tata_transcript_aw reform research paper

8/12/2019 Tata_transcript_aw Reform Research Paper

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/tatatranscriptaw-reform-research-paper 1/20

Open public servicesin a global marketplace

Reform-Tata Consultancy Services seminar series

Global solutions for open public servicesTim Jones, Chief Executive, National Employment Savings Trust Corporation Tuesday 11 September 2012

A flexible workforce: Improving skills mobility for economic growthMark Harper MP, Minister of State for Immigration

Thursday 6 December 2012

The role of the Civil Service in delivering open public servicesHon Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair, Public Administration Select Committee Wednesday 12 December 2012



Reform

45 Great Peter Street

London

SW1P 3LT

T 020 7799 6699

[email protected]

www.reform.co.uk

Reform is an independent, non-party think tank whose

mission is to set out a better way to deliver public services

and economic prosperity.

We believe that by reforming the public sector, increasing

investment and extending choice, high quality services can

be made available for everyone.

Our vision is of a Britain with 21st Century healthcare,

high standards in schools, a modern and efficient

transport system, safe streets, and a free, dynamic and

competitive economy.

Kindly sponsored by:



1www.reform.co.uk


Attendees

Global solutions for openpublic services

Patrick Barbour

Matthew Burgess

General Secretary,

Independent Schools Council

Kate Blatchford

Analyst, Office of Fair Trading

Richard Bacon MP

Member, Public Accounts

Select Committee

Catherine Davies

Director, Cooperation andCompetition Panel

Tom Frusher

Director, Public Affairs and

Communications, McKesson

UK

John Godfrey

Corporate Affairs Director,

Legal and General Group

Savas Hadjipavlou

Business Director, Probation

Chiefs Association

Andrew Haldenby Director, Reform

Simon Hill

Head of Corporate Affairs,

Cerner

Richard Jeffery

Managing Director, AOM

Erica Jobson

Senior Advocate (Public

Services), Which?

Tim Jones

Chief Executive, NEST

CorporationTara Majumdar

Researcher, Reform

Gemma Norman

Policy and Research

Advisor, Business Services

Association

Jonty Olliff-Cooper

Director of Strategy, A4e

Neil Rutledge

Partner, Grant Thornton UK

LLP

Keith Sharp Vice President, Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS)

Kate Steadman

Director, Government &

Strategy, Sodexo Justice

Services

Damien Venkatasamy

Director Public Sector

UK and Ireland for Tata


A flexible workforce:

Improving skills mobility

for economic growth

Robert Arnott

Director, Performance and

Compliance Unit, UK Border

Agency

Jo Attwooll

Policy Advisor, Universities

UK

Adrian Bailey MP

Chair, Business, Innovation

and Skills Committee

Richard Beamish

Interim Chief Officer, Alliance

of Sector Skills Councils

Jean CandlerInterim Head of Current

Affairs, Million +

Sophie Carter

Researcher, Office of Alan

Shelbrooke MP

Peter Cunnane

City Affairs Officer, City of

London

Andrew Haldenby

Director, Reform

Mark Harper MP

Minister of State forImmigration

Carrie Hartnell

Associate Director, Intellect

Mark Hilton

Programme Director for

Education and Employment,

London First

HE Thambynathan Jasudasen

High Commissioner, Embassy

of Singapore

Toomas Kull

NASSCOM UK

Tara Majumdar

Researcher, Reform

Ann McKechin MP

Member, Business,

Innovation and Skills

Committee

Julia Onslow-Cole

Partner and Head of

Immigration, PwC

Steve Radley

Director of Policy, EEF

Keith Sharp

Vice President, Tata


Ceri Smith

Director, Labour Markets,

Department for Business,

Innovation and Skills

Damien Venkatasamy




Glyn Williams

Head of Migration Policy,

Immigration and Border Policy

Directorate, Home Office

The role of the CivilService in delivering

open public services

Richard Bacon MP

Member, Public Accounts

Committee

Marcial Boo

Director of Strategy,

Communications and

Knowledge, National Audit

Office

Lee Bruce

Public Affairs and Campaigns

Advisor, Local Government

Association

Michael Burton

Director, The Municipal

Journal

Ian Dodge

Director, NHS Policy

and Outcomes Group,

Department of Health

Jane Dudman

Editor, Guardian Public

Leaders Network

Dr Chris Gibson-SmithChairman, London Stock

Exchange

Andrew Haldenby

Director, Reform

Hon Bernard Jenkin MP

Chair, Public Administration

Select Committee

Erica Jobson

Senior Advocate, Which?

Ed Jones

Account Director,

Hanover Communications

Stephen Kelly

Chief Operating Officer for

Government, Cabinet Office

Tara Majumdar

Researcher, Reform

Jonty Olliff-Cooper

Director of Policy, A4e

John Owen

Director, Strategic Markets,

Serco UK and Europe, Serco

Group

Zoe Paxton

Chief Press Officer,

Communications Directorate,

Cabinet Office

Charlie Pickles

Government Relations,

Accenture

Greg Rosen

Consultant Director, Reform

Keith Sharp

Vice President, Tata


Mary Starks

Senior Director, Office of Fair

Trading

John Telling

Director, Group Corporate

Affairs, MITIE Group

Peter Thomas

Director, Strategy and

Change, Institute for

Government

Damien Venkatasamy




Debra Willis

UK Government Relations

Manager, HP



2 www.reform.co.uk


The challenge for the UK in coming years istwofold: to reinvigorate the economy and reform

the public sector and government. The recent Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS) / Reform series had

much to say on these overriding policy objectives.

Immigration policy is now recognised as being

an integral part of the growth agenda. As with

all regulation, businesses are just as worried

about uncertainty over policy as the policy itself.

The prospect of greater restrictions on skilled

immigration in future has been exercising the minds

of international businesses in the UK. For thisreason Mark Harper’s determination to stabilise

immigration policy, and his statement that the Home

Office is “signed up to delivering growth”, were

highly important.

The seminar also identified the importance of

delivery. Politicians will not be confident to engage

the public on the benefits of immigration if the

day-to-day management of the service is unreliable.

The seminar benefited a great deal from the

participation not only of the Minister but also keyParliamentarians and leading officials from a number

of departments.

Harnessing global talent will also benefit UK public

services in the future. The first seminar in the series

presented a valuable case study of global

partnership in public service delivery: the successful

administration of the NEST workplace pensions

scheme by TCS staff in the UK and India. The point

is not that all services should be delivered by private

operators or indeed by private operators overseas. It

is that competition from the widest possible range ofproviders will reduce costs and increase innovation

to the benefit of UK consumers.

The seminar discussed natural concerns over theaccountability of global partnerships that spend public

money. In my experience, one of the great benefits of

private sector delivery is that the process of agreeing

exact contracts greatly increases transparency

and accountability compared to the public sector

alternative. All private sector providers should aim to

be as open as possible about their contracting (with

the exception of their intellectual property).

Successful partnership requires intelligent clients on

the government side. The third seminar in the series

identified the success factors needed to spreadgood practice in that regard. The Chief Operating

Officer for Government, Stephen Kelly, made

absolutely clear his personal commitment to reform

and improvement. A number of participants

emphasised that the frequent rotation of officials

greatly hinders the ability of government to develop

skills, capability and competence. The discussion

supported the new urgency that Francis Maude, the

Minister for the Cabinet Office, has brought to the

delivery of civil service reform.

A country with the right immigration policy, with an

openness to global innovation in public services and

with excellent government procurement has much to

look forward to. The TCS / Reform series will help

policy makers move towards that vision.

Reform comment

Andrew Haldenby,

Director,

Reform



3www.reform.co.uk


On behalf of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) I amdelighted to provide this foreword and to have

supported this seminar series. At TCS we are

convinced more than ever that the current era of

public service transformation will require new

thinking and innovative global solutions, which utilise

a flexible, mobile and highly capable workforce. We

are grateful for the important contributions of Tim

Jones, Chief Executive Officer at the National

Employers Savings Trust (NEST), Mark Harper MP,

Minister of State for Immigration and Hon Bernard

Jenkin MP, Chair of the Public Administration SelectCommittee, as well as all of the other organisations

who participated. The seminars were very thought

provoking and topical, and I am pleased to have

contributed to the debates on these critical issues.

Our experience working with both governments and

the private sector globally is that where the challenges

are really understood and the solution energetically

embraced, transformation gives rise to service

improvement and cost savings. In many respects,

the challenges currently faced by governments all

over the world are similar to those that have beenfaced by the private sector for many years, whereby

organisations must evolve if they are to succeed over

their competitors. Although the same pressures do

not apply to governments, it is clear that other

parallels with the private sector hold true.

Technology-enabled business change has been at

the forefront of tackling the often conflicting priorities

of cost reduction and service improvement. Within

the UK Public Sector, TCS is partnering with central

and local government to deliver technology-enabledtransformation of: pensions administration services

for the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST),

casework management for the Child Maintenance

Group (CMG), back-office processes for Cardiff CityCouncil, grants administration for the Big Lottery

Fund, and criminal record and barring checks for the

Home Office’s Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

The Benefits of Leveraging Global Solutions

and Experience

The UK is not unique in needing to transform

services and reset the relationship between the

state and the citizen. Across the world organisations

are adapting and providing citizens with morepersonalised services, such as new mobile payment

systems for Indian farmers or the use of self-service

kiosks for probation management in New York. The

UK should look globally for the design and delivery

of new approaches and import expertise when it

does not exist nationally.

A key benefit of global delivery is speed – i.e. the

ability to scale up and deliver complex projects to

tight deadlines. Within this approach, the ability to

exploit skills availability and existing assets, suchas operational delivery centres, is critical, wherever

they may be in the world. By harnessing our global

delivery model to support our thousands of

permanent UK staff, TCS has been able to transform

public services in the UK. The Open Public Services

White Paper provided a clear indication that the Civil

Service is ready to embrace global solutions, where

they are appropriate to the needs of users. We heard

from Tim Jones, the Chief Executive of National

Employment Savings Trust (NEST), about how

adopting a global approach to delivery has helpedto ensure the effective administration of millions of

pensions’ accounts and hundreds of thousands

of employer-customer relationships to deliver

Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) comment

Damien Venkatasamy,

Director Public Sector UK and

Ireland for Tata Consultancy

Services (TCS)



4 www.reform.co.uk


auto-enrolment for workplace pensions. It is clear

that there are an increasing number of examples

whereby a global sourcing approach has delivered

benefits to government departments within the UK.

The value of workforce flexibility and mobility

Businesses of all varieties consider international

labour mobility to be critically important for the UK

economy and creating growth. Clients demand a

blend of skills and experience that cannot always be

sourced from the UK’s existing workforce and global

solutions require access to the world’s best and

brightest people.

We welcomed the pledge from the Minister of

State for Immigration, Mark Harper MP, that the

Government will maintain a stable position onimmigration policy in this Parliament. Settled and

consistent immigration policy is vital for any

organisation seeking to invest in the UK.

A critical concern is the need for policy-makers to

accept the distinction between different kinds of

immigration. Economically active migrants are an

asset to the UK, providing tax, national insurance

and other revenues to the Treasury. Approximately

half of TCS’ workforce in the UK is made up of UK

nationals. On average, the remainder are resident in

the UK for less than a year, in which time theyimplant specialist knowledge, purchase goods and

services and contribute to the UK economy.

Businesses and policy-makers must support global

talent by clearly distinguishing and valuing this type

of labour mobility.

The role of the Civil Service

The fundamental question which needs to be

confronted in every government department is how

do you define its core function? What are the

functions that only the Civil Service can fulfil and then

conversely, what functions lend themselves toalternative forms of public service delivery?

Although these may be difficult questions for the

Civil Service to ask itself, once they have been

considered officials are in a position to assess a

range of delivery models – joint ventures, mutual or

cooperatives, outsourcing to the private sector or

engaging third sector organisations – to determine

which model will deliver the best outcome to

citizens. These questions of operational delivery and

capability should not be obscured by debates about

leadership and governance, which are important butdistinctly separate. It is clear that there are many

functions delivered by the Civil Service require

specialised knowledge and expertise that are not

available in the private sector. Equally there are many

areas of the Civil Service that could benefit from

alternative approaches and new delivery models.

Whatever the conclusion, it is clear from this series of

discussions that global delivery models and better

use of technology will be pivotal in the future.

At TCS we look forward to continuing to contribute to

this very important topic of transforming public services.



5www.reform.co.uk


Tim Jones, Chief Executive of NEST,

highlighted how NEST has collaborated with the Department for Work andPensions (DWP) and Tata Consultancy

Services (TCS) to deliver the NESTpensions scheme, a workplace pensionsprogramme.

He stated that, “we did a make/buydecision against our big problem which

was the scheme administration of

millions of accounts and hundreds ofthousands of employer – customerrelationships and determined it wasstupid to make it. It was better to buy it.”

Discussing the approach that NESTsubsequently took to nding a bidder forthe project, Tim said that, “we wanted

somebody whose distance from theirexisting estate of capabilities to ourrequirements was as small as possible”,

and that NEST were “completely global

in our outlook.”Reecting on the nature of the

collaboration, Tim stated that: “NEST isa pension scheme designed from theground oor up, which sits on an estate

of capabilities that TCS bring.”Damien Venkatasamy, Director

Public Sector UK and Ireland for Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS), observedthat underpinning the scheme is “a kindof global delivery model, in that much of

the front ofce or front of house pensionsadministration is delivered from

Peterborough where we have an existingfacility, and we actually have a whollyowned pensions subsidiary calledDiligenta which is based in Peterborough.

But a lot of the kind of back ofceprocessing is done out of Mumbai by oneof our delivery centres there.”

Setting out the argument for aglobal approach to public servicedelivery, Damien explained: “the reason

we’ve done it that way is not just aboutcost effectiveness. I think the reason

why NEST is interesting is that it is a

global approach to delivering these

services. Now you could say NEST isabout as close as you can get to a privatesector type endeavour… it just happens

to be under a Government non-departmental public body. But the

model works and I think the questionthat increasingly people need to askthemselves within the public sector is

where else could that kind of approach be replicated?”

“I think it would be wrong of me to

come here today and make the case for

outsourcing and global delivery ofservices given that I work for a company

whose core business is outsourcing andglobal delivery of those services. What I

want to do is to at least open up the

debate on this because with the OpenPublic Services White Paper I think it’s

very clear that this Government has a

view that the Civil Service, rightly or wrongly, is perhaps overweight in placesand could be made more efcient and

more effective.”“Where it leads to in the public

sector is probably a more difcult

question about ‘what is the core businessof a government department?’ Whatactivities does it need to preserve as its

own, i.e. those activities that no otherorganisation can do or it’s right for any

organisation to do. And once you’ve got

an understanding of that within agovernment department or an agency, Ithink the next step is to look at the

balance of activities and ask which ofthose could be provided more effectively,more cost effectively to a better quality

by another provider? And then I think the nal step

on that piece of analysis is to say if it is

something that we choose to get anotherorganisation to deliver, to what extent dothey have assets around the world that we

can leverage in order to increase the qualityand the cost effectiveness of that service?”

Simon Hill, Head of Corporate

Affairs at Cerner, raised the issue ofcomplicated accountability questions

which stem from global public-private

partnerships.“When you get a public-private

relationship that works well, it’s great. You don’t often really hear about it

because it’s not news. What you do hearabout is when it goes wrong. And whatare the problems? And you’ll nd that

Simon Hill, Tim Jones and Damien Venkatasamy

Global solutions foropen public services



6 www.reform.co.uk


both sides tend to sort of blame each

other. And that’s true because actuallyinvariably when things go wrong thereis always blame on both sides.”

“One of the things that you willoften nd the private sector saying is‘who is the accountable person within

the public sector? Who has got the staragainst their name that if it goes wrong?’

And invariably what you nd is that the

star moves around from a number ofdifferent people, that the star is in onepost for a couple of years and then moves

to a different post, and when that star

appears in front of a select committeethey’ll say ‘well actually when I inherited

it, it was like this. Now I have done some work to make it like this, but I’m off in acouple of months to do this’. And that is

very difcult. You don’t tend to hear thesame of the accountable ofcer on theprivate sector side.”

Tom Frusher, Director of Public

Affairs and Communications at

McKesson, explained the role of

McKesson in the delivery of healthcarein the UK. He stated: “We provide the

world’s largest integrated HR and

payroll system. We’ve been doing thatnow for several years in partnership withthe NHS Department of Health. That’slooking at 1.4 million employees. So we

see that there are real opportunities in

partnering with the Government. I think

in the context of this discussion I have tostress we do that with no outsourcing oroverseas type stuff.”

“However, we’re very clearly

moving forward. McKesson being the world’s largest health IT provider, theoldest healthcare company in the United

States. There is expertise andcompetencies over on the other side ofthe Atlantic, and when we see those

being able to bring over some added value to the UK Government andEuropean countries, we will leverage

that wherever possible.”Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Director of

Strategy at A4E, discussed how theconcept of global delivery has impacted

on his own experiences of working infrontline public services.

“I work for a company which

provides frontline public services, mostlyin getting people back into work but alsogetting people off drugs and to stop them

reoffending and a variety of other things.I guess there isn’t an equivalent globalrole because you can’t do social work

overseas, for instance.”

But there are some wrinkles to that. We welcome more and more providers

coming to the UK even if they’re rivalsfrom overseas. We’re starting to seetherefore a couple of players that are a

little bit more global on the front of housestuff rather than just back ofce services.So Maximus which is a US welfare

company, they’ve invaded and stolenour contracts in Devon and Cornwall.”

Equally we work in Australia, for

instance. So there is a kind of knittingtogether of some issues of global bestpractice on this that’s happeningthrough a market mechanism.”

“It’s important to remember thatthere is a considerable export industry inthe UK, a growing, booming industry in

public services, both in back ofceservices, front ofce and mixed ones.

And actually British companies areleaders in this and are seen as globalleaders in this. And because Britishpolicy is leading in this area you don’t

need to give a kind of subsidy to supportthat industry.”

Neil Rutledge, Partner at Grant

Thornton UK LLP, argued that withregards to outsourcing, “it feels to us that

bringing in new players to the market is

absolutely critical. It’s most likely that your incumbent is not likely to beincentivised to offer the full breadth of

what’s available, and therefore there is a

real role in the Government aboutencouraging new entrants, and they have

to do a bit more than just slightly openthe door. They have to really say we aregoing to let everybody be clear there will

be new entrants coming into thatmarket. And most competitors will

welcome that, I think, as you’ve

suggested, because it helps enhanceeverybody’s capability.”

Richard Jeffrey, Managing

Director of AOM, commented that oneof the largest barriers to successful

outsourcing is the inherent condence of both sides.

“I think the Civil Service inparticular could do a lot to essentiallyaddress the concern of ‘are we just giving

away prot to nasty third party privatesector organisations?’ Well if we’re tand able, then essentially we’re

demonstrating that we are condentabout what we do and we’re offeringgood value to the taxpayer.”

“I think the barriers to those thingsare the things – we’ve got to get into whythose options at the moment, the most

theoretically attractive, pragmaticallyare not taken up.”

Simon Hill explained that: “we

need to have the necessary conditions inplace both legislatively and in terms of

Savas Hadjipavlou



7www.reform.co.uk


guidance because there is, I suppose, asort of fear factor that we don’t take itforward because of the history of other

public-private sector partnerships whichhaven’t worked out so well.”

Savas Hadjipavlou, Business

Director at the Probation Chiefs

Association, warned that: “I mean what I’ve heard so far is largely aboutthe large scale, transactional based

work which kind of lends itself to eachindividual component and it’s fairlystraightforward, can be automated and

so on. The other ip side to that is workthe public sector and the public services

are involved in which is complex,individually based, largely driven bylocation, locality. I think it does dependto a large extent on which area of the

public service you’re looking at.”“If we do look at something like the

justice sector or probation, there is a lot

of work and change going on. There is agood deal of challenge. And things are

changing. But I haven’t heard anybody

as yet put forward a proposition that youdo probation from Mumbai. It doesn’tmake any sense.”

Catherine Davies, Director of the

Cooperation and Competition Panel,argued in favour of: “reducing barriers toentry that enables people to come in and

stimulate competition, which is generallya good thing”, while also noting thepolitical difculties.

She said: “my impression isthat sometimes within the healthcaresector we talk about competition,

privatisation, private sector. It all becomes

a very emotive issue and it’s difcult toseparate those things sometimes. I think

outsourcing and asking the private sectorto come in and provide services issometimes very difcult for people. The

idea of the global dimension is just yetanother difculty on top of that. Butoverall the concept of lowering barriers to

entry is a good thing in my view.”

Kate Blatchford, Analyst at the

Office of Fair Trading, referred back tothe issue of accountability surrounding

the concept of global delivery, stating: “I wondered how much of an additionaldimension or problem it is potentially

when you’re looking at globalised publicmarkets and how you deal with theaccountability issues there. How are you

accountable when you are a global body,and what sort of levers and mechanismscan we think about in which that can be

made to work?”Erica Jobson, Senior Analyst

at Which?, observed: “when you look

at quite a lot of the open public servicesagenda, I feel that the Governmentand businesses are moving quite fast,and there is going to be quite a big lag

time for users to catch up with theexpectations. If you are having moreof a transactional relationship and there

are demands being put on you and youare being asked to be a consumer, that’s

Erica Jobson and Kate Blatchford



8 www.reform.co.uk


ne as long as you have what you needto be an engaged consumer, which isinformation, advice, guidance, choice,

and redress. When something goes wrong you need to have someone totake you through the whole process,

and an understanding that you’remaking a choice.”

Damien Venkatasamy, returnedto the question of accountability in

global delivery in stating: “I think as aglobal business we’ve been quite carefulto keep a relatively at structure so that

accountability is very clear.”“I would say on all of our

government contracts we’ve had issues of varying size and complexity. And theaccountability for that initially resides

with the client partner that’s looking after

the public sector. We then operate a kindof geographic structure. So there is aHead of UK. That would be the next port

of escalation. And then beyond him it’sdirectly into our CEO who runs the wholecompany. So there are only really three

points of escalation that we operate.”“The other aspect of it is we’re

quite careful to get into relationships,

whether it be in the public sector or

private sector, with people that we feel we can work with. And ultimately I think

that’s how issues get resolved. There hasto be willingness on both sides that

you’re going to x the problems and

you’re not going to kind of escalate themin perpetuity.”

Richard Bacon MP, Member of

the Public Accounts Select

Committee, spoke on the issue oftransparency, noting: “on our

committee, which is the value for moneycommittee, we don’t look at the policy.

We look at the results of where things –usually; not always – of where thingshave gone wrong. And accountability is a

very big issue for us. When you weretalking a bit earlier about the person

with the star on his head or her head whom you can follow around, that has been a huge issue.”

“I have a telephone provider athome in Norfolk that is constantly

winning the best value for money award

every year – at least they tell me they areon their bill. But they’re never winningthe best customer service award. I know

the reason for this is that every time I callthem, which thankfully isn’t too often,it’s always a 45-minute wait before I get

through to the person in Mumbai. AndI’ve often thought I would happily go to

another provider where I paid moremoney and I got a service that I liked.”

“The difference is I do have that

choice. If I’m going along to the JobCentre and I don’t get the service that I

want and they want to pay me by benet,

I don’t have the option of saying ‘give memy benet or I’ll take my businesselsewhere’. It’s just not like that. So

you’re always talking at one remove. You’re talking about an interlocutor ofsome kind, an intermediary of some kind

trying to provide the service on behalf ofa government vendor to the public thatisn’t going to change where there’s a

natural monopoly.”Tim Jones argued that: “ease,

transparency, and empowerment are the

three things that our customers askedfor. It had better be transparent so I cansee what you’re doing with my money.

And you better make it easy for me to get

as involved or as uninvolved as I want.That’s what the empowerment means.”

“We are very transparent in that we

are clear about the overall size of thecontract. But I’ve got to balance thattransparency against member interests. I

have not disclosed what we’re paying our

providers. I think it’s in my members’interests to keep condential the

fantastic rates I’ve got from those fundmanagers because I want them to getfantastic rates for my members again.”

Matthew Burgess, General

Secretary of the Independent Schools

Council, noted: “In my sector, the

education sector, the distinction isactually prot versus not-for-prot.There is a great customer, consumer

political opposition to bringing infor-prot providers into the education

sector. And what you’ve seen is globalmarket players. But they are doing itthrough not-for-prot entities. And as yet

we have not got to the point where the

public it seems accepts that in educationpeople should be making prot.”



9www.reform.co.uk


Mark Harper MP, Minister of State

for Immigration, began by layingout the Government’s current stance

on immigration. He argued that“controlling immigration is a veryimportant political issue. I think it is

worth saying because anybody who

thinks that by not talking about it, notdealing with it and not controlling it youcan have it swept under the carpet I

think is kidding themselves. Indeed, it’smuch better that we have a rm but fairimmigration system because actually

then it’s dealt with by rational, sensibledebate by mainstream political partiesrather than allowing extremists and

people who would use these issues in anunhelpful way to be able to lead and setthe agenda.”

“The last two and a half years hasreally been about getting policy in goodshape and moving to a system where wehad controls that would deliver a

reduction in net migration but also aboutdelivering more selectivity so we don’t

just have fewer people coming here but

we have the right people for benetingBritain and Britain’s economy.”

“I see, going forward, a position

where we have some policy stability, and I want to really focus in my time in this jobon working with our colleagues in the UK

Border Agency and Border Force toimplement that policy to listen to where

businesses and universities have got

issues about how it works and make that work better. I have had, just by way ofconclusion, very positive meetings with

UUK, looking to them about how we

can work more closely together in acollaborative framework where our job isto help their members comply rather than

catch them out, and to deliver growth.”“To some extent the Home Ofce is

a control department, so clearly we are,

by denition, trying to stop people doingthings they want to do. But we are verymuch signed up to delivering growth. I

want to make sure we deliver an ability

for businesses to bring in the rightpeople for Britain and to make sure that

we can do business and the education

sector can be successful.”Keith Sharp, Vice President,

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),

responded: “saying that policy changesare largely done and we’re moving to astable implementation era is very

welcome news because one of the things

we’ve lived with over the last several years is future anxiety- what’s waiting for

us around the corner?”He went on to say: “International

labour mobility is absolutely key to how

we deliver value to UK PLC. We’re ableto bring in people on a temporary basisto supplement the staff that we employ

in the UK.”“I guess our concern going forward

is that although we see it as international

labour mobility, at the moment allmigration is dumped into the one

bucket, and we would welcome somekind of distinction or separation betweenthe types of migration.”

“But what the Minister said earlier

will alleviate some of the future fear thatI was going to talk about, and we doappreciate the way in which the

Government has approached its policytowards intra-company transfers”.

Damien Venkatasamy, Director

Public Sector UK and Ireland for Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS), furtherdeveloped the case for internationallabour mobility.

“We win these contracts because we’re able to hit the timeframes. We’reable to hit the timeframes because we

can take advantage of a global workforce.So for us this is not really about taking

A flexible workforce:Improving skills mobility for economic growth

Mark Harper MP and Keith Sharp



10 www.reform.co.uk


jobs from UK citizens. This is aboutgrowing our business which, in turn, isenabling us to employ more UK citizens

by augmenting them with skills fromoverseas that we can’t readily access inthis country.”

He continued: “When these peopleare here in the UK they are renting ats.Sometimes they bring their families

across and their partners take jobs.They’re putting money into the localeconomy, buying food and things like

that. We also nd they bring thoughtleadership, new ways of doing things,methodologies that both our clients

benet from and also our UK workforce

benet from.”Julia Onslow-Cole, Partner and

Head of Immigration atPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC),argued for an exemption from thecooling-off period for very high earners.

“A couple of weeks ago we had a banking client that wanted to hiresomeone in New York. This is a very

rare occurrence now: very big salary,hundreds of thousands, and the bank inthe UK was competing against banks in

New York. And they could not bring himinto the UK because of the cooling offperiod. We had to actually try and look

at alternative routes including theinvestor route to try and bring him inas an independent investor to get him

into the UK.”“I think a very quick x is if you took

people, say, earning over £250,000 a year

out of cooling off, I think that wouldalleviate the problems for companies

looking at those very big hires.” Adrian Bailey MP, Chair of the

Business, Innovation and Skills

Committee, raised the importance ofnding a political position to underpinimmigration policies reecting the

economic needs of the country.“I visit local foundries which I

know if they had not been able to recruit

migrant workers from east Europe wouldhave gone under, losing a considerablenumber of jobs for the indigenous white

population as well. But unfortunatelythat is not a message readily understood

by the public at large.”

Adrian emphasized the economic

need to win the political argument forand subsequently implement a more

exible visa system that will “enableindustry to tap into the best global

brains. There is increasing evidence that

we now have global market in talent because clever people know that they cango almost anywhere in the world and

deploy their skills to the benet of thathost country, and we are missing out insome of those areas. Secondly,

universities are a huge export earnerfrom foreign students – we’re missingout on that. There has been a substantialdrop from India, one of our historic

markets, and we are underperforming interms of our relationship with Brazil.”

To deal with this, Adrian said,

“student visas should be taken out

of the net immigration gures. The

Government has got to nd a way ofmanaging this politically because I thinkthere is now a huge volume of evidence

to demonstrate that our future economicgrowth could be adversely impactedunless we get this issue resolved.”

Mark Harper MP responded:

“Trying to pretend that students are notmigrants I think is fundamentally justnonsense. If someone comes here to

work for two years, we count them.There is no logical reason why you

wouldn’t count someone who comes

here for three or four years as a student.

They are a migrant. They meet theinternational denition of a migrant.

They have an impact on the communitiesthey live in.”

He continued: “I want a system

where I can do exactly what Adrian wantsto do. So we need to go and make the casefor global talent, getting the brightest and

the best to come to the UK, allowing ouruniversities to get those students here. But

we’re not going to win those arguments if

people think we have a system that has nocontrols. We’ll lose that debate, and that

will be bad for Britain.”Steve Radley, Director of Policy

at EEF, observed that “despite the fact we’ve had fairly weak economic growth,

companies are already reportingsignicant skill shortages. The goodnews is that they’re getting on with

investing in apprenticeships and inretraining the workforce. But at the sametime they do need to bring in skilled

workers at some time.”“We’ve just completed a

submission to the consultation from the

Migration Advisory Committee

proposing that sunset clauses areintroduced on the shortage occupationlists after just a period of two years. But

the idea that after just two years we’llhave had a lasting solution to thisproblem and to introduce sunset clauses,

and then there being another year before we can get them back on again, just doesnot seem to be a sensible approach and

not a good example of the selectivity we’re talking about.”

Ann McKechin MP, Member of

the Business, Innovation and Skills

Committee, agreed, stating: “I think we do have to be careful about certain

niche areas where there are going to belong-term shortages, and if we want tomake sure if we’re in a global competitive

market that we’re not losing our edge.”

Julia Onslow-Cole



11www.reform.co.uk


Making a plea for post-graduateresearch, she noted: “I’ve got Glasgow

University in my constituency area. We’ve got very large postgraduatecentres in medical research. Obviously

half of the people there who workactually come from non-EU countries.That is a unique part about the university

sector in the UK is actually we have a very high number of people from all overthe globe, and we actually do gain fromthat knowledge exchange, from that

ability. That is why our universities areso attractive, and I think we just haveto make sure that we retain our edge in

that respect.”Jo Attwooll, Policy Advisor at

Universities UK , explained that: “What

we’re looking for is Government supportfor sustained growth in legitimatestudent numbers within universities, not

least because of the future links thatthose students, when they graduate,offer to the UK. I think there was a BIS

study earlier on this year which showedthat something like 78 per cent ofgraduating students wanted to build

links with UK organisations in future.That is a huge number and there issignicant potential there.”

Ceri Smith, Director of Labour

Markets at the Department for

Business, Innovation and Skills, raised

the issue of future challenges for policy.

“It seems to me the stuff that goes

on now will be setting the context forthat debate. And the debate at themoment is very much in terms of net

migration and the target around that.”“If the future policy debate

continues only to be around net

migration, then any government of whatever complexion is going to nd it very difcult. My question is how does

any government respond to that goingforward, given opportunities like theneed to increase our educational exports.

You can only do that if there is actuallyan acceptance out there in the public

that that is a good thing to do. How doesone build public condence that the

borders are secure if actually somehow you’re seen as changing the terms of

the debate?”“It seems to me what one needs to

do between now and the next election is

start laying the grounds for a newframework for debate – not necessarilyset out what that answer might be but

somehow change the terms of the debateso it’s not suddenly seen as a shift andsomehow fudging the numbers. I don’t

see, as an ofcial, how we could lay theframework for that going forward. Itseems to me it’s not just about

Government. It’s also about businesses.”Jean Candler, Interim Head

of Current Affairs at Million+, called

for a more positive narrative fromthe Government.

“The ‘brightest and the best’ sendsa very negative message externally tooverseas countries as well as here. We

don’t use these terms because who is the‘brightest and the best’? What we meanis talented people. We want people who

are entrepreneurial and talented and who can offer something. So narrative isreally important. If we want to move

forward we need to think about how weexpress ourselves, what messages those

words are giving to other countries and

to this country.”

Mark Harper MP responded: “Thereason why we use the language aboutthe ‘brightest and the best’, about

selectivity, is we do want our universitiesto be getting the best people to comehere. We’re talking about skilled workers

coming in. But we’re clear we don’t thinkit’s of economic benet to the UnitedKingdom for lots and lots and lots of

unskilled workers coming here whodon’t really bring anything to the party.”

Richard Beamish, Interim Chief

Officer at the Alliance of Sector Skills

Councils, observed: “I think the issuefor us is over the public perception. It’s

over some of the more extreme political views. People don’t think about netmigration. They don’t think about skills

and talent. They think aboutimmigration. And the challenge we haveis to get the message across to the public

as a whole so there is real support for theconcept of skills and knowledge transfer,for movement of skills throughout the

world because that is what we’re talkingabout as well.”

HE Thambynathan Jasudasen,

High Commissioner at the Embassyof Singapore, observed: “in Singapore

we come from the perspective that the

countries that have the largestconcentration of talent will create

wealth, and countries that do not have

enough talent will decline. And the gamenow is one of attracting the most numberof talented people. So I’m in competition

for talent. And all our countries are incompetition for talent.”

“I’m a major investor here, and Ithink one of the issues we do have is

bringing people here, not so much that it’simpossible to get them in, but just in termsof the time taken. Businesses tend to

operate at a much faster pace. And when Isit down and talk to them, their challenge isalways to get the processes done quickly.”

HE Thambynathan



12 www.reform.co.uk


Robert Arnott, Director of

Performance and Compliance Unit at

the UK Border Agency (UKBA), notedthat immigration controls were needed“to get the operation right, both because

that then drives the credibility of thesystem which allows us to make thepolitical argument, but also because it

drives good selectivity in the way in which we do things.”

“But we then need very well in

operational terms to have adifferentiated approach to differentcategories of people. And we clearly need

to up our game substantially for those

cohorts of people who want to come tothe UK legitimately.”

He added: “On average 70,000people pass through Heathrow Airportevery day. Somewhere in the 70,000 are

some people who probably shouldn’t behere or who are certainly worthy of asecond look. So our operational

challenge is to know as much as possibleabout the 70,000 people before they gethere, try to prevent the bad ones evergetting on a plane in the rst place. We

have lots of international cooperation tohelp us with that – to spot them as theyarrive, and make sure we have a way of

realising that we won’t always get thingsright upstream.”

Mark Hilton, Programme

Director for Education and

Employment at London First, provideda case study: “One of our big four

accountancy members employssomething like 12,000 people. About 10per cent of those are non-EU. The

greatest proportion of that non-EU workforce are Indians. And theaccountancy rm is concerned about the

dip in Indian student numbers cominginto the UK because they sh from thatglobal talent pool.”

“And the reason that pool is soimportant to them is they employ them,they train them up in London, they

develop the skills, and then they exportthem out to support the work that they’redoing to build trade in the Indo-UK

corridor. So it’s not necessarily aboutemploying people to stay here, but it’susing people in that kind of global talent

ow way.”Sophie Carter, Researcher at the

Office of Alan Shelbrooke MP, said:

“it’s really good to hear UKBA isdeveloping, but the people on the frontline as far as the universities go are theadmissions ofcers. They see how well

the UKBA targets are met and whether

there is a problem. So obviously theLondon Metropolitan thing could have

been maybe discovered sooner by talking

to admissions ofcers.”Toomas Kull, from NASSCOM

UK , closed the discussion with a reference

to the importance of open debate andgood relations between government,universities and business: “We did make

some changes to the immigration rulesthat were laid before parliament a coupleof weeks ago. Clearly there will be tweaks

where people give us particular examplesthat we need to deal with, and we are very

open to looking at those. So it’s abouthaving that dialogue really.”

“Certainly those of you whoengage with ofcials will nd that we

want to listen. We won’t always agree, but I think we want to understand theissues and balance them out and try

and deliver that.”



13www.reform.co.uk


Hon Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair of

the Public Administration Select

Committee, began by outlining the

underlying factors that had led to thedevelopment of the Civil Service ReformPlan, explaining that it was “a nal

admission that the government needs

a plan in order to change the natureof government. It needs a changeprogramme. But it’s a plan that is

both a product of frustration and adetermination to do things. Thefrustration arises from the fact that

it’s very hard to get anything done in

government apparently, and the solutionseems to be to start questioning the very

basis on which the Civil Service was

established as we know today by theNorthcote-Trevelyan Report of 1853 asreinforced by the Haldane model of

accountability which has given us a Civil

Service that saw us through the 20thcentury, world wars, economic crises.”

“We ask Ministers to go into thisextremely highly charged, difcultenvironment and to assumeresponsibility in government

departments for direct command over

people whom they don’t choose. And it’s

not surprising how those people arechosen has moved up the agenda in theCivil Service Reform Plan because in no

other walk of life is the Chief Executive ofa company, for example, required to

work with the people that he’s taken over

from his predecessors.”“We’re dealing in a political

environment which has changed very

dramatically even from 20 years ago.There is far more scrutiny of what goes onin government departments. Ministers

and senior ofcials are trying to run

The role of the Civil Service indelivering open public services

Hon Bernard Jenkin MP



14 www.reform.co.uk


government departments in a goldsh bowl where they are being looked at by

24x7 media, the select committees,freedom of information requests.”

“What we need to help Ministers

and ofcials do better is to understandeach other and share each other’sconcerns and information. What is

happening at the moment is that in toomany Ministers’ ofces and governmentdepartments there is mutual suspicion

between ofcials and ministers. They are

hoarding information from each other. And if things aren’t getting done andthings aren’t going well, then people are

working in secret silos.”

“The Prime Minister has becomea more superannuated presidentialgure with more staff. My favourite

statistic is that there are a thousandmore people working in the CabinetOfce and Downing Street than there

were when Margaret Thatcher left ofce. All sorts of things that are happeningoutside of government departments, not

least the Prime Minister has his ownprivate policy. You hear people ingovernment departments saying: ‘gosh,

you know, everything goes ne until theTreasury or Downing Street get involvedand then everything stops because there

is a bottleneck’.”

“If we’re going to address theproblems of structure, of trust, I think

we’ve also got to address the structureof governments.”

Damien Venkatasamy, Director

Public Sector UK and Ireland for

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),

drew a parallel between the challengescurrently facing the public sector andthe driving forces which drive private

sector service delivery.“The rst observation that I would

have is that in many respects when I look

at the situation of the public sector andpublic service delivery, I see quite a strong

parallel in many respects to where theprivate sector has been for a long time. Soobviously the autumn statement recently,the budgetary cuts, and the year of

austerity lead you to a conclusion thatactually there is a need to reduce theoperational costs of delivering public

services. And then I guess counterintuitiveto that or contrary to that, there is also arising expectation from the electorate in

respect of the level of public service thatthey want to be receiving. And that issomething that the private sector has

grappled with for a long time.”Damien alluded to ways in which

the public sector could look to tackle this

problem in stating: “I think that leads you to a conclusion that something doeshave to change in terms of the way that

public services are delivered in thefuture, and I guess there is no oneanswer to that, and it depends on what

the function is. But I think there is a verydifcult question that every governmentdepartment, every government agencyand every local authority probably needs

to ask which is: ‘what is our core

function?’ By that I mean what are thefunctions that only we, the Civil Service,

can full, either because of a legalrequirement or because, frankly, there isso much knowledge embedded in that

function that it would be ludicrous foranyone else to even attempt to do it.”

“I want everybody to imagine a

spectrum which at the one end hasprivatisation and then at the other hascivil service in-house delivery. And then

in between you’ve got outsourcing, joint ventures, mutuals, co-operatives – allkinds of different public service delivery

models. Once the difcult question has been asked by a department of what theircore function is and therefore what things

are they perhaps not best placed to do,that spectrum I think needs to be applied

Dr Chris Gibson-Smith



15www.reform.co.uk


to the things that they don’t consider to becore, to say: well, what is the best deliverymodel for this moving forward?”

He concluded by arguing that thepublic sector should look to the privatesector’s embracing of technology to

enhance the quality of its serviceprovision: “what we see in the privatesector is people are very much milking the

back ofce, using technology to milk the

back ofce in order to feed the front ofce. And I think that is something that the

Civil Service could very much consider.”Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Director of

Strategy at A4E, observed: “I suppose

there are sort of two Ss which maybecover what we feel like we’re on thereceiving end of. I think one is about

bad structures, and the other is aboutinadequate skills.”

“There is a real problem that

aspects of commerciality are often justnot there. So one department estimatedfor us to do a programme we’d need £3million to do that in working capital. We

actually needed £38 million. That’s quitea big mis-estimate from them. And thedifculty of raising that money can be

sometimes, for some types of

organisation, quite extreme, particularly

for charities and so on.”Discussing the strengths of the

strategy: “I guess an additional S would

be strategy. Our biggest client is DWP andI think that they have been really fantasticin saying this is the direction, and giving

you a great deal of clarity. And it’s soimportant when you’ve got to raise a lot ofmoney, because investors will attach a

massive premium to what you’re doing ifthey think it’s all going to fall to piecesshortly. The DfE have been similar.”

John Telling, Director of Group

Corporate Affairs at MITIE Group,picked up again on the point of therotation of civil servants around

departments: “I’ve got a suspicion thatthere are some within the public sector

who thought that at this stage through

the parliament that things would be a lot better and therefore they didn’t reallyhurry much to do reform. And my plea

really is to say we’ve still got two and ahalf years left of this parliament andthere is an awful lot that can be done.”

“When the contractors at thestart of this government had to do amemorandum of understanding, we

dealt with eight different teams in theCabinet Ofce in relation to that. Every

time it comes out, it’s a different team.So that knowledge drain is enormousall the time. Our view would be stick

with the teams you’ve got, make themresponsible for delivering the projectsthey’re working on and seeing throughthe results.”

John Owen, Director of

Strategic Markets for Serco UK andEurope, was critical of the mutual

suspicion between public and privatesector providers.

“From Serco’s perspective I would

say the majority of our employees feelmore civil service than the civil servants.They get up and they spend more of their

time delivering great frontline servicesthan the average people in the Civil Service.

And that’s why they like coming across.”

“I’m just shocked why we havepublic sector/private sector as if one is

better than the other or vice versa. It’s

public services, and as a consumer I wantgreat public services at a low cost, digestedin a way I want to digest them, relevant for

me and my society. And I think the key forme is it’s this partnership.”

Stephen Kelly



16 www.reform.co.uk


Mary Starks, Senior Director at

the Office of Fair Trading, highlighted

the signicance of the diverse range ofskills that must underpin the multipleroles government has to play in the

provision of services: “in particular oneof the things that has been a big focus forus is procurement and commissioning

and how that set of skills is reallyquite fundamentally different toprovision. We’ve had a focus on trying

to think about how procurement andcommissioning can work, not just sothat you get good value for the rstround, but such that in 10 or 15 or 20

years you’ve got a vibrant market witha multiplicity of providers and notdefaulted to two or three big incumbents.

Those questions are quite difcult, and Ithink it partly comes down to skills.”

Marcial Boo, Director of

Strategy, Communications and

Knowledge at the National Audit

Office, commented again about the

importance of ensuring continuity: “Withministers changing, with senior civilservants moving around departments as

has been outlined, there need to bemechanisms by which both layers – the

political layer and the administrativelayer – can work effectively together, setand monitor their driving through oflong-term change that’s not going to be

interrupted because of staff turnover orpolitical ghting.”

Dr Chris Gibson-Smith,

Chairman of the London Stock

Exchange, discussed the importance ofleadership and valuing the workforce:

“the competency of leadership cannot bedisrespected to the standard that it’scurrently disrespected. Society is more

complex than it has ever been in history.There is no component of society whichis not now a lifetime study. If the Civil

Service is to do something it has to be ofConfucian standards of capability in theface of that complexity, and it must bestable, self-condent, and well paid, and

superbly educated. You cannot changethe Secretary of State for Transport 16times in 18 years and imagine you’re

doing anything except take the mickey of we the people.”

He also highlighted the importance

of better nancial management: “the

second thing is we’ve got to get control of budgeting. I would have a national

balance sheet that had integrity. And I would have scal budget boundaries with criminal sentences if you broke

them in order to make sure that we

understood that they had a purpose and

were for real. I’d be very selective withexternal help. You don’t need a lot of it.

Make the people change themselves. Andit will take fantastic training and supportto get it to happen.”

Stephen Kelly, Chief Operating

Officer for Government at the Cabinet

Office, made the case for haste in

implementing the Civil Service ReformPlan during the current window ofopportunity: “Let’s not boil the oceanor have a kind of two-year sabbatical

Oxford Union debate about ‘is it the best

plan?’, but let’s just get on and do the 18points within it. And it talks about

leadership. It talks about capability. Ittalks about operational skills. And ittalks about pretty much all the right

things, and then at the end of thisParliament I think it will give us, if we’resitting here with the Civil Service at

380,000 people rather than in 2010480,000 people still collecting taxes, stilldelivering benets, still supporting the

citizens of this country, we’ll be on a whole lot better plane to actually look atthe next phase of the journey.”

Greg Rosen, Consultant Directorat Reform, argued that “the Civil ServiceReform Plan does talk about many of the

right things, but that doesn’t necessarilymean it will it achieve its goals. And Ithink it’s really important that if

government is serious about achievingits goals that it is open to the idea thatmaybe the reform plan doesn’t go far

enough and is open minded in assessingits progress towards those things.”

Hon Bernard Jenkin MP, gave the

closing view: “I think there’s a babies in

bathwater situation here that we’re indanger of, that because the system isn’t

working properly we’re in danger ofthrowing out some very good things aboutour Civil Service which isn’t necessary

to throw out because if you get theleadership right, everything will follow.”



£20.00 Reform45 Great Peter StreetLondonSW1P 3LT

T 020 7799 [email protected] www.reform.co.uk

tata_transcript_aw reform research paper

Documents