Draft Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Identity Verification Services) Regulations 2023
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Identity Verification Services) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary.
The draft regulations are an important part of the Government’s commitment to strengthen the use of data and information across the public sector, so that we can deliver better and more joined-up services and, in turn, improve outcomes for our citizens. The aim is to allow information sharing between named bodies for the specific purpose of supporting cross-government identity checking when it is needed.
Verifying a user’s identity—ensuring that a person is who they say they are—is a key part of delivering many government services. The draft regulations enable this by establishing a new data-sharing objective under section 35 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 and by setting out which public bodies may use the new objective. That will create a legislative gateway, enabling us to use existing data sets that public bodies already hold to help as many people as possible to access the government services they need online. It is therefore central to the development of more inclusive and accessible systems.
Specifically, the proposed objective would unlock the full benefits of the new cross-government digital system known as GOV.UK One Login. This is now live. Users are able to set up an account, log in and prove their identity in order to access an initial set of 27 government services, with more being added all the time. That is a step change in the provision of simple and joined-up access to government services online. It is delivering substantial cost and time savings for the Government and for users by reducing duplication and providing enhanced capability to identify and stop fraudsters.
At the moment, however, users of One Login must have photographic documentation such as a passport or driving licence. That will change following the introduction of the new objective, as it will unlock new ways for people without photo ID to prove who they are, opening up the system to more users. In summary, the proposed objective will: enable checks against existing government-held information such as PAYE and benefits data to build confidence in a user’s identity; provide a specific legal framework for checks against documents currently used in identity verification such as driving licences; and provide a specific legal framework for sharing the results of identity checks performed by one named body with another, so that users only need to prove their identity once to access all the services they need.
The draft regulations apply to the relevant bodies already listed in schedule 4 to the Digital Economy Act, such as His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions. They also add four new public bodies to the schedule: the Cabinet Office; the Department for Transport; the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; and the Disclosure and Barring Service. The public bodies listed in the regulations either hold information that could be used in support of proving that someone is who they say they are, or own and manage services that people need to access and therefore need to receive the results of identity checks. Some public bodies do both.
The territorial extent of the draft regulations is England, Wales and Scotland. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the devolved Administrations support the regulations. Indeed, the Scottish and Welsh Administrations have requested that certain devolved bodies already listed in schedule 4 be able to use the new power.
I am sure hon. Members will be pleased to know that the draft regulations have been subject to the standard rigorous processes of internal and external review. In the first instance, the objective has been subject to scrutiny by the Public Service Delivery Review Board, as set out in the underpinning code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud under the Digital Economy Act. The board recommended that Ministers proceed with the draft regulations since they meet the required criteria of supporting the improvement, or targeting of, public services to individuals in order to enhance their wellbeing.
Furthermore, the objective has been subject to a public consultation, which received many responses. Some respondents recognised the benefits to individuals of improved and more inclusive services. Some, however, expressed concern that it was a back-door route to identity cards. That concern was mistaken. In response to the consultation, the Government confirmed that they have no plans to introduce mandatory digital identity or identity cards.
We also published additional information on how GOV.UK One Login will operate within the draft regulations and within the overall data protection framework. We extended the time between the regulations being approved and coming into force, and we amended some of the wording to reflect that of the Act.
The Government of course understand that people want to protect their personal information. I want to emphasise that that is central to our approach in developing both the draft regulations and the One Login system. Bodies that use this legislation will be required to do so with a robust set of controls that are designed to ensure that the data sharing is limited and to protect the individual.
The draft regulations relate only to using data for the purposes of identity verification. Part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 gives Government powers to share personal information across organisational boundaries to improve public services. It lays down what data can be shared and for which purposes. Data sharing must also have regard to the accompanying statutory code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud, which sets out how the power must be operated including how any data shared must be processed lawfully, securely and proportionately in compliance with data protection legislation and UK GDPR.
The Digital Economy Act code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud also requires that information-sharing agreements be listed in a public register of information-sharing activity under the powers. The framework for data sharing under the DEA provides a supportive background to help organisations share data in ways that benefit the public, as confirmed by the Information Commissioner’s Office in its recent review. It includes robust safeguards that ensure organisations share data responsibly and in alignment with data protection principles, while also safeguarding people’s rights. I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting the draft regulations.
Alex Burghart
The right hon. Member for Leicester South asked me to be brief, so I will be. The whole notion of consent is wrapped up in how the regulations have been put together. That is to say, the DEA provides the framework for consent. On complaints, I refer him to One Login’s privacy notice. I am pleased to tell him that we are on track to deliver One Login on time and in the near future.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
Value for money is central to the Government’s long-standing procurement policy, as set out in everybody’s favourite Treasury document, “Managing Public Money”. Current procurement regulations require contracting authorities to select the most economically advantageous tender. The Procurement Act 2023—I am pleased to say that it has recently received Royal Assent—will streamline procurement processes and ensure that value for money remains one of the central tenets of the UK’s procurement regime.
Liz Twist
If the Minister thinks that every pound of taxpayers’ money matters, what are the Government’s plans to recover the loss of billions of pounds in flawed covid contracts?
Alex Burghart
I am pleased to be able to remind the House that the Government have already taken extraordinary steps to recover fraud money during the covid period. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs remains committed to the recovery of covid-19 support scheme fraud. The Government are also committed to bearing down on fraud in the covid loan schemes. Some £13.2 million has been allocated to the National Investigation Service over three years to double its investigative capacity on bounce back loans and to fund other activities. This is just a small sample of the work being done to combat fraud across our Government.
James Murray
Further to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), billions of pounds of public money was wasted during the covid pandemic through dodgy contracts that we know were signed off by the Government. Labour has said that we will appoint a covid corruption commissioner to pursue every pound of public money that has been inappropriately lost from pandemic-related contracts, fraud and waste. Will the Minister borrow our plans?
Alex Burghart
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have noted—I imagine he pays attention to such things—that we already set out in the spring statement last year the public sector fraud authority, which is based in the Cabinet Office and very ably handled by my colleague Baroness Neville-Rolfe. We have debated fraud during covid many times in the House. All the contracts handed out during covid were signed off by extremely able and capable civil servants who were working in very difficult circumstances and the idea that there was ministerial sign off of these things is wrong and must be contradicted whenever it is raised.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)
It is clear from the Chancellor’s autumn statement yesterday that we will need to make savings in public sector budgets for some years to come to overcome the impact of inflation, so can the Minister say how artificial intelligence will play a role in that in the public sector and what efforts he is making to procure the necessary systems?
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We are still coming to terms with the potential of artificial intelligence to speed up Government processes, improve productivity and deliver value for money for the taxpayer. While we have procurement frameworks at present that help Departments across Government identify good AI systems they might wish to secure, we are also interested in developing our own AI within Government. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister announced earlier this week that we would hire more people with the highest levels of innovative skill to come into Government to build those systems for us and deliver value for money.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Procurement Act 2023 will deliver simpler, more effective public sector procurement and help small and medium-sized enterprises secure a greater share of approximately £300 billion of expenditure per year. The Act places a requirement on contracting authorities to assess the particular barriers facing SMEs throughout the entire procurement life cycle and to consider what can be done to overcome them.
Martin Vickers
The renewable energy sector offers great opportunities for SMEs to become involved in the supply chain. Many of them are unaware of the public sector tenders that are out there. What are the Government doing to ensure that SMEs are made more aware of the opportunities available?
Alex Burghart
I very much encourage my hon. Friend to take this matter up with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, but for my part I understand that anyone bidding for contracts for difference, our main renewable support scheme, must submit supply chain plans, including how many applicants will support SMEs. The Department is also consulting on reforms that will give greater revenue support to applicants using more sustainable supply chains, including those that make greater use of SMEs.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his response and the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for raising this matter. Northern Ireland, and particularly my constituency of Strangford, have a great many small and medium-sized businesses that depend greatly on opportunities for Government contracts. What discussions has the Minister had with the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland on a united approach, similar to that referred to by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes? I would love to see that in Northern Ireland.
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear, and will remember from discussions we had as the Procurement Act 2023 was making its way through Parliament, that Northern Ireland will benefit from the new post-EU regime that we have brought in. Unlike our friends in Scotland, who chose to opt out, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been able to shrug off the overly bureaucratic regime that we inherited from the EU and create, alongside small and medium-sized businesses, a brand-new way of doing things. I know that small and medium-sized enterprises in his constituency will ultimately benefit from that.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Government are delivering an ongoing programme of engagement with stakeholders across all sectors in all parts of the country and with key European Union trading partners to ensure goods continue to move across the border. We have not identified any specific risk to the cross-border flow of goods.
Daniel Zeichner
It has been a very long wait to get border checks in place on the UK side. What evidence does the Minister have that EU businesses have the appropriate systems in place, including enough vets, to make them work smoothly? What estimate has he made of the impact on UK food security?
Alex Burghart
The whole purpose of the exercise is to ensure that we have UK food security. The border target operating model will implement its next three major milestones on 31 January 2024, 30 April 2024 and 31 October 2024, which means that the regime will be introduced by increments. This will be good for British food and good for British animals.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Government outlined wide-ranging improvements to transparency in lobbying in their policy statement “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”, which was published in July. They include revising guidance to widen the range of lobbying engagements declared by Departments, and linked reforms of the consultant lobbying framework.
Jon Trickett
If you are one of the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises bidding for contracts from the public sector, you will be met with a wall of bureaucratic paperwork designed to prevent relationships between the contractor and the service provider. If you are an ex-Prime Minister, you can make dozens of phone calls on behalf of an interest in which you seem to have been involved, including nine texts to the current Prime Minister. Is it not clear that that was reprehensible behaviour, and that the lobbying rules allowed it to happen? When will the Minister tighten the lobbying rules properly to prevent people from being able to benefit from the old system of “It is not what you know, but who you know”?
Alex Burghart
I refer the hon. Gentleman to my previous answer; we have published a document called “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”.
On small and medium-sized enterprises, I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the Procurement Act 2023, which recently received Royal Assent, will make life much easier for SMEs that want to do business with the Government and get a share of the £300 billion of public procurement this Government have to offer.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Procurement Act is a landmark piece of legislation that is going to make life considerably easier for SMEs, and it will do that in a number of ways. A new online procurement platform will make it easier for people to enter information once and use it many times, and make it easier to see the pipeline of upcoming contracts. Crucially, contracting authorities will also now have to have regard to the needs of SMEs in order to break down barriers and give them a bigger share of the pie.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
Alex Burghart
Obviously, any contract of any size that the Government deal with—the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS in this case—goes through an extremely detailed and careful process in order to ensure that we get the best value for money for the British public, that we help our public services solve the problems they face and that national security is maintained. If the hon. Gentleman has a problem with a particular element of that contract, he should bring it before the House. Otherwise, I believe he is just scare- mongering.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend help with a situation where Thales, the French defence contractor, and its UK subsidiary are insisting that materials should be procured not from the UK, but from India. How is that consistent with the Government’s procurement policy?
Cabinet Office
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Sheerman
Will this team wake up? They have huge potential in the Cabinet Office to influence every Department of State. From my perspective, as a passionate supporter of sustainable transport and particularly the revolution that is coming in hydrogen power, I see an inert Department not pushing other Departments to do better. Could they wake up and do something about this?
Alex Burghart
I can think of nothing nicer than being woken up by the hon. Gentleman. I can reassure him that we do encourage our colleagues in other Departments to go further on this. We have a range of carbon offsetting programmes in place and, as I say, our location strategy means that we try to locate people near public transport hubs. This is the very essence of a green transport strategy.
[Official Report, 7 September 2023, Vol. 737, c. 532.]
Letter of correction from the Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart):
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) during Cabinet Office questions. The correct response should have been:
Alex Burghart
I can think of nothing nicer than being woken up by the hon. Gentleman. I can reassure him that we do encourage our colleagues in other Departments to go further on this. We have one carbon offsetting programme in place and, as I say, our location strategy means that we try to locate people near public transport hubs. This is the very essence of a green transport strategy.
Honesty in Politics
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I was not intending to make any allegations about any sitting Members, but I might refer to a couple of former sitting Members and others. It is a great delight to have you in the Chair, Mrs Murray, and to have this debate. It is only a sadness that, of course, it is in competition with very serious matters in the House of Commons Chamber this afternoon.
There is an irony that it is the fundamental assumption of the House of Commons that every single Member always speaks the truth to the best of their knowledge, understanding and ability. Of course, sometimes we get things wrong by mistake; we accidentally misspeak and all the rest of it, but it is the fundamental assumption of the House of Commons that every single Member always speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
However, it is the absolute presumption of every single member of the public these days that, every time a Member of Parliament opens their mouth, whether in the House of Commons or outside Parliament, we are lying. I cannot tell you, Mrs Murray, how many times I have heard that. We have all known it. We have all seen it on the Twittersphere—I cannot bring myself to call it X any more; it seems a very odd name. It is the working assumption of lots of people, and it is considerably worse than when I first arrived in the House. I cannot remember when you first arrived, Mrs Murray, but I arrived in 2001—I think I am the longest-standing Member present this afternoon. It was nowhere near that bad back in 2001. The statistics have got worse in every decade since the second world war, and the public are now at catastrophically low levels of trust in what politicians say. That is truly problematic.
Of course, as I said, we all make mistakes. I have made mistakes. I have had to correct the record several times. Sometimes, entirely inadvertently, one says “million” when one meant “billion”. Sometimes one gets the name of a country wrong. These things happen. Sometimes I have said “Labour” when I meant “Conservative”, or “Conservative” when I meant “Labour”. Sometimes we just have to correct the record, but it is not that easy for a Back-Bench Member. There is not, at the moment, a formal process for us to do so. We can do a point of order, although sometimes we may feel—I know I can be pompous anyway—
Sir Chris Bryant
Oi.
We can feel phenomenally pompous when raising a point of order about some minor correction of the record and can kind of think that we are wasting the House’s time. I really hope that tomorrow afternoon we vote through the amendment that will allow for the process to correct the record—which we introduced in government in 2007—to apply not just to Ministers but to all Back Benchers. We all know times when we wish we could have been able to correct the record. The good thing about this is that it will correct the original moment in Hansard. At present, if I were to say something foul that I believed to be true about a member of your family, Mrs Murray—I would not be able to say it about you, because of the rules that you have already laid out—but I subsequently found it to be untrue, it would still stand in the original Hansard even if I corrected the record two days later. But if the motion goes through tomorrow, we will be able to correct that problem in the present system.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) spoke very eloquently at the beginning of the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I think his heart was in it and he was not just doing it for the Petitions Committee. He referred to the term “bad apple”. Now, I dislike this term, because I think people believe it means, “Oh, there are just some bad apples, but everybody else is okay.” That has never been the meaning of the proverb, which goes all the way back to Chaucer. In “The Cook’s Tale”, one of the pilgrims refers to the one bad apple spoiling the whole barrel. That is the point—there needs to be just one bad apple to spoil the whole barrel, which I honestly think is what has happened in this Parliament.
We need to be terribly cognisant of the fact that 25 MPs in this Parliament since 2019 have been suspended for a day or more or have left Parliament before a report on their misconduct was produced to the House. That is 25 out of 650 of us, which is a record by a country mile. The Clerk of the House tells me that a country mile is as far as someone can see into the distance, to the horizon. I think that it has become normalised for some of our colleagues. I will not refer to specific individuals, but the whole idea of a meat tax theoretically being proposed by the Labour party—which has never, ever been proposed by the Labour party—is a flat-out, blatant lie.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond in this important and wide-ranging debate, which touches on one of the fundamentals of the unwritten constitution: honesty. It is fundamental not only to our relationship with the public, but to our relationship with each other, and to the relationship that everyone in society has with one another. Without honesty, democracy cannot work properly, and society cannot work properly either.
All credit to Members on all sides of the House: everyone has raised important examples—[Interruption.] This side of the House is being represented—it is being represented now. Members across the Floor have raised important examples of Members being found wanting—often not examples from within their own parties, of course, but examples nonetheless. I toyed with the idea of finding examples of dishonesty from within the ranks of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and Labour, but we all know that they are out there and I do not wish to engage in that sort of knockabout, much though the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) tempted me by not mentioning certain things that occurred when her party was last in power.
Through the petitions, the question before us is how we improve honesty. The petitions set out a particular route; the question is whether that is the right and appropriate route. I have to be clear with the House immediately that I do not think it is, for the reasons set out by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant). If honesty is one of the core values of our system, parliamentary privilege and freedom of speech within Parliament is one of the absolute pillars of the modern constitution—and not just in the modern constitution. The Bill of Rights 1689, in article 9, states that,
“The freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.”
Perhaps closer to the heart of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk who opened the debate is the Claim of Right Act 1689 from the Convention of the Estates in Scotland, which states,
“That for redress of all greivances and for the amending strenthneing and preserveing of the lawes Parliaments ought to be frequently called and allowed to sit and the freedom of speech and debate secured to the members”.
That was not even a new idea in the late 17th century. We know that it was a principle upheld in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and there is a case from 1455, of a Member called Younge who proved that he had been unduly punished because of something that he had said in the House. The House agreed that there was
“The olde liberty and freedom of the Commons of this land…to speak and say in the House…without any manner of challenge, charge or punishment.”
Even in 1455, it was considered to be an old privilege. There are examples from the late 14th century that may show likewise, but they are more contested.
It would seem that one of the founding principles of parliamentary debate is that people should be free from interference when they speak. It stands to reason that within Parliament people will not always agree. Of course, that does not give everyone the right to say whatever they like. The House has means of regulating its own behaviour.
The example that the hon. Member for Rhondda gave was far better than the made-up example that I had in my head. The consequences of success for petitions such as these is that the hon. Member will stand up and make a criticism of an oligarch; that oligarch has very deep pockets, and will find a way to get him into court. Even if the hon. Member wins, which he would do, he might find that legal process very expensive—so expensive that the next time he stood up he might genuinely think twice about what he said. It would not just be him; every Member of the House would think twice before they spoke on a contentious issue. That would have a supremely damaging effect on the honesty of discourse. Honesty is not just about what someone says; it is sometimes about what someone chooses not to say, and not to stand up against.
I do not believe it would stop there. Not only would there be rich individuals who sought to intimidate Members of the House, but there would be campaigning organisations with very deep pockets that would go after individuals who spoke on certain subjects and seek to clamp down on debate in certain areas. That would have a very damaging effect on our democracy. That is why, in my opinion and the opinion of the Government, the House has to grant those privileges and find means and mechanisms for self-regulation. That is why it is such an important and long-standing principle.
Hon. Members have raised interesting ideas about how those processes can be improved. I will not go into those today, but it is good that they have had the opportunity to air them here. If we were to accept the ideas put down in the petitions, though, we would be accepting—nay, sanctioning—the legal intimidation of MPs in the House of Commons. I am afraid that is something that this Government will not support.
Covid Commemoration
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Minister of State, Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG, has today made the following statement:
I am today publishing the final report of the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration. The Commission was established in July 2022 to secure a broad consensus across our whole United Kingdom on how we mark and commemorate this very distinctive period in our history.
The Chair of the Commission, the right hon. Baroness Morgan of Cotes, submitted the report to the Prime Minister following a series of meetings with stakeholders across the UK and a UK-wide public consultation.
Communities across the UK have already started to find ways of commemorating our country’s experience of the pandemic and the Government are keen to support their efforts. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will work with the devolved administrations to consider carefully the Commission’s wide-ranging recommendations and will respond in due course. I would like to thank all those who have engaged with the Commission, particularly the bereaved family members who took the time to share their difficult experiences.
I would also like to thank the right hon. Baroness Morgan of Cotes and the 10 members of the Commission for their work.
I have requested that a copy of the Commission’s report be deposited in the Libraries of the Houses of Parliament. A copy will also be published on www.gov.uk.
[HCWS1033]
Procurement Bill [Lords]
Alex Burghart ExcerptsWednesday 13th September 2023
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 102B.
It is an honour once again to open the debate on this important Bill, which I am delighted to say is now so close to receiving Royal Assent. The Bill is a key Brexit benefit, delivering a simpler, more transparent procurement framework that will benefit small businesses and meet the needs of UK suppliers and contracting authorities.
Colleagues in the Chamber will also, I hope, remember that, when the Bill was last debated in this House, we offered significant new measures to protect the UK’s public procurement supply chain from threats to national security. Those included new grounds to add suppliers to the debarment list for particular types of contracts that will allow us to ban risky suppliers from bidding for those contracts; the creation of a new national security unit for procurement that will provide dedicated resources in the Cabinet Office to scrutinise national security risks in procurement; and a commitment to publish a timetable for removal of surveillance equipment supplied by companies subject to the national intelligence law of China from Government Department sensitive sites. Earlier this week in the other place, we went further: my noble friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe provided an official clarification of the definition of sensitive sites and committed to an annual written report detailing progress. I am sure this House will welcome our additional agreements and agree that they demonstrate the Government’s unwavering dedication to tackle these issues seriously.
I will deal today with one amendment that the other place sent back to this House, on the subject of organ harvesting. Let me begin by saying that I think all sides of this House are in complete agreement that organ harvesting is a dreadful practice that has no place in our supply chains. The question before us today is whether Lords amendment 102B is the right or necessary one to make, given other provisions in the Bill. In Committee in this House, the Government removed a discretionary exclusion ground for suppliers engaged in forced organ harvesting. The other place has subsequently proposed an amendment in lieu, with some modifications of the original amendment. This new version of the Lords amendment does not cover unethical activities relating to human tissue; it does, however, still cover forced organ harvesting and dealing in devices, equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting.
I urge this House to reject this amendment for a number of reasons. First, as I have said previously, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary as, crucially, organ harvesting is already dealt with under existing provisions in the Procurement Bill. Under the Bill, any suppliers failing to adhere to existing ethical or professional standards that apply in their industry, including those relating to the removal, storage and use of human tissue, could be excluded on the grounds of professional misconduct. It is worth adding at this point that, as far as His Majesty’s Government are aware, no supplier in the UK public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting. This means that it is very unlikely that any of our public money is being spent on that terrible practice. As noted above, however, if such a situation did arise, the exclusion for professional misconduct would apply.
Secondly, the amendment has significant consequences for contracting authorities. It extends to suppliers
“dealing in any device or equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting.”
That is an incredibly broad provision that would be extremely difficult for contracting authorities and suppliers to verify in respect of all supply chains and customer bases. If there were any doubt about whether that discretionary ground applied, local authorities or NHS trusts would need to undertake significant due diligence to satisfy themselves that the entire supply chain and the end user of all goods provided by suppliers—potentially including oxygen masks, IT equipment and so on—were not used in these terrible practices. It would mean that a small business tendering for Government contracts would need to understand where their customers might be using or selling their products, to enable them to genuinely and legitimately confirm that they were not subject to this ground.
More generally, the amendment would create excessive bureaucracy, requiring each and every supplier bidding across the thousands of contracts awarded by contracting authorities each year to declare that they are not guilty of forced organ harvesting, when we know that there is no evidence of that horrific practice occurring in UK public sector supply chains. We believe that such a burden would be unjustified when the Bill already covers this issue.
Thirdly, the Government are already taking steps to tackle the issue of organ harvesting. We have been explicit that the overseas organ trade, or complicity with it, will not be tolerated. For example, by virtue of the Health and Care Act 2022, it is already an offence to travel outside of the UK to purchase an organ. In addition, the Government continue to monitor and review evidence relating to reports of forced organ harvesting in China, and maintain a dialogue with leading non-governmental organisations and international partners on this very important issue. This Bill creates new rules for suppliers and contracting authorities that will hopefully stay on the statute book for many decades to come.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I apologise for being slightly delayed, Mr Deputy Speaker: I did not see this debate pop up on the annunciator. I rushed to ask a question about this topic. Forgive me.
On the issue of organ harvesting, I understand the difficulties with this particular amendment, so while I am instinctively supportive of what the Lords are trying to do, I understand the Government’s arguments. However, there is a way to tighten this up. Organ harvesting is taking place in China—it is a regular occurrence—but I would not rely too much on declarations from supply chains. We have already unearthed the problem that supply chains are under no obligation to do the due diligence that would enable them to know whether companies, or the people they are trading with, have any involvement with organ harvesting. Tightening that up would be great.
On that basis, does my hon. Friend accept that we now have to make sure that China is on the enhanced tier of the foreign agents registration scheme? That would really put power in the Government’s hands to make sure that supply chains were properly checked. Will he say to our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and to all those concerned that it is time we did so? China is a genuine threat to us, industrially as well as politically.
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend is an expert on these matters. I thank him for his intervention—I have to say that I was quite surprised that he was not sitting behind me when I stood up in the first place, but I am delighted to see him in the Chamber now. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will have heard his remarks and will consider them carefully. This is obviously a procurement Bill, and we are doing our best to create the post-Brexit framework that will give us an enhanced ability to improve all aspects of procurement in our society.
In Committee and on Report in this House, we thought it was necessary to tighten up national security considerations to make sure that foreign hostile actors could not get involved in public procurement. We have—as my right hon. Friend knows, because he gave us good advice—taken steps to make sure that we remove technologies that come from those hostile actors from sensitive sites. On the broader point he made at the end of his comments, that is beyond my pay grade, but I have no doubt that those above my pay grade have heard what he has said.
This is an excellent Bill. It is a tribute to the officials who have worked on it and to my predecessors who worked on it in the Cabinet Office. I therefore urge the House to reject the amendment made by the other House and support the Government’s motion.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
In this week of all weeks, the House needs to show that our democracy is strong and that we are not intimidated by other nations. The Chinese Communist party has shown that it holds our democracy in contempt. Today we have an opportunity to put tough talk into action.
Forced organ harvesting is a systemic trade that is taking place on an industrial scale in China. Up to 100,000 of its citizens are butchered each year for their organs. This is a state-sponsored crime against humanity. The two or three organs harvested from a healthy young adult are worth over £500,000. Evidence of this crime has been extensively investigated by the China and Uyghur tribunals chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, the former lead prosecutor at The Hague. At the tribunals, evidence was heard of systematic medical testing of thousands of prisoners of conscience, allowing the oppressive regime to create an organ bank.
I have spoken extensively on the horrors that have occurred due to forced organ harvesting in previous stages of the Bill, so now I will address some of the concerns that the Government expressed in the other place when opposing the amendment. The Government claim that forced organ harvesting will be covered by existing provisions of the Bill. Certain conduct will absolutely not be covered by the existing provisions on professional misconduct. Supply chains can be complex, and improper conduct may often be one step too far removed from the crime for professional misconduct elements to be made out. Trying to cover all the different ethical and professional misconduct regulations across a multitude of industries is not practical. Only by having a specific provision for forced organ harvesting will we ensure that British taxpayers’ money is not funding this horrific trade. Otherwise, it will be all too easy for companies to hide behind complex supply chains.
The second issue that the Government raised in the other place was that there was no evidence of UK organisations facilitating forced organ harvesting, yet there are companies with substantial operations in the UK providing immunosuppressive drugs for transplants in China. There is evidence of companies dramatically raising their stake in the Chinese market over the past few years. Sources on the ground claim that CellCept, an immunosuppressive drug, has been used on Chinese prisoners for transplants. There is no evidence that those individuals consented.
That is why a clear and direct provision relating to forced organ harvesting is necessary. UK taxpayers’ money should not inadvertently be supporting this inhumane trade perpetrated by the Chinese Communist party. There must be the ability or at least the option to stop it. The amendment is not asking for draconian action. It simply gives discretionary powers to exclude a supplier from a procurement contract if there is a connection to forced organ harvesting. That would give the Government the ability to act to prevent the complicity of UK taxpayers in forced organ harvesting.
The amendment must be seen in the context of our country’s wider relationship with China. The Government have extensively talked tough about standing up for our values against China. China is a trading partner that we cannot ignore or close ourselves off to, but that does not mean that we should not take such opportunities as this amendment to do right by our values and by humanity. Only a couple of days ago, the Prime Minister told the Chinese Prime Minister that attempts to undermine British democracy are completely unacceptable and that we will defend our democracy and our security. The amendment gives us the opportunity to use our democracy—the democracy that they seem to hold in contempt—to stand up for our values against China.
I urge colleagues across the House to take this opportunity to send a clear message to the Chinese Communist party, in this week of all weeks, that this House will stand up for our values by keeping Lords amendment 102B in the Bill.
Alex Burghart
With the leave of the House, I thank all Members who have made points in this important debate. Let me remind colleagues that the exclusion grounds in the Bill have been selected in the areas of greatest risk to public procurement. I return to the point I made at the start: there is fortunately no single known instance of such practice in the UK public procurement chain. We do not see it as a great risk to public procurement. I welcome the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) to her place and her new role, and I look forward to debating with her and working with her in the weeks and months ahead.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
It is a long-standing convention, under successive Governments, that outgoing Prime Ministers can draw up a resignation honours list. Any names proposed are subject to the usual propriety checks.
Patricia Gibson
Trust in politics has never been lower, and this has been worsened by the grubby reality that the former right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip handed out peerages to his pals and covid partygoers. The other former Prime Minister was the shortest-serving Prime Minister in history but still managed to crash the economy, and she will also enjoy the privilege of ennobling pals and cronies. Do the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet feel this is inappropriate in any way? Does the Minister think such a spectacle will help to restore trust in politics?
Alex Burghart
We discussed this at length on 22 June, when it was said that if the hon. Lady were to look at the resignation honours list of the former right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, she will see many people who conducted a great deal of public service and deserved to have that service recognised. We have not yet seen the list of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), but it is worth remembering that people who are honoured in our system have often contributed greatly to our country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before we proceed, the House may wish to join me in wishing the Minister a happy birthday.
Alex Burghart
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. What nicer way to spend one’s 28th birthday? Alas, I am not 28.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Government know the importance of collaborating internationally on the challenge and opportunities of AI. That is why, in the autumn, the Prime Minister will convene the first major AI summit, which will bring together major international partners and leaders in the technology to discuss the issues that confront society.
Dr Evans
It is great to hear that the international community will be coming to Bletchley Park in November to discuss the principles and core values when dealing with AI. Given that AI is moving so quickly, with the likes of ChatGPT already impacting things like the work of school kids, what more can the Government do to make sure each Department is taking full account of the impact of AI?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend asks a pertinent question. The Cabinet Office, which is home to the Government Digital Service and the Central Digital and Data Office, takes a lead role, along with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, in co-ordinating work within Government so that we can take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities AI presents and guard ourselves against potential disadvantages.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is nice to see you in the Chair first thing in the morning, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for his response. Constituents all around this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland rely on employment to make ends meet and survive. Has he had discussions with international partners as to how AI will impact on people’s livelihoods and jobs? That is so important.
Alex Burghart
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, as one potential risk of AI is that it displaces employment. However, across Government we are looking at the risks and opportunities. We see a future in which humans working with AI create all sorts of great new opportunities for our economy and for individuals.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let me also say happy birthday to the Minister. He has just told the House that the Cabinet Office is responsible for the Government Digital Service—quite rightly. The Government could be making better use of AI to improve government services. For example, we are losing £8 billion a year to benefit fraud and error. Under this Government, we have lost £60 billion to that since 2010—that is £150 a second. Are they going to use AI to deal with benefit fraud and error, or should we assume that this is another example of how nothing works after 13 years?
Alex Burghart
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place and look forward to debating these and other issues with him in future. He will be delighted to hear that over the past three years the Government have saved billions of pounds using the latest technology—
Alex Burghart
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that they have. I can see he is new to the brief and he has some reading to do. [Interruption.] He has been moved from his previous brief to this one. He may be interested to discover that we regularly convene meetings with groups such as Evidence House and 10DS, which contain some of the finest technical experience in Government, to ensure we are taking advantage of the latest technology to make savings for taxpayers. He talks about money lost, but the money that the Government and the Treasury have saved through implementing the latest techniques is far in excess of the number he gave.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
In April, the Government published a draft British border target operating model and on 29 August we published our final border target operating model, confirming its introduction on 31 January next year. It outlines our new controls regime, using better technology and co-ordination to reduce friction and costs, and will provide a simpler, yet secure, experience for traders moving goods across the border.
Sarah Olney
Small businesses up and down the country have spent countless hours and millions of pounds preparing for these changes, only to find that the Government are delaying implementation for the fifth time. How does the Minister expect businesses to have any confidence in making long-term investment and supply chain decisions when this Government have such a long list of U-turns and policy blunders?
Alex Burghart
The hon. Lady is right that we have pushed the date back several times, first because of covid, secondly because of Ukraine and thirdly to ease the pressure of the cost of living crisis. We are now working in line with business readiness, having had regular engagement with people across the sector. We have now set out, as she will have seen from the statement I made to this House in writing on 4 September and the written document published on 29 August, that we have a final time schedule.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The Office for National Statistics has found that more than 50% of people are paying more for their food shop. What is the Government’s plan to bring down inflation quickly to ensure that people can feed their families?
Alex Burghart
I was trying to glimpse the British border target operating model within that question. The Government have taken a range of measures in order to help bring down the cost of living for people, notably the very considerable help we have given people with the cost of fuel.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is great to see you in the Chair so early in the day. Members will be aware that the Government attempted to sneak out in the summer that announcement about the utter chaos they have created over the border target operating model. I say to the Minister that inflation is of central relevance to this matter, because the cat is out of the bag. The Government’s own document concedes that these measures, when introduced, will have an impact on inflation and will make the cost of food even higher. Can the Minister set out what assessment has been made of the wasted money and the cost to taxpayers and businesses as a result of the Government’s chaos on this issue?
Alex Burghart
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his spot and I look forward to debating with him on this and other issues. I do not quite accept his categorisation of us as sneaking out a document by publishing it and sharing it widely on social media. As I explained to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), we have delayed implementation in response to the challenges the country has faced. We are now ready to move forward with a brand-new border target operating model, which has the support of businesses, of vets and of those dealing with sanitary and phytosanitary checks. It will be a very good thing for the country and will help us to secure our borders in new ways.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Well, that was announced when the House was not sitting, and to describe something that the Government concede will increase prices as a “good thing” is quite extraordinary and shows how out of touch they are.
Let me turn to another area of the Government’s incompetence. The January 2024 deadline for the rules-of-origin provisions is now rapidly approaching. Unless this matter is dealt with, it will devastate our car industry. It should have been anticipated by the Government. Can the Minister tell us when an agreement for an extension to that deadline can be secured, and what contingency plans are in place if the Government fail to do that?
Alex Burghart
On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, the document was published when it was ready; it was not hastily snuck out during recess. On his point about readiness for the trade window in the car industry, that matter is being taken seriously by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, who I am sure will be ready to say something shortly.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The UK Government already award contracts on the basis of most economically advantageous tender. Furthermore, we are currently taking the Procurement Bill through Parliament, which is an opportunity to streamline procurement processes and ensure that value for money remains central to the UK’s procurement regime.
Ruth Cadbury
It is important that taxpayers get value for money when public services are outsourced. Over recent years, the Home Office has given vast sums of taxpayers’ money to Clearsprings Ready Homes, yet the accommodation that it has contracted out for housing asylum seekers has been unfit for human habitation, partly because so much taxpayers’ money is being skimmed off by unaccountable intermediaries before it reaches the hotels or food providers. What is the Cabinet Office doing to stop that sort of thing happening in outsourced services?
Alex Burghart
I am unable to comment on the specifics of that case, but on the broader point, the Procurement Bill covers a range of issues, including how we can improve quality within our supply chains. Perhaps the hon. Lady will join us for ping-pong next week.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
I welcome the recent announcement that a growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises have secured Government contracts, but businesses with a social purpose and female-owned businesses are still under-represented in public procurement opportunities. Will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss what can be done to remedy that?
Alex Burghart
I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend about this and other issues. She will know that the Procurement Bill means we are now looking at the most advantageous tender, which means that value for money remains central but that those seeking to strike up procurement can also look for other factors when deciding which contract to sign. We are very much on the same page.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The greening Government commitments prescribe all Departments to address the matter of environmentally sustainable transport management by reducing and refining their need to travel through hybrid working and the current location strategy. Departmental locations, where possible, are all within 10 minutes’ walk of a major public transport hub.
Mr Sheerman
Will this team wake up? They have huge potential in the Cabinet Office to influence every Department of State. From my perspective, as a passionate supporter of sustainable transport and particularly the revolution that is coming in hydrogen power, I see an inert Department not pushing other Departments to do better. Could they wake up and do something about this?
Alex Burghart
I can think of nothing nicer than being woken up by the hon. Gentleman. I can reassure him that we do encourage our colleagues in other Departments to go further on this. We have a range of carbon offsetting programmes in place and, as I say, our location strategy means that we try to locate people near public transport hubs. This is the very essence of a green transport strategy.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
It is clear from their actions that the Tories want to privatise our health service, selling data from England’s NHS to a Trump-backed business, Palantir, under a £27 million data deal. This was done without a competitive tender. Not only that, but they also accepted a £5 million donation from a rich health tycoon this week. Does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree with me that the only way to guarantee protection and integrity for Scotland’s NHS is to keep it out of Westminster Tory hands and keep it in the hands of the people of Scotland?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The hon. Lady will know, because she sat on the Procurement Bill Committee, that we have a new procurement regime coming in, but in the case she refers to it is my understanding that everything was above board and in line with due process.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Alex Burghart
As ever, my hon. Friend has his finger on the pulse. I was lucky enough to be on a work trip to Edinburgh and Glasgow just before the summer break, and all the people I met there were interested in employment, skills, the state of the health service, and law and order. Not one person raised a second referendum with me, which is because it is not among people’s priorities in Scotland. People’s priorities are the same as those of the Westminster Government.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Alex Burghart
I am very happy to look again at the hon. Lady’s work. Our general belief is that it is our actions in this place and outside it as elected representatives that will restore trust in politics rather than legislation, and that is a job for all of us.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The forthcoming by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be the first in Scotland under the new requirement for voter identification. We know that thousands of voters in England were disenfranchised at council elections because they did not have a passport or driving licence. What specific steps is the Cabinet Office taking to make sure that the voters of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, who want to turn out in their thousands to elect Katy Loudon as their MP, are not prevented from doing so because they are too poor to own a passport or driving licence?
Alex Burghart
I hope the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that people can only vote if they have a passport or driver’s licence. If he does not know that that is untrue, he now does. We have had a widespread publicity campaign to ensure that people understand the identity requirements at elections. At the local elections, despite considerable scaremongering from Opposition parties, the disruption was minimal.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
That concludes questions. I pause for a moment to allow the change of dramatis personae on the Front Bench—there is quite a lot of movement this morning.
Border Target Operating Model
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Minister of State, Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG, has today made the following statement:
On 29 August 2023, the Government published the final border target operating model and confirmed our approach to border controls for goods imported into Great Britain. These controls will be progressively introduced from the end of January 2024 to better protect the UK against biosecurity threats and create a world-class border system.
The publication follows extensive engagement with stakeholders on the draft we published in April 2023. In response to this feedback, we have revised the timeline for the introduction of sanitary and phytosanitary controls, and have postponed the first implementation milestone by three months to give businesses sufficient time to prepare.
Bearing in mind our commitment on inflation, we have worked to ensure that the border target operating model does not impact costs for consumers. Our analysis indicates that, at most, the impact of the new model on annual consumer food price inflation will be less than 0.2% in total over a three-year period.
The border target operating model sets out the improved rules and processes that will apply to the import of goods into Great Britain. We have worked with the devolved Administrations to agree this approach, ensuring that a coherent model is introduced across the United Kingdom.
Our border controls on goods will include safety and security controls for EU goods, and sanitary and phytosanitary checks. This approach will reduce the risk of importing harmful diseases, including zoonotic diseases which are responsible for a majority of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans (including those with pandemic potential).
While the costs of new disease outbreaks cannot be quantified directly, previous outbreaks have had severe agricultural and economic impacts. Our new approach will fulfil the UK’s domestic and international obligations and uphold our reputation for the high regulatory standards that underpin our agrifood trading relationships.
The border target operating model will implement controls through three major milestones:
31 January 2024: The introduction of health certification on imports of medium risk animal products, plants, plant products and high risk food (and feed) of non-animal origin from the EU.
30 April 2024: The introduction of documentary and risk-based identity and physical checks on medium risk animal products, plants, plant products and high risk food (and feed) of non-animal origin from the EU. At this point, imports of sanitary and phytosanitary goods from the rest of the world will begin to benefit from the new risk-based model.
31 October 2024: Safety and security declarations for EU imports will come into force from 31 October 2024. Alongside this, we will introduce a reduced dataset for imports and use of the UK single trade window will remove duplication where possible across different pre-arrival datasets.
At west coast ports, businesses will face new checks and controls when moving Irish goods (i.e. any goods other than qualifying Northern Ireland goods) from Irish ports directly to Great Britain. The border target operating model sets out information on these new controls, which we will introduce from 31 January 2024. The date for the commencement of physical checks for nonqualifying goods moving from the island of Ireland will be confirmed in Autumn 2023. In line with the Windsor framework, we will ensure that Northern Ireland businesses have unfettered access when moving qualifying goods to their most important market in Great Britain.
We will continue to work with businesses and ports to prepare for the implementation of new controls.
Copies of the border target operating model were deposited in the Libraries of the Houses of Parliament over summer recess and remain available to Members.
[HCWS998]
Departmental Update
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
The Minister of State, Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG, has today made the following statement:
I would like to update hon Members on the main items of business undertaken by my Department in advance of Summer Recess.
Strengthening ethics and integrity in central government
The Government are announcing today a wide-ranging programme of reform to strengthen ethics and integrity in central Government.
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has today laid in Parliament the Government full response to the Upholding Standards in Public Life report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the report by Nigel Boardman into the development and use of supply chain finance (and associated schemes) related to Greensill Capital in Government, and the propriety of governance in light of Greensill report from the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
This statement follows the reforms announced to the House in the written ministerial statement “Government Transparency and Accountability” of 15 July 2022, and concludes the Government obligations under the motion passed by the House on 7 June 2022, Official Report, column 728.
The Government are also accepting the three recommendations of Adam Heppinstall KC to review conflicts of interests guidance, consider advice on handling potential conflicts between candidates and Ministers, and consider whether changes are needed to the relevant section of the governance code on public appointments.
In addition to their response to these recommendations, the Government are also delivering further reforms to the business appointment rules beyond the scope of these reports, to both improve the experience for applicants and ensure a more consistent, risk-based approach. As part of this work, the Government will also be integrating into legally binding agreements its other obligations on former office-holders and employees, namely the Radcliffe Rules on books and memoirs, and the rules on the return of, and access to, papers from time in office.
These reforms to the Government’s ethics and integrity framework sit alongside the ongoing obligation on all office-holders to uphold their relevant codes of conduct, including the Civil Service Code, the Special Adviser Code of Conduct, the Ministerial Code, and the Code of Conduct for Board Members of Public Bodies.
Government transparency and accountability
Since 2010, the Government have been at the forefront of opening up data to allow Parliament, the press and the media to hold public bodies to account.
Transparency is crucial to delivering value for money, cutting waste and inefficiency, and ensuring every pound of taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible way.
The Government will continue to look at how the range of information published by the Government can be improved and made as useful as possible to the public, press and parliament. The following subject areas include documents and information that the Government is due to publish.
Ministerial transparency
The Government will today be publishing the list of ministerial responsibilities on gov.uk. Copies will also be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses in Parliament. The list includes details of ministerial Departments, the Ministers within each Department, their portfolio responsibilities and private offices and the Executive agencies within each Department.
Departments will also be publishing routine transparency data on Ministers’ gifts, hospitality, overseas travel and external meetings for the period of January to March 2023. This data covers the returns for the Prime Minister, Government Chief Whip and the Leaders of the House of Commons and the Lords, as well as the Cabinet Office. Government previously published this data on 30 March, for the period of October to December 2022.
Transparency on special advisers
Special advisers are a critical part of the team supporting Ministers. They add a political dimension to the advice and assistance available to Ministers while reinforcing the impartiality of the permanent civil service by distinguishing the source of political advice and support.
Special advisers are temporary civil servants, and their costs are met by the Government Department in which they are based. Each year, the Cabinet Office publishes a report on the cost and number of special advisers across Government. Today, the Cabinet Office will be laying and publishing its report for the previous financial year, April 2022 to March 2023, which also contains a list of special advisers in post as of the end of the reporting period.
Departments will also be publishing routine quarterly data on special advisers' gifts, hospitality and meetings with senior media figures.
Transparency on senior civil servants
The Cabinet Office is also, today, publishing details of all Cabinet Office senior civil servants who hold outside employment for 2022-23, which is paid or otherwise remunerated, and has been approved in line with the requirements of 4.3.4 of the civil service management code.
Routine quarterly data on senior officials’ hospitality, expenses and meetings, along with business appointment rules advice, will also be published by Departments today.
Public appointments order in council
Yesterday, His Majesty the King’s Privy Council approved a refresh of the public appointments Order in Council, which lists the public bodies regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The order was last updated in 2019.
As well as amending the schedule to reflect newly created, renamed or dissolved regulated public bodies since its last update, the changes take account of the machinery of government departmental changes announced by the Prime Minister earlier this year, and make an addition to the commissioner’s remit of the appointment of non-executive directors to the boards of ministerial Departments, in line with the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s recommendations.
[HCWS992]
Draft Official Statistics Order 2023
Alex Burghart Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Official Statistics Order 2023.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. The order updates the list of non-Crown organisations that produce official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Government and UK Statistics Authority want to see official statistics enabling sound policy decisions and providing a firm evidence base for decision making both inside and outside Government.
The code of practice for statistics plays an important role in ensuring that producers of official statistics inspire public confidence by demonstrating trustworthiness, quality and value in the statistics they produce. The order revokes and replaces the Official Statistics Order 2018, updating the list of UK non-Crown bodies that may produce official statistics. From December 2007, the Statistics and Registration Service Act has allowed the flexibility to add non-Crown bodies to and remove them from the authority’s remit by order.
The order provides an updated list of bodies whose statistical activities will be official statistics and so will be monitored by the authority. The authority will work with bodies designated as producers of official statistics to promote good practice in the production and publication of official statistics. It will monitor and report on the production and publication of official statistics, and assess the treatment of producers of official statistics against the code of practice, at their request, and publish the results of those assessments. If the statistics comply with the code, the authority will designate them as “national statistics”.
The changes are applied to UK-wide and English organisations. It is important to designate the bodies as producers of official statistics to bring them within the scope of the code of practice for statistics. That will help to provide assurance that the statistics they produce are trustworthy and of high quality, and have public value.
It is important to note that although the order covers a wide range of bodies listed in the schedule, the vast majority were already designated under the previous order, so this order makes a very minor adjustment. It adds five new bodies to the list in the 2018 order: the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, the Joint Information Systems Committee, the Regulator of Social Housing, Skills for Care Ltd and the Trade Remedies Authority. It removes five bodies that are no longer legal entities from the list in the 2018 order: the Health and Social Care Information Centre, the Higher Education Statistics Agency Ltd, Monitor, the National Health Service Trust Development Authority and the Natural Environment Research Council.
The order also alters the name of two bodies that were contained in the 2018 order: the National Health Service Commissioning Board is now recorded as NHS England, and Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary is now recorded as His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. The UK Statistics Authority was consulted in preparing this order in accordance with the Act and is content for it to be laid. My Department laid the order on behalf of other Departments in preference to each Department laying an order for the bodies for which it is responsible. That is intended to make the best use of parliamentary time.
Alex Burghart
We have had a wide-ranging and engaging debate. In answer to the question from the hon. Member for Vauxhall about the Natural Environment Research Council, as I said in my remarks, NERC became part of UKRI in 2022, so it is no longer a legal entity and therefore ought to be removed from the order. Its removal was approved by the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and by UKRI itself. The Department confirmed that the Natural Environment Research Council does not produce official statistics, and engagement with UKRI confirmed that that organisation should not be included in the order.
I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley on his point about pensions, and I will ask the authority what the position is.
Question put and agreed to.