Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The hon. Lady is right to ask that question. We do keep such matters under review, and as she will appreciate, a large part of the process involves ensuring that prosecutors are properly trained and encouraged to do what the guidelines say they should do. We will ensure that they receive that ongoing training and updating, but I think that the signs are encouraging. I think that we are doing more of the things that we need to do to ensure that child witnesses, in particular, are accommodated properly in the court system, so that they can give the best evidence that they are able to give.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

In this very difficult field, does the Attorney-General recognise that the Crown Prosecution Service must learn some lessons from its mistakes, but also that its independent ability to prosecute without fear or favour must not be called into question?

[The Attorney-General]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. It is right that, where mistakes are made, they should be learned from, but of course, as he will appreciate, it does not follow that cases that result in an acquittal should never have been brought as prosecutions in the first place. That is not the way the system works; it is important to make that point. It is also right, as he has heard me say before, that regardless of what someone does for a living or their position in society, if a prosecution is appropriate, according to the evidence and the tests that are applied, it should be brought.

Government Efficiency and Reform

Lord Beith Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am very sorry that the hon. Lady has been so mean-minded about this. She has cast some unworthy aspersions on the reasons for my statement. The historic purpose of the House is to vote Supply and scrutinise the way in which Governments spend their money. I am astonished that, when I come to the House to explain how this Government have delivered savings running into tens of billions of pounds, and have protected front-line services by taking out the cost of government, the hon. Lady should trivialise something that is at the core of the historic mission of the House of Commons. She has done no honour to her position.

The hon. Lady should reflect on the fact that the Office for National Statistics, which began its series on public sector productivity in 1997, has shown that during the years of the Labour Government, up to 2010, productivity in that sector remained flat, while productivity in the nearest analogue, the private services sector, rose by nearly 30%. She should reflect on the difference that could have been made to the deficit of historic proportions that her party bequeathed to the coalition.

The hon. Lady talked about the future, and about the contribution that could be made by what she described as back-office efficiencies. We are talking about much more than back-office efficiencies; we are talking about the introduction of very different and improved ways of delivering public services. That can be done, and we have shown that it can be done. The public’s expectations in terms of the quality of public services are, properly, rising; the demand in terms of the quantity of public services is also rising as people—happily—live longer; and the amount of money that is available to support those public services is less, thanks to the deficit that we inherited.

We therefore must do more, and do it better, with less money. We have shown over the last five years that that can be done, and we have also shown that it needs to be done again. There should never be an end to efficiencies. The most efficient organisations in the world always look for further efficiency savings every year, and that is what this Government, under a Conservative leadership, will do in the next Parliament.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Why has the rigorous challenge that the coalition Government have had to make to the way in which money is spent in many Departments not been applied to the criminal justice system? Having a larger prison population than nearly all the other European countries is not necessarily the most cost-effective way of keeping people safe. Will the Minister look at the American states that are trying to reverse that trend in order to spend the taxpayer’s dollar in the way that is most likely to keep the taxpayer safe?

[Mr Maude]

Let me say to my right hon. Friend, as we both enter our last week in the House of Commons, that, as he knows, the reason our prison population is so large is the rate of reoffending. I know that he will support, as I do, the rehabilitation revolution, led by our right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, which is committed to a radical reduction in the rate of reoffending that is the sole reason why our prison population is so much higher than those of comparable countries.

Growth Deals

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The university of Huddersfield is a strong institution. I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a particular interest in its connections with business, so I hope he will welcome locally the investment that has gone in there. The Centre for Cities is a good and valued think-tank. It carried out a 10-year review of the performance of cities over that period. It did not split what happened before 2010 from what happened subsequently, but when one does that, the story is striking: most of the net new jobs before 2010 were in London and the south-east, whereas most now are outside London and the south-east. Strikingly, since 2010 the list of areas that have had the biggest fall in unemployment, as measured by the claimant count, is topped by Liverpool, followed by the black country, Birmingham, Teesside, Manchester, Coventry and Warwickshire, the Humber, and Stoke and Staffordshire. That is a picture of the revival of our local economy, which is due to the efforts of local leaders but backed by this Government.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome this coalition Government’s investment in the north-east of England—in skills, science and manufacturing—including in Northumberland college. May I, however, underline the fact that the college needs to extend its services into the north of Northumberland, where many students are 40 or 50 miles away from the college?

[Greg Clark]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s endorsement. The investment in the north-east has been striking, and it is making a big impact. We have been talking about the local growth fund, but there is also the regional growth fund, of which the north-east has been a big beneficiary to the tune of more than £300 million. That is the right way to go—to take money from Departments in Whitehall and to put it into the hands of local leaders and business leaders in the community, because they know where to get the best bang for their buck.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the need to support the development and skills of civil servants and to provide them with rewarding jobs. Obviously, the purpose of the civil service is not to provide jobs but to serve the public. I am happy to tell him that morale in the civil service, as measured in the annual people survey, has held up very well—it has certainly not fallen since the last year that his Government were in office—despite the very considerable demands made on it and the downsizing to which I have referred.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Jobs are lost from rural communities under the shared services project, as has happened at Alnwick. Can we have a more determined cross-Government effort to relocate out of London work, such as archives, that could be done in rural communities?

[Mr Maude]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have discussed that in the Chamber before, and I completely understand his concern, particularly about the shared service staff in Alnwick. The machinery is not always as simple as it might be, but there is more that we can and should do to ensure that jobs are located in places where they can be undertaken efficiently and effectively with good results for the taxpayer and the citizen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The hon. Lady will understand that I cannot comment on particular prosecution decisions, but she will know that in my last job and this one I have made my views plain: I think it is important that where there is evidence Crown prosecutors prosecute in cases where prison officers are assaulted. Such assaults should never happen, of course, but we have tightened the protocols to make it clear that where they do so and evidence is present Crown prosecutors should proceed against those who assault prison officers, because those who work in our prison system are entitled to the full support of the law in what they do.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Given the increasing incidence of violence in prisons, I welcome the personal interest that the Attorney-General has taken in the issue and his determination that prosecution will follow assaults on prison officers. Does he agree that it is essential that the state protects prison officers with the full force of the law, given the important work they do on our behalf?

[The Attorney-General]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. I restate the point that, as he and the House understand, it is not for politicians to make decisions on individual prosecutions, but it is important that we send the clearest guidance we can to Crown prosecutors about when prosecution should follow. It is important, too, that sentencers make full use of the sentencing guidelines in this respect. The sentencing guidelines are clear that where an offence is committed by a serving prisoner, the sentence that follows, if a conviction occurs, should be consecutive and not concurrent. It is important that prosecutors do their bit to make that clear too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There are 1,000 more GPs today than there were when I became Prime Minister. What we are doing is reintroducing the named GP for frail elderly people, which Labour got rid of. That is one reason, combined with the disastrous GP contract that Labour introduced, why there is so much pressure on our accident and emergency system. We need to learn from the mistakes that Labour made rather than repeat them.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Q7. Is the Prime Minister aware that 16 to 18-year-olds in Northumberland who may live 50 miles from a further education college or 20 miles from a high school are facing charges ranging from £600 a year to several thousand pounds a year to get an education, because the Labour-controlled council has reversed the support given by the previous Liberal Democrat administration? Will he deplore that decision and see what central Government can do to promote fair access to education?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. As he knows, responsibility for transport for education and training rests with local authorities. Clearly, this local authority, now controlled by Labour, has made this decision. Of course we have introduced the £180 million bursary fund to support the most disadvantaged young people and perhaps that is something that his council and these families could make the most of. I certainly join him in agreeing that this is another example of the fact that Labour costs us more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

The emerging evidence is that the referrals are beginning to increase, which is good news. However, there are new guidelines, issued last October, for child sex abuse cases, which provide that there should be specialist prosecutors; a focus on the allegation, not the victim: early third-party material; and a challenging of myths and stereotypes.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Given that historic child abuse cases are being revisited because there is a chance of successful prosecution, can the Solicitor-General clarify the policy of his office and of the CPS on the destruction of documents, and what has been the policy over the years?

[The Solicitor-General]

As my right hon. Friend will know, the Home Secretary announced yesterday an inquiry that will look into the way in which paedophilia and institutions have operated. A separate inquiry, which he knows about, is looking into the documents and dossiers, including those of my former hon. Friend Geoffrey Dickens. A lot of work is being done to discover the history. As far as the present situation is concerned, the Government are for maximum security and care in looking after documents and want to see transparency in everything they do.

Local Growth Deals

Lord Beith Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The reason we are devolving powers in this way, and the reason the deal with the north-east has received such enthusiastic support, is that the best people to make these decisions, and the people who know about an area’s skills requirements and transport investment, are those who live and work there. I commend to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know takes an interest in these matters, the fact that one of our agreements is to improve the standard of secondary education across the north-east—to do what has been done in London by transforming the prospects of every young person. As someone who grew up in the north-east, I think that will be of immense value not just for young people, but for employers.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the fact that both coalition parties are determined to raise standards in the north-east, but will that not also require a change of attitude by some Labour council leaders, such as those in Northumberland who are withdrawing support for travel for those young people seeking to improve their skills, even though they have to travel a long way to get to a further education college?

[Greg Clark]

It is true that one of the hallmarks of a successful local economy is people putting aside their differences and working together. One feature of the growth deals that have been negotiated is the remarkable ability of people who previously did not get on to put their differences aside and work together locally. I hope that will be the case in the north-east.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The Labour party continues to be in denial about why there were cuts in the first place. I have said very publicly that we are concerned that youth services have been too easy to cut, in part because there is insufficient evidence about the value of the work that they do in terms of outcomes. We want to work with commissioners to change that, but at the same time we are actively investing from the centre to create new opportunities for young people, not just through the NCS but by backing the scouts and other uniformed organisations and the organisations that have formed part of the Step Up to Serve campaign.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that well-directed youth work is a vital part of crime prevention and as such saves money and prevents victimisation in the long run?

[Mr Hurd]

I agree wholeheartedly. The Government are a strong supporter of the value of high-quality, well-structured youth services, which is why we are working with local authorities to help in their difficult task of delivering more with less, as well as supporting the voluntary sector to offer more opportunities for young people to develop.

Civil Service Reform

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on bringing this matter forward so determinedly. Indeed, I am glad that the debate will be responded to by a Minister who I know to be a reforming Minister, but we still feel he needs to raise his reforming game from the specific and valuable things that he has been doing to deal with a wider concept of the future of the civil service. We have a civil service with excellent qualities, and I will refer to some of them in a moment, but as the Government themselves have said, we want a

“world-class, 21st Century Civil Service capable of delivering”

future

“Government’s priorities and the best public services.”

When the Public Administration Committee produced its report, the Liaison Committee wanted to support its conclusions but also to bring together several Select Committees’ experience of failings in the system. That led us to question the Prime Minister last September, at one of our thrice-yearly sessions with him, about the civil service. He responded well on specific matters, but I am still not at all convinced that he grasped the fundamental problem that the civil service is now facing very different circumstances, and we need to assess how far it can change the way it does things without losing some of its essential features.

We published a short report that highlighted some of the problem areas, such as the electronic monitoring of offenders, the west coast main line franchise and universal credit, where there had been serious implementation problems. We also gave praise where it was due, for example for the success of the Olympic and Paralympic games organisation. We concluded that there was significant evidence that the civil service is not equipped to support consistent contract management and tends to be driven by short-term pressures rather than long-term value for money for the taxpayer. We were unconvinced that the Government’s civil service reform plan for Whitehall is based on a strategic consideration of the future of the civil service. We gave our support to the idea of a parliamentary commission, jointly involving both Houses.

The Government responded to our report earlier this week and published their response in time for this debate. They deal with all our specific points, but still do not, I think, grasp the overall point. They say

“the Government does not agree that these examples indicate a wider failure, nor suggest that there is any systemic problem of trust and honesty in the critical relationship between Ministers and officials.”

However, the Institute for Government recently published a report saying that there is a “lack of collective leadership” at the centre and that “short-termism” is weakening Whitehall’s ability to plan ahead, while there is

“no co-ordinating…narrative for the Civil Service to lock into”,

and although:

“Leaders of reform report strong Prime Ministerial support for civil service reform in private...this has little visibility within Whitehall.”

The argument that the Prime Minister used was that a parliamentary commission could displace current reform efforts, which are urgently needed. If that view ever had any significance, it does not in the last year of this Parliament, when so many of the Government’s reform initiatives have already been introduced. We ought now to be considering what we can bequeath to the next Parliament. We in the Select Committees inherited a significant bequest as a result of the Wright Committee’s work and, in many ways, we would like the next Parliament to inherit some worthwhile things, including a clear concept of how to develop the civil service to meet modern needs. A joint commission would make that possible.

The other place has a ready supply of former Cabinet Secretaries, people who have run large private and public sector organisations and people who have political experience, who can join with those who have recent and immediate experience in this House in analysing what is needed and making proposals.

[Mr Harper]

I have studied the motion on the Commons Order Paper and the proposed names of Members of this House. On the point about membership, I was a little worried, given the right hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for reform, that he seemed to suggest that the Members of the House of Lords who should serve on the commission would be former Cabinet Secretaries. Is that a way to get reform or to ensure that reform does not happen?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. My list was much longer than that. It included people with experience in the private sector and—as I was about to say but did not due to the shortage of time—in the armed forces.

[Mr Jenkin]

If the commission were chaired by a Cross Bencher in the other place, there would be no space on the committee for a former Cabinet Secretary.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I suppose I ought also to say that it would be an amendable motion in any event. Before I was elected to the House, I used to give university lectures about the civil service at the time of the Fulton report. My lecture notes would be of little use today as so much has changed. The Fulton report was itself trying to catch up with change, but so much has happened since then. The civil service is now far less an administrator of services and much more a buyer of services. Back-office outsourcing has been a major development. The Minister knows that I have some concerns that we will not have a footprint of the civil service in the smaller towns and communities around the country if we do not manage that carefully to take advantage of good people who are available, as in my own constituency.

The civil service can no longer be treated as a protected environment where private sector disciplines of personal responsibility, value for money and management of risk have no place. Much policy making is now international—in the European Union, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. We are a less centralised state, at least in Scotland, Wales and London, with some devolution to cities and combined local authorities. Departments cannot continue to operate as sole owners of policy, living in separate silos, when so many of the problems we have to address—crime prevention, public health and skills for employment, to name just three—can be solved only on a cross-departmental basis. This means that money needs to be spent in one Department when the consequent savings will be earned in another Department. Money spent dealing with alcohol problems will save money in prison places, for example. Our system is not designed to accommodate such decisions.

The Prime Minister’s office expects to be much more closely involved in many areas of policy, and questioning in the Liaison Committee has been developed to get at that and establish just what the Prime Minister’s office is doing when it has a guiding role—some would say an interfering role—in policy. Perhaps that is an unfortunately pejorative term. Many would say that it is right that the Prime Minister exercises a significant influence on policy development, but it has made a different character of work in at least some Departments.

The Treasury’s role is nowadays quite often one of encouraging specific expenditure as well as blocking other expenditure—a more active role than it sometimes played in the past. Select Committee scrutiny has pulled back the veil of ministerial responsibility and rightly opened up much more what actually happened when decisions were taken. Coalition Government has required new procedures to be developed, and Ministers are as impatient as ever to deliver policy change. The Government have sought to accommodate that through the idea of extended ministerial offices, but I am still unclear whether any Department has followed the Cabinet Office with an extended ministerial office. Perhaps the Minister can tell us.

Amidst all this there are key features of the British civil service that most of us are very anxious to keep, including political impartiality—a civil service that can serve any Government—high ethical standards and the ability to attract people of the highest ability. Resolving these things is not a simple matter. It needs some careful thought. We need to hand on to the next Parliament a well-thought-out understanding of the future of our civil service and how it can be achieved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree, and that takes me very neatly to my next point. Promotion in the civil service is all too often about moving to a job in another area, rather than focusing on one job and seeing it through to the end. I think that the hon. Lady would agree that the worst example the Committee has seen was the attempt to implement the new FiReControl policy, for which we saw 10 senior responsible officers in a matter of five years. It is no wonder the project went horribly wrong.

I think that there is still a culture in the civil service of being hostile to outsiders, rather than embracing the talents that can be brought in from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, which I think are often seen as a threat. When I was a Minister, I brought three incredibly talented women into the Department for Education to try to implement policies. None of them now works anywhere in Government, even though they could contribute to policy implementation.

I also think that too often the civil service and Government are—dare I say it?— exploited by consultants. My Committee will shortly be looking at the sale of Royal Mail, which might be just the last in a line of examples of that. I recognise that some steps are being taken, such as the development of the Major Projects Authority and the academy for training in project management. They are all steps in the right direction, but they are not enough and they are not happening fast enough.

Secondly, Government are just poorly organised for delivering what is wanted and needed. Government still work in silos, which always leads to unintended consequences. To take a current example, local authorities have had massive cuts, which inevitably has an impact on their social care expenditure. At the same time, we have a health policy that is trying to get people out of hospitals and into the community, but without any money to support it.

Working in silos leads to a failure to learn from mistakes, with one Department simply replicating the mistakes made by another. The Committee has seen that in the mistakes made during the early implementation of the private finance initiative, for example. If we look at how the contracts for energy have been implemented, we see that lots of those errors have been duplicated in the current contracts that have been signed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

There is a failure at the centre to recognise the importance of a strong centre. My Committee has just received a letter from Sir Bob Kerslake, Nicholas Macpherson and Richard Heaton. We had written to them about the importance of having a strong centre. I will quote a few lines from their letter:

“Your Committee urges the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to take a strong strategic lead, as the Government’s corporate centre, in civil service reform and associated issues… However, the… central direction and integration that you appear to recommend does not reflect the model that this government and previous governments have operated.”

I do not know whether that is true. I have asked the Minister whether he agrees.

The letter goes on to state that

“the Centre does not and cannot take decisions or set a strong direction on every item of the £720 billion of public expenditure… the government machine is not like a holding company dominating its subsidiaries from a corporate centre.”

Well, I do not know what business of that magnitude would not have a strong centre and would wash its hands of its responsibility for the performance of its constituent parts. Since when have we, as politicians, signed up to the mantra? It is almost like claiming that there is no such thing as Government; only Departments with their Secretaries of State. Reform, if it is to ensure that coherence, efficiency and effectiveness are delivered across Government, must mean that we have strong central direction and much better integration than we currently enjoy.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I agree with the point the right hon. Lady is making. It comes back to what I was saying about the role of the Prime Minister’s office, which often seems to get involved in specific policies because they are politically significant, rather than to exert the central management she describes.

[Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree with that comment.

Finally, I want to talk about the conventions on responsibilities and accountabilities within the civil service and between civil servants and Ministers. The system is no longer working, and we need to rethink it. That is the extent of the complexity of the issues we are confronting. We need to deliver this in a sustainable way that will work across the political parties. The current position is frustrating for Ministers and for civil servants. We can look at the situation at the Ministry of Justice and at the Department for Work and Pensions, where I think there is a reluctance to speak truth to power, or at the Home Office, with the experience regarding the UK Borders Agency and the frustrations felt by Ministers.

As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex said, the doctrine of ministerial accountability is constructed on a basic lie. If Ministers are to be held accountable for the work of their civil servants, it is nonsensical that they can neither hire nor fire them. If we do not challenge that basic lie, we will never achieve the effective changes that we require.