1.23 The Government is committed to ensuring fair and reasonable treatment for workers in PFI projects. The value for money that PFI provides should not be achieved at the expense of staff terms and conditions. Chapter 6 sets out the Government's approach to ensuring fair and reasonable treatment for staff in PFI projects, and the principles which lie behind it. It goes on to outline the steps taken since 1997 to protect employees in PFI schemes, including:
• the Fair Deal for Staff Pensions, announced in June 1999, which stated that staff who transfer from the public sector should continue to have access to a good quality broadly comparable occupational pension scheme, with options for handling benefits they have already earned;
• the Cabinet Office Statement of Practice which sets out how staff compulsorily transferred should be treated;
• Retention of Employment in the NHS recognises the specific needs of the NHS. Staff who fall under this agreement remain employed by the NHS and are then seconded to the new service provider; and
• the Best Value code of practice, which came into effect from March 2003 across England. It applies to all new staff employed on PFI, PPP and outsourcing contracts that are covered by Best Value. The code ensures new employees terms and conditions that are "overall, no less favourable" than their transferred colleagues, and requires that employers proved a pension to a given standard.
1.24 Going forward, the Government is also committed to monitoring the implementation and performance of measures taken to avoid new joiners to PFI workforces receiving worse terms and conditions than do transfered staff, as this will be key to establishing future best practice. It is important that the principles behind the code, workforce protection and adequate flexibility to deliver high quality public services, are achieved.
1.25 To ensure that the value for money delivered by PFI does not come at the expense of employees' terms and conditions, Departments have the option of not transferring soft services staff in a PFI project, where they believe their transfer is not essential for achieving the overall benefits of improved standard of service delivery specified by the procurer, and where not transferring staff is consistent with delivering the Prime Minister's commitment to flexibility in public services provision.