Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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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?
Government Files
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement today regarding the inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales.
The Cabinet Office will support the inquiry and will work with the Home Office to ensure that Departments provide the inquiry with all relevant information.
As the House is aware, the Cabinet Office last week released to The National Archives a file containing information about a former United Kingdom High Commissioner to Canada, Sir Peter Hayman. This file is now public. This file should have been submitted to the review by Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC. I regret that the file was missed in error and was not submitted at the time. However, a similar set of papers was held in the Home Office and seen by Wanless and Whittam. The complete and unredacted Cabinet Office file will be made available to Wanless and Whittam if they wish to see it, and the inquiry. However Wanless has already confirmed that the file would not have changed the conclusions of his review.
As a result of the discovery of the Sir Peter Hayman file, the Cabinet Office has conducted additional searches of its extensive papers and files. Officials have identified four additional relevant files, one of which was marked for destruction pending further checks by the Cabinet Office and The National Archives. The Cabinet Office already has in place a process for reviewing its files scheduled for destruction. I am ensuring that relevant departments have a similar process in place. These files are being shared with the inquiry, the Hart inquiry, the relevant departments, and the Metropolitan Police Service. All the complete and unredacted files will be made available to Wanless and Whittam if they wish to see them.
The files were found in a separate Cabinet Office archive of sensitive, historic papers. This archive, colloquially known as the Cabinet Secretaries’ file, was closed in 2007. It is largely uncatalogued and unregistered; a programme to review it has been underway since last year but remains in progress. Officials assure me that the available titles have now been searched and more detailed searches are ongoing. My officials will work with the inquiry to ensure it has the assurance it requires that all papers held by the Cabinet Office have been fully examined and that relevant papers are correctly identified and disclosed.
[HCWS251]
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
1. What plans he has to reduce the number of London-based civil servants; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
As part of our long-term economic plan to save taxpayers money and to pay off the deficit, this Government have reduced the size of the civil service like for like by 21%—that is after adjusting for machinery of government changes. That has increased productivity and saved the taxpayers £2.4 billion last year alone compared with spending in 2009-10. The reduction includes a substantial cut in the number of London-based civil servants.
Mr Maude
There is a lot of scope for us to get out of properties that we do not need and we have done that already. We have released a huge amount of property into the private sector where it can be used for the purpose of creating jobs, and there is more that we can and will do in that respect.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that an outstanding example of civil service dispersal is the Department for International Development in East Kilbride. As long as Scotland remains in the UK, which I believe it will for a very long time, can such an example be emulated?
Mr Maude
I completely share the right hon. Gentleman’s hope about the United Kingdom, and wish to add my thanks and congratulations to the civil servants at DFID who do such a fantastic job in Scotland. There is scope for civil servants to work in many places other than central London and we will continue to pursue that.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Although transferring civil servants to other locations and downsizing are necessary, do they not make the whole business of managing the personnel in the civil service much more difficult? Will my right hon. Friend give full backing to the new chief executive of the civil service to strengthen the data held by the Cabinet Office on the skills and capabilities among civil servants so that we do not disrupt the training and career paths of the people on whom we depend?
Mr Maude
As my hon. Friend well knows, the quality of data in central Government that we inherited was not good. It is getting better, but there is much more that needs to be done. The new chief executive of the civil service, who has got off to a terrific start, has a lot of experience in the management of big, complex dispersed organisations from his business background and I am sure that he will want to discuss that further with my hon. Friend.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Minister not aware that there is a great deal of disillusionment in the civil service? Is it not our job in this House to support really good people with the highest level of skills coming into the civil service so that they are happy and motivated in their job? What will he do about morale in the civil service?
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.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
2. What progress his Department has made on releasing outstanding documents relating to the miners dispute in 1984-85.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The documents, other than sensitive or personal papers, were released in the usual way under the law that was passed by the previous Government.
Ian Lavery
What have this Government got to hide with regard to the miners strike, because only 30 out of 500 digitised documents relating to the strike were released last week? There was no mention of Orgreave, but there was an admission that the Government tapped National Union of Mineworkers members’ phones. When will the documents that have not been released be released, and will they be released unredacted?
Mr Maude
I really have nothing to add to what I have already said and what has been said on previous occasions. The same considerations were applied to these papers as apply to the release of Government papers generally, which means that those that are personal or sensitive are not released in the normal time scales. I know that there are very strong feelings about this. I was a Member of Parliament for a coal mining constituency during the mining strike, and the mining community was deeply divided during that period. I am well aware of the sensitivities of that period.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend note that the appetite for everything to be disclosed is shared by some Government Members, most particularly because I can recall the unlawful killing of the taxi driver David Wilkie and the recent revelations from the former right hon. Member for Pontypridd that following the event a number of papers at the NUM offices in south Wales were deliberately burnt and destroyed?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I am a strong supporter of transparency and am proud of what this Government have done to make us the most transparent Government in the world. There is a concern, and that was a very bitter period in our nation’s life, but the normal considerations about the protection of personal papers must be followed in this case as in others.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Is not the whole subject of these papers embarrassing to the Government and to the Minister? At the beginning we argued that 75 pits were to be closed, and the Thatcher Government said at the time that there were only 20. They lied continually in the House of Commons, repeating that figure, and then the Cabinet papers revealed that it was 75 after all and that the miners had been right. He is embarrassed to reveal other papers simply because that Government decided to attack the NUM and Britain’s manufacturing base, and that has been carried on by the Tories ever since.
Mr Maude
I think that the hon. Gentleman’s case would be stronger if at that time he had made the case for the National Union of Mineworkers to have a proper ballot of all its members so that they could decide whether they wanted to be brought out on strike, rather than being bullied and intimidated into it.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I was elected in the middle of the miners strike in 1984 and know exactly what happened: we were lied to by those in authority. They said that our pit, Tower colliery, was uneconomic. We kept it going because the miners put their own money into it for another 10 years. There are lots of things that have not yet been revealed publicly, and I think that it is high time the truth came out.
Mr Maude
As I say, the papers have been released, subject to the normal considerations about protecting sensitive and personal documents. Again, I do not recollect—the right hon. Lady and I were elected on the same day and were Back-Bench Members of Parliament during that period—hearing her voice being raised to support a proper ballot of mineworkers on whether they wanted to go on strike at all.
Mr Jim Hood (Lanark and Hamilton East) (Lab)
Why have not all the papers and memos between the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, and the chief constables and magistrates courts been published?
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policies of the findings of the report from the National Audit Office entitled “Follow-up: grants to the Big Society Network and the Society Network Foundation”, HC 840.
Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of the use of trade union facility time by civil servants; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
At the time of the last general election there was no proper monitoring of trade union facility time in government. We now have controls in place that have saved taxpayers £25 million in the last rolling year to date, and have reduced the number of taxpayer-funded full-time union officials in central Government from 200 in May 2010 to fewer than 10 now.
Mr Robathan
I am sure everybody in the House believes that employees in whatever sector should be given both the right and the opportunity to be properly represented with their employers, be it by trades unions or others, but the majority of my constituents and, I suspect, the majority of people in this country would still be quite shocked and unhappy to discover that we are still funding public servants, who should be working for the public service, to support trade union activity that has nothing whatever to do with what they are paid for. Will my right hon. Friend bear down on the remaining members given facility time in the public service?
Mr Maude
As I say, the amount of facility time has been reduced significantly. There is a perfectly proper use of facility time for trade union duties in resolving grievances and dealing with disputes locally and effectively, and we support that, but there was also a huge amount of unmonitored and out-of-control, paid-for activity supporting trade unions, including in many cases paying for civil servants to attend seaside conferences of trade unions at the taxpayers’ expense, and that seemed to us to be wrong.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
When he carried out an assessment, did the Minister consider speaking to Opposition Members who have experience of being employed under facility time arrangements, where we spent the vast majority of our time helping management to manage the service we were working in, particularly when management was faced with cuts, redundancies and redeployment forced on it by central Government?
Mr Maude
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that the proper use of a trade union presence and the use of facility time on trade union duties, as defined by law, can be very beneficial, and we support it, but what was going on went way, way beyond that. It was completely out of control, and it was quite right that we should bear down on it by first monitoring it and then reducing it. We have now reduced the amount of money spent on it to less than 0.1% of the pay bill in the civil service, and that was quite right.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
5. What future plans he has for the National Citizen Service in Colne Valley.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
6. What future plans he has to achieve efficiency and reform savings by digitising Government services.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
As part of our long-term economic plan, we are moving a first wave of 25 public services online. Our future plans are to secure further savings by digitising more public services and moving to a “Government as a platform” model, building common digital infrastructure for services that improves the user experience and saves money by building common services only once.
Stephen Metcalfe
How are the Government working with the private sector and voluntary sector in Thurrock and Basildon to ensure that my constituents have the relevant training to be able to access these services?
Mr Maude
Britain already has a high level of digital inclusion, and it is rising, but we are determined to go further and get more people online. We are working closely with almost 70 organisations from the private and voluntary sectors that are signed up to our digital inclusion charter. I have no details of exactly what is going on in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but I would happily share them with him.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Digitising public services creates vast amounts of data that can be used further to improve services and accountability, transforming the relationship between citizens and Government—a subject dear to your heart, Mr Speaker. However, each Government Department has a different approach to handling data, and there is total chaos among officials and Ministers about what is allowed, with, consequently, deep distrust among the public. In government, we will instigate a review to set out a coherent and ethical approach to data sharing. Will the Minister join us in committing to the principle that people own their own data and it is for them to say what happens to it?
Mr Maude
I am happy to welcome the hon. Lady to the movement for open data. Under the coalition, the UK Government have become the world leader in open data. There is more that can be done with sharing data, but it is very sensitive and difficult. We are determined not to make the mistake that her party made in government when it had a train wreck in trying to move data sharing too fast. We have a lot of ongoing work on this, and I would be very happy to share the thinking with her.
Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
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.
Douglas Carswell
The Minister for the Cabinet Office stated in October 2010 that public bodies would be made more meaningfully accountable. Specifically, what new mechanisms has he put in place to make public bodies more meaningfully accountable to this House and, indeed, to the public?
Mr Maude
Our concern with public body reform has always been to ensure that accountability is improved. A number of functions have been brought within Government to make them directly accountable to this House through Ministers. A number of other activities have been discontinued completely. The number of public bodies has been reduced by about a third. When we came into office, there were no data about the actual number of public bodies. In addition to increasing accountability, we have also saved the taxpayer very considerable amounts of money.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
T3. Given the recent cyber-attacks on the United States, what strategies are the Department and the Government putting in place to protect Britain and Britain’s corporations from cyber-terrorism?
Mr Maude
This is a very real and live concern. Our cyber-security strategy—I reported to the House on its third year of operation in the last month of the year—has been backed with £860 million of new money. We take this very seriously, but much more will need to be done because the threats are moving on very quickly, as well as the need for the defences.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
In February 2010, when he was shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Gentleman wrote to the Cabinet Secretary to complain that in asking Treasury officials to cost Conservative party policy, Labour had
“compromised the impartiality of the Civil Service and used the taxpayer funded service for political attacks.”
What discussions has he had with the Chancellor about special advisers using civil servants to propagate political smears and fiction this week, and has he redrafted his letter to the Cabinet Secretary?
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
T4. Does my hon. Friend agree with Lord Winston that Labour’s mansion tax would have a devastating impact on the ability of charities to raise money from legacy giving?
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
T2. Earlier in this Parliament, Ministers flirted with the possibility of a politicised senior civil service. That danger seems to have receded, but will the Minister now reaffirm a Government commitment to the historic principle of political impartiality in the civil service, specifically in matters relating to the European Union?
Mr Speaker
That is a commentary on the amount of noise. Let us have a bit of order for Mr Adam Holloway.
Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
T5. Will the Minister update us on the timing of the publication of the Chilcot report?
Mr Maude
I cannot really add to what Sir John Chilcot has said. That independent inquiry is under the control of the inquiry members. I can say that we have responded to every request for extra resources; none has been turned down. I would just add that if the previous Government had launched the inquiry at the time it was requested, it could have been finished and could have reported long ago.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T8. In the debate on food banks just before Christmas, the Minister for Civil Society kept saying that the reasons for food bank use were complex and overlapping. He would not go beyond that. Will he join me in condemning the Tory councillor who said that the only people who use food banks are those with drug, alcohol and mental health problems, and will he acknowledge that the top two reasons for food bank use are due to the failings of this Government’s welfare system?
European Explanatory Memoranda
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The Cabinet Office is responsible for the Government’s participation in European negotiations on EU procurement matters. It is with regret that explanatory memoranda on 3 EU proposals submitted for scrutiny by Parliament which were the responsibility of my Department were submitted late, with the result that decisions were taken on the proposals in the Council of Ministers before the UK’s parliamentary scrutiny process could be completed. The proposals were:
EU Council document 12859/14; COM(2014)539: Proposal for a council decision establishing the position to be taken by the European Union within the Committee on Government procurement on the withdrawal of the Union objections to the delisting of three entities from Japan’s Annex 3 to Appendix I to the agreement on Government procurement. The proposal was adopted in the Council of Ministers on 29 October 2014.
EU Council document 13257/14; COM(2014)573: Proposal for a Council decision establishing the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union within the Committee on Government procurement on the accession of Montenegro to the agreement on Government procurement. The proposal was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 13 October.
EU Council document 13281/14; COM(2014)574: Proposal for a Council Decision establishing the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union within the Committee on Government procurement on the accession of New Zealand to the agreement on Government procurement. The proposal was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 13 October.
The Government were supportive of all three proposals through negotiations in Brussels.
The Cabinet Office has addressed the internal procedural failings which led to these overrides to ensure that similar failures do not happen again. These include giving an official in the Cabinet Office Ministerial team responsibility for managing EU scrutiny business on which the Cabinet Office leads. A training workshop will also be held to ensure the scrutiny process is properly understood across all Cabinet Office policy units that deal with EU business and that the expectations of Cabinet Office Ministers is also reinforced.
Ministerial and Civil Service Pension
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Today a new pension scheme for Ministers is being laid and is available in the Libraries of both Houses. The scheme will apply to all Ministers after the general election in 2015.
The scheme is consistent with the principles and design parameters of other new public service pension schemes which will apply to Members from April 2015—aside from older Members with transitional protection.
The key features of the scheme are:
An accrual rate of 1.775% (about 1/56)
Normal pension age linked to state pension age
A Member contribution rate of 11.1 %
Revaluation of accrued benefits in line with prices
There are also amendment schemes being laid for the current ministerial and civil service pension schemes to cover protection of survivor benefits.
The amendments do not make any provision in relation to an accrued right which puts—or might put—a person in a worse position than the person would have been in apart from the provision.
The details of the new scheme have been laid in the Libraries of both Houses, along with a copy of the response to the consultations from the chairman of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund Trustees.
It is also available online at: http://www.parliament.uk/writtenstatements
Cyber Security Strategy
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
In November 2011 we published the UK Cyber Security strategy and each year since then I have presented an annual report to Parliament on progress against the strategy’s objectives. I am pleased to present the third of these reports to both Houses today alongside this statement.
The Cyber Security strategy set out the Government’s vision of “a vibrant, resilient and secure cyberspace” and set out four objectives:
making the UK one of the most secure places in the world to do business in cyberspace
making the UK more resilient to cyber attack and better able to protect our interests in cyberspace
helping shape an open, vibrant and stable cyberspace that supports open societies
building the UK’s cyber security knowledge, skills and capability.
To support the strategy we put in place a national cyber security programme backed by £860 million of investment to 2016. Through the programme the Government are working to:
further deepen our national sovereign capability to detect and defeat high-end threats;
ensure law enforcement has the skills and capabilities needed to tackle cyber crime and maintain the confidence needed to do business on the Internet;
ensure critical UK systems and networks are robust and resilient;
improve cyber awareness and risk management among UK business;
ensure members of the public know what they can do to protect themselves, and are demanding good cyber security in the products and services they consume;
bolster cyber security research and education, so we have the knowledge and expertise to keep pace with this fast-moving issue into the medium term; and
work with international partners to bear down on havens for cybercrime and build capacity, and to help shape international dialogue to promote an open, secure and vibrant cyberspace.
We have made significant strides towards all these goals this year and throughout the course of the programme’s existence. The long-term economic plan of this Government continues to make the UK one of the most secure places globally for cyber innovation and commerce. Notable highlights from this year include the inauguration of the new CERT-UK—computer emergency response team—which co-ordinates our national response to significant cyber incidents. CERT-UK has played a significant role already in protecting the Commonwealth games and the NATO summit in Wales from cyber threats. The National Cyber Crime Unit has led global law enforcement operations in conjunction with the FBI and other counterparts to target cyber criminals. We have also introduced a new scheme, Cyber Essentials, which sets a basic standard for cyber security for all organisations in the UK. Much of this work is done in partnership with business and the academic community and we are grateful to our partners for their co-operation and efforts, as it is clear that Government cannot deliver these goals on their own.
I refer hon. Members to the accompanying “Report on Progress and Forward Plans-December 2014” for details of achievements across all the objectives in the UK Cyber Security strategy and commend this to both Houses.
The report can be viewed online at: http://www. parliament.uk/writtenstatements.
Cabinet Committees List
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Today I am publishing an updated Cabinet Committees list. I have placed a copy of the new list in the Libraries of both Houses.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
1. What recent progress the Government Digital Service has made on moving public services online.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
We have designed and created the award-winning and world-leading gov.uk, the central web domain for Government information. We are redesigning 25 major Government services to make them simpler, clearer and faster to use. That will not only provide savings to the taxpayer, but improve delivery for the public, focused on user need, not Government convenience.
Sheryll Murray
What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to make sure that individuals who are not digitised, many of whom live in rural constituencies such as mine, are not disadvantaged if they cannot access digitised public services or can do so only at low speeds?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes an important point. When, on the recommendation of Baroness Lane-Fox, we adopted the digital-by-default approach—if it can be done online, it should be done only online—we stressed that there must be an assisted digital alternative for those who are not online, and we will ensure that that is the case.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
May I congratulate the Minister on much of the innovative work he has done in the digital area, thanks to Martha Lane Fox, the Cross-Bench Member of the House of Lords? Will he, however, take on board the fact that older people in this country find it very difficult to make the transition from the traditional to a digital way of communicating with the Government?
Mr Maude
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his compliment. We are trying to make a lot of progress, and the British Government are now regarded as world leading, after having been, frankly, a byword for failure in Government IT. Other Governments are now using the source code for gov.uk, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Baroness Lane-Fox leads the Go ON UK charity, which is dedicated to getting more people online, which is the key purpose. When we provide the assisted digital option, we ideally want to frame contracts so that they incentivise the provider not just to provide a service, but to use it to help individuals to get online so that their lives are enriched more widely.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
In answer to the very good question from my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), the Minister responded that those, like many in my constituency, who have no access to computers and are not online will be given something called an “assisted digital alternative”. Will he perhaps tell us what that is?
Mr Maude
It can take many forms, but the point is that the service is provided or the transaction is conducted digitally—it is conducted online—although not necessarily by the citizen themselves. For example, it could be done in a library, where someone sits alongside the citizen to help them to input data or conduct the transaction, or it could be done on the telephone, with someone on the other end to put data into the web service. There are a lot of different ways of providing it, and they will be fashioned around the needs of the user, not the convenience of the Government.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
In the spring, the Minister announced his digital inclusion strategy to exclude 5 million people. In the summer, he told pensioners to get online or lose access to Government services. In the autumn, farmers found that they needed a credit reference from Experian to apply for common agricultural policy grants. The list of people he is excluding grows day by day. Next week, a report for the Labour party will highlight the impact of his policies on the most vulnerable, and how a Labour Government will change that. How many more people does he intend to exclude from public services before he is voted out of office?
Mr Maude
I invite the hon. Lady to dream on, on that front. Her party is ill-equipped to criticise us. The last Labour Government’s definition of an online service was enabling people to download a form from the web, print it off, fill it in by hand and send it off by post. They regarded that as an online transaction—they were not quite in the modern world. We are glad that she is catching up, but she still has a long way to go.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
2. When he next plans to meet the Charity Commission to discuss the operation of legislation relating to charities.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
4. What recent steps he has taken to address barriers to small and medium-sized enterprises participating in Government procurement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Central Government spend with SMEs increased from £3 billion in 2009-10 to £4.5 billion in 2012-13. They benefited from a further £4 billion in indirect spend through the supply chain, so we are on track to deliver our ambition that 25% of Government’s direct and indirect spend should be with SMEs. In addition, we are implementing further changes to procurement rules that will benefit small businesses.
Yasmin Qureshi
The majority of local authorities are still not using the Government’s Contracts Finder, resulting in local SMEs losing out on opportunities. What are Ministers doing to ensure that more local authorities submit their procurement opportunities to the website?
Mr Maude
I draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the fact that a new and greatly improved version of Contracts Finder will be launched early in the new year. It is a massive opportunity for local authorities to procure better and cheaper, but also to be able to support local businesses. There are now more than 1,000 suppliers on our G-Cloud framework, 87% of which are SMEs, a number of them based in Bolton. They are all now able to provide services directly to public sector purchasers, which helps growth and jobs as well as providing better value for the taxpayer.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
What is being done to encourage innovative SMEs to get in on public procurement, and will the Minister update the House on the effectiveness of the mystery shopper tool?
Mr Maude
We have enabled suppliers who suspect that a procurement is being done in the old-fashioned way that we inherited to raise it directly with my officials in the Cabinet Office, who can then intervene with the public sector procurer-commissioner to ensure that it is done in the modern way, which does not exclude small businesses from supplying to government in the way that was routinely the case in the past. We have made a huge amount of progress, but we still have a long way to go.
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
5. What his policy is on the deduction of trade union subscriptions from payroll in the civil service.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The policy is delegated to individual Departments.
Ann McKechin
I am interested in the Minister’s response because I understand that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been writing e-mails and letters to other Secretaries of State, asking them not to write off. Will the Minister confirm whether that is correct, and will he make clear all correspondence between him and other Liberal Democrat Ministers concerning their opposition to this Tory attack plan on worker representation?
Mr Maude
I can do no better than quote a member of the Public and Commercial Services Union—she is just identified as June—who said that direct debit is
“the easiest way of paying my union subs. You know then that it’s going to get paid because you’re not dependent on your employer taking it from your wages. I think it’s better.”
I agree with June.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the relationship between trade unions and their members ought to be direct and not intermediated by the civil service?
Mr Maude
As the PCS said in the document from which I quoted, check-off is an archaic way of operating that pre-dates the existence of bank accounts and direct debits. Most civil service unions use direct debits, not check-off, because they think that is the modern, direct way for an organisation to have a relationship with its members.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Department for Work and Pensions estimated that the cost of ending check-off across Departments was £1 million. The Minister denies that, so will he tell the House exactly how much it will cost to implement what is a political attack by the Conservative party, rather than a policy worthy of Government?
Mr Maude
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point and she is completely correct to say that an official produced the figure of £1 million. However, when asked for the workings and calculations that underpinned that number they were unable to produce them, and it turned out to be a completely fictional number. The correct calculation of the cost is more likely to be a negative number and a saving to the taxpayer, as well as being a measure that enables the PCS to do what its members now prefer and have a direct relationship with them.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
The Paymaster General has reiterated his support for getting rid of check-off, even though the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has written to Departments saying that there could be legal costs associated with that. A leaked HMRC memo talks about marginalising the unions, which could lead to industrial action among civil service unions. Does that show that Ministers are playing irresponsible party politics with the trade unions, and that the right hon. Gentleman should abandon his plans to get rid of check-off?
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (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 relation strategy, Government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber-security.
Mr Donohoe
The right hon. Gentleman is also responsible for the list of Ministers’ interests, and it is some time since that was done—I wonder when it will be. I am interested to know whether his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is still a honorary member of the Irvine Burns club, and whether the Minister still lists the Blind Trust as part of his financial interests, and whether we can see where we are going on this subject.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
T3. My constituents Callum Brogan and Parvathi Thara have been selected as National Citizen Service leaders for 2014-15, and have told me how much the NCS means to them. Will my hon. Friend tell me his future plans for the NCS?
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is good to see the Deputy Prime Minister this morning talking up family-friendly working, but what is the right hon. Gentleman doing to ensure best practice on family friendly across the civil service, in particular on access to high-quality and high-level part-time and flexible opportunities? Is it not about time that the Government showed leadership, instead of lecturing others on what they are not doing?
Mr Maude
I warmly welcome the hon. Lady to her post. I have slightly lost count, but on my reckoning she is the fifth incumbent of the shadow post and I am sure the best. I look forward to a warm relationship with her over the coming period.
On the hon. Lady’s valid point about the need for the Government to exercise leadership in providing family-friendly opportunities for flexible working, I very much agree that we should do that, and we are already doing that. We are providing more opportunities and we think there are significant productivity improvements in enabling people to work more flexibly. However, it is always to be stressed that it is not an entitlement; it has to be according to the needs of the business.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
T5. What assessment has the Minister made of Labour’s proposals for a mansion tax on legacy giving, which is so appreciated by our charities?
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
T2. Several Ministers, including, it has to be said, the Prime Minister, fail to handle data with a certain amount of precision. Indeed, two weeks ago the Prime Minister told the House that there were 1,000 extra GPs when in actual fact there are 36 fewer. Will the Minister, who is responsible for consistency and co-ordination across government, clamp down on these bad practices and perhaps help the Prime Minister to correct the record today?
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
T8. Like the Minister I, too, have seen at first hand the benefits of the National Citizen Service and believe that every young person would benefit from taking part in the programme. Will he tell the House how he intends to increase both participation and the availability of the programme across the whole UK?
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I have previously praised the important role parish councillors play during national emergencies, as they did in my constituency during the flooding last year, but the picture nationally remains patchy in terms of parish councils with emergency plans in place. May I urge the Minister, ahead of this winter, to push again to ensure that parish councils take up their responsibility for emergency planning?
Ministerial Responsibilities
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The new “List of Ministerial Responsibilities” has been published today. Copies have been placed in the Vote Office and the Libraries of both Houses. Copies will also be sent to each hon. Member’s office in this House.
The list can also be accessed on the Cabinet Office website at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-ministers-and-responsibilities
Public Bodies Reform Programme
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
In May 2010, the Government committed to review public bodies, with the aim of increasing accountability for actions carried out on behalf of the state. Nearly four years on, I am pleased that the public bodies reform programme has made excellent progress in the biggest reform of the public bodies in a generation. Earlier this year the National Audit Office commended this progress and
“major simplification of the public bodies landscape”.
Today I am placing in the Library of the House an update setting out progress. It is the first comprehensive update since the Public Bodies Act received Royal Assent in 2011. The achievement now stands at over 95% of planned abolitions and mergers completed.
The public bodies reform programmes’ successes include:
Reducing the number of public bodies by over 285—by abolishing more than 185 and merging over 165 bodies into fewer than 70.
Improved accountability through bringing the functions of over 75 bodies closer to democratically elected representatives.
Increased funding from alternative sources and volunteering by moving some organisations outside the public sector under innovative delivery models.
Achieving cumulative administrative spend reductions as at March 2014 of £2.0 billion since 2010.
The programme is now on track to exceed cumulative spend reductions of £2.6 billion by the end of March 2015.
Full details of the reforms are available at https://www. gov.uk/public-bodies-reform.
Today the Cabinet Office is publishing “Public Bodies 2014”—detailing the broad range of public bodies sponsored by the UK Government.
The “Public Bodies” annual report was first published by the Cabinet Office in 1980. Initially it reported on the size, expenditure and membership of non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs), but since 2010 it has been expanded. Today it is a single transparent source of top-level data on all NDPBs, Executive agencies and non-ministerial departments. “Public Bodies 2014” also contains an annual update of the progress in rationalising the public bodies landscape, the savings made and the legacy delivered by the work on the sponsorship and triennial review programme, which will continue reform.
“Public Bodies 2014” will be an online publication, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ public-bodies-2014, and the data set will be updated quarterly where applicable.
Continuing reform
We have delivered our promise. The landscape is now smaller, more accountable and efficient, with reduced administrative costs, ensuring better value for money to the public. This remarkable achievement is thanks in no small part to the committed public servants who have embraced the spirit of reform. We will continue to work in partnership with the chairs and chief executives of public bodies to build on these achievements, and improve accountability, embracing innovation and, most importantly of all, raising the quality of services. This is efficiency and reform at its best—not just cutting costs, but actually finding new and better ways of providing services that people can rely on.
Triennial reviews provide regular, rigorous review of the form and function of public bodies to guarantee that NDPBs exist for a clear purpose, deliver the services their users want, maximise value for money for the taxpayer and do not outlive their useful purpose. The Cabinet Office and Departments have worked together to apply lessons from the first phase of the triennial review programme, firmly embed good practice for the next phase and build the civil service’s capacity for good governance of the landscape of arm’s length bodies.
To ensure that Departments improve the way they sponsor public bodies in the long term a sponsorship specialism has been established this year for over 500 officials across Government. Independent analysis of the public bodies reform programme undertaken by academic experts at the universities of Birmingham and Sheffield demonstrate that a step change has been achieved in Government capacity to undertake public bodies’ sponsorship, but we will continue to work to improve this.
We are also pressing forward with a review of the classification system for public bodies in order to ensure that it is fit for purpose.