David Blunkett: Short-sighted move to cut training for civil servants facing new challenges

To most people, a decision to slash by £90m the training programme across the Civil Service would seem to be just another measure in the austerity programme of the Government, greeted with a shrug of the shoulders.

But this is not a matter merely for those who are interested in the future skills of the nation, or those already committed to taking an interest in the field of human resource.

This is very much about the delivery of services, and the equipping of officials across the whole of Whitehall and beyond, to do the job as we move through the first quarter of the 21st century.

Of course the statement presented a very different picture. This was all about getting more for less, about reshaping the way that people accessed training to fit in with practise outside the public service. All about using new technology and, of course, “work-based” on-the-job training!

It all sounded extremely benign, that is until you examine the implications! For this short Written Statement has profound consequences for the future of delivery at a moment when the Government are bringing in-house those operations (known since the time of Margaret Thatcher as Next Steps Agencies).

As a result they are expecting the Civil Service to be hands on, operational and equipped to deal with the challenge of more than producing policy papers and creating Bill Teams to help Ministers get their policies through Parliament.

The truth is, and everyone knows it, that we have had a long-term problem with creating a Service which was equipped for the modern era.

Excellent, highly intelligent and motivated individuals who were not experienced in Project Management, and with notable exceptions, had not usually substantial experience outside the service, found themselves in this new environment.

The notion that learning on the job is learning anything but what those already on the job and managing you already know, is risible.

I should know, for between 1997 and 2001 I was responsible alongside Michael (now Lord) Bichard for a substantial modernisation of the Department for Education and Employment, and for the best delivery record of any government department in recent decades. And what is more, I was responsible in this broader policy sphere, for skills, setting up the Sector Skills Councils, the expansion of National Vocational Qualifications and the thrust to use e-learning. I also saw the downside. NVQs awarded to people for simply doing what they had always done. Not for added value, not for extending their work but for doing what they did well.

And here is the rub. It is possible to do on-the-job training well. You need however substantial input of funds to ensure that the replacement of what in the Statement is called “classroom learning” recognises the need for proper tutoring, for rigorous development and for the very simple truth, that it depends on what job you are on as to whether you are learning! Given the musical chairs which constitutes any length of tenure in any particular civil service post, the reluctance to promote people in-post, and the disbursement of expertise almost as soon as anyone has really learnt the job, and the picture looks bleak indeed.

The National School of Government will close on March 31 next year. External providers will be “commissioned” to come in and do what in the terms of the Statement are “expensive” residential and classroom-based programmes. Who are these external providers? What expertise do they have in the specific requirements for personal development and delivery processes? How can someone gain experience in a job that they currently do not do, unless they are released to learn about that job and experience it elsewhere?

In other words, it may not be a classroom that is required, but it certainly will be funding to enable people to do more than boot up the computer at lunchtime to engage in this all-encompassing, all-dancing and all-delivering “e-learning” experience.

And of course, if you are not on the job (whether it is e-learning or watching Nelly do the job) then you do need someone to be paid to do the job that you should be doing. Given the enormity of the cutbacks and the struggle that civil servants currently have to deliver anything, a £90m hatchet job on skilling and training for the future, looks about as short sighted and cheese pairing as you could possibly get. Fewer people trained less, with reduced experience and limited added value, is frankly a recipe for disaster. 

Unfortunately for the future of public service but fortunately for the Government’s public standing, virtually no one has noticed!

David Blunkett held three Cabinet posts from 1997-2005. He is the Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough.