Oral Answers to Questions

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and so was the Public Accounts Committee, to say that we need to go much further. The ambition is to cover all public services. I am currently conducting a review of the complaints procedures across Government to see how we can mine them for user satisfaction data. I hope that that, combined with the expansion of the friends and family test, will lead to increasing fulfilment of our ambition, but the House should be in no doubt that it will take some time to fulfil it completely.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

T6. In the previous financial year more than £85 million was spent by the taxpayer on full-time trade union representatives. Is that a fair figure, and what is the Minister doing to reduce it?

[Mr Maude]

At the time of the last general election there was no monitoring whatsoever of the volume of taxpayer-funded trade union facility time in the civil service. We now have controls in place that saved £23 million last year, and we have already reduced the number of full-time taxpayer-funded union officials from 200 in May 2010 to fewer than 10 this summer.