Q51 Chair: I notice on the top level, you have got 12 vacancies.
Ian Watmore: I have taken it down by 11 of the most senior grades in the civil service.
Amyas Morse: When I was asking about synergy-it is good to hear about the cost reduction aspect of it- I was thinking more about how you bring together the considerations from these various groups, and to actually shape services and structure the functions of central Government more effectively. It is interesting, and it is good that you are doing that, but I am much more interested in some of the positive aspects.
Ian Watmore: Let me answer that part of the question then. One of the reasons is that I genuinely believe these teams, if they are too big, create their own silos, they fragment, and they just focus down their own channel. Then some poor Department out there gets 15 visits from the centre, all of whom are being told it is the most important thing on God's earth that they do this thing, and they just plate-spin them away. What we are trying to do is by having much smaller teams, we are then joining up around Departments and key issues like the universal credit. We are taking a business problem and then getting our capability aligned with the major projects, the IT, the procurement, the commercial contracting people etc. We are saying, "There is a common problem there, it is called universal credit. Go work at it together and join up for the benefit of DWP." That is the approach that we are adopting. Given that you and I have a shared professional services background, it is, if you like, joining up your capability around a common client rather than bombarding that client with every bit of your organisation.
Q52 Joseph Johnson: Just quickly on the 380 people in the efficiency unit. Obviously it raised a few eyebrows this side of the table.
Ian Watmore: What, that it was so small?
Joseph Johnson: That you are so lean and efficiently. No, seriously, were these new people or were they people who were rolled in from previous bodies that were-
Ian Watmore: When we assembled the teams in the first place, the 600 came from all the different bits of Government that already existed. We brought them together and we have taken a third out of the cost in the first year. You need to understand what some of these people are doing. They are not just advising on key projects. In there is the Office of Civil Society that is actually giving grants to third sector bodies. We have got the HR management team for the whole civil service-
Joseph Johnson: So are we doing efficiency more efficient?
Ian Watmore: Exactly. I have a saying that credibility begins at home, and if you are going to preach-to use the word that Mr Mitchell was using-efficiency across the patch and you look fat, dumb and happy yourself, you have got no credibility. We have been making sure that we are taking our own medicine early, applying the techniques that we think everybody else should be doing to ourselves, and the numbers are there.
Q53 Joseph Johnson: I am not sure if it is possible for you to give us this answer, but how many people were doing efficiency before you came along, and how many are doing it now?
Ian Watmore: Efficiency is an umbrella term. It was, as I said, 600 people before in the corporate functions, the central bit, and another 1,300 in the bits around the centre like the COI and Directgov, and those things that were delivering a daily service on behalf of Government.
Q54 Joseph Johnson: What's happened to them? Are they still doing it?
Ian Watmore: The 600 is down to 380 and the 1,300 is down to 800.
Q55 Chair: In that, is there any outsourcing?
Ian Watmore: No.
Chair: None of that is outsourcing?
Ian Watmore: No.
Chair: So it is all people out.
Ian Watmore: It is either voluntary departures or abolition really.
Chair: But the COI function is not being outsourced?
Ian Watmore: No.
Q56 Stephen Barclay: Just building on Jo's question, you just used the phrase, "Efficiency is an umbrella term." I was struck by your comments earlier Mr Watmore that data does not compare between Departments. Do you have an agreed definition between all Departments and arm's length bodies in terms of what constitutes a frontline service?
Ian Watmore: No. I think that you get into a very difficult territory whenever you write one of these things down, because if you are sitting in the Department for Education, who is providing the frontline service? Is it the teacher, the school, the local education authority, Ofsted, or the Department? You get into very difficult degrees of definition here. What we have put our arms around are the central Government Departments and their arm's length bodies that people recognise as constituting part of central Government. That is what we are dealing with. The wider public sector, which is largely education, police, health etc., is then beyond.
Q57 Stephen Barclay: Within central Whitehall do you have an agreed definition between Departments for frontline services?
Ian Watmore: Give me an example.
Stephen Barclay: At paragraph 1.12, for example, it says, "A recruitment ban across the civil service except for key frontline staff." I accept, because I have had an interesting exchange in terms of arm's length bodies with my chief fire officer who has 206 full-time fire fighters in Cambridgeshire, six people full-time in the media and communications department, and describes those as essential parts of the frontline service. So his interpretation of paragraph 1.12-
Ian Watmore: The Minister for the Cabinet Office might find that one a difficult one to agree with, I would think.
Q58 Stephen Barclay: I will relay your statement to him. Even though I accept there is an issue with arm's length bodies, although one can look at accounting officers' accountability in terms of arm's length bodies-even within central Government, for frontline services, you put a ban on there with a definition attached to that ban-is there an agreed definition across all Departments of what constitutes a frontline service?
Ian Watmore: I think we have defined it in words but at the end of the day you have got to sit down and say, "Is this person delivering a frontline service?" If it is a job centre clerk and you need them, then yes they are. If it is a communications back-up resource then no, they are not; and there are all the shades of grey in between.
Q59 Stephen Barclay: Let me give you another example because I think it goes to the heart of this Committee finding the same issues coming up. We had an exchange on professional services, which you may recall, on consultancy.
Ian Watmore: I do.
Stephen Barclay: In the Treasury minute's response it says, "Spend on consultancy across Whitehall has fallen by 46%." That sounds extremely positive. It suggests that a grip is being taken. Yet we had a note from one of the Departments that said, "Our consultancy spend has come down, but our spend on contractors has gone up." In a way it relates to these umbrella terms or different work being rebadged, very imaginatively, with different titles.
Ian Watmore: Would you like to tell me which Department that was and I will go and have a look at it?
Stephen Barclay: I think it was the Department for Transport, but I can send you a note.
Ian Watmore: The overall figures are being audited at the moment so they may not be 100%.
Stephen Barclay: It was in a note to the Committee; I am very happy to do it.
Ian Watmore: Consultancy was down for the year by 70% and the agency staff, which would be your contractor types, was down 40%.
Q60 Stephen Barclay: There is a Department-and for any journalists who want to check it, I will very happily make it available when I go back to the office-that in its note to this committee, and I asked the Permanent Secretary about it at a recent hearing, I forget which Department it was off hand, said that their consultancy spend had gone down, but their spend on contractors had gone up and they could not tell me the difference between the two. That is what I am trying to get to the heart of. Could I come back to the original question, which is about the extent to which you at the centre, in terms of facilitating benchmarking, have now got a set of agreed definitions on professional services across central Government Departments? Have you got that in place?
Ian Watmore: I believe we do.