Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

That is a tempting question, but actually we have achieved a huge amount. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who has worked closely with me and my officials on driving through this programme. It is hard to see how we could have done much more in that context.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. Does the Minister agree that one of the great failures of this Government has been their inability to check the quality of private companies engaged to deliver our people’s public services? Has that not been one of the fatal policy weaknesses of this Government?

[Mr Maude]

We have improved the quality of the commercial directors and teams across Government so that we can monitor much better what is done than was the case under the hon. Gentleman’s Government, and I announced yesterday some principles for transparency that will take this process yet further. It is much better than it was, but there is still a lot to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman made a very interesting point, but I am finding it hard to relate it to the question under consideration.

[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.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 12th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I absolutely understand the point that my right hon. Friend makes and I will undertake to look at this with my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. The Minister has a bit of a reputation as a pyromaniac, trying to have bonfires of regulations, quangos and much else. If that is the case, why is he allowing the Financial Conduct Authority to introduce a new code that will inhibit crowdfunding and local people in their communities in raising money through social media? Why do we have this new regulation?

[Mr Maude]

I accept the compliment that the hon. Gentleman pays me—gracefully, I hope—but the issue he raises is not one with which I am familiar. I am sure that my right hon. Friends in the Treasury will want to look at it. It is a great pleasure to have representation from the Opposition about excessive regulation. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I can confirm that we have accepted the recommendations, and Departments are producing their plans for implementing them imminently. With regard to the requirement for senior civil servants to get commercial and operational experience, we have already set out that someone looking to be appointed as permanent secretary of a delivery Department must be able to show at least two years of commercial or operational experience before being considered.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I push the Minister on that? Is it not a bit wishy-washy to refer to “commercial” skills? I am co-chair of the all-party management group. What we want across the civil service are pure management skills. Moreover, we want Ministers with some ability to manage a Department. The fact is that most of the Ministers who appeared before me when I chaired a Select Committee could not manage the proverbial in a brewery.

[Mr Maude]

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

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I have always been at pains to say that there is benefit to the employer in having union representatives in the workplace. What is not acceptable, however, is having those representatives uncontrolled, unmonitored and growing like Topsy, to the extent that they were costing the taxpayer £36 million a year at a time of financial stringency caused by the grotesque budget deficit we inherited from the Labour party. That is completely unacceptable.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister knows that I have a lot of time for him, and I congratulate him on winning a famous design award for his Department recently. However, I am a proud trade unionist and member of Unite, and I am a proud Co-operator. In a democratic society in which unions have an important part to play—as does the co-operative movement—why is there a feeling coming from the Government Benches that they are out to get us?

[Mr Maude]

I am certainly not out to get the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have—if I may return the compliment—a great deal of respect. I have never said that there is no role for trade unions or for trade union representatives having paid time off in the workplace. I have always stressed that there is value for the employer in the ability to have disputes resolved quickly, effectively and at local level. What was going on in the civil service, however, was way out of line with any other workplace, even in the public sector. The taxpayer is entitled to expect that the Government will grip that issue, which, for the first time, is being done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

3. What steps he is taking to utilise innovative design to increase the effectiveness and quality of public service delivery.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

The Government are implementing an ambitious programme of public sector reform. From welfare to education, we are changing the way services are delivered to the public. We are opening up policy making, ensuring that policy is made with implementation in mind. To improve the quality of public services, we are backing new delivery models, such as public service mutuals, and redesigning services to be digital by default.

[Mr Sheerman]

Is the Minister aware that too many people still think that good design means a beautiful table or chair or a new piece of architecture, such as the Shard? There is a whole body of expert design capacity in this country that could help design services, particularly public services. Will he, his Department and the Government wake up to the fact that good design, as shown in a new publication from the Design Commission, could help recovery in this country?

[Mr Maude]

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman says except his assumption that we are not already doing this. I know he is a member of the Design Commission, which produced that excellent publication; it is in fact very complimentary about a number of initiatives that the Government have taken, including the creation of the Government Digital Service, which is committed to ensuring that as we reform the delivery of public services, they are designed around the needs of the user rather than, as has far too often been the case, designed to suit the convenience of the Government.