Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

1. What recent progress he has made on reform of trades union facility time in Government Departments.

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

Mr Speaker, with permission I will take questions 1 and 10 together.

At the time of the last general election, there was no monitoring of taxpayer-funded trade union facility time in the civil service. We now have controls in place that saved £19 million last year, and we have already reduced the number of taxpayer-funded full-time union officials from 200 in May 2010 down to around a dozen this month.

[Mr Speaker]

I allowed the right hon. Gentleman to continue his answer, but my office advises me that it has not been notified of the grouping to which he refers. It might have been the intention, but my office indicates that it has not been notified of it, which obviously it should have been.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

In the past, Departments gave paid time off for union conferences. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that this Government will not be spending taxpayers’ money packing civil servants off to the seaside?

[Mr Maude]

Under the rules that operated under the last Government, it was absolutely the case that thousands of union officials, paid for by the taxpayer as civil servants, were given paid time off—sometimes, extraordinarily, with paid travel and expenses—to attend union conferences at the seaside. We have stopped this. They can take unpaid time off to attend conferences, and any decision to award paid time off is entirely at the discretion of the Minister in charge of that civil servant’s Department.