, when employees have a voice in the decision-making process over their jobs and the wider organisation, productivity is higher.
We have a lot of government activity and support, right up to the level of Prime Minister. We have a large, wide-ranging and supportive group of employers involved and a report demonstrating the link between employee engagement and improved productivity. What’s not to like? The amendment calls on the Government to reiterate their support and to give this initiative—which they are on record as being supportive of—a formal boost.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
My Lords, when I spoke in Committee I made reference to the Minister behaving like Stonewall Jackson. I was concerned in making that analogy because I pointed out to the Committee that he was eventually shot by his own side. I was mightily relieved today that, when all the cannons were turned on the Minister, the Government made a number of sensible suggestions in the interests of her welfare.
As we come to this debate, we can relax a little and look at how industrial relations affect industry and employment in this country. I hope that we can spend a moment away from the adversarial side of industrial relations and look at the more positive aspects. It is not that I do not respect the need for collective bargaining but I see the benefits of employee participation and working with trade unions as important elements of our democracy. It is sad that in industry generally we have often relied far too much on overseas companies and foreign management to bring in new techniques for our managers and employees and benefit from. There are some notable examples, particularly John Lewis and Marks & Spencer, but I have to say that in these days when customer service, quality and value-added products and services are so important all these aspects of employment require direct employee engagement.
I am reminded of my own experience in the 1970s in a WEA class of shop stewards from the Morris Cowley plant who I had to teach the economics of the car industry. It was not an easy task at that time, particularly as they were cynically suspicious of me and I was warning them of the coming threat to them and their jobs from Japan, which had reached America and was about to become very dominant in Europe. The Morris Marina was the car those employees made at the time and I remember using the words of Gerald Ratner to describe their product.
At that point, there was uproar in the class. The people who made the rear door panels and the electrics and those who worked in the paint shop came to an amazing defence of their product. I was quite astonished. They took real pride in their product and in what they did in that plant, despite its huge complexities and difficulties at that time. Throughout the rest of my career, I have always thought what an opportunity was missed by British management in the British motor industry at that time by failing to engage with its staff. It was only when we had the foreign management of Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota and Honda that we started to make real progress in those sectors.
Baroness Prosser
I am grateful to the Minister for that response and I am heartened by it. I have just a couple of points. The new amendment does not mention a code of practice. That was removed in the change on the basis that we wanted to ensure that we did not back the Government Front Bench into too much of a corner on this but we could leave open a way for proper discussion.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
I should have said that. The powers are not the problem here; it is about what we do, in intent and communication, which is why I gave the noble Baroness the response that I did.
Baroness Prosser
I thank the Minister for that.
Secondly, employee engagement, and the mechanisms to bring it about, must of course take place in workplaces, whether or not they are unionised. That is the whole point. The evidence shows, and I think the Minister agrees, that there is a lot of good will and activity taking place, but there are always employers and organisations that are reluctant to get on the front foot. That is why we are looking for a little bit more of a push from the Government. I am grateful for the Minister’s suggestion that we can continue to discuss this matter to find ways of taking it forward. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security
Baroness Prosser Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Prosser
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on the development of the UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I stand to introduce this Question for Short Debate on women, peace and security, but not because the subject is a pleasing one. No, I am pleased because the more we debate these matters, the more we place our commitments and concerns on the record, the more likely it is that women in areas of conflict, who desperately need our voices and our support, will grow in confidence themselves and will feel stronger and more able to fight off the degradations and humiliations all too frequently suffered.
I can also express my pleasure at the work currently being done by our Government. The UK leads on the women, peace and security agenda in the UN Security Council, which is a very practical demonstration of commitment to this issue. During the period of our leadership two further Security Council resolutions have been agreed. Security Council Resolution 2106 notes that rape and other forms of sexual violence in armed conflict are war crimes and calls upon member states to comply with their obligations by investigating and prosecuting those who are subject to their jurisdiction who are responsible for such crimes. Further, the resolution recognises the need for accurate information and monitoring and, importantly, calls for further deployment of women protection advisers. A second resolution, UN Security Council Resolution 2122, unanimously agreed in October 2013, looks at the UN’s own responsibilities by, for example, strengthening the Security Council’s commitment to deliver this agenda by ensuring UN departments provide effective reporting and increase women’s participation in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes. It also reiterates the Security Council’s decision to hold a high-level review of UNSCR 1325 in 2015.
I am also particularly pleased by the Government’s commitment to the elimination of rape as a weapon of war, as demonstrated by the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative. In November 2013, when announcing the global PSVI summit, William Hague said:
“We intend it to be the largest summit ever staged on this issue. We want to bring the world to a point of no return, creating irreversible momentum towards ending warzone rape and sexual violence worldwide”.
These are, indeed, welcome words.
We welcome the positive moves taking place which we are all pleased about and which give us confidence on behalf of our sisters around the world. Now here comes the “but”. With any such complicated initiative with far-reaching implications, both across and between Governments, nationally and globally, there will always be room for improvement, both by better co-ordination and clearer resourcing. This is, therefore, a two-stage process with immediate and longer-term objectives. The need to focus, in the first instance, on keeping women and girls safe is absolutely understood. However, this is a problem based on power and women and girls will not be safe while they remain powerless. Plans which build on women’s involvement and participation in the decision-making processes in their neighbourhoods, regions and countries will contribute towards shifting the power away from men and towards women and will help to bring about the cultural shifts which are so badly needed.
The national action plan and the review document published in October 2013 both recognise this argument and there is government commitment to putting women’s participation at the heart of the new national action plan. What is meant by participation? I would argue that participation must be seen in its deepest and widest sense: at local, regional and national level; in policy development around access to education, healthcare, employment, finance, et cetera; in the drafting of relevant legislation; in constitutional change and in access to democratic processes which enable women to become involved in all levels of public life. I am not always a fan of quota systems but they can kick-start a change to traditionally biased bodies and the need for the presence of women throughout society is so great that quotas would be essential. Will the Minister confirm that Her Majesty’s Government’s negotiation and mediation teams will be at least 30% female, in line with agreed best practice guidelines?
We also need to see meaningful and robust consultation with in-country women’s organisations. That way, national action plans can best be developed and implemented and progress monitored to ensure the delivery of the NAP objectives. This work must also ensure that women’s NGOs are invited to participate in official meetings, particularly when those meetings are attended by Ministers or other decision-makers, where local voices can well make the decisions taken more relevant and more easily implemented. Involvement of local women’s organisations also informs and guides priorities; changes to so-called social norms can best be led by these organisations. Continued efforts need to be made to build on the in-country workshops which so helpfully informed the 2012 national action plan review and which should set the template for the development of the 2014-17 national action plan.
Turning to the question of funding, there needs to be the political will to allocate ring-fenced resources for this particular work, and there needs to be exemplar interdepartmental co-operation to make sure we get the biggest bang for our buck. Although significant sums have been allocated to various programmes, some run by DfID, some by the FCO and others through the MoD, there have never been any dedicated or ring-fenced moneys allocated to the national action plan. This can cause uncertainty and can also lead to a less than strategic approach. For example, women, peace and security criteria have been included in Strengthening Alliances and Partnerships within the Conflict Pool as part of the Building Stability Overseas strategy but it does not ring-fence funding for thematic priorities such as women, peace and security. Also, the Conflict Pool does not have a centrally driven approach and, although local influences are invaluable, an overarching strategy must surely be key to achieving the best delivery outcomes. With this in mind, how will DfID, the MoD and the FCO be sure that posts are implementing projects and that they are aligned to the principles of the NAP?
In summary, much good work has been and is being done. I have tried to capture the need to shift our emphasis away from dealing with the results of powerlessness towards enabling women to drive the agenda by knowledge, education, participation and influence. We need to ensure that the funding strategy enables local decision-making which fits into the overall strategy of the national action plan and that all departments involved in this project are taking an integrated approach. Successful outcomes will change women’s lives and, in turn, will provide security to the lives of all in areas that for so long have suffered conflict and a lack of security.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this is a rather tightly timed debate and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield has asked if he might speak in the gap. It would, therefore, be a help if all noble Lords could complete their speeches well before “6” comes up on the clock.
Civil Society
Baroness Prosser Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Prosser
My Lords, I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to lead this debate today on the future of civil society.
The impact of organisations that we collectively describe as civil society has for many years been recognised across many walks of life as of importance and value. There is, however, sometimes confusion about the term. That is not surprising, because civil society is made up of many and various people and organisations. We have the truly voluntary, such as the Scouts and the Guides, amateur boxing clubs and golf clubs, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, church groups and play groups. Then we have umbrella groups such as Community Service Volunteers and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which among other activities provide networks of support and advice. In the past, CSV has provided educational training on citizenship as part of the school curriculum.
The third wing, known generally as the voluntary sector or the third sector, provides professional help often including advice and representation. This group includes law centres, CABs and advice centres of many kinds, dealing with issues of race or gender, or helping those who have been trafficked or abused or those without housing. Some services are very specific, for example for children and young people, the elderly or drug addicts.
Where does the government initiative on the big society fit in here? The Conservative Party website states:
“The Big Society is about putting more power in people’s hands—a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities. We want to see people encouraged and enabled to play a more active role in society”.
No one, I am sure, would disagree with the second sentence, but a transfer of power from the state to local communities should be considered more warily.
The TUC’s 2011 report, Civil Society and Public Services, contends that the overall concept of the big society is the outsourcing of public services to providers from civil society and to social enterprises. It says that it must be seen in the context of huge cuts to public spending.
The report quotes from another report, Cutting It: ‘The Big Society’ and the New Austerity, produced by the New Economics Foundation. It argues that there might be merit in the theory of empowering communities, opening up public services and promoting social action, but that these aims cannot at this time be separated from the Government’s programme of deep and rapid spending cuts. As the foundation puts it:
“Unpaid labour and the charitable and voluntary sectors are due to fill the gaps left by public services, providing support to increasing numbers of poor, jobless, insecure and unsupported individuals and families”.
Was it a little harsh? Was it jumping the gun in 2011 when the big society had hardly started? We shall see.
Let us look at where we are now. The Charity Finance Group’s March 2013 report, Managing the New Normal—Adapting to Uncertainty, found that 93% of the charities that it surveyed said that they were experiencing a squeeze on fundraising, while two-thirds said that demand for their services had increased.
CSV declares that individual citizens in small community groups cannot tackle widespread complex and costly social, health and social care problems alone, and that a well resourced independent and responsive sector is needed to get the best fit and to find and support the vulnerable and needy. It also says that voluntary sector organisations that involve volunteers need to be properly resourced in order to effectively and efficiently recruit, support and retain volunteers, and that this is particularly important when volunteers are engaging with vulnerable families and individuals as well as people in difficult circumstances.
While the aim of the big society might be laudable, the funding of small, often isolated groups of individuals cannot and will not make up for the gaps that are being left by the cuts to local authority budgets and the subsequent reduction or loss of vital professional services. According to the NCVO, reporting this year on the June spending review, the further reduction in funding from local authorities, together with the negative impact of many welfare changes, will mean the likelihood of more and more people seeking support while the charities that are geared up to providing that support become more and more financially precarious.
The NCVO goes on to say:
“Given that charities play a major role in preventing social problems and therefore reducing costs, councils looking to balance their budgets will need to have meaningful discussions with the voluntary sector about how they can support their communities”.
I hope that when the Minister replies he does not tell us that these decisions are local and local authorities are free to choose their own priorities. While that might be factually correct, the size of the financial pot that largely determines these priorities is very much a national decision.
I turn now to some brief specifics, such as areas of service and/or need that have been hit particularly hard by the current austerity measures. The availability or lack of civil legal aid was discussed at length in this Chamber during the passage of the recent legislation and in a debate last week, so I will not labour the point. Suffice it to say that problems addressed early on do not often develop into major crises. The Law Society is quoted as believing that one in three law centres will be forced to close because of its reliance on legal aid funding. Most of these centres are in areas of deprivation and most need. With nowhere to go for help, many problems are certain to turn into crises.
The 2012 report, Perfect Storms, by Children England, which is the membership organisation for the children, young people and families voluntary sector, cites an example of a national charity providing advocacy, legal representation and information and advice to vulnerable young people and adults that uses both paid staff and volunteers. Despite the local authority duty to provide such a service, the charity has seen the allocation of core funding reduced on all its contracts, which has meant the loss of 15, or 10%, of paid staff, and 19, or 5%, of volunteers.
According to a survey by the National Children’s Bureau, more than 65% of children and young people’s charities responding said that they are reducing both the level and range of services they deliver due to public spending cuts. The TUC has reported that more than 30% of funding to sexual violence and sexual abuse services for women has been cut. Women’s Aid says that it has been turning away 260 women per day because of its cuts. Yet the Government’s announcement only this month of a £4.3 million boost to big society funds to put communities in control cites among other areas of priority: troubled families, improving maintenance arrangements for children of separated families, and improving social mobility. This is virtually the same client group as those currently losing funding. It seems very strange that we are starving well established and experienced organisations of the funds they need to deliver the services in which they are the experts and then providing more funding to set up something unprofessional and new.
The only conclusion I can reach is to go back to the Conservative Party website, which I remind the House talks about:
“a massive transfer of power from Whitehall to local communities”—
in other words, services on the cheap provided by local people with little or no experience to some of our most vulnerable and needy citizens. It will end in tears and somebody in the future will have to pick up the pieces of a very short-sighted and poor policy.
Finally, lest anyone thinks that I am more in favour of bureaucracy than the development of communities, I can tell the House that this is not the case. I spent many happy years in the 1970s and 1980s working in community development and a community law centre, and I absolutely believe that many communities have hidden strengths and that many people very much enjoy participating in local activities, helping those more in need than themselves. However, those people who are in need of help deserve to know that the assistance given to them comes from professional and experienced advisers. The volunteers working in local centres or agencies also deserve the support of those with professional know-how. I look forward to listening to the contributions of noble Lords.
Baroness Prosser
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this afternoon’s debate, particularly the Minister for his opening comments, which reminded us that our discussion has been focused around the United Kingdom and civil society. His initial comments, however, brought to our attention the breadth, depth and history of civil society across the world. We ought not to forget that when we consider the importance of all of these matters.
I can safely say that the nature of the debate has demonstrated the huge variety of subject matter that comes under the heading of civil society and the huge variety of provision we have seen. Some parts of it we have had for many years; some have been developed more recently; some may be suffering slightly and in need of some assistance; and others that are developing with great speed—demonstrating the changed nature of the society in which we live—and we must face. Those are all big questions that we will all be chewing over for a considerable time to come.
Something that has struck me about this debate is that there is a great need to be clear when talking about civil society and the nature of the solutions that we might wish to propose. There are many different pieces to this jigsaw but in the discussion about solutions I have detected a blurring between solutions which are suitable for service provision and those which are suitable for what I would call community development. The Minister gave as one such example the people on a housing estate in the north, and that was my experience as well when working in community development in the London Borough of Southwark, where precisely the same issues and difficulties arose. In that project our role was to enable the local people to find their voices and to speak up. The Likes of Us, by Michael Collins, is an excellent book based around some housing estates in Southwark which records how the people there had said that they had been done to, but never given the opportunity to put their own point of view. It is an important point to make. The right reverend Prelate described it as “human flourishing”. I would put human flourishing under the community development umbrella.
Before concluding, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, that I was rather pleased that he disagreed with me—I would be asking myself questions about my analysis of these issues if he had said that he felt I was right. I am not upset by that—as I say, I am rather chuffed.