Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The Smith recommendations were, so far as I can see, made on an assumption of stable public sector employment. Owing to the size of the public sector deficit that the coalition Government inherited, public sector employment has been falling since then by more than 400,000, and the size of the civil service is down by about 73,000 since the election, so the priority has been to reduce the amount of property we occupy, rather than moving employment from one part of the country to another.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The problems with finding savings from the Government estate are that many Departments are finding it difficult to surrender leaseholds early and to find private sector businesses to take up surplus accommodation, and are even having problems with selling freeholds because of the state of the property market, meaning that it is very unlikely that the full potential savings of £830 million will be met before 2020.

[Mr Maude]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman is right on that. Actually, vacant space in the central Government estate is running at about 2.5%, compared with the national average of over 10% across the public and private sectors, so in fact Government Departments and agencies are not finding it impossible to surrender leases—they are doing so very effectively—or to sell properties where that makes sense, although our preference is to occupy the freeholds and get out of the leaseholds.