Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

No, I am not happy that we are yet doing enough, but we are doing more. We are establishing a series of What Works organisations that will exist to share best practice and experiences. We have also set up the commissioning academy, an unexpected by-product of which is that it brings together public service deliverers from all over the public sector who network and share experience, which is already proving extremely beneficial.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

On the subject of innovative public service design, the Minister abolished the Central Office of Information and sacked hundreds of staff while simultaneously increasing the number of spin merchants in his Department and others. Meanwhile, he put the Government Information Service out to tender, with contracts valuing £520 million, millions of which then went to a company which he himself had chaired in the past, although I accept that he took no part in letting that contract. There are many ways of describing this chain of events. Does he agree that intelligent design is not one of them?

[Mr Maude]

We did dismantle the Central Office of Information, which was overloaded with 750 people who were not doing enough useful work. We cut down massively on the previous Government’s gross overspend on marketing and advertising, which was throwing money out of the back of a lorry wholly ineffectually. We therefore needed a lot fewer people in the Government communication service. Our own press and media operation in the Cabinet Office is smaller than what we inherited from the previous Government despite the fact that it has to service the Deputy Prime Minister as well as other Ministers and the Prime Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I enjoyed my visit with my hon. Friend to Ark Continuity. It was very illuminating. There is a huge amount we can do. Data centre capacity across Government is massively underused. A huge amount of overcapacity was left in place by the outgoing Government, who had no interest in these subjects at all. We are getting to grips with it, however. We need to do more, and we will do so; there is much more money we can save.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The fact is that the NAO did not verify the savings. According to the NAO, the Department overstated its claimed IT savings probably by tens of millions of pounds. The Minister has form on this: he predicted £20 billion of savings from his quango review, but the NAO showed he barely saved a tenth of that. Perhaps the Department should propose a new ministerial baccalaureate in adding up and taking away. Since the Minister cannot get his figures right, will he now at least agree to brush up on his maths?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman is talking total nonsense. We inherited a massive Budget deficit left by a Government who were fiscally incontinent and made no effort to deliver any efficiency savings whatsoever. Through our efficiency programme, we have already delivered £12 billion of savings and there is much more that can be done. The outgoing Government left the public finances and Whitehall efficiency in a shockingly sorry state.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The civil service certainly must reduce in size, and it is doing so: it is at its smallest since the second world war. Private sector jobs are being created at quite a rate, and in the two years after the formation of the coalition Government 11,000 jobs were created in the private sector in York, while 4,400 were lost in the public sector.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Consensual civil service relocation to cities such as York is good, cost-effective one-nation politics, as it can help to overcome chronic regional economic disparities, but if the right hon. Gentleman insists on regionalising public sector pay such relocations will simply further retrench existing regional disparities. People in York doing exactly the same job as their colleagues elsewhere in the country will be paid less. The Cabinet is reportedly divided on the subject. In this festive season, may I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to say goodbye to his inner Scrooge and abandon the ill-conceived regional public pay proposals he has been hawking around Government?

[Mr Maude]

My inner Scrooge is the taxpayer’s outer friend, and I should, perhaps, point out to the hon. Gentleman that in only one part of the civil service—Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service—have regional pay scales been abandoned and the move to regional or local market-facing pay been made, and the Government of whom he was a member introduced that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The movement towards mutualisation of public services is very powerful and is being looked at by other Governments, as well as our own. It is powerful because it enables entrepreneurial leaders in the public sector, of whom there are many, to take control of the services, innovate, do things differently and drive out cost. It is a powerful means of driving efficiency, for the taxpayer and for the user.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Today’s Institute for Government report reveals what it calls “fragile leadership” of the civil service reform programme. It is clear that the chaotic and expensive redundancy programme and the culture of blaming the service for blunders while Ministers get away scot-free is damaging morale. Even the right hon. Gentleman’s friends in the TaxPayers Alliance acknowledge that he is engaging in the costly practice of laying off staff while paying to recruit replacements. For all his bluster about savings, the Cabinet Office now has more staff than it had last year. When will he get a grip?

[Mr Maude]

Coming from the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Prime Minister, who presided over a massive explosion in the size of the state and the growth of inefficiency—who presided over the decade in which public sector productivity was flat while private sector productivity grew by 30%—that is pretty rich. The hon. Gentleman refers to the expensive voluntary redundancy programme that has taken place. Under the position that his Government left—until we reformed the redundancy scheme—it would have been impossible to pursue that at all. The civil service today is considerably smaller. There are plans in Departments to reduce the size further, but productivity is already improving considerably. I just wish it had started under the previous Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

That is exactly our approach. Far too much of the freehold estate is under-occupied and far too many expensive leasehold properties are occupied in a very inefficient way. In Bristol alone we discovered that central Government, in their different forms, occupied 115 separate addresses, which is very inefficient and not at all conducive to joined-up government.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

As you know, Mr Speaker, we should always watch what Ministers do, rather than simply listening to what they say. The problem with this Minister is that he promised millions of pounds of savings from other Departments while sneakily building up his own empire. In truth, his Department’s agencies had 23,000 square metres of office space when he came to office, but that figure has more than doubled to a staggering 56,000 square metres. Squeezing others while fattening up his own Department is hardly a policy that will incentivise colleagues to reduce their estate. When will he deliver the savings, and not just mythical ones?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman ought to look a little more carefully at the facts. He will see that the National School of Government and the Central Office of Information, which had been part of quangoland under the previous Government, have been brought in-house and so have been closed down.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It is completely consistent with that, because we need particular skills to drive out the waste we inherited. Particularly, there is a need for commercial and IT skills. While those skills exist in Government, we do not have enough of them. Every single one of those external recruitments by the Cabinet Office will have been approved by me personally, and I make absolutely no apology at all for approving them. Where those skills are needed and a rigorous search has shown that they are not available within Government, we will recruit from outside and we will pay people properly for work that is essential.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is it not a fact that the Minister’s Efficiency and Reform Group will achieve no savings at all if the most senior officials in Government are distracted into chaotic breaches of the Cabinet Office code of conduct? Will he confirm that the Cabinet Secretary has now restored efficient Government by launching an investigation into such destructive breaches of the code as that reported in The Times yesterday of a senior No. 10 aide saying the Health Secretary should be “taken out and shot”?

[Mr Maude]

Frankly, coming from the hon. Gentleman—the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Prime Minister, who operated in a No. 10 that was widely reviled as a snake pit of back-biting and anonymous briefings—that is pretty rich.

Industrial Action

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

As always, Mr Speaker, I will do as you encourage me to.

Contrary to claims being made this morning by trade union leaders—and by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor—talks are very much alive. They are intensive and they are making good progress. I deeply regret the misleading claims to the contrary.

All this underlines how indefensible today’s strike is while talks at scheme level are moving forward. It is inappropriate, untimely and irresponsible. The ballots for strike action, particularly in the bigger unions, had a turnout of between a quarter and a third—a very low turnout indeed. Our latest data suggest that, as of 11 am today, 135,000 civil servants—well below a third, indeed not much more than a quarter, of civil servants—were on strike. Most civil servants are going to work today as normal.

We have put in place rigorous contingency plans to ensure that, as far as possible, essential public services are maintained during such periods of industrial action. I have an update on what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said a few minutes ago: only 16 of the 930 jobcentres are now closed to the public, and UK borders are open and operating with only very minor delays in some seaports. In the airports services are being maintained. I pay tribute to all the dedicated people who are keeping those borders both secure and open.

Across the other sectors the impact has been varied. According to estimates early this morning, across all state-funded schools in England, some 60% are closed but a great many are open or partially open. I am very grateful to those who have worked hard to keep their schools open across the country—head teachers, governors, support staff and teachers, all of whom may have concerns about their own pensions but have chosen to put the needs of pupils and parents above their own to minimise the impact of this strike. I deeply regret the fact that there will have been disruption to the lives of so many hard-working parents across the country, and to hard-working pupils, many of whom are facing mock exams in the near future; they need a closed school like they need a hole in the head.

Overall, the national health service is coping well with industrial action. Early indications are that the strike is having only a minor impact on patient services, and that has largely been mitigated by robust contingency planning. Several trusts have been forced to make cancellations of elective surgery, which is deeply unfortunate and I deeply regret it, but many organisations in the health service are reporting that they are operating at near normal levels. There is some disruption taking place in the local government sector, but councils have worked hard to secure essential services in areas such as dementia care and homelessness, to protect some of the most vulnerable members of the public from the most serious potential impacts of strikes.

Let me finish by saying this: I have huge respect for the dedicated women and men who keep our public services running. Their work is demanding, essential and highly valued. They deserve to be able to retire on decent pensions. Our reforms will ensure that their pension schemes will be decent, and that they can be sustained for the future. They deserve no less.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his courtesy in letting me have advance sight of the statement, which I received 20 minutes ago.

Clearly, the whole House regrets that industrial action is taking place today and that millions of families now face disruption to the services on which they rely and depend. Strikes are always a sign that negotiations have broken down, and if a deal is to be reached it is essential that both sides—let us be clear that that includes the unions, but the bulk of the responsibility lies with the Government—get around the negotiating table and show willingness to give ground.

Is it not true that the Government bear the greatest burden of responsibility for what is happening today? We accept that there is a need to continue the reform of public service pensions, which we in fact began when we were in office. We found the unions to be tough but ultimately reasonable negotiators. and we achieved a settlement without any industrial action.

The Government refer to Lord Hutton. He provided rigorous analysis of the current situation, laid out the ground rules for the negotiations, and persuasively argued that there was a need for further change. For example, he was right when he suggested we should look again at career average schemes, which might be fairer in many cases.

The unions need to show they accept the need for change, and indeed they have said they accept the continued need for negotiation and further change. The Government arbitrarily announced a 3p in the pound levy on the incomes of public sector workers, but this imposition has nothing whatever to do with Hutton. Is it not the case that the money that will be garnered from that 3p is not going to the pension schemes but is instead going into the pockets of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? The Minister says negotiations are ongoing, but will he tell us whether or not the 3p imposition, which is a form of tax on public sector workers, is negotiable? It clearly is not in the Government’s mind. Will he also respond to the question about when he last met the unions as part of the negotiation, and when Treasury Ministers last met them, as the leader of Unison said today he had not met them at all since 2 November? It is remarkable that the Government can say negotiations are ongoing when the key Departments have never met the trade unions.

At the core of today’s industrial action are 750,000 low-paid workers. These people provide daily services to all of us and to all the people we serve in our constituencies. They are mainly women, they are almost exclusively low paid, and they provide the essential services on which our whole country depends: they are school dinner ladies, teachers, nurses and others. The House must not underestimate the difficult decisions each of those people must make in deciding whether to take action. Many of them never thought, when they entered the service of the public, that they would have to go on strike. It is a difficult personal decision for each of them, and I assure the House that they take it only with the greatest reluctance. They feel a burning sense of injustice that, low paid though they are, an additional burden is now being imposed on them. Equally, they face a significant deterioration in their pensions, which is why 750,000 low-paid workers—mainly women—have taken that difficult personal decision.

There is a risk that many of those people will opt out of their pensions.

[Jon Trickett]

I thought I was asking questions as I was going along.

What estimate have the Government made of the number of people who might opt out of their pension schemes, and what damage might the schemes incur?

It has been suggested that the Prime Minister thinks he can gain political advantage from the strike. He told The Daily Telegraph that he was delighted that a strike would take place. What is the Minister’s strategy? Will he and the Treasury again meet the trade unions to begin negotiations? We have consistently argued that negotiations should be ongoing. Will he call the unions today to ask for meetings tomorrow?

Let me turn to the disruption that has been caused today. How many people are staffing the borders? Will the Minister confirm that there has been no relaxation of border checks?

This is a strike that did not need to happen—nobody wants strikes. The Government must show that they are willing to negotiate sensibly.

[Mr Maude]

It is easy to tell from the tone of that response who pays for the hon. Gentleman’s party. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Given the pride the Minister obviously takes in transparency, is it not slightly odd that his Department, which leads on these matters for the whole Government, has the worst record in responding to freedom of information requests? Indeed, some people might think that is almost fishy. Since coming into office, the number of FOI requests answered on time by his Department has nosedived from 90% in March 2010 to only 42% in March this year. What do they have to hide? Will the Minister now tell us when he intends to get his house in order on FOI?

[Mr Maude]

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and congratulate him on his elevation to the shadow Cabinet.

The Cabinet Office deals with FOI requests in respect of Cabinet papers under the last Government, and that takes some time to deal with because we need to consult former Ministers in that Government. Any FOI requests relating to the royal family also need to be dealt with sensitively, with a lot of consultation. I notice that the hon. Gentleman does not raise the issue of Government procurement cards, and does not echo the response of his colleague, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), who said, when we published these data, that we had gone on a spending spree, when, in fact, we had cut spending under Government procurement cards by 10% compared with the record of his party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The chair of the Efficiency and Reform Group is me, so I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend, who, when he was leader of Barnet council, showed how much can be done. We do, absolutely, have a huge amount to learn from what is being done best in local government, particularly the sort of savings that can be made by much better use of office accommodation. It is such a pity that when the current Leader of the Opposition was Minister for the Cabinet Office he did not do this stuff himself. The country would be in less of a mess and the public finances would be in better shape if he had done his job properly.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Of course everybody welcomes cuts to wasteful expenditure. However, will the Minister explain why the Cabinet Office website indicates that in January a contractor charged the taxpayer £5,867.66 for flying flags? Will he explain why the Government paid a single taxi fare of £324.14, which would almost get me from here to Yorkshire and back again? Finally, will he explain why the taxpayer paid £181 for a single individual’s eye test? What a waste of money.

[Mr Maude]

I shall be absolutely delighted to provide the hon. Gentleman with full and detailed replies. I just point out to him, however, that if we had not opened up public spending to public scrutiny, he would not have a prayer of even asking the question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Only three of the unions have done that. The majority of unions are continuing to engage in good faith with the discussions that are still taking place. It is our determination that at the end of the reforms proposed by Lord Hutton, Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary, public sector pensions will continue to be among the best available, but we will ask people to work longer because they are living longer and to pay a bit more, to achieve a better balance between what they pay and what other taxpayers pay.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

How can the Minister possibly justify the announcement on the No. 10 transparency website that since November the Government have spent more than £5 million on tarting up offices in Whitehall, including £680,000 on No. 10 Downing street? How can he justify that when he is laying off nurses, policemen, servicemen and so on? Will he now publish a line-by-line account of how the money was spent?

Cabinet Office

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Thursday 5th May 2011 Ministerial Corrections

[Jon Trickett]

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office pursuant to the answer of 21 March 2011, Official Report, column 838W, if he will publish the departmental estimates that were collated to arrive at the stated estimates of savings.

[Official Report, 1 April 2011, Vol. 526, c. 540-41W.]

Letter of correction from Mr Francis Maude:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on 1 April 2011. The HO and total figures were incorrect.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Maude]

[holding answer 31 March 2011]: On 16 March 2011, I announced that we estimate cumulative administrative savings of £2.6 billion will flow from public bodies over the spending review period.

The departmental estimates that were collated to arrive at that figure are:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The essence of that programme is that it is designed to bring together young people from a genuine mix of backgrounds. It is not designed particularly to help disadvantaged young people. It will benefit all young people and help to create a much more cohesive society by bringing together people from all backgrounds at an important and formative stage in their lives, during the rites of passage to adulthood. The social mix is an absolutely crucial ingredient of the programme.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the national citizen service requires that the voluntary sector has adequate capacity to deliver additional volunteering, which is contrary to the unequivocal statement made at the last Cabinet Office questions by the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), that the sector would expand? Will the Minister now admit that that statement was untrue. The latest figures for the voluntary sector show a decline of 13,000 jobs in a single quarter. Does he agree that the House was misled and that the statement—

[Jon Trickett]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The House was inadvertently misled, even though the facts show what actually happened. Finally, would the Minister say that the job losses are a clear disaster for his big society aspirations?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman asked in particular about the capacity of the voluntary sector in relation to the national citizen service. I can tell him that the number of interested providers massively outweighed the number of places that we were able to fund. There is huge interest in the voluntary sector in taking part in the programme. The point that my right hon. Friend the Minister was making was that our approach to public service reform will open up areas of public service delivery to the voluntary and charitable sector and to social enterprise in a way that has not been done before, for all the talk from the previous Government, and the opportunities going forward will be considerable. My right hon. Friend made the point, as we all have, that there will be a tough time immediately, and we have some steps in place to try to help over that period, but the opportunities down the track are considerable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We have already encouraged them to come forward with ideas. As part of the spending challenge that we launched in the summer, we invited public sector workers to come up with ideas to save money while protecting front-line services, and 65,000 of them did so, indicating a huge amount of pent-up frustration. We are now encouraging as many of them as possible who are interested not only in having ideas but in putting them into effect to form worker co-operatives to spin out of the public sector while continuing to deliver services.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Given that there are strict procurement rules designed to demonstrate probity and value for money, and to avoid political interference, does the Minister think that it was wise for the Department for Education to hand out a £500,000 contract to the New Schools Network, an organisation led by a former associate of the Secretary of State? Was that contract fully compliant with all the relevant tendering regulations?

[Mr Maude]

I certainly do not know the details of that procurement, but I am confident that it would have followed all the rules to the letter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Jon Trickett

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We certainly hope that that will be the case. It is our aspiration that 25% of Government contracts should end up in the small and medium-sized sector. We are committed to publishing online, in an easily accessible form, all Government tender documents. That will make it much easier for small businesses, which can otherwise be put off the process, to take part.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

In terms of commissioning and procurement, the public sector procures £13 billion-worth of services from the charitable sector. On Monday, a think-tank suggested that the Government’s statement today will wipe out about £5 billion of that procurement—the whole of the increase that was achieved in the past 10 years. What are the Minister’s intentions for funding the voluntary sector? How does he reconcile cuts in that sector with the Prime Minister’s aspiration for the big society?

[Mr Maude]

We are very aware of concerns in the sector. The Chancellor is very aware of them, and will have something to say about the matter a little later. However, there must be reductions in public spending for the simple reason that the former Chief Secretary set out with such uncharacteristic lucidity in his valedictory note.