Trade Union Reform (Civil Service)

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

As the right hon. Gentleman, who is knowledgeable on this subject, knows, many employers have taken exactly this step. Many unions have sought to withdraw from check-off arrangements themselves, because they take the view that a modern union in a modern workplace should have a direct relationship with their members, not intermediated by the employer. Check-off dates from an era when many people did not have bank accounts and direct debit did not exist. It exists now, and many unions take the view, and indeed the PCS has said, that the easiest way to collect their dues is through direct debit.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating the TaxPayers Alliance on its important work which shows that £100 million of public money is wasted on facility time? Does he share my concern that a PCS-Unite merger would undermine our democracy and mean that the Labour party would be even more bought by the unions than it is today?

[Mr Maude]

I make the point again that the perception of political impartiality in the civil service is fundamental to our system of government. That should not be imperilled in any way. My hon. Friend is completely right to draw attention to the much wider scale of facility time and the cost borne by the taxpayer—money that would be better spent in the delivery of front-line public services on which vulnerable people depend. That is something that all public authorities should be looking at.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

That sounds like an issue for the Office for National Statistics, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is independent of Ministers, but I will ensure that this issue is looked at and that she gets a proper answer.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Another aspect of the transparency agenda is showing how taxpayers’ money is being spent. Does the Minister agree that that is the best way to safeguard against the massive waste and wild spending we have seen in the past and to avoid ballooning deficits and flat-lining public sector productivity in the future?

[Mr Maude]

I am proud that the UK is now ranked as having the most transparent Government in the world. It undoubtedly has an effect in driving efficiency and savings. The ability to benchmark and compare spending in different parts of Government is a hugely powerful driver of efficiency and savings, and we intend to continue down that path.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

What is being done to encourage innovative SMEs to get in on public procurement, and will the Minister update the House on the effectiveness of the mystery shopper tool?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

7. What estimate he has made of the savings arising from measures to increase departmental efficiency; and if he will make a statement.

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

On 10 June, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I announced savings through efficiency reform of central Government of £14.3 billion for 2013-14, against a 2009-10 baseline. Those savings are both recurring and non-recurring items, and include £5.4 billion from procurement and commercial savings, £3.3 billion in project savings and £4.7 billion from work force reform and pension savings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Maude]

Moving public services online has a major part to play, both in making services more convenient and designed around the needs of the user rather than the convenience of the Government, and in making major savings. Typically, the cost of an online transaction is about one fiftieth of the cost of the transaction being done face to face, but for those people who are not online there will always be an assisted digital option.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does the size of the savings being made not highlight the truly galactic waste of money by the previous Labour Government? Will my right hon. Friend set out his vision for further savings in the future?

Party Funding

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman points to what is undoubtedly an anomaly in respect of territory upon which I feel it is well beyond my brief to trespass.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that for the last two decades all major parties in this House have been affected by donor scandals of one sort or another, and that, rather than more hammering and rock throwing, we should in the next Session get on and legislate to bring in a donor cap, without state funding for political parties?

[Mr Maude]

I would be delighted if we were to do that. It is a long-established convention that reform of party funding proceeds by way of consensus. That was definitely the view that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and I took when we conducted previous discussions on this topic. We need to have another try at that. It is unsatisfactory for the party in power to legislate unilaterally to change the party funding system. If at all possible, we must proceed by consensus, as before, so we will strain every fibre to try to achieve consensus.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I deeply regret that it has been necessary for the Government to cut spending in the way that they have. The reason is very simple—the Government of which the hon. Lady was a member left this country with the biggest budget deficit in the developed world.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

T8. In the past decade, small business has increased employment by 1 million and big business cut it by 1 million. Does that not show that procurement for small businesses is about not just fairness but more jobs and money?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

1. What recent progress he has made on bringing forward proposals on Government IT procurement; and if he will make a statement.

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

Soon after the coalition Government came to office, we introduced strict controls on ICT spend that saved £300 million in the year to March 2011 alone. We have opened up procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises, we are moving towards open standards and interoperability, and we are examining some of the incredibly expensive and burdensome ICT contracts that we inherited from the previous Government.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the Minister tell us more about how open source, getting computers to talk to each other through common standards, and smarter procurement can help to save billions of pounds, secure better computers, and break up the IT cartel that was fostered under the previous Government?

[Mr Maude]

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Government have opportunities to handle their IT and increase their digital offering in transactional public services very differently from that which we inherited. It is also becoming increasingly clear that it will be possible for both the quality of those public services and public interaction to be massively improved, at a fraction of the cost incurred by the previous Government.

Industrial Action

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Unlike the Labour Government, we are tiering the increases in contributions in a progressive way so that people on the lowest pay are protected and those on highest pay will pay most. We think that that is a fair way of doing it. Someone who is working part-time, on a full-time equivalent salary of between £15,000 and £21,000, will have their increase in contributions capped at 1.5%. If it is below £15,000, they pay nothing more. We think that is fair. The full-time equivalent basis about which she is complaining is what her own Government put in place.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

As a former private sector worker, I know how many people will be wondering, given the irresponsible nature of these strikes, why £113 million of Government money is paid to the unions. Would it not be better used on body armour for our troops in the field, or on looking after sick babies in our hospitals by improving intensive care?

[Mr Maude]

It is entirely correct that a large amount of taxpayers’ money is effectively used to pay for full and part-time union officials. There can be perfectly good justification for some of that, in order to sort out local disputes quickly and effectively, but that there should now be 260 full-time union officials on the civil service payroll is really hard to justify, and we are reviewing it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It is good to hear the right hon. Gentleman being so enthusiastic about transparency. We have already published Government payment card data covering transactions between April and August this year, and we will continue to do so. We will publish the data for 2010 and 2011, and Departments will also have the option of publishing data for the previous year, when the last Government were in office. I look forward to enthusiastic support from the Labour party when the transactions made when it was in office are made public.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that response, and in particular for what he said about the last Government. I believe that the limit should be zero rather than £500, because we would not have known about the expenditure of the NHS on finger puppets if a higher limit had applied.

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend makes the purist case for the disclosure of absolutely everything, but we have gone infinitely further than any Government have ever gone before in exposing the spending of Departments. Of course we will keep that under review, but the first thing we need to do is complete the publication of the data on transactions below £500, including some that took place under the last Government.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The office of chief coroner will be brought into existence. It will not be set up in the elaborate way and with the extensive additional costs embodied in the proposals of the previous Government. The office will exist. The functions, to the extent that they are needed, will be exercised in a way that is affordable in the current circumstances. If the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have considerable respect, is really suggesting that we should spend this amount of extra money on this matter, he needs to tell the House what he would cut to enable that to happen.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Surely the concern is not just over the amazingly expensive offices that many quangos like to equip themselves with, but over the amount of pay that they receive. People at the UK Film Council get more than £150,000 a year, the British Waterways chief executive gets £230,000, and a similar amount goes to the chief executive of the Dover Harbour Board, dare I mention it? Surely we should ensure that the cost of each individual is reduced to a sensible amount.

[Mr Maude]

One of the benefits brought about by this Government is to make all that more transparent. We have exposed for scrutiny by the public and the House what those high salaries are, and it is right that we should do so. They may be completely justified in many cases, but they ought to be justified and scrutinised, so I make no apology for introducing that degree of transparency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend’s point simply amplifies the case for the presumption that we are instituting in the Bill that there needs to be a really compelling case for a state function being carried out in a way that is not accountable. That is the purpose of the Bill.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will my right hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend will forgive me, but I really do need to make progress. A great many Members wish to contribute to the debate.

Our first test of a body was the existential test—does its function need to be carried out at all? If, as in most cases, the body’s functions were deemed necessary, we then sought to establish whether the functions should be carried out independently. We had three tests. If a body carries out a highly technical activity, if it is required to be politically impartial or if it needs to be able to act independently to establish or measure facts, it is right for it to remain outside direct ministerial or other democratic accountability. That is clearly the case with bodies such as the new Office for Budget Responsibility, Ofgem and many others.

Any body that does not meet any of those tests will either be brought back into a Department, where it can be held accountable to the House through a Minister, or devolved to local authorities. In both cases there will be democratic accountability. Or in some cases, a body’s functions could be carried out outside the state altogether in the private or voluntary sector. We went through an extensive process to determine the outcome of the review.

The first task was simply to establish how many quangos there were and what they did. It may sound absurd, but it was and remains incredibly difficult to get firm information on that. Many do not publish accounts, there is no central list and there are many different types of quango with different statuses. The official list of non-departmental public bodies contains 679 bodies, excluding those in Northern Ireland, but that does not include non-ministerial departments, Government-owned public corporations or trading funds. Our review covered 901 bodies, and we believe, but cannot be certain, that that is the true extent of the landscape. I stress that departmental executive agencies were not within the review’s scope. They are directly controlled by Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament for what they do.

At the end of that review, I announced our proposals to the House on 14 October last year. They were that 481 of the bodies should be substantially reformed, including 192 abolished entirely and a further 118 merged. Since that announcement we have concluded consideration of a number of other bodies, and I can tell the House that the current total is that 495 bodies will be reformed, including 200 abolished and 120 others merged into 59 successor bodies. We have moved quickly to implement that programme, and I am pleased to tell the House that 45 bodies had been abolished by the end of April this year. Overall, we expect to make administrative savings—I stress that they are administrative—of £2.6 billion from public bodies over the spending review period. That money will be better spent on protecting public sector jobs and on front-line services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It would be quite interesting to know which of our plans for reforming quangos the hon. Gentleman disagrees with. His own party had in its manifesto a commitment to cut the number of quangos. It had such plans when it was in government, but sadly, as with so much else, it did not give effect to them. We will save money, but much more importantly, we will increase accountability, which is what this is really all about.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Public expenditure by quangos includes expenditure on lobbying, which is an abuse of public money. Will Ministers ban quango lobbying?

[Mr Maude]

The code for public bodies already purports to make it impossible for quangos to employ lobbyists from outside in order to lobby the Government. However, that code has not been effective, and considerable amounts of taxpayers’ money have been spent by public bodies, frequently in order to lobby the Government for them to spend more taxpayers’ money. We will make absolutely certain that the code is watertight and that that becomes impossible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Lord Maude of Horsham

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

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

Last week I announced the first results of the Government’s review of quangos. This is a work in progress; the principal aim is to increase accountability. We believe that where the state carries out a function it should be accountable to a Minister or to a local council unless one of three rigorous tests is met. To pass, the function must be purely technical, tasked with measuring facts or figures, or plainly required to be politically impartial. We reviewed 901 bodies and intend that nearly 200 will cease to be NDPBs, and we will merge a further 118 and substantially reform a further 171.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does the Minister agree that the review should include the misuse of public funds by quangos and public sector balance sheet organisations in paying lobbyists to brief against the Government or elected Members in the execution of their mandates?

[Mr Maude]

Guidelines already limit the use of external consultants for those purposes, and we intend to tighten them further, because the public find it quite offensive that a quango should be spending taxpayers’ money on hiring external consultants to lobby the Government to encourage them to spend more taxpayers’ money.