6 February 2020

Attendees

Those present:          

• Mostaque Ahmed, Finance Director and Managing Director, Finance, Portfolio and Performance
• Ian Ailles, Director General of the House of Commons and representing In-House Services and Strategic Estates (Chair)
• John Benger, Clerk of the House [items 1-6]
• Sarah Davies, Clerk Assistant and Managing Director of Chamber & Committees
• Tracey Jessup, Chief Information Officer and Managing Director of the Parliamentary Digital Service
• Edge Watchorn, Acting Managing Director of Participation
• Penny Young, Librarian and Managing Director of Research & Information

Apologies:

• Mandy Eddolls, Managing Director of HR and Diversity
• Marianne Cwynarski, Head of Governance and Central Services and Secretary to the Commission
• Eric Hepburn, Director of Security for Parliament

In attendance:

• Emily Baldock, Deputy Director of Security (representing Eric Hepburn)
• Philip Collins, Director of Corporate Finance and Performance [items 6-7]
• Rhiannon Hollis, Secretary to the Commons Executive Board
• Jane Hough, Head of Business Planning and Performance [item 2]
• Clare Jennings, Director of Communications    
• Markos Koumaditis, Human Resources Director (representing Mandy Eddolls)
• William Newing, Business Change Manager
• John Pelton, Programme Director (representing Strategic Estates)
• Reg Perry, Head of Reward & Engagement [item 4]
• Patsy Richards, Moves Director (representing In-House Services)
• Saira Salimi, Speaker’s Counsel [item 3]
• Charlotte Simmonds, Restoration & Renewal Director [item 3]
• Michael Torrance, Head of secretariat, Shadow Sponsor Body [item 3]
• Katharine Williams, Governance and Compliance Manager
• Jo Willows, Director of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme [item 5]

Meeting

1. Updates and culture reflection

The Commons Executive Board noted the following updates: 

-       Actions arising from its previous meetings and the work of its sub groups.

-       Stress survey: the Board would discuss the results in greater detail at its 27 February workshop [this was moved to 5 March]. The Board agreed that all teams should be consistent in when they shared the details of the survey with teams and therefore for the time being the detailed report should only be shared with senior managers; the Insight team would produce presentations specific to each team for MDs to share with their whole team.

-       ‘Everyone has a voice’ survey: The Board noted that responses were at 45% and MDs were asked to encourage their teams to complete the survey. The Board also noted that, due to human error, under the discrimination question, sexual orientation had not been listed as a protected characteristic nor an option to select as the basis for discrimination. A plan had been agreed to gain insight on this issue and ParliOUT have been made aware and asked to help. In addition, this being the second error of this kind, the Insight team had asked Internal Audit to look at the processes for consulting, checking and sign-off of this survey, in order to learn lessons for future surveys.

-       Cultural Transformation: The Cultural Transformation Steering Group had escalated to CEB the risk that “House Service decisions are overruled by Member decision making bodies/decisions are reversed in response to Member feedback, stymieing progress on or prompting cynicism about cultural change”. The Board would consider this at its next Risk Oversight Committee meeting and members were asked to reflect on possible mitigations.

-       Diversity & Inclusion Steering Group: the Board noted an update from the Clerk on the work of the group. In particular the Board noted:

• A reminder to encourage teams to submit diversity monitoring data.
• The group was keen to promote stories about diversity in the organisation as evidence that the organisation was able to change.
• CEB was asked to encourage reverse-mentoring as a means of getting senior engagement on ethnicity issues; the Board agreed to ask SDG to be reverse mentored. The Board also noted that the Commons, Lords and Digital Service were due to publish their ethnicity pay gap statistics shortly and should prepare to talk about the difference between their results.

-       John Bercow’s book: the newly published book by former Speaker John Bercow talked about existing and former members of staff without their consent; the House Service had issued a statement condemning this behaviour and the Board noted that the colleagues affected might need support.

-       Website: Parliament’s new website was due to launch shortly.

2. Strategy implementation and corporate business plan

• Draft corporate business plan 2020-21 to 2023-24

The Commons Executive Board thanked Jane Hough for her work on the business plan. The Board agreed that the Managing Director of Finance, Portfolio and Performance should trim down the draft, including consolidating actions to a maximum of 25, which could then be put forward to the Commission. The Board endorsed plans to produce a supplementary booklet that would communicate the key points of the business plan to a wider audience. The Board also agreed that work should be done to make sure future iterations were explicitly aligned with pending work on the strategy and strategic metrics and that the purpose of each was clear.

• Strategy implementation 2020/21

The Commons Executive Board agreed to board-level actions to support the implementation of the strategy and to the recommendation for functional strategy development but agreed the list of priorities should be removed from the Strategy document. The Board also asked that the role of SDG in strategy implementation be covered in the Communications Director’s wider work on SDG.

3. Draft Parliamentary Relationship Agreement

The Commons Executive Board noted and commented on the draft Parliamentary Relationship Agreement (PRA) between Parliament and the Sponsor Body; this was the Board’s last formal sight of the paper ahead of its consideration by the House Commissions in March, and conclusion by the end of April. The Board also noted the subsidiary PRA documents which were under development and the services that the Programme might seek from Parliament and vice versa.

4. Pay remit 2020-21

The Commons Executive Board discussed the approaches to securing a pay remit for 2020/21 set out in the paper and agreed a recommendation to the Commission. The Board considered the outline strategic vision for reward to be achieved over the next 2-3 years and asked for this to be worked on and brought to the Board in April, making clear what the desired outcomes would be.

5. Draft Commission paper: Determination of ICGS complaints against MPs: options

The Commons Executive Board considered the options set out in the draft paper to meet the third and last of Dame Laura Cox’s recommendations, noted that Dame Laura had given her support to option D and agreed a recommendation to the Commission.

Secondly, the Board noted that a separate paper would go to the Commission about proposed minor changes to tighten up the ICGS system. This was also being considered by the Lords and this highlighted the issue that there were now other bodies that would need to agree any changes. This issue would be addressed as part of the 18-month review due in June. The paper included a proposal that the names of MPs who had competed or registered for ‘Valuing Everyone’ training would be published at the start of summer recess.

The Board thanked the team for their work.

6. Financial monitoring report

The Commons Executive Board noted the financial position on the Administration Resource and Capital budgets as at the end of December 2019, noted the confirmed requirement for a net Cash Supplementary Estimate of c.£450k for the Members Estimate, substantially to cover a legacy issue, and noted that, as budgets became tighter from next financial year, alongside the wider pressures from the MTFP & MTIP process, that effective forecasting and management across all budgets would become increasingly more important.

7. Quarterly performance dashboards

The Commons Executive Board noted and discussed performance during 2019-20 Q3, including delivery of the corporate business plan. Satisfaction with maintenance services was the only KPI with a red rating; there was a small sample size and the team had had staff shortages so the Board agreed to monitor this rather than take any action. The Board noted the four red flags against the progress of business plan delivery which were all known and accepted. Project managers were working on managing a greater number of the operational metrics locally so that fewer appeared on the Board dashboard, making this a better tool. The Board noted that a review of the operational metrics should follow on from the development of strategic metrics. Finally the Board asked how it could do more to celebrate performance success stories and noted that the Communications team was now including a story on this in newsletters on a monthly basis.

8. Portfolio performance report

The Commons Executive Board noted and discussed the report. The Board reflected on the fact that strategic metrics and performance management currently sat in different teams and that the use of metrics to monitor performance and run business varied considerably across teams. There was a need to increase the organisation’s capability in this area.

9. Whistle-blowing update

The report was postponed to the next meeting.

10. Counter-fraud report

The Commons Executive Board noted the report.

11. Safety report

The Commons Executive Board noted the report for Q3, which summarised the activities of the Parliamentary Safety Assurance Board, the level of compliance with the corporate safety plan and opinion on the assurances received regarding operational arrangements. John Pelton felt that the report did not give enough credit to the work done in Strategic Estates over the past three months which, he said, had led to an improvement in safety metrics; also that too much effort was put into assurance and not enough into direct safety support.

12. Safeguarding report

The report was postponed to the next meeting.

13. Commons Executive Board

The Commons Executive Board briefly discussed how its time would be managed over the year ahead, noting the need to focus on key and cross-cutting strategic issues with other matters decided outside the Board at the appropriate level. Board members were reminded that all papers had a Board member as sponsor, who ought to be trusted to bring only necessary papers.

14. Change to discounting structure in banqueting events

The Commons Executive Board noted the planned new banqueting discount and business model.

15. Restoration & Renewal

• Future Directions reports

The Commons Executive Board noted the release and use of the Future Directions reports recently released by the R&R programme. The four reports – covering participation, digital data, technology and Parliamentary business – had been shared with the relevant teams for information and to help inform their thinking and future planning, and also with the R&R Joint Working Group to use as reference material in determining strategic steers for the Palace design.

• Shadow Sponsor Body quarterly report (Q2 2019)

The Commons Executive Board noted the quarterly progress report from the shadow Sponsor Body to the Commissions for quarter 2 of 2019/20, including the enclosed report from the R&R Delivery team.

16. House of Commons Audit Actions

The Commons Executive Board noted outstanding actions.

17. Culture reflection

The Commons Executive Board reflected on its performance as a board over the course of the meeting. In particular it noted that attendees were kept waiting when items overran their allocated times and discussed how to avoid this in future. The Board also said that everyone in the room should be invited to sit at the table instead of the side of the room if there was space.