Oak National Academy

Lord Strathcarron Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a publisher, although in this case the interest is purely theoretical as none of my publishing group’s imprints is in the academic market. I therefore have nothing to win or lose from any of Oak National Academy’s proposed activities.

However, I am a taxpayer and a publishing professional, and I know that publishing is an extremely marginal business in which even the most experienced and successful managers find it hard to make a profit. How the Civil Service is going to equal them is a complete mystery. Why they should even be trying to do so is an even bigger mystery, and why a Conservative Government are proposing to set up a state-owned and taxpayer-funded publishing operation in direct competition to private enterprise publishing companies is an even bigger mystery than that.

The headline figures are that the taxpayer should invest £43 million to hire 83 officials over the next three years. I would treat all three figures with a great degree of scepticism. Let us take the £43 million. A quick Google search will show that the average government contract goes over budget by 29%. Of course, we will not know until three years from now how Oak has fared, but as the budget was prepared using taxpayers’ imaginary money, with no accountability and to prove a business model, there is no reason to suggest that the £43 million will not conform to the national average and become £55 million.

Then we have the 83 officials. If anyone can wade through Oak’s 75-page acronym and jargon-laden business case, they will find that there are not 83 officials but 82.6 so-called full-time equivalents, so some poor soul is going to be 0.4 of himself or herself short. We then find that their main responsibility is procurement: £16 million-worth of material over the period. Anyone can do the maths; that is £193,000 per person. As these procurements break down into 12 lots, that is £16,000 per procurement item.

Bearing in mind the costs of those 82.6 people and their overheads, I have never come across a less efficient purchasing KPI. But they have nothing to worry about because, amazingly, nobody is in charge. We eventually find somebody called the senior responsible officer, but that role turns out to have two names to it followed by “job-share”, in brackets.

Lastly, we come to the three years. Unfortunately, my four minutes will soon be up so I can only ask: has anyone ever come across a government department, quango or arm’s-length body that voluntarily liquidated itself after three years, no matter how worthy that liquidation may have been? I fear that, unless we prevent it from starting, we will be stuck with Oak for ever.

This is an absolutely classic case of departmental overreach: an ill-conceived and unnecessary waste of taxpayers’ money, which can only undermine the private sector for no benefit to anyone, except the people who work for it. I urge all concerned to hand the programme back to publishing professionals who know what they are doing, are accountable for their success and failure and do it for a living.