Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I point out to the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, that the need for austerity was caused by the huge budget deficit that we inherited from the Government of which he was a part. We would rather have not had to do that, but I give credit to civil servants across the country who have done a huge amount. The civil service is smaller than at any time since the second world war, but it is doing more than it was before and productivity has improved dramatically.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Paymaster General has spent the last five years attacking civil servants’ facility time and check-off. We now learn, a week before Dissolution, that he is inserting a gagging clause into the civil service code. Why is it so necessary and urgent to change the civil service code now?

[Mr Maude]

The change to which the hon. Gentleman refers simply makes clear what was already the case. There will be considerable concern about whistleblowing, and we will do whatever is needed to ensure that we continue to be much more open about things that have gone wrong. Things are much less suppressed than they were when the Labour party was in power.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am proud that the UK is now ranked as having the most transparent Government in the world. It undoubtedly has an effect in driving efficiency and savings. The ability to benchmark and compare spending in different parts of Government is a hugely powerful driver of efficiency and savings, and we intend to continue down that path.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Can we perhaps have a bit more transparency with respect to ministerial interests? This week, we saw Ministers hobnobbing at the black and white ball, although I noticed that the Paymaster General was sadly excluded from the Cabinet auction, and we saw new analysis showing that in the past 12 months Tory Ministers have made 168 ministerial visits to marginal Tory-held constituencies. In the interests of transparency, will the Minister now provide a full list of all ministerial visits and the reasons the locations were chosen, and will he publish the ministerial list of interests?

[Mr Maude]

It sounds like the hon. Gentleman is getting a little concerned about the result of the upcoming election. The Government are disclosing more about what Ministers do than any Government have ever done before, and enormously more than the Government whom he supported before 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point and she is completely correct to say that an official produced the figure of £1 million. However, when asked for the workings and calculations that underpinned that number they were unable to produce them, and it turned out to be a completely fictional number. The correct calculation of the cost is more likely to be a negative number and a saving to the taxpayer, as well as being a measure that enables the PCS to do what its members now prefer and have a direct relationship with them.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Paymaster General has reiterated his support for getting rid of check-off, even though the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has written to Departments saying that there could be legal costs associated with that. A leaked HMRC memo talks about marginalising the unions, which could lead to industrial action among civil service unions. Does that show that Ministers are playing irresponsible party politics with the trade unions, and that the right hon. Gentleman should abandon his plans to get rid of check-off?

[Mr Maude]

It is always reassuring to find that the old truths turn out to be enduring and that Labour speaks for its paymasters, the trade unions.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that this is not another invasion of Iraq. It is a response to a desperate plea by the new Iraqi Government for outside help to combat what is seen as an existential threat to the Iraqi state; nor is ISIL just another enemy in the complex and lethal sectarianism of the middle east. It is a monster, with a bloodlust that can only be compared to the Genghis Khan Mongols or the latter-day Nazis—and one that the world simply cannot turn aside from or wash its hands of. But equally, it is foolish not to recognise the risks of military action through air strikes: the inevitable civilian casualties, the death threats to hostages, the very real possibility of terrorist retaliation on British soil and the risk of mission creep, which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) was talking about in terms of taking action towards Syria with a dubious legality—I gather from what he said—and the uncertain and unpredictable consequences for the civil war against Assad.

Perhaps the biggest problem, as always in war, is the exit strategy. No war can be won from the air—we all agree on that—and this war can be won only on the basis of political and diplomatic action, which, frankly, will be quite difficult to achieve. First, this depends on the regional powers that feed ISIL with money, arms and political support reaching an agreement that they will withdraw that oxygen, which keeps the pyre burning. In particular, the oil-smuggling network that was created to evade UN sanctions on Saddam’s Iraq, now in the hands of ISIL and yielding more than $3 million a day, must be stopped via Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Secondly, this depends on achieving some reconciliation across the broken Shi’a-Sunni divide. That is incredibly important. Of course things have flared up with lethal intensity because of the highly discriminatory policies of the last Maliki Government. The new Iraqi Government recognise this. Of course they have been in office for only three weeks, but they have yet to provide a power-sharing agreement that will bring the Sunni majority on side.

Thirdly, the moderate Sunni element needs to be split from the extremists. Again, that is beginning to happen, but the lessons of al-Sahwa, the awakening, which played such a crucial role in stemming the insurgency in 2007-08, need to be revisited. Fourthly—this is the most difficult one of all, but the most important—the really big, major powers in the middle east, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which until recently were implacably opposed to each other, clearly are needed to use their influence to restrain their proxies and to restore at least some co-existence across inflamed sectarian lines. All that will be extremely difficult to achieve; but ultimately, the war against ISIL will be won only if we can reconstruct and repair the broken Iraqi state.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good speech. Does he agree that we must do all we can to rebuild trust between the Kurdish Government and the Government in Baghdad, because that will help us to build up civil society in Iraq, which is absolutely key to taking on ISIL?

[Mr Meacher]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course that is part of the commitment of the new Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Abadi, to produce a governance within Iraq that takes account of all the key parts of the population, not just the Shi’a and Sunnis, but crucially the Kurds, who are a very important part of this equation.

Again, it cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Iraqi Prime Minister, al-Abadi, has made it absolutely clear that he does not want western and US troops on the ground in Iraq because he believes that he has sufficient volunteers to contest ISIL with Iraqi forces, provided that there is collaboration from air cover. But in the last analysis, the only serious long-term answer for these broken states—not just Iraq, but Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Nigeria—is to restore them again to a real, viable state. It is easy to say that; it is extremely difficult to do. It will take a long time, and it will require enormous, long-term economic and aid commitments, which was patently not apparent after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. That aid will, no doubt, predominantly come from the US and Europe, but it should come from other places as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority on these matters. Regarding the regional actors, does he agree that, although it is welcome that five Arab nations are involved in this mission, they should do all they can to stem the flow of donations from their own citizens to ISIL that has been going on?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful for that intervention and I absolutely agree that all those regional partner-nations must do everything they can, as we must.

The point that I was making is that military force on its own will not be enough. There needs to be a wider, encompassing political framework, with a plan for humanitarian aid and reconstruction, which will ultimately lead us to create a stronger and more accountable Iraqi Government as part of a wider settlement in the middle east. We should contribute to that work, but ultimately it will be for the countries of the region to ensure long-term peace and stability.

In the midst of this important debate, we should reflect on the service of our armed forces and on what we will ask them to do. I believe that throughout the country, whether people agree or disagree with the action being proposed today, our armed forces will always be held in the highest regard. They represent the best of our country and we have a lifelong commitment to supporting them in every way we can.

The judgments we are making are difficult, and there are no easy answers to the situation we find ourselves in. I do not relish the action that we are taking. Like Members from across the House, I come to this debate with a heavy heart, and I am mindful of the risks and uncertainties that undoubtedly lie ahead. However, it is in our national interest to act; it is in the interest of the people of Iraq to act; and it is in the interest of peace and stability in the middle east that we act. That is why I will support the Government motion today.

European Council

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks an intriguing question and I do not know whether Labour will block the opportunity to put into statute now the need for a referendum before the end of 2017. Everyone in this House will have a chance to vote on that Bill, and I hope we will support it.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Having so skilfully turned a divided EU into an EU united against his position, will the Prime Minister spell out at the Dispatch Box precisely where he expects to win in his renegotiation?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Again, there were no arrangements at all to monitor what facilities were being made available to union officials at taxpayers’ expense. We have now put in place arrangements to try to find out exactly what is going on, but I regret to say that the data are not yet complete. However, we will continue to pursue this.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

The Paymaster General will of course be aware that many private sector employers, such as Rolls-Royce, Jaguar Land Rover and Airbus, all take advantage of facility time, because they know it helps with workplace relations and with their obligations to consult. The private sector can recognise the benefits of facility time, so rather than knocking facility time in the public sector, why can he not recognise its benefits for that sector?

[Mr Maude]

I do recognise the benefits, which is why—even if we wanted to, which we do not—we are not proposing to get rid of it altogether. All we are saying is that it should be in accordance with the law and the obligations that the statute places on us as employers. I am the first to recognise that there are often advantages in being able to resolve disputes quickly and locally before they escalate, which is why some facility time will continue to be available.

Debate on the Address

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I wish she had seen the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee, because he is a class act in respect of his evidence. He told the Committee that he is responsible for the immigration total not going below 100,000 because he has been going around the world drumming up support for students to come and study in this country. He looked no further. It is a great achievement. When he went to China, he told all the Chinese to come and study in the UK. When he went to India, as he has done four times—full credit to him for being the first Prime Minister to visit India four times—he told all the Indians to come to study in Britain. No wonder the target has not been met. He is responsible.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour for giving way. In the city that we represent we have two superb universities, both of which want to attract students from India. Yet the Home Office insists that students applying for visas have to go through credibility interviews. How on earth can the Government on the one hand say they want to increase our links and trade with India, and on the other hand make it more difficult for students from India to come to the UK?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Both vice-chancellors were dying to get on the Prime Minister’s plane when he went to India, to get more students to come over. All that will do is increase the total.

Civil Service Reform

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

This has been an extremely good debate, with exceptional speeches from all Members who have contributed. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on securing the debate. His speech was very thoughtful, and in “Truth to power” his Committee has produced a weighty, detailed report that must be taken seriously. I hope in my remarks to give him a bit of guidance about what the Labour Front Bench thinks of his report’s recommendations.

Our deliberations have also benefited from recent reports from the Liaison Committee and outside bodies such as the Institute for Government. In addition, today my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) have launched GovernUp, which is described as an independent cross-party project

“to consider the far-reaching reforms needed in Whitehall and beyond to enable more effective and efficient government.”

Based on the thoughtful speeches of my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman, we look forward to GovernUp’s research and recommendations with some eagerness.

We have benefited from many former senior Ministers’ insights this afternoon. I am not a former Minister, but I am a former special adviser and had the privilege of working closely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne. In my time in government, I found the civil servants who supported Ministers on policy advice to be wholly dedicated, impartial and exceptional men and women. I think sometimes we should be careful in debates such as this not to reinforce the stereotypes of civil servants as faceless bureaucrats. Thankfully, nobody has done that in this debate, but sometimes in popular culture that can happen. The reality is that civil servants are public servants. As well as serving Ministers, they serve our constituents, sometimes on a daily basis. and they serve some of the most vulnerable people we represent at their times of greatest need. Civil servants prosecute criminals, represent British interests abroad and help to protect our borders.

The model of our civil service has stood the test of time, ever since Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan’s reports 150-odd years ago. It is a model of political impartiality, objectivity and integrity. Those values should be maintained at the heart of the civil service, and they are values to which I reiterate our absolute commitment.

The function of the civil service is not only to serve Ministers and the Government of the day. Civil servants prepare and transfer their expertise from one Government to the next. A fact that is sometimes overlooked is that the civil service enables us in Parliament to hold the Government to account. It is civil servants who draft answers to parliamentary questions—of course, Ministers sign them off and sometimes change them, but it is the civil servants who draft them in the first place. The civil service also provides factual information to our Committees and Libraries. A healthy, functioning and impartial civil service is important not only for a healthy, functioning Government but for enabling Parliament to hold Ministers to account. As “Truth to power” points out:

“Nobody…argues that the Civil Service should be immune from change.”

I am sure that everyone in the Chamber would agree with that.

I was impressed that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne, in making a point about the inertia of the civil service, managed to quote both Tony Blair and the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. That is quite an unusual coalition. My right hon. Friend was right to make that point; that is what the debate is about. It is about ensuring that we reform the civil service so that Ministers are able to pursue the agenda that they were elected to implement and that the British people supported when they voted for them.

We should also bear in mind that the civil service is undergoing a significant reduction in numbers, with an overall reduction of 138,000 planned by 2015. In that context, we need to ask ourselves what the policy-making functions and the implementation of policy in a much-reduced civil service will look like. We will need to make sure that a civil service with those numbers can continue to serve Ministers and to enable Parliament to hold those Ministers to account.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) said that her speech was merely skimming the surface. I thought she made an incredibly powerful speech, however, and I am impressed that she would describe a contribution of such depth as skimming the surface. She rightly talked about the way in which Departments work in silos. She also made a point about the nature of the Government and how the concept of individual Departments is completely alien to many of our constituents. The citizen is increasingly frustrated and baffled as to why their interaction with the Government has to be conducted through so many different agencies. How many times do they have to hand over their personal data—whether for a driving licence, a passport, a tax return or benefits—to many different Departments? We understand how it works, because we are politicians, but our constituents find the number of Departments increasingly baffling. Any Government who wanted to make changes in those areas would probably run up against the type of inertia that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne was talking about, but these are the issues that we have to confront in the modern world.

The right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs made a thoughtful and, at times, quite sparky contribution to the debate. I was not expecting such a sparky debate, but I enjoyed his speech. He too alluded to the way in which Government Departments work in silos, as he did in his joint article with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne in The Times today. We really have to confront the problem of departmental silos, because many of the issues that we are going to have to deal with—long-term trends in health, climate change, the opportunity of opening up big data and raising the trend rate of growth over the medium to long term, for example—will require increased cross-departmental working. That is why I am particularly interested in the outcome of the research of the think-tank that my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman have established.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking, the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) and many others have referred to the skills gap and capability problems in the civil service. We are all familiar with the horror stories that have appeared in the press, including those relating to the west coast main line and to the contracts for broadband roll-out. The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has been candid about the failures in introducing universal credit—indeed, there have been some spiky exchanges across the Dispatch Box on that subject. His candour has been refreshing, but we have to acknowledge that there are commercial problems within the civil service, and we must tackle them.

The report pulls no punches in its assessment of the skills gap across the civil service. Lord Adonis, in evidence to the Committee, said that, in his experience, some civil servants were

“poorly trained and their experience of the sectors in which they work is very poor”.

The Institute for Government has recently found that the civil service has suffered from “weak corporate leadership”. I think I am correct in saying that the data published by the Cabinet Office when it launched the civil service reform plan showed that out of 15 permanent secretaries at the main delivery Departments, only four had significant operational delivery or commercial experience. We would warmly welcome initiatives that increased the commercial experience of the civil service and developed the skills of the work force. I hope that the Department and Ministers involve all the workplace trade unions in meaningful discussions about and in the design of any such initiatives.

I am also worried about the general sense that there is a quick turnover in civil service posts. I recall from my few years working in government that civil servants moved quickly and Ministers would sometimes be surprised that a civil servant with whom they may have had a close working relationship on a particular project was suddenly moved to another part of the Department and working in a different area. My worry is that we sometimes lose, or we can lose, expertise in that way, although I understand that civil servants want to develop their skills. Again, we need to think about this carefully.

None the less, Labour Members believe that a number of the Government’s reform proposals have merit, such as requiring greater scrutiny of major projects, reducing the turnover of senior responsible officers, and the plan for integrating corporate functions. On the latter measure, may I press the Minister to say something about the shared services centres for functions relating to IT, human resources, pay and payroll? When they were created, some TUPE-ing over of staff took place, with time-limited agreements on no compulsory redundancies. We now understand that there will be job losses and offshoring of work, so will he give us his views on that? Is he confident about the data security issues?

Some Members have referred to the extended ministerial offices. We will want to study the Government’s proposals on that and what they mean for accountability of Ministers and of civil servants. More generally, when we are discussing these issues, we must remember that the morale of civil servants is important—a happy work force is a more productive work force. We have previously had exchanges across the Dispatch Box about check-off, and Departments are reviewing that. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on those reviews and when he expects Departments to report back, if it is not going to be the Cabinet Office doing this.

The Opposition are examining and thinking carefully about our views on civil service reform. We warmly welcome the initiatives taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs. The case for a parliamentary commission made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex should be taken seriously. We are not going to commit today to supporting such a commission. It would need to have cross-party support, and some Members have spoken in favour today and others have spoken against. We are not ruling such a commission out indefinitely, but today we do not feel we can commit to supporting it. None the less, these debates should be taken seriously and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I of course welcome that inquiry. This is an important issue that should be kept under considerable review. Where the Executive and Parliament forgo the ability for a public activity to be directly accountable to Parliament, we need to understand very clearly how that responsibility is being executed.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I am not sure that the row has come to an end, because in recent weeks we have learned that a Tory donor has been made chair of Natural England, that a former Tory Member of this House has been made chair of the Care Quality Commission, and indeed in the Cabinet Office an impartial civil service post, heading up the appointments unit, has gone to a former member of Conservative central office. So can the Minister, who is of course a former Tory party chairman, explain why an exemption was agreed to give Laura Wyld that Cabinet Office post?

[Mr Maude]

One has to admire the gall of the hon. Gentleman, given that the Government of whom he was a supporter relentlessly stuffed public bodies full of Labour donors and Labour lickspittles. It was the most appalling abuse of power. We are running things in a substantially better way, as the statistic I have just disclosed illustrates. Further, I can inform the hon. Gentleman that the number of women appointed to public appointments is now up to 45% for the last period, which is significantly better than anything his Government ever even began to achieve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman may have more experience of the latter activity than I do, but the truth is that Ministers are not actually required to manage Departments; that responsibility sits very clearly with the civil service leadership. I think that they would be the first to accept that he makes a valid point. We have a deficiency in leadership and management skills as well as in commercial skills, and we need to address that. Concerns about the quality of the leadership and management of change come up consistently in the civil service staff survey, and as great organisations are always changing, we need to rectify that deficiency.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Of course we agree that we want greater commercial skills, and indeed management skills, in the civil service, but with the fiasco over the west coast main line, botched contracts over rural broadband roll-out and the lamentable implementation of the universal credit, with the Minister squabbling publicly with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when will Ministers, rather than blaming officials, take some responsibility for their own shambles?

[Mr Maude]

On that last point, the hon. Gentleman will know that it was my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who spotted that things were not right with the implementation of the universal credit and commissioned the review that disclosed the problems to the Department for the first time, as the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee report makes absolutely clear. Far from evading responsibility, it was my right hon. Friend who spotted the problems and set to work solving them.