Superannuation Bill

Debate between Baroness Jowell and Matt Hancock

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady made the comparison between civil service and other public sector redundancy packages. Can she also make a comparison between civil service and private sector mandatory redundancy packages?

[Tessa Jowell]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to ask that question. If employers in the private sector use the basic statutory scheme, it is considerably less generous than even the proposals in the Bill. In a way, that is not the point, because the value that we attach to public servants, to the importance of the jobs that they do and to the commitment to invest in security to prevent turnover and to compensate for what are often lower levels of pay is one of the reasons that such provisions have traditionally tended to be more generous. It is worth reminding the hon. Gentleman—the Minister took us through the history—that the scheme was created by a Conservative Government and amended by a Conservative Government and that attempts at reform were made under a Labour Government. Now, under the coalition Government, we have what amounts to a hollowed out version of the original scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

It is always dangerous to give way to my hon. Friend, because she usually puts the point far more lucidly than one could oneself.

I was going to come on precisely to that point—my second point about fairness. Not only is it fair to deal with the deficit and, I think, unfair to give enormous payouts when we have to achieve other very difficult things, but fairness across the economy and across society is also important. The maximum payout in the mandatory private sector compensation scheme, for which this House legislated, is £11,400, yet the proposal is nowhere near that figure within the public sector.

It was interesting to note that when the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), responded to an intervention about whether it was fair to have a similar sort of payoff scheme in the private sector as in the public sector, she effectively said that she was not in favour of equality. I thought that Labour Members were in favour of equality, but obviously not when it does not suit.

[Tessa Jowell]

I am not quite sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make. If the question is whether I agree the case for parity between the public and the private sector on these matters, the answer is that parity cannot be willed. We are not going to peg the public sector to the private sector other than in an indicative way. There are different incentive structures in the remuneration packages of people who work in the two sectors and they are in different ways reflected in aspects such as the compensation for redundancy that we are discussing this evening.

[Matthew Hancock]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. In some cases, it seems, one can talk about parity, and in other cases about equality. If one is favour of it, one might use one word, but if one is against it, use the other. The important point here is that we need to look at overall compensation packages and overall pay, including pensions and other terms and conditions of work.

That brings me back to the issue of fairness across the sectors. If we are to have a modern civil service and a modern flexible economy that work in the future, we also need to allow transfer between the two sectors. Bringing into line the working practices in the two is no bad thing; nor is bringing into line the redundancy payoffs as the Bill does—and, indeed, as the right hon. Lady’s former proposals did. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) raised an interesting point when he argued that we should put the members of the unions ahead of the rest of our constituents. I think that the most important thing for a new MP to do is to represent all of their constituents, not just those who are members of a union.

My final point is about fairness in employment practices. I asked the House of Commons Library about the concept of priority posting pools, which are groups of civil servants who are given nothing to do, but cannot be let go because of the cost of the redundancy package. The Library determined that there were a total of 1,946 such civil servants. When people working for their country have completed their jobs and their projects, it cannot be fair to tell them, “We would like to pay you to do nothing. We cannot find anything useful for you to do. We do not think you would be any good at doing anything else, but we cannot afford to get rid of you, so we are going to carry on paying you.” As of January 2010, there were 1,946 such people in the civil service. I believe it is unfair to them not to have a flexible employment system so that we can have a grown-up and modern civil service working for the future.

Such is my argument. We are here to look at the fairness of this Bill as well as other aspects of it. If we want to spend public money fairly, rebalance our economy fairly and try to improve the fairness of working practices in civil service employment, we should support the Bill. The alternative is defending £500,000 payouts, an unbalanced economy and out-of-date working practices. I do not want to defend those things, so I will support the Bill this evening.