Public Accounts Committee

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I, too, pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). She is the first woman—indeed, the first elected—Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and that is a unique combination. She is also one of the bravest politicians in the House, and anybody who has seen the magnificent election battle that she undertook in her constituency against the British National party may well understand why permanent secretaries might be worried about appearing before her at the Committee.

It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), but he needs to remind me to give him a lecture on Scottish geography. He always tells me that he knows a bit about Scotland, but I must tell him that, although Edinburgh and Stirling have castles, Stirling has by far the best, and it, as opposed to Edinburgh, has me as its MP. I forgive him, however, because I admire the skill and tenacity that he brings to the Committee, and he is a role model for us all.

I am not a new Member, but as someone who has been here since 1957—[Interruption.] It sometimes feels like that. As someone who has been here since 1997, I am asked by some colleagues, “Why do you want to go on to the PAC?” The Committee has an image deficit, and, although in various analyses of our work we are called the “queen of Committees”, we are still a bit of a mystery to the majority of our colleagues. Indeed, today’s attendance shows that we will remain a mystery for another few months at least.

On the PAC, one walks in the footsteps of history. I learned more about William Ewart Gladstone in my first few weeks on the Committee than I ever did taking an honours degree in history at Glasgow university, and all sorts of historical anecdotes add to, if not the glamour, then the attraction of being a member. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking mentioned Harold Wilson. One of the anecdotes that delights me most was the fact that, when he was shadow Chancellor, he decided that he also wanted to be Chair—he would have been a Chairman in those days, of course—of the Public Accounts Committee. In some ways, that was breaking new ground. Such a decision tuned in with Harold Wilson’s desire to consolidate his portfolio, so that he could ensure he was in control of all the strategic decisions that had to be made within the Labour party at that time. Ben Pimlott, his biographer, states that such a decision also had a practical benefit because, at a time when accommodation at the Palace of Westminster was not available for senior Opposition Front Benchers, the PAC Chairman was provided with his own room—a citadel of great importance in Westminster’s psychological battleground. My right hon. Friend has maintained the image of that citadel in the Upper Committee corridor.

Of course, the Committee does not consider the formulation or the merits of policy; it focuses very much on value-for-money criteria that are based on economy, efficiency and effectiveness, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk mentioned. Those are the three by-words that should determine how we judge the reports that come before us. In many respects, such an approach is almost counter-intuitive for politicians because we spend most of our time discussing and developing policy. However, as at least one previous Labour Prime Minister has commented, it is no use throwing money at something unless it guarantees the delivery of the objectives. I fully understood that cry of frustration in relation to one report we considered in the Committee. I shall come on to that in a moment.

We have gelled reasonably well as a Committee. There is a mixture of people who have longevity in the House, people who have longevity in membership of the Committee and people who have more recently joined this place. We bring to the Committee a range of external work experience, which allows us to question things in a way rooted in some sort of credibility in managing finances. As a Committee, we have a breadth of experience that allows us to challenge even the most eloquent of the accounting officers who appear before us. Although the subject is sometimes considered to be rather dry, we have developed a passion for our discussions with witnesses. Certainly, anyone present at our sittings this week would have noted that both energy and passion are in abundance in Room 15—anyone who follows our deliberations will have that confirmed.

In my brief contribution, I want to highlight three things that I have drawn from my short experience as a Committee member. The first relates to the lessons that we can learn from discussions on the reports and the Committee’s conclusions. Some of these issues have been the subject of previous debates—indeed, I think the hon. Member for South Norfolk has probably raised them—but they do need repeating. There is still a concern, which I hope is shared by most of my colleagues on the Committee, that the recruitment and training of civil servants has not kept pace with some of the issues, particularly that of financial responsibility. There has been an increase in training and personal development, which is welcome, but it astonished me to find out that, for example, it was only a couple of years ago when a financially qualified senior civil servant was recruited by the Ministry of Defence.

Sir Gus O’Donnell stated at a recent hearing that the British civil service has always prided itself on recruiting,

“the brightest and the best”

and on making people skilled generalists. I am not suggesting in any way that we stop recruiting those exceptionally bright people, but we also need to recognise that, in delivering projects efficiently, effectively and economically, they need to be managed properly. Will the Minister address that issue in his comments at the end of the debate and tell us what Departments are doing to enhance the training opportunities for those who undertake project management? It is not fair to the taxpayer or, indeed, to the individual civil servant for us to assume that people can manage complex and expensive projects without having the appropriate skills from the very day on which they assume responsibility for that work. With complex financial projects, learning on the job is simply not good enough.

Another point that has emerged from our discussions is how lessons are disseminated—or not, whichever is the case—across Government Departments. How does this happen currently? I get the feeling that permanent secretaries talk about it when they meet, and I understand that they meet on a regular basis. But is it a structured discussion? Is it then cascaded down to other colleagues in their Departments? Is it a learning experience only for them and their senior officials, or is it used as a corporate opportunity to change the way in which the service as a whole develops? I would like to get a feel for how we spread the word of good practice across all Departments.

Before I leave this part of my speech, I want to comment on one Department where people have tended to get it right—not always, but probably in the majority of cases—and that is the Department for Work and Pensions. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking, I have a special interest in that Department having been a Minister there for more than three years. I was delighted to hear from the retiring permanent secretary about the implementation of the new employment and support allowance IT platforms. I remember this particularly because as a Minister, when we had discussions on that project in undertaking the development work that led to the Welfare Reform Act 2007, we were told that, yes, it was “stretching”, but those officials immediately started to look at ways in which they could deliver it.

I know that there are good officials in all Whitehall Departments, but the one distinguishing feature of the DWP and its senior management team is that they tend to “grow” their own people. Officials at the DWP have come through the ranks. They understand the business, and they have had to deal with real people and solve real problems throughout their civil service career. I was pleased to note that the permanent secretary who was retiring indicated that the new perm sec, Terry Moran, follows in that tradition as someone who joined the Department as a 16-year-old in Blackpool, as I remember. That is an indication of how Departments can get it right. The DWP is not perfect, by any manner of means, but on average it tends to be a bit better in delivering some of its projects.

I want briefly to mention two specific reports and Committee sessions: first, on the academies programme, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking also mentioned; and, secondly, on tackling health inequalities. On the first, it was a joy to be present at that discussion. Unlike the current proposals, about which I have grave misgivings on a political level, this programme was intended to improve the performance of so-called failing schools still within the state system and directly managed by the Department of Education. The NAO report clearly indicates that most academies are achieving increased academic success and that Ofsted reports are, in the main, good. There are, of course, imperfections—the report did not say that things were perfect—but in delivering effectively, economically and efficiently, the Department is doing reasonably well.

It was no surprise to discover that one of the reasons that happened was that one person, in the shape of Lord Adonis, was there at the inception of the idea and through to the delivery of the project. Consistent and persistent political overview obviously helped. In the same vein, we need to look to consistent and persistent senior responsible officials to deliver some of these complicated reports.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The right hon. Lady may be aware that a previous NAO report seen by the previous PAC established that Excellence in Cities, which was a predecessor programme, achieved equally good results at far less cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs McGuire]

I am speaking purely of the report that was in front of us, but I accept that there may have been other approaches. I was using the point as an illustration, not a comparison.

[Mr Bacon]

I fully accept the right hon. Lady’s point, whether it was meant as an illustration or a comparison. Another interesting facet of the academies programme, which Lord Adonis pointed out to the Committee in a seminar, was that after a relatively short period it was he, as the Minister, who held the collective memory in the Department. All the civil servants who advised him on the programme had been there for less time than him. What does that tell us about how the civil service manages its people?

[Mrs McGuire]

The hon. Gentleman highlights a recurring concern among Committee members, which is that the tendency to move civil servants around the system so often means that the collective memory is not built up. That was illustrated beautifully in yesterday’s discussions with the people from the MOD. Even in a programme of intermediate length, there had been God knows how many senior responsible officers. That leaves no opportunity to build up the collective memory.

I will take your comments to heart, Mr Deputy Speaker, and will not speak for too much time. However, I wish to highlight one other report that I found outrageous, which was on health inequalities and life expectancy. As the Committee said, the issue of health inequalities is not new. A J Cronin wrote about it in his stories about Dr Finlay and Dr Cameron. We all know about these issues. Although it was officially identified in 1997, our progress in dealing with this problem, which has been staring us in the face, is depressing. There are issues with the approach of general practitioners to those who suffer health disadvantages.

I hope that the new Government will look at the report carefully, because as they reform and change the NHS, they must consider whether they can deal with the inequalities in health across the country, or whether they will reinforce them. For the record, that is one report on which I received positive feedback from people outside this House who are in public health. A colleague in the Scottish Parliament said that it was one of the best reports he had read on the issue.

I will conclude by looking briefly to the future. Parliamentary scrutiny of the taxpayer’s pound will be more challenging. As more services are devolved to commissioning GP practices and thousands of schools, the scale of the audit trail will be breathtaking and value-for-money analyses will be even more complex. I hope that the Minister gives us an understanding of who will be responsible for the spend. Can we expect it to still be the departmental accounting officer, when he or she will have no control once the money leaves the Department? Will we invite school governors and managers, partners in general practices, and chief executives of voluntary organisations to appear before us? This is a question for us all: who carries the can when public money is involved and who pays the price if it all goes wrong? It is bad enough at the moment, when few heads appear to roll even when things go spectacularly wrong. What will it be like when thousands of people are ostensibly responsible for signing taxpayers’ cheques? A taxpayer’s pound is a taxpayer’s pound, whoever spends it. The PAC, along with the NAO and the Government, will have to consider quickly how we will manage our work to ensure that there is still public accountability and that value for money is still identified.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—