Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

That is a very good question, but if I were to go through that in elaborate detail, you would cut me short, Mr Speaker. There are opportunities for efficiency savings right across Government and the public sector. We have made significant progress, but, as my hon. Friend would expect, there is considerably more that can and should be done.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Serco had to repay £68 million and G4S £104 million because they overcharged the Ministry of Justice. Why are they still receiving contracts when they have obviously been very good at efficiently taking money off the taxpayer?

[Mr Maude]

The practices to which the right hon. Gentleman refers date from contracts let by the previous Government, and those malpractices had been going on for many years. It is because the quality of contract management in Government is at last beginning to improve that those malpractices came to light at all. Therefore, the taxpayer was able to be recompensed for the money that had been wrongly pumped out of the door during that time. We are making progress on this, but again there is more to be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those remarks, for his interest in this area and, more generally, for the brilliant forensic work he does on the Public Accounts Committee to protect the taxpayer’s interest. He is right about the legal advice that is often given in this complex area of law, which is a mishmash of common law and statutory provisions. There are many opportunities to share data, which would protect privacy but promote the public interest by saving money. We need to look at that area and have a rather more open approach.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister also consider the proposal to establish a register of private sector companies in receipt of public sector contracts that have been involved in fraud?

Civil Service Reform

Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I hope that my hon. Friend, who stewarded the PAC with such distinction and speaks with great authority on this subject, would recognise that the appointment as head of the civil service of Sir Bob Kerslake, who has a formidable history of operational delivery in local government and running big local authorities, is a step in the right direction. If my hon. Friend looks across the piece, he will see that there are more, but not yet nearly enough, permanent secretaries with a background in operational delivery. We need to go further, however.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

On 23 May, in answer to my question about bonuses, the Prime Minister told the House that there was

“no place in the modern civil service for a presumption of good performance.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 1130.]

Why has the Minister not taken the opportunity, in his excellent paper, to outlaw the culture of bonuses for senior civil servants, especially in failing organisations, such as the UK Border Agency? Giving senior civil servants bonuses of £3.5 million cannot be right.

[Mr Maude]

Performance pay is always controversial, whether in the public or private sector. The paper suggests that a voluntary earn-back scheme, such as that suggested by Will Hutton in his report on fair pay, might be worth considering. We will invite the Senior Salaries Review Body to consider such a scheme for the senior civil service. Civil servants would be invited to put, say, 5% of their basic pay at risk, so that they have to earn it back, with the possibility of exceeding it with exceptional performance. That would not feel like a one-way bet.