Important note: This is an archive of the website that was formerly at www.morrisinquiry.gov.uk. It is being hosted on the MPA website for archival purposes only and may contain out-of-date information.

This resource is from the Transcripts section. This section contains a transcript of the public session with Mr J Taylor, Chief Executive of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), on 5 April 2004.

Sections available here:

• Transcript of public session: Mr J Taylor of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
  • Questions by Sir William Morris
  • Questions by Miss Weekes
  • Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

This transcript is also available with original line and page numbering.

Transcript of public session: Mr J Taylor of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

Monday, 5 April 2004
10.30 am

Sir William Morris: Good morning, everyone, and good morning to you, Mr Taylor. Can I first of all say thank you very much indeed for accepting our invitation to attend the Inquiry to give some evidence, and thank you also for letting us have your written submission by way of the draft code. We are very grateful.

We do appreciate that for some of our witnesses, the process that we are adopting might be seen as somewhat daunting, so I thought it would be helpful if I set out just briefly how we propose to conduct the hearing this morning.

But first let me introduce myself and the other members of the panel. I am Sir Bill Morris, recently retired General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union. As you can see, there are two other panel members: on my right is Sir Anthony Burden, who recently retired as Chief Constable of South Wales Constabulary after a very long and distinguished career in the police service; and on my left is Miss Anesta Weekes QC. Anesta is an eminent barrister and sits as a recorder and part-time chairperson for employment tribunals, and she was also counsel to the Lawrence Inquiry.

Mr Taylor, as you know, we have been asked by the Metropolitan Police Authority to conduct an independent inquiry into professional standards and employment matters in the Metropolitan Police Service. Our focus is the MPS as an organisation and not the individuals that make up that organisation. The inquiry we are conducting is inquisitorial and not, by nature or character, adversarial.

We are very keen to enquire into the issues raised by our terms of reference so that we can make appropriate recommendations for further good practice, rather than concentrating on making criticisms of the Metropolitan Police Service as an organisation.

To help us in our task, we are very keen to hear from all our witnesses not just what is wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service but equally what is right with it; but more importantly, any suggestions for making it better.

A transcript is being taken so that we have a proper record of the evidence given by all our witnesses, and this will be posted on our website later today.

At the end of these introductory remarks, I will lead on the questions to you, followed by my colleagues, Miss Weekes first, followed by Sir Anthony, and any supplementary questions that I might find necessary. At the conclusion of our questions, I will offer you the opportunity for a brief closing comment if you so wish.

You, Mr Taylor, have kindly sent us, as I have said, ACAS' draft code, and we are treating that as your written submission. That document, along with whatever evidence that you offer to us, will be posted on the website also.

We would like to ask some questions about the code and seek your views on other relevant matters of interest to us, but before we raise these issues, however, for the benefit of the transcript notes, I wonder if you would mind formally introducing yourself to the Inquiry.

Mr Taylor: Thank you very much, chair. My name is John Taylor, I am the chief executive of ACAS, the full name of ACAS, which is a big mouthful, is the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. So I will call it ACAS, I think, for the sake of the transcribers.

I have done that job for about three years, and in that time, we have been trying to reposition ourselves as an organisation which provides and promotes good practice in the workplace, rather than being seen as an organisation which is the last chance saloon for the resulting conflicts, with mixed success, I have to say.

Questions by Sir William Morris

Sir William Morris: Just by way of my first question, let me just say that, as you perhaps know, the police service is tightly regulated by statutes, policies, procedures. The area of complaints and grievances are no exception to that. We are very anxious to maximise yours and indeed our time with you this morning, and I wonder if you can tell us just broadly ACAS' understanding of the police service in terms of its grievance, its conduct, complaints and disciplinary procedures, insofar as it affects police services generally, but the Metropolitan Police Service in particular. We want to avoid asking questions that you have already answered.

Mr Taylor: Sure. My understanding, which is not – I would not pretend is a great one, is that the Met has a detailed series of procedures, but as with most organisations, the culture of an organisation determines what the procedures are, and there is not such a thing as an ideal or a model procedure.

It seems to me that perhaps the culture is one of trying to find a great level of sort of almost empirical proof, in terms of dealing with individuals, whereas in many organisations, most organisations, the issue is really around what is reasonable behaviour, rather than what is perhaps correct and precise behaviour.

On a point of detail, my understanding is that the Metropolitan Police are – well, the police generally are excluded from claiming unfair dismissal by statute, but the discrimination cases do apply.

From afar, not surprisingly, the Met Police comes across to us as rather a legalistic approach to dealing with employment relations.

Sir William Morris: Thank you for that. There are, as you have partially identified, two principal means by which the matters that regulate the employment of police officers are handled. There is the formal complaints procedures, and these can give rise to complaints from members of the public, as well as complaints internally; and there is also the relatively new voluntary scheme for conflict resolution and grievance resolution called Fairness at Work.

What we are keenly interested in is to explore possible alternatives, so could you be so kind as to outline your experience of the effectiveness of alternative models of resolving workplace disputes, concentrating in particular on the advantages or disadvantages both of external and internal arrangements?

Mr Taylor: I think the first point to make is that all parties should try and avoid getting into some kind of formal dispute situation, because once the battle lines are drawn, it is rather difficult to get people to think reasonably and sensibly.

So we would argue it is a matter of getting the right kind of approach, procedures and management style, which essentially identifies problems early on and then attempts to resolve them in a reasonably informal way.

Once that fails, then there are a number of routes. A fruitful one that we see is the use of internal mediation, where certainly large organisations could use individuals from the management chain not directly linked to the person or where that person has a grievance with a manager, and perhaps use some mediation type skills.

What we have done in some areas, for example the Prison Service, we have actually trained managers and governors in the Prison Service to mediate in disputes. So that is a very helpful route. It also ensures that the mediators understand the culture and the issues of the organisation that they are actually dealing with.

There is then, of course, the much more formalised route, when someone either goes down the procedure or makes a complaint to tribunal where the third party, in this case ourselves, would offer conciliation between the two parties.

That can be a very helpful way of trying to create a sort of win/win, if you like, for the two organisations. The difficulty with that is that generally, we would get involved where the employment relationship has in fact finished, and what you are actually seeking is compensation for the one party and reducing risk or loss for the other.

Ideally, what you want to do, I guess given the amount of – the cost and the time of recruitment retention training, the last thing you want to do is to generate labour turnover through your disciplinary procedures, and your disciplinary procedures should be designed to correct wrongs and make people better, not necessarily to punish them.

Now obviously there are issues around, you know, levels of misconduct or gross misconduct where punishment does have to kick in, but I think the point we would make is to try and make the procedure initially informal, where you are really asking the managers within the police force, the senior police officers, to apply judgment and common sense, and perhaps intervene early when there are issues.

Sir William Morris: A couple of points which have been recurring as we explore the evidence from various witnesses. First of all, there is delays in the process and the procedures, to the point where a lot of – all the parties are somewhat frustrated by the inordinate period of delay. We have heard delays of up to seven years mentioned to us.

The other issue which again we are very concerned about is what I call the management by retreat. We have had evidence from a lot of contributors indicating that in many instances, local management has either lost the competency or the confidence to deal with issues, and therefore they find it very convenient to have an upwards referral, which formalises the process and inhibits informal settlements and settlements, if you like, near to the points of grievance.

I just wondered whether there are any general comments you would want to offer as to how competency and confidence could be restored and delay reduced.

Mr Taylor: Just to make quickly a comment on the first point, I think that certainly disciplinary action should not begin until all the facts have been acquired. That was really why I was making the reference to the culture of the criminal law really, where in many – in other employment situations, the view would be taken about reasonableness; is it reasonable for an employee to act in this way? Has my manager been reasonable in their conduct? So that is just a point on collecting evidence.

On the second point, it seems to me there is an issue around how you incentivise and reward good management and good behaviour, and in a way penalise – I like the term "management by retreat", and I guess it is the kind of signals that chief constables and chief officers will be sending to the officer chain, I guess down to sergeant.

I mean, in other areas of employment, it is very clear that disputes do not go away if you ignore them, they just reappear in another shape or form; generally, it is worse than it was when it initially started off, so I think there has to be some kind of incentive.

Now I can understand, given the goldfish bowl within the police operate that in certain tricky circumstances, there will be quite a significant temptation not to do anything, and I think, you know, that is where the senior officers need to send very consistent supporting messages to the management structure.

Sir William Morris: I know from my own experience that ACAS has had a long and indeed distinguished tradition of working right across the sectors, and you have mentioned the Prison Service. Could you tell us your experience with other uniformed public services that  have managed to resolve their issues about complaints and grievances in a way which does not create the high profile public debates about individual issues? Are there any lessons there for the Metropolitan Police Service?

I particularly would like to hear about the new Prison Service agreement, to see whether there is any lessons there for the Met.

Mr Taylor: Yes, we did have a little bit to do with the fire brigade in the last week or so, but I will put those to one side.

If we take the Prison Service agreement, what it is really designed to do is to resolve conflict as far down the chain as before, because historically, what has happened is that issues have been quickly escalated to a national level, and the greater distance you are away from where the dispute took place, the more difficult it is to take on board all the issues.

So it is designed to, you know, trigger internal mediation; it is designed indeed to bring ourselves in. Given the fact that we are a GB-wide institution, we can obviously offer that service.

There are, I think, lessons to be learnt from it, however, in that if you do not tightly draw this up, you run the risk of providing a surrogate management as and 11 when you are faced with a difficult issue, so you have to get the balance right between, again, incentivising the managers or senior officers to deal with the issue locally, and not to, you know, hide behind the fact that there is an alternative dispute resolution machinery.

What we have done with the Prison Service is keep the way in which the agreement has been operating under regular review, and trying to feed back in to the Prison Service and the POA, the Prison Officers' Association, where we think it is working well and where perhaps there are lessons to learn.

Another uniformed service that is quite a regular customer of ours is the Royal Mail, and again, what we have tried to do there, I think with some success, in particular in Scotland, is to, again, localise the dispute resolution processes. So I think the key message would be to push down that dispute resolution as far down as you can, with a qualified back-up that is only brought into play when there really is a real failure to agree.

Sir William Morris: We are exploring, based on evidence offered to us, the appropriateness or otherwise of police officers having the right to seek the protection, if that is the appropriate word, of unfair dismissal, say, in an industrial tribunal. 

Obviously, there are mixed views about that, because the Police Federation have a view and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has a view. And some of the constraints, for example the office of constable established many, many years ago, but I will come back to that in a few minutes.

My recollection is that the officers in the Prison Service at one stage had the right to withdraw their labour, and that was retracted, and if I am not mistaken, I think it has been restored somewhat, as a result of the recent discussion and dialogue; am I right in that?

Mr Taylor: Well, I am not sure, is the honest answer. There is a sort of current level – there is a dialogue taking place between the POA and the Prison Service, where we are attempting to be helpful.

Sir William Morris: Do I understand that there is a relatively new agreement for the Prison Service with mediation built in as a procedural stage?

Mr Taylor: Yes, that is part of the model agreement, and these are the mediators that we have actually trained for the Prison Service.

Sir William Morris: Right. Does ACAS as a service itself have a stage in the procedure?

Mr Taylor: Yes, where there is a complete failure to agree – before this model agreement, we were written in to the procedures, and we were being, you know, pulled in at all levels to – you know, where there was a dispute about manning levels on a particular landing, for example. But it is clearly not sensible for an arbitrator or a mediator to take a decision about that; that is an operational decision for the management of the prison. So where there are issues around manning levels now, this is where the internal mediation would be used, but where that mediation failed to get agreement, we would be involved as the third party.

But our level of success I would judge on us not being called in, because in reality, the issues have to be resolved by the prison governor and the POA.

Sir William Morris: ACAS stages – is that the final stage?

Mr Taylor: Well, almost at the beginning, in terms of training the mediators, and the final stage, if there is no agreement.

Sir William Morris: Are these mediators employees within the Prison Service?

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Sir William Morris: I see. And who selects them?

Mr Taylor: It is a joint panel between the POA and the Prison Service, so clearly, they have got to have a level of confidence and competence, and they have been picked or selected on their capacity to undertake the mediation role rather than a particular management position or what have you.

Sir William Morris: Help me, Mr Taylor: as I remember it, and it has been a long time, the Central Arbitration Committee used to maintain, I recall, a panel of arbitrators.

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Sir William Morris: Is that still ongoing, or is it now the responsibility of ACAS, I am not sure?

Mr Taylor: We are responsible for funding the Central Arbitration Committee. There are three panels of arbitrators, if you like, just to complicate matters. There is a Central Arbitration Committee, which has a panel which is drawn upon to staff the Central Arbitration Committee, and generally, that is dealing around trade union recognition issues.

ACAS has a panel of arbitrators, and we have had the panel since we began in 1975, and this generally would be where there is a collective dispute between the trade union and the employer.

In addition, we have a scheme called the ACAS Arbitration Alternative, which is an alternative to going to a tribunal, where we have about 200 individuals as arbitrators/mediators, who have been selected to decide on individual cases rather than collective ones, so there is three groups.

Sir William Morris: But the key panel, for the purpose of this exercise, would be your arbitration panel, not to do with trade union recognition of the CAC.

Mr Taylor: Yes, the Arbitration Alternative, yes.

Sir William Morris: Or indeed to do with the other issues. If the Metropolitan Police Service were minded to establish a panel of arbitrators to look at issues, given the size of the organisation, it has 46,000 employees, could ACAS provide, if you like, the secretariat for maintaining an MPS panel of arbitrators?

Mr Taylor: Well, I guess it would depend on the size of the task. I am not sort of trying to be evasive, but we are obviously not – because the police service is exempt from unfair dismissal legislation, we are not staffed to deal with it, or have the competence. But we could quickly learn that competence, and assuming there is not going to be huge numbers of cases, we probably could provide a service.

If the implication of your question is a broader – providing a broader mediation type service beyond nuclear issues like unfair dismissal, then I doubt if we could provide that. What we would do is we would say to the Metropolitan Police, "It is much better for you to create your own, to train your own staff in-house", which we will train, we are very happy to train, but I doubt if we could cope with that demand.

But we would certainly be happy to sit down and talk through the issues, how you would do it, and advise as to how it could be done.

Sir William Morris: Yes. And just a final point: I know that ACAS has made a contribution to recent conflict resolution issues within the Metropolitan Police Service recently. Without wanting to be enlightened on the specifics, the terms or anything like that, could you just share with us: was the reference into ACAS from the individuals, or was the reference to ACAS from the Metropolitan Police Service management? How did ACAS become involved at this stage?

Mr Taylor: We were approached initially by the Home Office to see if – and we explained that provided both parties were in agreement, we would be happy to provide an internal mediator. I mean, we took the view, because the black police officers' association were involved, that it was almost tantamount to a trade dispute, as well as an individual dispute. Given the seriousness of the issues, we offered to mediate it, but we made the point that, of course, we had no powers, and if either of the parties do not want to participate in the process, well, it does not happen.

Sir William Morris: Can I just take the liberty of a further question on tribunals? Because there is the inbuilt statutory conciliation process once the ET1 is lodged. Would that, insofar as the Met is concerned, be handled through your London regional office?

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Sir William Morris: And could we have some evidence from the London regional office about the parties' approach to that very first stage of conciliation?

Mr Taylor: Yes, absolutely.

Sir William Morris: That would be of immense value to us, if your London regional office could offer some evidence to us on the conciliation process.

Mr Taylor: Yes, we can do that.

Sir William Morris: And also if we could get numbers for say the last two or three years, if that is not too odious a task on the service.

Mr Taylor: Yes, we would be very happy to do that. We have actually been piloting a mediation type exercise in East London, and we would be quite happy to update you on what we found from that as well.

Sir William Morris: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Taylor, you have been extremely helpful. Could I hand you over to my colleague, Miss Weekes, who I know has some questions she would like to put to you?

Questions by Miss Weekes

Miss Weekes: Good morning, Mr Taylor. Can I, if I may, go back to some of the comments you have already dealt with in terms of mediation? We have heard evidence, for example, from the legal services department of the Met that they are very keen on mediation and in any event, the Fairness at Work is based upon an ability to mediate, the first stage of it is, because the line manager, who might himself be the reason for the complaint, is asked at the first instance to resolve it before getting a Fairness at Work advisor, which will be the next stage.

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Miss Weekes: I appreciate you would not be as familiar with the process, but I thought I might just outline it briefly. So the Met need to be congratulated that they are making some attempts at attempting to introduce or inject some stage where they are going to try to informally resolve disputes.

And the word "mediation" can cover really many styles; what is important is that it is successful?

Can I draw on your experience from your organisation, in terms of selecting the right mediator and training.

Can I go to selection? You mentioned in terms of the Prison Service that the selection of those who would mediate does not have anything to do with their management level, so it clearly must have something to do with their personality characteristics.

Can I have some guidance from you as to what you say those criteria should be, or is that an unfair question?

Mr Taylor: It is a difficult question.

Miss Weekes: It is obviously a crucial one, is it not?

Mr Taylor: It is. I mean, I guess there are two levels of skills or attributes that we are looking for. The first one, if I could describe them, is intellectual; someone needs to have the capacity to quickly cut through the detail and understand what the issues are in a variety of very different industries.

Now obviously, when you have an in-service mediator, that problem is reduced, but then, of course, you have got the problem about being quite subjective about issues. So the second area I would say would be about their personal skills, and it would seem to me that there are two which are crucial.

One is this capacity to be objective and not to be a prisoner of the past, in terms of what your experience or what your history says. So there is an issue about objectively collecting the evidence, if you like, the facts, on which there should be no disagreement; you know, trying to get consensus on the facts.

The second personal attribute, I think, is judgment, sound judgment, which I would say is rooted in common sense, but there is not a lot of people have got common sense. It is just the capacity to sit down and make a sensible judgment based on common sense.

The third one is impartiality, that if the mediator cannot project themselves as being impartial, then they will have lost the confidence of either of the parties. So it is an interesting person that you are after now.

Historically, what has happened is we have drawn arbitrators and mediators from academia, and when we have had a panel of arbitrators, we have had an employer rep and a trade union rep, chaired by the academic.

What we have seen increasingly, and indeed this panel of individual arbitrators that we have are drawn from employers and trade unions, and, you know, it is more difficult for them to create their reputation for being impartial, because everyone has got an element of baggage.

But I think that is the key, you know, it is good forensic intellectual skills. You do not have to be a brain surgeon by any stretch of the imagination, but you have to be able to understand things. The capacity to be impartial; and good judgment.

Miss Weekes: That is extremely helpful. Can I ask you whether you can give me an example in industry, public or private, it does not matter, of where it is possible to select from the inside of an organisation that sort of quality of person?

Mr Taylor: Certainly the Prison Service has done it.

Miss Weekes: The Prison Service.

Mr Taylor: The Prison Service has done it. It is early days, but it does appear to be working quite well.

I am pretty sure, although I would need to check, that some of the major retailers have done this, in terms of resolving disputes.

Miss Weekes: Such as? I know you are going to check.

Mr Taylor: I think such as Tesco and Marks & Spencers.

I know that part of the civil service have done this; for example I know that Customs and Excise would use a manager from another part of the customs to get involved in dispute resolution.

So there are, you know, a fair number of examples around, but I will check.

Miss Weekes: That would be extremely helpful.

You have the right person with the right qualities, but it does not stop there: they need to understand how to resolve the issues, and that is where your knowledge of training comes in.

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Miss Weekes: Can you just, if you can, summarise your training package: what does it contain? Because the Met does a huge amount of training, and one of the comments we have heard is that it may be the skills for personnel management are not adequate within the training packages. So it would be helpful for us to know as a panel, what is the bare minimum that is required to properly train someone in personnel skills?

Mr Taylor: I am not an expert on the training package, but my understanding is it broadly falls into two parts.

The first part is about the dynamics of conflict, where we take people through, you know, time phases, anger; where various emotions kick in and prevent people from being reasonable. So it is to give people the idea about timing, because timing generally is everything in terms of conflict resolution.

The second part of the training is really about techniques, you know, "These are some of the techniques that you can actually apply". I will give you just an example – I mean, there are some words to avoid when you are mediating or conciliating.

Miss Weekes: Language?

Mr Taylor: Yes, and it is words like "never" or "only" or  even "why", and if you ask the question, "How?", as opposed to, "Why?", then that is one of the ways in which you will start to resolve conflict. So it is 30 years' worth of tips really, of darkened rooms and what have you, trying to be handed on to individuals.

In fact, then what we do is we bring people back on reasonably regular gatherings, so there is peer group reinforcement and learning from people.

Miss Weekes: Would you consider that the training might need to be tailored to deal with the reality that officers bring to bear, the legalistic structures in which they work, and you have so adequately identified?

Mr Taylor: I would say not to a great extent. I think you obviously have to reflect the reality and the culture, but very often, you know, if it is the old thinking that has got you into the current circumstances, more of the old thinking will not get you out of it, you need to have some new thinking to consider how best to resolve issues.

Now I clearly understand that given some of the police's customer base, then their customers may not be reliable in terms of complaints, but I think once you get within – internally, the way in which officers should refer to their senior officers, I really do not see why the more general approach to employment in the civilian workforce could not apply.

Miss Weekes: I should have been perhaps clearer in my question: the training needs to address that old-fashioned culture of the legalistic approach, because it is perhaps understandable that a manager who has had to deal with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act on a 10-hour shift is suddenly thrown into dealing with an issue of personnel difference between he and another colleague.

Mr Taylor: I think that is right, and I would not underestimate the difficulty of managing out of this culture, and I think there is an issue about the amount of resource, the amount of political will and the amount of, I guess, chief constable support to actually make this happen.

Miss Weekes: How important do you see the whole question of the right approach to managing sensitive issues in the workplace as being the bedrock of a solid good organisation?

Mr Taylor: Well, we would argue it is probably the single most important issue which impacts on how successful an organisation is. I mean, if I just say that seven out of ten people between the ages of 16 and 65 are in employment, so next to your relationship with your family, it is the second most important relationship that anybody will actually have.

There is a lot of evidence around, both public sector and private sector, that if you get your employment relations right in the workplace, it impacts positively on the bottom line in terms of profitability, and certainly in terms of, you know, driving up the quality of public services.

I think the other issue is that – I mean, today's labour force is very, very different to the labour force even of ten years ago, certainly of 20 years ago, when many people will have joined the police force at a relatively young age, and the labour force has completely changed, as has the pattern of work.

So the expectations of people are much, much higher than they have ever been, fuelled by, you know, just how transparent society is today.

Miss Weekes: I would like to think that I would be good at persuading the Metropolitan Police that your view is correct, and my persuasive skills sometimes fail me, but there is a wall; what we might get, if we presented that as being a reason to put as a priority personnel skills and the training of personnel skills, is, "There are conflicting demands on our budget: we have to train officers in firearms skills, we have to train them in specialist areas; it is not the only bit of training we  have to deliver".

What would be a very helpful persuasive approach to demolishing that argument?

Mr Taylor: Well, I mean, I think you have to argue the business case. It has to be a bottom line business case. The world is littered with organisations of highly trained individuals which have gone bust, because it is not necessarily just skills and education, it is the way in which people interact, so that the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the individuals.

But I would have thought the killer point, the killer argument is around cost, that the recruitment retention training of a police officer – I do not know what the cost would be, but I guess it would be many thousands of pounds. Generating at the worst case, labour turnover is hugely expensive, at the best case, having people who are underperforming, and not performing that potential; there are a lot of examples elsewhere where good management has actually released the potential of the workforce.

Miss Weekes: Where would we go for those examples?

Mr Taylor: Well, if you look at – if you take Investors in People, for example, which was an attempt to crystallise good behaviour; if you recall, the background to that was, in the recessions of the 1980s and the 1990s, a few firms appeared to weather the recession better, and the research showed that these were firms that put human resource development at the top of their activities.

So there is a fair amount of empirical evidence around. There was a report called the "Kingsmill Report on Human Capital", where, in fact, ACAS submitted evidence to that inquiry, setting out real positive benefits; we have a template for what the ideal workplace should look like.

Miss Weekes: Is that Killsmill?

Mr Taylor: Kingsmill. But I think the issue is sitting down with the policy makers and just talking it through, because I think the evidence is pretty convincing.

Miss Weekes: Just one final point, following on from that very helpful discussion on how to informally resolve disputes, if, for whatever reason, and there often is a very good reason why the first line manager cannot resolve that dispute, is there what I might refer to as a second level of keeping that informality, although you are bringing in someone else as opposed to going on to the first step of the formal – do you see what I am getting at?

Mr Taylor: I do. In our code, we would argue, and this is not do-able in very small organisations, but it certainly should be do-able in an organisation like the Metropolitan Police, that a different level – first of all, that individuals should have some right of appeal, and that is just a piece of natural justice. And that, if necessary, that right of appeal should be to a different manager. So you build in, very early on, into the process – because what you want is to de-escalate this thing, you want to resolve it.

I think we would also recognise that there are issues around bullying, harassment, where individuals would find it difficult to perhaps raise a case with their first line manager.

I think, you know, you have to get over in the culture of an organisation that it is not being disloyal if someone goes to the next level of management, because genuinely, they are intimidated by their senior officers.

But I think I would revert back to – it is natural justice really, that there should be an opportunity for a third party very early on to get involved.

Miss Weekes: My last sequence of questions deals with the sensitivity of sex and race cases, which I know your organisation will have a good deal of experience and background of.

You and I have just dealt with the general informal resolution of workplace conflicts. Is there a different  approach to race and sex discrimination? Should it be different?

Mr Taylor: In terms of the ACAS approach, we do not approach the conciliation process differently with race or sex. In fact, we have about the same success rate in terms of conciliating settlements in race and sex discrimination cases.

I think there are issues around the human dignity being offended, and passions run a lot higher between the parties, but the actual process of resolving the conflict, once you have gone through that anger cycle, is really not that different to unfair dismissal.

We do train our conciliation officers – we do not actually put them on discrimination cases on day one, because there is a lot more to actually learn, but surprisingly, we actually end up performing at almost the same level.

Miss Weekes: You speak from a confident privileged position about race and sex cases, which is, and you will understand this, not the same for a manager who has genuine fear about getting it wrong; I am putting forward the views of some managers within the Metropolitan Police.

It is not easy to see a way through those managers who want to get it right, getting rid of the fear and being able to deal with those cases, as you say, in the same way they would deal with, "You messed up at work today, there is a performance issue, let us talk about it".

Mr Taylor: Well, I think it is probably fair to say that there is a sort of underclaim, if you like, on sex and race, that I think individuals probably claim less and perhaps managers try to avoid situations, although there is no hard and fast information on that. I do not think the Metropolitan Police would be any different to any other large employer.

What we do say is we have what is called a race relations employment advisory service who work for us; we would go along and work with particularly large employers and help them to come up with some kind of discrimination free process.

Now the reality is that if you apply common sense and natural justice, then 99.9 per cent of the times you would be all right, because common sense and natural justice is, broadly speaking, what reasonable behaviour is based upon.

But I think I would go back to my earlier comment about senior management within the police force providing – I mean, reassurance goes both ways. On the one hand, you want your managers to address issues, and on the other, when they have addressed the issue, and perhaps the individual is being unreasonable, then that manager should be supported.

Miss Weekes: In your experience – this, I know, is a general question, but it does help to have your experience and expertise – those organisations who deal with it internally, that is the resolution of disputes, taking on board the internal expertise, are they more successful than those who almost wholesale draft in external mediators?

Mr Taylor: I mean, this would be a pretty subjective view, because I do not think there is any research which has evaluated this, but I think broadly yes; and again, you know, it is common sense that if you resolve something within house to the satisfaction of both parties, then you have probably done it within the confines of what the organisation's business aims and objectives are, and in particular, you have avoided sort of name and shame, you know, and the glare of publicity, which can be unhelpful, both in demotivating the managers to address issues, or indeed, you know, reinforcing prejudices amongst staff, who think, "Well, what is the point?"

So I think doing it internally, but also, I think, as far as you can be compatible with an individual's confidentiality, being quite open about it. It is actually all right to be wrong in terms of dealing with a subjective area like employment relationships. What is not all right is to not admit that you are actually wrong, and put the thing right.

Miss Weekes: Time; apart from money, which the Metropolitan Police have obvious concerns about, and responsibilities for the budget, there is the question of time for managers to be trained properly. Again, drawing on your experience of other uniformed organisations, and/or other public bodies, what is the normal acceptable bottom line for the amount of time that is required for proper training, and the repeat, as it were, follow-ups?

Mr Taylor: I think you can train people to be quite adequate within a day. I do not think you are talking about a huge amount of time. You are talking about a significant amount of senior management commitment, and that is the critical thing that will make things work, and I guess, you know, the police already have a lot of inherent skills in terms of interviewing individuals, and a lot of the training, I guess, will have already been given in a work context. So it is a question of building on skills that are already there.

I think the critical thing is to bring managers – is to bring the officers together from time to time, and it is about sharing of experiences, and really peer group support, because once you have gone through the ceiling, you will be all right, but it is getting through that initial barrier.

Miss Weekes: Thank you very much indeed. That was very helpful.

Sir William Morris: Thank you again, Mr Taylor. Can I hand you straight over to Sir Anthony Burden, who I know has one or two questions to put to you?

Questions by Sir Anthony Burden

Sir Anthony Burden: Yes, that has been very, very helpful indeed. Can I just ask you firstly, Mr Taylor, you mentioned in relation to the Prison Service example, I think, the need to have incentives for managers to deal with conflict locally. When you say incentives, what sort of thing are you referring to there?

Mr Taylor: Well, not necessarily financial ones.

Sir Anthony Burden: Oh no.

Mr Taylor: I am thinking about rewarding good behaviour; I mean, if – where many organisations go wrong is they look at the bottom line, whether it be profit or in the case of perhaps the police, in terms of crime statistics, and do not necessarily look at the process of how an organisation works.

If the organisation takes the view that resolving conflict internally and developing people is very important, then managers should be judged on that, not simply on the number of crimes they have solved or what have you. And that is what they have started to do in the Prison Service.

Sir Anthony Burden: Right, so within a batch of performance indicators, you would make it very clear that personnel management and conflict resolution would be part of the success factor?

Mr Taylor: Far be it from me to recommend performance indicators –

Sir Anthony Burden: Nor me!

Mr Taylor: We have enough of them. But yes, I think it is back to the point about senior management reinforcing and valuing an individual's performance.

Sir Anthony Burden: So if I could just clarify that, the point you would want to make is that – no, I am putting words into your mouth.

What senior management say about what is important in an organisation is interpreted locally, and if it is only about the hard end business, then if we are not careful, the personnel bits of management will get lost?

Mr Taylor: I very much agree. I mean, I think I would express it like this: it is senior management behaviour that drives culture and performance, and if you do not get that right, it will not work.

Sir Anthony Burden: So can I just ask you this: in unravelling a blame culture, can that successfully be done just with a constant message from the top?

Mr Taylor: I think it can. I mean, it has to be, you know, reinforced by action. If it is simply reiteration of a mantra or what is politically correct or what have you, that will actually create cynicism and drive the process backwards.

I think it has to be accompanied by action. Now essentially, you need to be rather opportunistic, I guess, and as events unfold, respond to events in a positive kind of way.

Sir Anthony Burden: Yes, thank you. When you were explaining the Prison Service model, you helpfully gave the skills required for a mediator, and you said it obviously did not regard the position that a person held within the organisation, so the Prison Service, like the police service, I guess, is a hierarchical organisation.

Mr Taylor: Yes.

Sir Anthony Burden: Very rank conscious; in fact, I think, probably the police service is more rank conscious. So in the Prison Service model, would I be right in thinking that if you had a prison officer who could be fairly inexperienced, a few years' service, maybe, but who showed exceptional skills in mediation, that that individual could actually sit down in a mediation experience with a governor and a higher grade prison officer; would that be common practice?

Mr Taylor: I do not know whether it is common practice, but it would be certainly possible. I mean, they have taken the view that it is about the individual's skills. We sat down for a long time and talked it through with them; it does not follow that because you have got to a certain rank, or indeed a certain position in the trade union, that you will have very good, you know, conciliatory skills. It is really around the individual.

Sir Anthony Burden: If I can just give you an example of one submission we have had here – in fairness to the Metropolitan Police, in designing its Fairness at Work policy, it has promoted that initiative, but we were given one example where somebody who was not senior in the organisation, in fact a lot lower in rank than the officers concerned in the workplace conflict, actually mediated, and I think the comment was made that he came out with a far more sensible solution than many other mediators. But that was not warmly received, because of rank getting in the way.

Is there therefore anything special that has to be done or included in the training package which deals with that sort of difficult situation for a mediator, where they obviously realise that rank is getting in the way of resolution?

Mr Taylor: I would say yes. I mean, I think we would attempt to customise any training package, and we would have to reflect, you know, what the culture is. You know, one of the tricks of this is somehow or other, baggage has to be dropped, if you are going to fundamentally change the process. You do not drop baggage if you ignore that it is there. You actually have to address this.

I mean, the argument that we generally put forward is the one about inclusivity. I guess this must be true for the police service, where you are very dependent on high levels of teamwork at times where individual police officers will be in danger, so it should not be that difficult to argue that inclusivity point, and get people to respect – and I guess the police service have got individuals with certain skills, dog section, the firearms squad or what have you, where rank is not an issue there: it is skills and specialism.

So the issue is trying to get people to recognise that someone who has got a skill level in mediation and conciliation is as valuable as a specialist unit in the police.

Sir Anthony Burden: Sure, thank you. Final point from me: is there any role, do you think, in a mediation model for add-ons such as community panels?

Mr Taylor: I mean, there may be. I would not discount anything without thinking it through. I would be asking the question, what value will this bring?

If it is about sending reassurance to the community about the accountability of the police, then it is not about discipline and grievance handling, and I think that distinction would have to be made, and I guess it is a judgment call from your colleagues.

But I think if you – I mean, the general point I would make is that the focus of any dispute resolution process has to be on resolving the dispute, and I think that if you broaden it out into other areas, then a number of other issues, which would be very legitimate in their own right, may well be run to the detriment of resolving the dispute.

Sir Anthony Burden: That is very helpful, thank you very much indeed.

Sir William Morris: Right, thank you, Tony.

Mr Taylor, we have come to the end of the primary questions that we wanted to put to you. Just before I move to my closing words, I wondered, is it possible for us to be offered a copy of the Prison Service's agreement? If that presents any difficulty –

Mr Taylor: I would imagine so. We would have to talk to the Prison Service and the POA, but yes.

Sir William Morris: Of course. Can I say again, thank you for your help; we have now finished the questions that we wanted to put to you, but you will recall that in my opening statement, I said that I would offer you the opportunity for brief closing comments if you so wished. If you do wish, then I would invite you to do so at this point.

Mr Taylor: Thanks very much. I think the only point I would make is that we would be very happy to operate and help and advise on policies and procedures, and, you know, share our experience from elsewhere, because while I accept that every organisation has got an element of uniqueness, and clearly the Metropolitan Police have, equally, there is a lot of shared wisdom out there from large organisations which employ people, and it makes sense to tap into it, but thanks very much.

Sir William Morris: Just my final words, Mr Taylor: as with all our witnesses, it may be that once we have heard from others, we may want to ask a few more questions, or seek additional information in writing, and if that is the case, that we want to ask questions, obviously we will invite you back to a further session of these hearings. If we do decide to do so, then obviously we will want to do so in a way that causes you and your service, ACAS, the least possible inconvenience.

But for the moment, all that I need to do is, on behalf of my two colleagues and the Inquiry generally, thank you very much indeed for your submission, for your evidence this morning and for the service's contribution to the Inquiry.

Mr Taylor: Thank you.

Sir William Morris: I think we stand adjourned now until 2.00.

11.40 am 
(The short adjournment)

On this website:

• Evidence:  Mr J Taylor
  Evidence provided by and documents referred to by Mr J Taylor, Chief Executive of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), in his appearance at the Inquiry.