Evaluation in Government Policy-making
Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Twycross
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
This Government intend to use evaluation and evidence-based policy-making as the norm. We want to get away from the position we saw under the previous Government, where political decisions—including the Rwanda scheme—were more about newspaper headlines than value for money for taxpayers.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, will the Government’s Evaluation Task Force be looking at the costs and benefits we have had at a local level rather than from central government? Will it also be looking at the extra costs of outsourcing as opposed to occasionally insourcing? The question of care home and children’s home provision has already been mentioned; they are clear areas where there is waste, because giving the contracts to outsourcers gets them excessive profits, as they provide poorer services at a higher cost.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Absolutely. The fund I spoke of in response to the noble Lord’s initial supplementary will be working in partnership with local authorities, local leaders and mayors across the country. We are very clear that we need to drive out waste and ensure that we get value for money. When we talk about value for money, it is also about better outcomes for the people we serve.
Ministerial Code: Policy Announcements
Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Twycross(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government take their obligations to Parliament extremely seriously. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said in the other place yesterday, the Speaker’s comments have been heard by Ministers across government, including in this House. As for Treasury Ministers making announcements in the other place, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made an Oral Statement to Parliament on Monday about the fiscal rules and Treasury Ministers answered questions in the other place yesterday. Today, the Chancellor set out in Parliament the full details of the Budget, which will fix the foundations of our economy. Anyone who was watching the faces of the Opposition Front Bench will know that most of the measures were clearly a surprise. The leader of the Opposition seemed particularly glum as he looked at his phone for his revised lines.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister understand why we on these Benches feel that we keep hearing the pot calling the kettle black? I note that, in the Commons, the Conservative spokesperson complained that the Labour Party was behaving just as badly as the Conservatives had. Perhaps I should admit that, during the coalition Government, George Osborne, as Chancellor, was heard to complain that Nick Clegg’s office briefed out all the juicy bits from the Budget before he had a chance to give his Budget speech—so everyone does it to a certain amount. Does the Minister accept that the idea that everything in the Budget should be unknown beforehand and sprung immediately on Parliament is perhaps not the best way to handle financial and spending planning in today’s complicated environment, and that that is one of the things the new Government should be reconsidering, in consultation with the other parties?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
This party and the Government understand our obligations to Parliament and take them extremely seriously, but I note the noble Lord’s points. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said in the other place, we have heard what the Speaker said, and all Ministers are very clear about their responsibility to the other place and, on this Front Bench, to your Lordships’ House.
Procurement Act 2023
Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Twycross(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I can only agree with my noble friend.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister recall that, when the Procurement Act was first presented—it started in the Lords—it was one of the most badly drafted Bills I have ever seen, and that the Government themselves produced 350 amendments between Second Reading and Committee? Do the Government intend to look again at the rules covering outsourcing, particularly to companies which have in the past made excessive profits from government contracts?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I will look into that matter and write to the noble Lord on that point.
Whitehall: Prioritising Performance
Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Twycross(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
All of us have probably come across points at which people are treated as almost indispensable. Part of the value of people stepping back and having a report of this kind is that we can focus on what those critical single points of failure are. I will feed back the noble Baroness’s comments to the relevant Minister.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned that retention of the exceptionally talented is a problem. I have been distressed in the last five years to discover that some of the most talented civil servants I worked with in the coalition have given up and left the Civil Service, partly because of the rapid turnover of Ministers, partly because of the way in which some Ministers treated their officials, and also because a number of Ministers always seemed to prefer advice from consultants to that from civil servants. In that context, can the Minister explain why the Government have just given—perhaps she inherited the idea from her predecessor—a £200 million contract to KPMG to train civil servants? To my knowledge, KPMG is not particularly expert in training governmental officials, and it would be much cheaper and more effective to ask the university sector to train civil servants instead. I declare an interest as I used, as a university academic, to train civil servants.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
This is not an issue that I have got specific details on. I will go back and ask about it, but I assume that this would have been subject to a pretty rigorous procurement process.
Emergency Alert Service
Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Twycross(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Our thoughts go to everyone touched by the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report yesterday into the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. I am sure all noble Lords across the House share the determination expressed by the Prime Minister yesterday that nothing like this must ever happen again. My noble friend will be aware that alerts can currently be targeted down to electoral ward level and that, therefore, in a future incident akin to the horrific events at Grenfell Tower, the emergency alerting tool could now be an important aspect of the emergency response. I reassure him and Members across the House that all local resilience forums can both request an emergency alert and receive extensive training on this capability, which has been made available through the ResilienceDirect website. The Cabinet Office has also worked with the College of Policing’s multi-agency gold incident command programme to integrate awareness of emergency alerts.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, when the UK Government’s resilience framework was launched two years ago, one of its three core principles, as announced, was:
“Resilience is a ‘whole of society’ endeavour, so we must be more transparent and empower everybody to make a contribution”.
Since then, there has been remarkably little publicity, let alone any attempts to engage “the whole of society” in this endeavour. Given the likelihood of flood emergencies, heat emergencies, more pandemics and terrorist emergencies, we ought to be engaged. Will the new Government attempt to engage all of us, not just local government resilience frameworks and others, in making sure that the country is informed about and ready for these sorts of emergencies?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
As noble Lords are aware, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will chair a dedicated Cabinet committee to oversee the Government’s review of national resilience and preparedness. As part of this, there will definitely be a focus on this whole-society and whole-system resilience and how we can improve it. It is part of the suite of measures that the previous Government were looking at. I think it could go a lot further but it was essentially the correct idea.