Oral Answers to Questions

Ann McKechin Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We have enabled suppliers who suspect that a procurement is being done in the old-fashioned way that we inherited to raise it directly with my officials in the Cabinet Office, who can then intervene with the public sector procurer-commissioner to ensure that it is done in the modern way, which does not exclude small businesses from supplying to government in the way that was routinely the case in the past. We have made a huge amount of progress, but we still have a long way to go.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

5. What his policy is on the deduction of trade union subscriptions from payroll in the civil service.

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

The policy is delegated to individual Departments.

[Ann McKechin]

I am interested in the Minister’s response because I understand that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been writing e-mails and letters to other Secretaries of State, asking them not to write off. Will the Minister confirm whether that is correct, and will he make clear all correspondence between him and other Liberal Democrat Ministers concerning their opposition to this Tory attack plan on worker representation?

[Mr Maude]

I can do no better than quote a member of the Public and Commercial Services Union—she is just identified as June—who said that direct debit is

“the easiest way of paying my union subs. You know then that it’s going to get paid because you’re not dependent on your employer taking it from your wages. I think it’s better.”

I agree with June.