The following is the text of the branch chairs address to the PCS ADC on the subject of private infringement on public neutrality."President, Conference – Andy Boylan on behalf of the Veterans Agency National Branch to move motion A14.
Conference some of you will be aware of how the SPVA came to be – but for those who don’t know we were a merger of the Veterans Agency and AFPAA.
Veterans Agency was entirely civil service but AFPAA had been mainly privatised to EDS in a so called ‘partnership’. Now our previous Chief Executive was somewhat friendly with EDS. Not only were they on the Management Group but he referred to EDS staff as his staff. He actively told civil servants how good EDS were and that they were better than the civil servant staff.
Now Conference, I should make it clear, we are not opposed to the actual hard working staff in EDS – many of whom were civil servants who were betrayed and sold by their employer. We want to support them and bring them back in-house, saving them from a company enforcing pay cuts whilst maintaining profits – aiming for 6% year on year increases in profit one of their senior managers once confessed. We are opposed, however, to EDS having such a pull within a Government Agency – a body that should be politically neutral.
How has this pull manifested? Well one example would be the Staff Survey Team that VA had. The team had produced annual surveys in full consultation with the Trade Union Side. Suddenly the survey was to be done by a private company (the one previously used by AFPAA). This was done without consultation because, “EDS wouldn’t like a survey designed by civil servants” – so much for partnership. Of course, what this means in real terms is that EDS forced an outsourcing.
EDS wanted to move the Agency’s Disaster Recovery Servers into an EDS building; why? I think it was to make it more difficult to extract us from the company. There was no gain for the Agency, no gain for the taxpayer. Indeed here was a substantial increased in annual cost to make the move. Thankfully this was something the TUS were able to prevent.
We asked for a seat, in an observers capacity, on the previous Chief Executive’s AMG – EDS wouldn’t like that we were told. In short the unions couldn’t observe the AMG but EDS managers were full participants.
Our Health and Safety committee terms of reference and our equality statement have both been signed by both the EDS senior manager and our Chief Executive. These documents have been dependant on EDS approval and EDS have failed to consult EDS PCS colleagues. The civil service TUS have had to send the health and safety terms of reference to PCS EDS because their management didn’t.
Conference, despite a legacy of failure, especially after PCS gave the previous Chief Executive a political kicking and saved Innsworth station, the Rear Admiral was given a New Years Honour.
Conference things have moved on and we have a new Chief Executive. Have things improved? Well they have to a degree but our new Chief Executive does carry a mantra of “One Agency, One Team,” we even have a corporate voiceover that goes {puts on gravely voice} “One Agency, One Team.” We are not one Agency, we are an Agency bolted together out of two separate companies – one public and the other private and trying to make a profit. It appears that our new contract, being signed today {by date of the speech}, has even cut out the main penalty clauses – penalties that I understand added up to around the £10m mark, mostly uncollected last year by public managers from the private company – FOI questions have been raised.
Conference this motion calls for a Parliamentary Enquiry into the influence private companies have within Government Agencies – it takes civil service neutrality as a necessity of Government. A Parliamentary enquiry might seem a strange call given that we can’t even trust the majority of politicians not to fleece us for every penny they can – but it is a way forward to highlight the issues with the public. I move."
This motion was carried at the national ADC with the wholehearted support of the NEC and resounding support from the whole of conference, including the commercial sector, and will now form part of the PCS campaign for the incoming NEC.
http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/conference/index.cfm
