Security and Intelligence Agencies: Contingencies Fund Advance
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
My statement of 17 March informed Parliament of the intention to access £66,800,000 from the contingency fund pending parliamentary approval of the supply estimates 2014-15. Royal Assent of the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill has been further delayed therefore the Security and Intelligence Agencies are seeking an additional advance of £42,900,000.
As the Security and Intelligence Agencies are non-ministerial departments, I am making this statement on behalf of their Accounting Officer, to ensure that Parliament is informed of this advance from the Contingencies Fund.
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Public Data Principles
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I am laying the “Report on departmental open data commitments and adherence to public data principles for the period between April and June 2014”.
The report is released on a quarterly basis and details progress against our commitment to open up Government data.
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Government Efficiency and Reform
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
With permission, I would like to make a statement on Government savings from efficiency and reform.
Since May 2010, my Department has led a cross-Government programme, working closely with the Treasury, to ensure that taxpayers’ money is focused on front-line services. With rising public expectations for high-quality services, coupled with the huge budget deficit we inherited in 2010, the coalition faced a huge challenge to do more—and better—for less. Over this Parliament, we have secured unprecedented levels of savings, delivering for successive years £3.75 billion, £5.5 billion, and £10 billion, compared with spending in Labour’s last year. For 2013-14, we saved £14.3 billion, against a 2009-10 baseline.
That is testament to the hard work of civil servants across Whitehall and the strong support of my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary and other Treasury colleagues. Last July, the Comptroller and Auditor General recognised the pace and priority we had injected into the efficiency agenda. We started this with the introduction of tight spending controls just days after we entered government, and these controls have delivered the largest share of savings. Since 2010, we have negotiated billions of pounds off expensive legacy contracts and cut central Government spending on consultants and interim workers by over half. Like for like, the civil service is 21% smaller. I publish today our annual “State of the Estate” report, which shows that we have exited in aggregate more than one building every day since May 2010, reducing the total size of our estate by 20%.
As part of our long-term economic plan, our aim was to save £20 billion from central Government efficiency and reform for the last year of this Parliament, including by reducing losses to the public purse through fraud, error and uncollected debt. I can tell the House that we are on course to meet and indeed exceed this target. Up to January 2015, we have already identified £11 billion of efficiency and reform savings—over a third up on the same point last year—with the largest savings coming in the final quarter every year so far. With fraud, error and debt benefits still to be counted, we are well on the way to the £20 billion target. The full year’s savings will need to be confirmed by independent audit, and, as in previous years, we will invite the National Audit Office to undertake this.
We have made significant progress in transforming government and cutting costs, but this is only the beginning. At the autumn statement, we published, with the Treasury, a document entitled “Efficiency and reform in the next Parliament”, which set out our intention to save a further £10 billion for 2017-18 and £15 billion to £20 billion for 2019-20 compared with the current year. We now set out our next steps. We will implement a new approach to land and property, based on central ownership and management of assets and Departments paying market-level rents. This will provide greater incentives for Departments to rationalise space, as well as releasing land and property for productive use—for example, for up to 150,000 homes. To do this successfully will mean working even more closely with local government, including through our One Public Estate programme, which now operates across 32 local authorities.
The UK is now a world leader in digital government, and we will work with local government to take this transformative approach into the wider public sector. Digital services improve the citizen experience, while being significantly cheaper to provide. We will continue to reduce the cost of technology in government, as extravagantly expensive legacy IT contracts fall in over the coming years. To that end, I have signed an innovative deal to create a joint venture for data hosting that will save up to £100 million.
All of this work has been driven by an increasingly strong corporate centre, supporting and challenging Departments to work together to maximise efficiencies and improve services. We are strengthening central leadership across 10 key cross- departmental functions, including commercial, digital and technology, project management, legal and human resources. Later this week, we will publish our functional leadership model.
The chief executive of the civil service will lead the build-out of this strengthened model, under which the Treasury and the Cabinet Office will work together as the corporate centre to support Departments to continue their programme of reform and to deliver future spending consolidations. Spending controls will remain in place and evolve in time to strong functional standards, while Departments will need to own more of the transformation agenda. As part of this, we are recruiting 25 commercial directors across government and launching a new project leadership programme at Cranfield university. This programme will help to build project management skills in parallel to our successful major projects leadership academy.
I am grateful for the collaborative way in which the shadow Cabinet Office Minister has approached this important programme, which continues that of her predecessor, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), and also for the support of the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and its members, who have seen the point of what we are seeking to do and given significant support to it.
We have made substantial and long-overdue improvements to the way government operates, but much more lies ahead. We have shown that we can drive down the cost of government while improving the quality of services. We have shown that we can get more and better for less, and that we have a long-term plan to deliver it. I commend the statement to the House.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement. His statement today has a little bit more content than his empty statement of two weeks ago, but only a little bit more. One has to wonder again why it is that I keep being called to this House for his statements. Is it perhaps because he wants to continue his very long career of public office in the other place after May and is using Hansard to scrub up his CV? Or is it, more seriously, to distract me and this place from the disarray that is now besetting the Conservative party’s election campaign? Perhaps his and his colleagues’ time would have been better spent today deploring the despicable actions of the Tory candidate for Dudley North or by explaining to the public where the axe will fall, following last week’s confirmation of the Chancellor’s extreme spending cuts in the next Parliament.
The Minister has carried out his job in government of identifying efficiency savings with zeal and his work to reduce the cost of government bureaucracy is welcome. While I might disagree with him on occasion, I do not question his motives to reduce costs. I also commend the civil service for its work on the shared agenda.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office thanked the Chancellor for his support on this agenda, but I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that it really should be the other way around. It is clear from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies that after the Chancellor’s Budget last week, unprotected Departments will face huge and colossal cuts to meet his spending plans and unfunded tax cuts. With all due respect to the Minister, no amount of back-office efficiencies will save front-line police, armed forces or social care services, or working families from the Government’s secret VAT plans. Only so much can be got from efficiency savings and even with his savings in this Parliament, the Government are still only halfway to their own deficit reduction targets. That is why, even with his savings, public services would face even bigger cuts in the next Parliament than they have in this one. Opposition Members have a better plan. We will balance the books in a fair way, ensuring a recovery for the many, not just for the privileged few.
We broadly support the approach to land and property that the Minister has outlined. On digital government, I am pleased to see that he has been reading our independent review on this topic. Just weeks ago, he was saying that the Government Digital Service could not work with councils to improve services and save money. Now he is championing this, and I welcome his conversion today. We agree that stronger functional skills in the civil service are important, and we will examine in detail the Minister’s plans for new commercial directors and a new project leadership programme.
Any new Government will have to think about how we can provide better and more responsive public services with less, but with just a few weeks to go, the country faces a clear choice at the election. No amount of spinning on efficiency savings will hide the Tories’ true agenda of cutting front-line public services and hitting families with a rise in VAT.
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.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Treasury’s problems are, above all, about income, not expenditure. There is a gap of £120 billion a year between the tax that should be paid and the tax that is actually paid. However, the Government have presided over tens of thousands of job cuts in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, where senior staff collect 20 times their own salaries and junior staff 10 times theirs. Are the Government not shooting themselves in the foot?
Mr Maude
The hon. Gentleman is completely mistaken if he believes that there is a direct linear relationship between the number of HMRC officials and the amount of tax that is being collected. There is absolutely no evidence of that. The size of HMRC, in terms of headcount, was falling before the 2010 election, and the amount of tax being collected has risen. We can do things differently and we can do things better—we have already shown that that is the case—but if the hon. Gentleman thinks that the only problem with the public finances is that we are not taxing enough and not raising enough taxes, I am afraid that he and I differ. I think that we must cut our costs first, which is what we are doing and will continue to do.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour, who has done a superb job in driving these savings and thereby ensuring front-line services can be protected? He has done a fine job behind the scenes and will be much missed from this place, but I hope he will be able to continue in some way in this important public service. Does he agree that the key part of his statement was that these savings have been achieved as a result of a strong corporate centre—a central drive for efficiency—and is it not the case that that centre will have to be strengthened further if significant additional savings are to be achieved?
Mr Maude
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s kind comments, and I also hugely appreciate what he and the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) have done in leading the work of GovernUp, which has made the case very powerfully, as indeed has the Public Accounts Committee, for a strong corporate centre in Government that can drive these sorts of changes. When we examined this, we found that, in almost all cross-government functions, the historical position of the British Government is to have an extraordinarily weak centre. That is part of the reason why it has been proved in the past to be so difficult to drive these sorts of efficiency savings, but we are changing that.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
This was a swansong statement, if I may say so, which largely looked backwards rather than forwards. Nevertheless, what the Minister has announced today about stronger central leadership within Whitehall, clearer professional standards right across the Departments and more power to the elbow of the new chief executive of the civil service are welcome on all sides. The right hon. Gentleman over five years has made something of a start in ensuring we get better and more for less, but his statement this afternoon is clearly passing the baton for the next five years to this side of the House and my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on our Front Bench.
Mr Maude
I agree with every part of what the right hon. Gentleman says except the last part, but I am grateful for what he says and the work he has done on this issue. He is a very experienced former Minister himself and he has seen very vividly how we can do these things better. We have made a start but there is much, much more to be done.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend has stated, public sector productivity flatlined between 1997 and 2010, but what assessment has he made of improvements in civil service productivity since 2010?
Mr Maude
Productivity has improved dramatically. Like for like, the civil service is 21% smaller, yet I do not think anyone would say the civil service is doing less. It is not; if anything, in some places it is doing more. Productivity has markedly improved and I pay a very warm and genuine tribute to those hundreds of thousands of civil servants who do a fantastic job, often in very difficult circumstances. All of us in this House should be warm in our tribute to them.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I agree with what the Minister has said about extending digitisation in government, but what is he doing to ensure millions of people are not excluded from the process of digitisation?
Mr Maude
That is a very good point. When the now Baroness Lane-Fox reported to me at the very beginning of this Parliament when she introduced the concept, which we warmly adopted, of digital by default—if a service can be delivered online, it should be delivered only online—she made the point, which again we strongly supported, that there must always be an assisted digital option, which ideally can be used to help people who are currently digitally excluded to become full participants in the online world, so, for example, older people can more easily communicate with distant family members. There is a big programme here that we are strongly promoting.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I am so pleased to hear that we are protecting public services while cutting down the cost of government, but does my right hon. Friend share my concern that we have been prevented from delivering one of the bigger cuts—namely, cutting the number of Members of Parliament by delivering our proposed boundary changes? Does he agree that although the Opposition refer to fairer cuts, they give no indication of what those cuts would be, and that the public therefore cannot trust anything they have to say?
Mr Maude
Aneurin Bevan once said:
“Why look into the crystal ball when you can read the book?”
The last Government did nothing to drive the sort of efficiency savings that we have achieved, so when it comes to making cuts in public spending, we can only fear that they would cut the services, whereas we are cutting the costs, which is the better way to go.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Why has there been no reform of the continuing parliamentary scandals of cash for access to politicians and cash to buy peerages? Why has there been no brake on the revolving door that allows retiring Ministers to prostitute their insider knowledge to the highest bidder, and why are there no controls over lobbyists who are still free to buy influence and privilege in this House? Is not the Minister ashamed that, after his Government have been in office for five years, the reputation of politics remains firmly in the gutter?
Mr Maude
I cannot imagine a greater contribution to that reputation than the hon. Gentleman going on about it all the time. As he above all people ought to know, most people come into this particular form of public service, known as politics, for high reasons and with high motivation, and they do their job in an honourable way. He might just occasionally shrug off that carapace of cynicism and give due credit to the public servants in this House as well as to those outside it.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
My right hon. Friend can leave the House knowing that he has done an outstanding job in reforming our public services, and it would have been nice to hear a little more humble pie from the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). On the question of getting better digital coverage across our country, does he agree that the public estate should be made more available for things such as mobile phone masts if we are to have a 21st-century digital economy? What more can be done to encourage the public sector estate to make up for the absence of support from the private sector estate in getting greater digital coverage?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a really good point, and there is much more that we can do. For example, we will make available public sector Government-owned land and buildings for the siting of mobile phone masts, which will be beneficial in lots of ways. It will provide locations for the masts as well as income for the Government. We have now also published the second iteration of our map of the publicly funded digital infrastructure. This includes the many thousands of miles of fibre that have been paid for by the taxpayer but which are massively underused and under-exploited. If that network can be mobilised to support the roll-out of mobile coverage and rural broadband, it could accelerate the programme to which my hon. Friend and I are both deeply committed.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
It is three years to the day since the Minister took up my invitation to visit Ark Data Centres in Corsham with me, and I am delighted to hear that the taxpayer stands to benefit to the tune of £100 million from the Crown hosting joint venture with the company. Does he agree, however, that the benefits of digital services extend much further than that, in that they allow a total redesign of the processes that underpin our public services?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend is completely right. The digitisation of services is sometimes seen as just a pretty front end on a website, but this goes much deeper. It is about a fundamental redesign of the way in which services are delivered, with the processes being designed and built around the needs of the citizen instead of around the convenience of the Government, which has far too often been the case in the past.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
As this is probably my right hon. Friend’s last statement in the House, may I thank him for the numerous visits he has made to Pendle over the past few years and for recently meeting Training 2000 in the Cabinet Office to discuss its plans to set up a cyber-security institute in my constituency? Will he say more about public service mutuals, the increase in their number under this Government and how they can benefit productivity?
Mr Maude
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The public service mutuals programme is important. There are now more than 100 of them, whereas there were fewer than 10 when the coalition Government were formed. More than 35,000 members of staff have joined public service mutuals, which are delivering public services to the value of more than £1.5 billion. Most of them choose to be not-for-profit, and have seen an extraordinary improvement in productivity by bringing together: entrepreneurial leadership, of which there is much more in the public sector than is generally thought; staff who are liberated from bureaucratic constraints; hard-edged commercial discipline; and the public service ethos. Those four factors, brought together, are an extraordinarily powerful driver of improved productivity and value.
Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)
In my right hon. Friend’s swansong—I commend him for it and for his five years’ work, saving money for the public purse—I wonder whether I might pick up on one specific issue of government efficiency reform, which is the trade unions training fund. It was set up a dozen or so years ago by the previous Government; some £10 million to £12 million was given to trade unions’ training and, lo and behold, £12 million came back as a bung to the Labour party. Will he update the House on what has happened to that?
Mr Maude
My right hon. Friend should not assume that this is my swansong. Although it is my last week in the House of Commons, I am answering oral questions on Wednesday and I am looking forward to that—[Interruption.] I am looking forward to engaging with the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on that occasion. It is very nice to see my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury here, as he has been my comrade in arms as we have driven forward these efficiency savings over that period. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan) will know that I made a statement, either last week or the week before, about the reform of trade unions within central Government. We have cut the cost of the subsidies to trade unions significantly over that time, bringing into these things a proper sense of proportion.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the work he has done, saving taxpayers billions of pounds. Does he agree that by merging Departments even greater efficiencies and savings could be made?
Mr Maude
I understand what my hon. Friend says. The studies that have been done on machinery of government changes do not always indicate that they pay for themselves, but there are undoubtedly ways in which we can organise government to yield—in addition to what we have already done—significant improvements.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. Many of us recall my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) making his suggestions to the House at the beginning of this Parliament and being vilified by some Opposition Members. May I say how resolutely and quietly the Minister has gone about this work? Not only has he made the savings, but he has taken the civil service with him to improve the public services of this country.
Mr Maude
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. This has been a long process and it is fair to say that the further we have gone, we have discovered a deep appetite for reform and change within the civil service, particularly among its younger members, who often get frustrated. They are the people who complain most about bureaucracy, and they have welcomed the fact that Ministers have taken a real interest in driving out bureaucracy and speeding things up.
Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The Government have asked Sir Gerry Grimstone to lead a review of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. This will be the first review of the Office’s status and role since the role of the Commissioner for Public Appointments was created by the Public Appointments Order in Council 1995 on 23 November 1995. Although the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments is technically not a public body, the review will follow the guidance on conducting a triennial review.
The review’s purpose will be to establish the continuing need for the Office, and to examine its scope of responsibilities. In particular the review will consider the Office’s role in regulating the processes by which Ministers make appointments to the boards of certain public bodies and certain statutory offices. The review’s terms of reference have been placed in the Library of the House.
Sir Gerry will seek input from a wide range of individuals, including current and former Ministers, current and former officials and advisers, the Government’s Non-Executive Directors, the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Parliament, public bodies and those who have gone through an appointments process. The review will report in the summer.
TERMS OF REFERENCE. The role of the Commissioner for Public Appointments was created by the Public Appointments Order in Council 1995 on 23 November 1995, following recommendations made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (under the chairmanship of Lord Nolan). We are now twenty years on, and this provides a suitable opportunity to review the role of the Commissioner and the processes around public appointments. In the light of the range and diversity of public appointments, it is important to ensure that the procedures are both effective and proportionate. The review will be led by Sir Gerry Grimstone and will report to the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
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“The State of the Estate in 2013-14”
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I have today laid before Parliament, pursuant to section 86 of the Climate Change Act 2008, “The State of the Estate in 2013-14”. This report describes the efficiency and sustainability of the Government’s civil estate and records the progress that Government have made since the previous year and since 2010. The report is published on an annual basis.
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Security and Intelligence Agencies (Contingencies Fund Advance)
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
As part of the supplementary estimates 2014-15, parliamentary approval for additional resource of £34,201,000, additional capital of £28,255,000 and additional cash of £4,344,000 is sought for the security and intelligence agencies to reflect a number of in-year budgetary changes.
Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £66,800,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund. This is required to meet contractual commitments.
A total net cash requirement of £111,456,000 has been requested as part of the supplementary estimates 2014-15 and the advance will be repaid upon Royal Assent of the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill.
As the security and intelligence agencies are non-ministerial departments, I am making this statement on behalf of their Accounting Officer, to ensure that Parliament is informed of this advance from the Contingencies Fund.
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Trade Union Reform (Civil Service)
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on trade unions in the civil service.
Trade unions can play an important role in the modern workplace. Some important reforms implemented under the coalition Government, such as changes to the civil service compensation scheme and public sector pensions, were the subject of extended and constructive discussions with a range of public sector trade unions, and I am grateful to union leaders for the forward-looking and thoughtful way in which they have engaged with the need for reform. However, further reforms were needed to how the unions operated within the civil service, and I want to update the House on progress.
Facility time describes the arrangement whereby union officials and representatives have paid time off for trade union duties and activities. Properly controlled and monitored, this can assist with the rapid resolution of local disputes and grievances, but five years ago in the civil service, it was neither controlled nor monitored. We found that thousands of civil servants were paid, sometimes including travel costs and expenses, to attend union conferences. We found that more than 200 civil servants were being paid to work full time on union business. Several had been promoted, one of them twice, without ever doing the job for which they were employed.
The total cost to taxpayers of trade union facility time taken by these officials and the thousands of other part-time representatives was a staggering £36 million a year. Unacceptable at any time, this was particularly intolerable at a time when the coalition Government were making difficult decisions to get the country’s finances back on track. Facility time in the civil service is now rigorously monitored and reported. Now, unless specifically authorised by a Minister, all trade union representatives must spend at least half their time doing the civil service job for which they were employed. Gone is the automatic paid time off to attend seaside union conferences.
Today I can tell the House that the cost of trade union facility time has dropped by nearly 75%, from £36 million in 2011 to just over £10 million now, saving taxpayers £26 million a year. The cost has fallen from 0.26% of pay bill to just 0.07% for the latest rolling year to date—well below the benchmark we set of 0.1%. I can also reveal that the number of full-time trade union officials on the public’s payroll has fallen from 200 in 2011 to just eight today. With the civil service now over one fifth smaller—like for like—than it was in 2010, I expect the overall number of representatives to continue to fall over the coming years.
Check-off is the practice where the employer collects trade union subscriptions from payroll on behalf of the union, and decisions on whether this should continue are delegated to individual Departments. The civil service management code requires Departments to recover the cost of check-off from the unions, which only two Departments were doing, so the head of the civil service has written to permanent secretaries of Departments where check-off remains to remind them of this obligation. So far, eight Departments have served notice to the trade unions that they intend to remove check-off: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for International Development, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Others have started the consultation process to allow this to happen. I believe that this change will enable unions to build a much more direct relationship with their members, without the need for the relationship to be intermediated by the employer.
Taken together, these reforms have made a considerable contribution to modernising Departments’ relationships with their trade unions—reforms that were long overdue—and I commend the statement to the House.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement—it is good to see that at least this member of the Cabinet is not ducking difficult questions in Parliament today.
It is election time, so we have a Tory Minister coming to the House as part of a pre-election union-bashing exercise. There is absolutely nothing new in this statement, so one wonders what his motives are. The Government have a clear strategy towards public servants up and down the country: “The Government do not value the work you do and are hellbent on disfranchising you and weakening your rights at work.” Government Members, especially those in marginal seats, should be worried about the impact this is having on public sector voters in their constituencies.
One has to ask whether this so-called statement is just a smokescreen for a Prime Minister running scared of a debate about the future of our country and a Chancellor whose economic plans threaten £70 billion of cuts that would take us back to a time before there was even an NHS. This Minister is a reasonable man, and I support what the Government are doing on many aspects of civil service reform, but I will not support the steps he has taken under the name of trade union reform, which have resulted in souring relations, low staff morale and unnecessary industrial action, and have scuppered some of his otherwise valiant attempts to change how government is run.
Facility time is an important resource not just for union members and employees but for the employer and, in this case, the taxpayer. Labour is clear that facility time is not political time; where well deployed and not abused, it reduces many human resources costs to a company, such as by reducing the number of disputes going to an employment tribunal, recruitment costs and the number of days off sick and workplace injuries. That is why some of the biggest companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, support facility time—because it is part of an effective HR strategy and a productive workforce.
Of course, we support genuine attempts to eradicate abuse, but the Government’s rhetoric tells a different story—one that is more about their political ideology than good accounting. Check-off is another example. Many major private employers use it: in construction, there is Balfour Beatty; in pharmaceuticals, there is AstraZeneca; in manufacturing, there is BAE Systems, GKN and Rolls-Royce. All of these private sector companies recognise its benefits, but unsurprisingly this Conservative-led Government have done everything they can to end check-off. Given that the cost of check-off is relatively low and that most unions are happy to pay the cost of administering it themselves, it is clear that this is another stage in the long campaign to weaken trade unions and disfranchise their members. Would it not have been better to give the trade unions and their tens of thousands of members across government proper and ample time to move members on to a direct debit system, which I am sure we all agree is more sustainable in the long-term? That is what we will do, and I want to put it on record that when we win in May, we will ensure that this is made possible across all Departments.
The Minister has come to this House today with his Lynton Crosby route 1 election strategy: bash the unions and duck the leaders’ debates. Hard-pressed public sector workers will see this for what it is, and they know that they deserve better than this.
Mr Maude
It is lovely to see the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) taking time off from her pressing duties of holding the Labour party’s election campaign together. It is good to have her here. I thank her for her gracious support for most of what we do. It is important to stress that much of what we have done on civil service reform has commanded widespread support across the political spectrum. I am grateful to her and her predecessors for the constructive way in which they have done that—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) makes a comment that is rather less graceful than his colleague.
Mr Maude
It is very hard to tell.
Let me deal head on with the hon. Lady’s points. She says that this is an attack on public servants, but it is absolutely the contrary. She talks as if this is an attack on union facility time. It is not. I said in my statement—she might have listened to it; she had it in advance—that I supported the use of facility time. Facility time for trade union duties is protected by law. Trade union duties—the resolution of disputes and grievances—are important, and the presence of trade union officials and representatives within the workplace can be helpful in achieving that. What we are concerned with is the abuse and the use of paid time off in facility time for large numbers of civil servants to attend their union conferences with their expenses paid by the public. That is not acceptable. That is what we have called time on.
I know that the hon. Lady and her colleagues do not like it, and we know what the reason is. The reason is perfectly simple: it is that the Labour party is paid for and puppet-mastered by the trade unions. She should come clean and say that the Labour party election campaign that she is trying to hold together and conduct is paid for by exactly the trade union leaders who have no doubt written the script that she has read out to the House today.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The practices that the Minister described as seeing on his arrival at the Cabinet Office in 2010 will have come as a complete shock to my constituents. May I tell him that my constituents will very much support the steps he has taken to ensure fair use of union time by officials?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend is completely right. To be honest, it was a complete shock to us to see how much this system had been abused, and how little effort was made by our predecessors to count and control the costs of what was happening. Opposition Members say that this is an attack on public servants, but the truth is that public servants would much rather have this money spent on public services, which is their vocation, than on supporting trade union officials at the taxpayers’ expense.
John McDonnell
We are going to have to develop some criteria for providing statements to this House, because this is a complete waste of the House’s time. The Minister needs to get up to speed: the Public and Commercial Services Union has never been affiliated to the Labour party and has never funded it, so he can drop these accusations. This is all about union busting, so I want to know what investigation took place into the union-busting strategy within HMRC, where leaked reports said that trade unionists were to be victimised and the union to be broken within that department. What did the right hon. Gentleman do about that?
Mr Maude
First, I never said that about the PCS. I know it is not affiliated. The PCS dislikes the Labour party nearly as much as it dislikes us. Secondly, when it comes to attacks on public servants, the hon. Gentleman’s attack on hard-working public servants in HMRC—the management of HMRC, those senior hard-working officials who have decided in conducting their vocation of public service that check-off should be discontinued—is disgraceful.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that unions can perform an important role in the workplace, but that the creation of a so-called super union would damage the perception of the independence of civil servants and that many would wish not to join such a union?
Mr Maude
I saw a report this morning suggesting that there was a plan, not yet divulged to the public, for the PCS to be swallowed up by Unite. Civil service political impartiality is an essential part of the way in which our system of government works. For the largest civil service union to be controlled by the same puppet-master and paymaster that controls Labour would be a matter—[Interruption]—of very considerable concern—
Mr Speaker
Order. When I say the Minister is finished, let it be clear. It is no good him sitting there shrugging. When I say he is finished, he is finished. It is important not to waste the time of the House. It is beneath the level of a Minister.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
Government Departments offer a range of check-off services to their employees, including deductions for membership fees, for private sporting clubs, for private clubs more generally and even for private medical schemes. What is it that makes the payments of trade union dues exceptional? Why would any employer want to withdraw this from its own employees?
Mr Maude
As the right hon. Gentleman, who is knowledgeable on this subject, knows, many employers have taken exactly this step. Many unions have sought to withdraw from check-off arrangements themselves, because they take the view that a modern union in a modern workplace should have a direct relationship with their members, not intermediated by the employer. Check-off dates from an era when many people did not have bank accounts and direct debit did not exist. It exists now, and many unions take the view, and indeed the PCS has said, that the easiest way to collect their dues is through direct debit.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Will the Minister join me in congratulating the TaxPayers Alliance on its important work which shows that £100 million of public money is wasted on facility time? Does he share my concern that a PCS-Unite merger would undermine our democracy and mean that the Labour party would be even more bought by the unions than it is today?
Mr Maude
I make the point again that the perception of political impartiality in the civil service is fundamental to our system of government. That should not be imperilled in any way. My hon. Friend is completely right to draw attention to the much wider scale of facility time and the cost borne by the taxpayer—money that would be better spent in the delivery of front-line public services on which vulnerable people depend. That is something that all public authorities should be looking at.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Is the Minister aware that all he needed to say today was quite simple: Tory Ministers are continuing their spite and vendetta against trade unions? This is nothing different from what has occurred previously.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
This statement is called “Trade Union Reform (Civil Service)”, so will the Minister correct himself and the record and confirm that none of the civil service unions is affiliated to the Labour party or pays towards it? Rolls-Royce, Tesco, Virgin Media, Odeon Cinemas, Jaguar Land Rover —some of our biggest and best British companies—work with trade unions, recognise trade unions, and offer check- off to trade union members and facility time to their representatives. Why are the Government not dealing with their staff and unions in the same decent, modern way?
Mr Maude
I support the use of trade union time, but it must be controlled and monitored, and it must not be abused. I also support the presence of trade unions in the workplace, and I personally have worked very closely with them. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and I spent 12 months in productive discussions with the TUC and public sector trade unions when we were considering public sector pension reform, and we made a number of changes to reflect the concerns of the unions that were prepared to engage with us. I need no lectures about the importance of engagement with the unions, but the arrangements should be controlled and modernised, and the right way for that to be done is the way that I have described.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I have seriously tried to understand the rationale for what the Minister has announced. It appears that the management were not controlling the check-off arrangements properly, because the unions would have paid the costs willingly, but those costs were not paid. It also appears that the management could have monitored the difference between facility time for activities and facility time for duties, but did not do so. That suggests a failure in senior management. As for attendance at conferences, it seems that trade unions will still be paid if they hold their annual conferences in Newcastle, Glasgow, Birmingham or Liverpool, because the Minister mentioned only seaside conferences. The truth is that this is nothing more than another attempt to find the bogeyman whom the Conservatives have tried to find for the last five years. They want another Arthur Scargill so that they can try to rattle a can in the next few weeks. That is what this is all about.
Mr Maude
Given that Opposition Members apparently do not think the statement should have been made, they are finding plenty to say about it. Indeed, we are having a good and productive debate. It is important for the issues to be debated, because they do matter.
As I said, I take my relationship with trade unions very seriously. I continue to chair the public services forum which was set up under the last Government. We engage with each other very fully, and I am happy to say that I have warm relationships with a number of trade union leaders.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am probably the only Member of Parliament who is a former branch secretary of the First Division Association, and I think that the Minister’s attempt to divide junior from senior officials is wholly misconceived. It reminds me of the time when Mrs Thatcher kicked the trade unions out of GCHQ.
Why has the Minister chosen this moment to crack down on check-off? Has he done so because the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast a 1 million reduction in the number of public servants, and he wants to weaken the unions before that happens?
Mr Maude
The hon. Lady’s mind is more elaborate than mine. We have looked at this in a perfectly sensible, straightforward way. We want trade unions in the civil service—and in this context I am talking only about the civil service—to engage in a sensible, modern fashion, and we want public money to be deployed in the delivery of public services rather than the delivery of trade union officials’ salaries.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The Minister said that Departments were entitled to recover the costs of check-off from the unions, and rattled off a list of Departments that were ending check-off. Have any of those Departments made any attempt to negotiate with the unions on the costs of check-off, or does the Minister simply want to get rid of check-off altogether?
Mr Maude
For many years, the civil service management code has obliged Departments to recover the costs of check-off from the unions, but only two have been doing so, namely the Ministry of Defence and HMRC. Check-off remains in place in a number of Departments, and the head of the civil service has very properly written to their permanent secretaries telling them that they should rectify the position.
UK Statistics Authority (2011 Census)
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The UK Statistics Authority has published the general report of the 2011 census.
The general report is the official, and comprehensive, account of the 2011 census in England and Wales. It reviews the entire census operation and provides a wealth of detail about how the census was carried out and what lessons have been learned.
It is aimed at both the experienced and occasional user of census data, but it is hoped the wider public may also find the report useful and informative.
This general report is being laid before both Houses of Parliament pursuant to the Census Act 1920.
[HCWS341]
Triennal Review of the Civil Service Commission
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Lord Wallace of Saltaire announced on 29 July 2014 that the Government had asked Sir Gerry Grimstone to lead a triennial review of the Civil Service Commission. I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.
The commission plays an important role providing assurance that selection to appointments in the civil service is on merit and hearing and determining appeals made under the civil service code.
The review concludes that the functions performed by the commission are still required and that it should be retained as an Executive non-departmental public body. The review also looked at whether its remit should be extended or amended to support the civil service in facing its future challenges. The report makes 31 recommendations. The Government welcome the review and thank Sir Gerry for his work. The Government will consider its recommendations carefully.
In the course of his review, Sir Gerry consulted with a wide range of stakeholders and ensured there was independent challenge. I would like to thank all contributors and Sir Gerry for his work on this review, and his useful report.
The full report of the triennial review of the Civil Service Commission — “A Better Civil Service”— can be found on gov.uk and copies have been placed in the Library of both Houses.
It can also available online at: http://www.parliament. uk/writtenstatements
[HCWS296]
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
2. What progress he has made on implementing his Department's transparency agenda.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
In January this year, the UK was ranked top of a list of 86 countries on the World Wide Web Foundation’s open data barometer for the second year running. In addition, last year the 2014 Global Open Data Index again ranked the UK No. 1 out of 97 countries. There are now 19,000 data sets published on data.gov.uk and our national information infrastructure sets the framework for how we manage hugely valuable open data.
Diana Johnson
I have a local issue to which I would like the Minister to respond. In Hull, 1,000 people applied for the first 14 jobs that Siemens recently advertised. Until 2013, MPs got constituency-based figures on the number of jobseekers going after each job vacancy. I would like to know why this was stopped under his Government. I have never had a clear explanation, and I do not think it is aiding transparency in this country.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Another aspect of the transparency agenda is showing how taxpayers’ money is being spent. Does the Minister agree that that is the best way to safeguard against the massive waste and wild spending we have seen in the past and to avoid ballooning deficits and flat-lining public sector productivity in the future?
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.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
3. What his policy is on promoting the formation of public sector mutuals.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The Government are committed to supporting the growth of public service mutuals, which deliver benefits to front-line staff, commissioners and service users. There are now more than 100 live mutuals delivering well over £1.5 billion of public services, and more than 35,000 staff have themselves taken the decision to join a mutual.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Minister for his answer, but with the flagship mutual, Hinchingbrooke hospital, in special measures, will the Minister say whose idea it was to write to all the foundation and NHS trusts asking them to be pathfinder mutuals, and how many people have replied?
Mr Maude
Mr Speaker, the
“failure of Circle at Hinchingbrooke hospital…where the company very nearly managed to remove an operating loss inherited from the public sector, was due to the failure of the NHS to deliver its side of the bargain”—
not my words, but the words of Tom Levitt, the former Labour MP for High Peak. Yes, a lot of NHS trusts have applied for the Department of Health and Cabinet Office mutual pathfinder programme, and all of that is progressing very satisfactorily. There are huge benefits for patients in this movement. We should all be concerned with that, not with an outworn, outdated ideology.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
May I say how sad I was to hear that my right hon. Friend would be standing down at the next election? Singlehandedly, he has done more than anyone to reform the home civil service. What companies has he been in contact with to advise him on how public service mutuals might work better?
Mr Maude
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind remarks. This will be the second time I have left the House of Commons—the first time was not entirely consensual—and I shall be sorry to leave, although I think I have one more outing this time before the House dissolves.
Many businesses in the private sector operate as mutuals—John Lewis prominent among them—and they have been generous in their support for this programme because they think that employee ownership and control also benefit service users, which should be our overriding concern.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Government Digital Service.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The Washington Post hailed the UK as
“setting the gold standard of digital government”,
and the Obama Administration have created a digital service modelled on our own. The Australian Government announced the same in January this year. The New Zealand Government have taken the source code from gov.uk and used it for their own online presence. Last October, we celebrated the 1 billionth visit to gov.uk.
Stephen Mosley
The Government Digital Service has been one of the unsung success stories of the Government, and it has been introduced smoothly and successfully. There have been none of the mess-ups that occurred on previous IT projects, which has meant that it has not had the public attention it deserves. What further services does the Minister foresee digitising to save taxpayers’ money and improve services for the public?
Mr Maude
We have already saved a great deal of money and improved services for citizens, and we are beginning to roll out much better technology in government, so that civil servants are helped by the technology they have rather than hindered by it. There is much more to do. We inherited some extremely expensive, cumbersome and unwieldy IT contracts, and for one of them the Department had to pay £30,000 to change one word on a website. That is not acceptable; it is no way to treat taxpayers’ money; and it is going to change.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
The Government Digital Service is a very talented group within the Cabinet Office and is internationally recognised, so it is unfortunate that the Minister has prevented the group from working with local government. On Monday, the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy said that he agreed with me and Labour’s independent digital government review that this expertise should not be barred from working with local authorities. Will the Minister now concede that GDS should be allowed and encouraged to work more closely with councils, so that we have digital services that work for everyone—locally and nationally?
Mr Maude
The hon. Lady is completely right to flag up the huge scope for improvement in online services in local government. GDS’s focus has had to be on central Government, but in the document on efficiency and reform that we published at the time of the autumn statement, we flagged up that we expect this to be available across the wider public sector. The focus for the time being has to be on finishing the job in central Government, but helping to build an equivalent to support local government is a very high priority for us.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
5. What change there has been in the proportion of Government procurement made through small businesses and the voluntary sector since May 2010.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The central Government’s direct spend with small businesses increased from 6.5% in 2009-10 to 10.5% in 2012-13, and small and medium-sized enterprises have benefited from a further 9.4% of indirect spend through the supply chain in that same year. I shall be publishing figures for 2013-14 shortly. We have moved a long way towards our ambition and aspiration that a quarter of Government procurement should be with SMEs.
Mr Maude
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has raised this point about supporting businesses in the Isle of Wight; he has been a huge and doughty champion of businesses in his constituency. We have made public procurement more transparent and accessible. We have published tenders and contracts through the contracts finder website—and we shall be launching a much-improved version of that very soon. We have simplified how procurement takes place to take away some of the bureaucracy that looked like it was designed to stop small businesses competing for, and winning, business. There is much more we can and will do.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
12. Reading through the UK Statistics Authority booklet, I am struck by the number of times that the Government have been rebuked for giving false information in their statements. The Prime Minister is twice rebuked for giving the wrong facts about the debt, saying that it is falling when it has in fact been rising. Could the Cabinet Office get together with the UK Statistics Authority and agree to deal with facts, rather than fiction, in Government statements for the next three months?
Mr Speaker
Order. The question is about Government procurement, small businesses and the voluntary sector.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
6. What system is used for identifying potential candidates for public appointments.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
As was the case under the last Government, appointments to public bodies are made on merit by Ministers after a fair and open selection process regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. We have taken unprecedented steps to open up the public appointments process to new talent, slimming down the application process, placing an emphasis on ability rather than prior experience, and increasing awareness. In the first six months of the current financial year, 44% of new public appointments made by Whitehall Departments were women, compared with about a third under the last Government.
Mr Sheerman
The Minister knows that, following the fiasco of the Home Secretary’s attempt to appoint a chairman of the inquiry into child abuse allegations, there is a sense that there is a black book or a secret list, dominated by the metropolitan elite. They are all from London, they all know each other, and they all went to school together. When will the Government open up the secret list, and let us know how people get on it?
Mr Maude
As I have said, we have moved significantly towards our aim of ensuring that 50% of public appointments are of women. I recently hosted events organised in Birmingham and Leeds to encourage people from outside London to express interest and apply for such roles, and I am delighted to say that there was a huge amount of interest. We will continue down that path. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. A great many very noisy private conversations are taking place in the Chamber. We should have a bit of order, not least so that we can hear the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, Mr Bernard Jenkin.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
My responsibilities are for efficiency and reform, civil service issues, public sector industrial relations strategy, Government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber-security.
Debbie Abrahams
Today’s National Audit Office report on late payment says that the Government’s policy to pay invoices more quickly risks boosting the working capital of the main contractors rather than benefiting small businesses down the supply chain. Why then did the Government on three separate occasions refuse to adopt amendments I tabled ensuring that small businesses all the way down the supply chain would have been paid on time?
Mr Maude
We have gone infinitely further than any previous Government ever did to ensure that payment is speeded up through the creation of project bank accounts and inserting into main suppliers’ contract terms a requirement that they pay quickly as well, because the concern is a very real one. Small businesses can end up being starved of cash and it is not acceptable, so we are driving much better practice through these legal obligations. The situation is better than it was, but there is much more still to do.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
T2. May I congratulate and thank my right hon. Friend on having secured a 4.3% increase in public service productivity in the first three years of his watch, by contrast with the zero growth over the previous 13 years? What further measures does he plan to take to increase public sector productivity?
Mr Maude
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. There is much more to do. According to the Office for National Statistics, public sector productivity remained flat throughout the Labour years and it has started to increase, but there is much more that we need to do. We have said further savings and reductions in the cost of delivering public services can be made while the quality of the service increases. We have shown over this period that we can do more for less, but we are going to need to continue with redoubled effort in the future.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Given his laudable aims to improve access to Government contracts for small business, is the right hon. Gentleman as disappointed as I am about revelations in The Independent today that Capita faces allegations of using a major Government contract to short-change small companies, forcing many out of business? He described this contract as a model of how to open up the public sector, yet it has catastrophically failed. Given his championing of the Maude awards for failure, will this contract be a winner of such an award, and what lessons has he learned from this contract?
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
T3. The framework agreement for public procurement of infrastructure in the south-west provides that the bidder that gets closest to the average tender price, not the cheapest, gets the job. Will my right hon. Friend look into this matter, because it seems to me that this is wasting taxpayers’ money?
Mr Maude
I am not familiar with the precise issue my hon. Friend raises, but it sounds very odd to me, and I will investigate it. Of course everyone who spends public money procuring services, goods or infrastructure needs to ensure the money is spent as well as it possibly can be, and I will look urgently at the case my hon. Friend raises.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
T4. The Geoffrey Dickens dossier was distributed across the Central Office of Information in the early ’80s, with one special archive suddenly emerging. How can we be certain there is not another special archive in the Cabinet Office that needs to be handed over to the police immediately?
Mr Maude
The Central Office of Information had nothing to do with any of this. That is a completely different, and now defunct, organisation. I am ensuring that officials in my Department are going through all the files thoroughly to make sure that they are organised, that they know what is in them, and that any files that are at all relevant are submitted immediately to all of the inquiries that are under way. There is no excuse whatsoever for these files not being surfaced.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
T5. Will the Minister join me in praising the vibrant charity and social enterprise sector in west Norfolk for all its superb work, especially the two charities chosen by this year’s mayor, Barry Ayres, namely the Prince’s Trust of King’s Lynn and the west Norfolk Kandoo club?