Civil Service Impartiality

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is for the Civil Service of the day to prepare for Governments, as I remember doing in 1997, with three lots of policies. It is very important that ACOBA looks at this appointment. The business appointment rules govern the process by which civil servants take up new employment—it is part of their contract. As my right honourable friend the Paymaster-General said in the other place, there are various sets of rules and guidance designed to make sure that impartiality is observed in the Civil Service, particularly with the movement of senior Ministers or civil servants into other jobs.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it important to see impartiality in our Civil Service, which is judged throughout the world as the finest—arguably until Thursday—but precedents are just as important. The noble Baroness opposite said that one precedent was my noble friend Lord Frost. He was a special adviser—a political post—for five years and was also in the House of Lords before he took up a post as a Minister, so that is not a precedent. Last Thursday, a Second Permanent Secretary who was at the heart of this Government and of policy, and who advised government officials, turned over and took a political post without any break in contract. For me, that is completely different. Does my noble friend, who has Civil Service experience, agree that this move is simply without precedent?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that it is both unusual and without precedent, and I agree that Ministers must be able to speak to their officials from a position of trust. As the Cabinet Office Minister, I have worked closely with Ms Gray two or three times a week. My noble friend is right and asks a legitimate question.

Cross-government Cost-cutting

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, it is incredibly difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I started off wondering where that was going to lead. I wish him merry Christmas. I bought my Big Issue outside Waitrose in Fulham, as he knows—it is a cracking issue written by people who obviously did not go to the Big Issue party, because it is quite well written.

I first declare my interests, as set out in the register. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I am proud to say that I am now a life vice-president of the Local Government Association—it took me 20 years of hard slog to get there, but I am delighted to be able to declare that particular interest. I will draw on my local government experience, rather than my ministerial experience, to make a couple of points. The whole idea of cross-cutting cost cutting is a bit like “She sells seashells on the seashore”. Those of us who understand local government know that, when you talk about cross-cutting cost cutting, it is normally because you have no idea how you will save any money, and it is a sort of balancing item in the budget—that is my experience, from six years as a council leader. It is when your Section 151 officer, the finance director, has no clue about how to balance the budget, so it is called cross-cutting cost cutting, which is a sort of “We don’t know” label.

But there are ways of taking money out. It is not a bad thing to reduce costs, whether you are a Labour, Liberal Democrat or Conservative council. I always felt that it was noble to ensure that we spent every penny of every pound from the taxpayer wisely to deliver public services—and you could reduce costs. I had my ABC: A was for “asset management”, or the release of underutilised assets; B was for “budgetary control”, or controlling budgets, as I am sure the Big Issue does; and C was for “cost reduction”, which you could achieve by raising or saving money. This is a noble thing to do; it is not austerity but common sense. That is the ABC of local government. When I was in City Hall, rather than a town hall, it became the three Rs: release underutilised assets, reduce overheads and reform, for example by changing your business model—you could have more constables rather than middle managers and chiefs. That is a way can save money, and it is a noble endeavour.

When I came to Whitehall, it was incredibly difficult to apply those principles because there is something called the Civil Service. You did not deal with council officers or paid service; you suddenly dealt with people who felt that Ministers were here today, if I may say so, and gone tomorrow—certainly in my case. The idea of them following your lead on applying some of those principles was extremely difficult and frustrating. It is particularly frustrating because a lot of us come with real skills in squeezing every penny from every pound. I am a business guy—I have a business as well as a public service track record, and I can apply those principles to saving money—and it pains me to see things such as the NHS track and trace call centres being only 2% utilised. On the NHS—this is not a political point, although I know Labour or the Lib Dems may seize on it—we need inventory management systems to know what people actually need; it should not be “He who shouts the loudest gets the most PPE”. This is basic supply chain management and basic procurement skills. It is not down to politics; it happens under any Government, partly because you cannot get your hands around it in the way that you do in local government, and that is a great shame.

Going back to the way that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, started his speech, and in my final 30 seconds, I therefore do accuse Stoke council of a miscarriage of common sense. For goodness’ sake, if it is a few thousand pounds, do something about it: intervene and use your common sense. You can use common sense, whether in local, regional or national government. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for raising this, and I am right behind him. Let us get Stoke council to behave itself.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I have just a couple of points to make before I speak to Amendment 9. First, I join the chorus of welcome for the collaborative spirit that the Minister has managed to engender among noble Lords working on the Bill. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—who I see has slipped out—and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, both mentioned the fog of uncertainty created by the number of government amendments. I have a small mea culpa as to why some of those have been carried over on Report. Those of your Lordships who were in Grand Committee will remember the outrage caused by 340-odd government amendments landing without an explanation. That caused me to push them back, so I am afraid that I am responsible for their reappearance. However, that did what we wanted it to do: it gave us time to understand and follow those amendments. I think this amendment arises from the perspective we have had in that time.

Two things have happened which I never thought would: first, I find myself in almost complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Moylan; and, secondly, he appears to be calling for the emulation of the EU in British law. When we get to the retained EU law revocation Bill, I am sure he can join me to make similar entreaties from his position at the back of the Chamber. Joking aside, the point here is whether this was deliberate or an accident; we are waiting to hear from the Minister on that. This issue reflects a number of debates, certainly the one we have had on Amendment 34—which I trust will come back at Third Reading rather than being agreed here—and one that we will have in a later group in which the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, has highlighted another issue.

More generally, whatever happens to the Bill on Report, there is a real need for people to sit down with cold towels on their heads and go through the Bill line by line one more time before we get to Third Reading. Because there have been so many amendments, it has been almost impossible to follow properly what is happening. We have all done our best, and the Minister has worked like a Trojan—as have your Lordships—but I think that there is a strong call for further work to be done once we get through Report stage on Wednesday evening.

With that, I support the attempts of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in Amendment 9 to get some clarity on this, and I support the spirit of her speech.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I rise because I was named by my noble friend Lord Moylan, and because this is a subject that I feel very passionately about, as someone who spent 16 years as a councillor and six years as a council leader. Indeed, I am very proud of the work we did to collaborate. It is something that came to me a little late in my local government career, because I used to believe in two things: competition and fear—that is, fear of failure—but collaboration is also important in local government.

My noble friend Lord Moylan pointed to the vision we had in west London to come together to collaborate to drive down costs. In fact, when it came to library services, it was very much in the back offices that we could make savings so that libraries could stay open and the public could be served by excellent libraries. We worked very carefully across a whole range of areas, such as highways and helping children across west London who needed safeguarding and support to find potential parents who could look after them, in a way that would not have been possible without collaboration.

I am also a huge fan of mutualisation. I know that is coming up in group 6, but I want to say that as someone who was a pathfinder of the work that my noble friend Lord Maude brought forward. The organisation that was spun out of the council to provide school support services exists today and is trading very well with officers I had as senior officers in Hammersmith and Fulham. They preferred a life outside the council. I pay tribute to that movement. It had real vision behind it. It did not involve competition and was really about empowering people to provide the services that they were already providing in a better and more comprehensive way. I think that was a tremendous pathfinder and I only wish that it could have been rolled out more widely across local government and the public sector.

I probably should have declared my business interests as set out in the register before starting to speak. However, I can honestly tell noble Lords that I have absolutely nothing to do with public procurement in my business life because today it takes a long time. It is really difficult and the barriers to entry are very great. I am sure the purpose of this Procurement Bill is to make sure that public procurement works for the benefit of those services and we can use competition in a sensible way and it can be streamlined. I think the purpose of the amendment from my noble friend Lady Noakes is to ensure that, where local trading companies exist, they will not fall foul of the reasonableness test and things have to be put out to competition. In fact, as a council leader I bought a communications service from the City of Westminster because of the expertise it had in comms. That was an expertise that existed only in Westminster City Council, and I did not think that that needed to go out to competition. So I think we need to be sensible.

As a true loyalist, I support the Government if they can point out how a reasonable test can work to ensure that there is not unnecessary tendering in this instance. Provided I get those reassurances, I am happy to support the Minister in her endeavours to ensure that we sort out these areas and preserve areas such as local authority trading companies that provide an important part of services in local government.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for her introduction to her amendment which was very clearly laid out. Again, I would like to join with other noble Lords who talked about the number of government amendments, not just here but in Committee. People who were here on the first day will probably remember that I was a little bit cross about it. But in response, the Minister has really grappled with our concerns in the lead-up to Report and I appreciate the time that she has spent doing that.

I will be brief. I will just say that we strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, with her amendment. She clearly laid out why this is important for local authorities and by including her amendment you increase the efficiency of the public sector when it is structuring the way it delivers its services, much of which do not need to include the procurement laws that we see before us. All I would say is that it is important that we can ensure that local authorities and other public sectors bodies within this area can continue to deliver better public services and make savings, as the noble Lord just mentioned, by collaboration, working together and sharing services. That makes eminent sense, and I would hope that the Minister will be able to reflect on that.