Vivian Widgery - Deputy editor of the House of Commons - London

I WOULDN’T START FROM HERE

The review of parliamentary reporting services carried out by the Department of the Official Report, House of Commons

Intersteno Congress - Vienna July 2005

The title of my presentation comes from an old joke.  Some people are lost in the country and ask a local for directions on how to get to where they want to be, and he replies, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”  It applies to two aspects of our review – one, the way that the Department did its work, and two, because I must be honest, to the initial announcement of our review itself.

You all work in Parliaments, and you must all have experienced changes in the sitting hours of your Parliaments.  Even one of our youngest Parliaments, the Scottish Parliament, has, after five short years, changed its working patterns.  I don’t know how you have dealt with those changes, but in our case, we have “made do”, in that uniquely British way.  While staff have been flexible and made changes in their own working lives, the overall shape of the Department and the way it is staffed have remained the same since our working practices were set up 35 years ago. The traditional demand for parliamentary reporting services has changed gradually over the years, but the resources within the Department to supply that demand have remained relatively static. And we must also not forget the delights of IT, PCs, the internet and all things electronic, which have revolutionised every part of our working lives, but again in a piecemeal way.

So, despite the fact that we produce a highly regarded report, appreciated by nearly all Members of Parliament, problems have arisen. Some staff have not been as flexible as others, and have refused to change their working hours to match those of the House.  Staff were taken on to posts with the same responsibilities and expectations of 35 years ago, although the quality of people today and their potential is so much higher. The House decided to sit on only 13 Fridays a year, which meant work on only 13 in a year, much to the envy of staff in other Departments. Equally, some in one part of the Department did have to work on those non-sitting days, while others did not – hardly conducive to harmonious working conditions.  Thirty years ago, the Select Committee system was set up, but as the Department did not have enough staff to report them, an outside firm was given the contract for that work.  As you can see, all around, things had changed, but the Department was still starting from the same place. On top of that, the work of the House of Commons was concentrated within three days – Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – with the result that staff work long hours those days, and shorter hours on other days.

The previous Editor therefore decided that there should be a review of reporting services, which would examine how the Department operated in the current working conditions of the House, and what could be done to make its operations more efficient. Unfortunately, the review was given the worst of all starts because it was announced to staff suddenly and without previous consultation, with the decision to bring in an outside consultancy firm already taken. Understandably, this did not endear the review to staff.

I should perhaps here give a brief outline of the shape of the Department, which is responsible for reporting the Chamber of the House of Commons – but not the House of Lords – Westminster Hall, the second debating chamber; and the Standing Committees, which examine Bills clause by clause – but not Select Committees, which examine the work of Government Departments. Committee Reporters report the Committees and Westminster Hall, and House Reporters report the House.

The entry level for the Department is at Committee Reporter level.  Thereafter, people work their way up to House Reporter; then to Committee Sub-Editor, overseeing the work of the Committee Reporters; Principal Assistant Editor, overseeing the work of the House Reporters; and then on to Deputy Editor and Editor.

Despite the fact that Committee Reporters are the seedbed of the Department, from whose ranks all promotion starts, and although we ensure that we take on highly intelligent and motivated people, they still work in the method set up 35 years ago, with instructions handed down to them from the Committee Sub-Editors.  This is not only demotivating for those involved, but has led to a divide between the Committee and the House sections, as the House Reporters work independently.

At the other end of the scale, the Principal Assistant Editors, while highly skilled editors and intelligent and capable people, had very few true management duties, despite their high grade, and despite the fact that they all have a great deal to offer not only the Department but the increasingly corporate House of Commons.  There are six Departments in the House: Clerks; Serjeant at Arms; Library; Finance and Administration; Official Report; and Refreshment. All six used to operate very much on their own, in an extremely lose federation, but over the past 10 years, the House has become much more of a corporate body, with a chief executive and more “joined-up” approach to the functioning of the House as a whole.

In short, the problems that it was the aim of the review to solve were:

1.      Working patterns that did not properly fit the changed sitting hours of the House.

2.      Staff not working on non-sitting Fridays.

3.      Lack of management opportunities for highly graded staff.

4.      Low-quality work for highly qualified staff.

5.     The reporting of Select Committees by an outside body, when that work should naturally be done by the Department.

6.     The concentration of work into three days of the week.

7.     The application of new technologies such as digital audio to our work.

In January 2004, the then Editor announced to staff his decision to have a review of parliamentary reporting services, and in February, the consultants were chosen and began their investigation of the Department and the work of Select Committees.  Unfortunately, the chance to be truly revolutionary by taking a look at the work of the House of Lords Official Report to see whether we could set up a Parliament-wide body to do all reporting in both Houses was blocked right at the start.  We may have moved on to a more corporate structure within the Commons, but the Lords maintains its separation from the Commons – it has its own Library, Clerks Department, Refreshment Department and Official Report, not to mention its own colour for its carpets – red instead of the green in the House of Commons part of the Palace of Westminster. So the remit of the consulting firm was to look at reporting in the House of Commons, with the participation of a House of Lords representative.

I cannot recommend having a firm of outside consultants look at the work of your Department.  It is no fun for anyone involved, and is naturally deeply resented by all. Furthermore, in the end you usually just learn what you knew already, and at huge cost.  However, left to our own devices, while we might have come to much the same conclusions as the consultants, we would almost certainly have taken at least another two years to do so, because real work would always have got in the way. When the report came out in May, the problems that we were already aware of were highlighted and some ways to get around them recommended.

The next stage was to find ways to tailor those recommendations to the realities of the Department, and here we asked the staff who would be affected by them to take part in a series of groups to examine the outcomes seen as necessary by the review. We set up four groups and asked for volunteers to take part in them.  It is a testimony to the dedication of staff that nearly all took part in one of the groups, and some in two. One group looked at demand, or the work load of the Department.  One looked at design, or how the work that we do could be done differently.  One looked at support services, or how support staff could more efficiently help the work of editorial staff. One looked a technology to see how new developments could improve the work of the Department.  A fifth group was then set up to examine Select Committees and see whether, and how, the Department could be involved in the reporting of their proceedings.

These groups worked for nearly three months, and by the end of the process, had come up with some interesting ideas.  The management team of the Acting Editor and the two Deputy Editors took these ideas, together with the report and the recommendations arising out of it, and, over several weeks, produced decisions aimed at overcoming the problems.  These decisions, backed with training and development needs, an implementation plan and job descriptions, were presented to staff on Friday 1 July, meeting with a mixed reception.  I will not bore you with everything, merely set out the key points that will, we hope, enable us to overcome the problems I outlined earlier.

They are:

1.     That the Official Report should start reporting Select Committees – in part at first but with the ultimate aim of doing all the work eventually.

2.     That a new grade of reporter be created in between the House and Committee reporters, the aim being to have a cadre of reporters more used to working on their own.

3.     That Principal Assistant Editors should have more management duties.

4.     That there should be better recording of the “nuts and bolts” of the job – budgets, hours worked by staff, etc.

5.     That the working patterns of all staff should ensure that they meet the demands of the House but also provide value for money – more than 13 Fridays a year being worked.

6.     That staff training and development should be at the centre of all that we do, to ensure that all staff can not only fulfil the demands of the post that they are in but are already working towards the demands of the job above them.

We are now at the early stages of discussion on how to implement all these decisions. Time will tell whether we have succeeded in putting the Department on the right road to being the dynamic, flexible and achieving organisation that we envisage but, with the help of the staff, we hope that we will never again have to ask our way.

Vivian Widgery

20 July 2005