Public Accounts Committee

Ian Swales Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I shall be brief. I am also new to the House and the Public Accounts Committee, and I thoroughly enjoy working for the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and respect the massive expertise of my fellow Committee members.

I wish to discuss the recurring themes of our work, which is an issue that has been mentioned today. Even at this early stage, I recognise the same messages coming out again and again. The hon. Members for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who are the corporate memory of our Committee, often remind us of that. I was recently contacted by a former senior civil servant in the Home Office, who discovered that I was serving on the PAC and wrote me a long e-mail outlining the issues as he remembered them, how the Committee’s recommendations were dealt with and the crucial issue of accountability. Although he retired seven years ago, his e-mail could have been written about what was happening yesterday.

I am conscious that the Committee tends to review problem areas, rather than successes, and so one perhaps gets a slightly jaundiced view. However, one is struck by the eye-watering sums we often talk about and one can get desensitised. One begins to think that £100 million of waste does not seem too much. Last week, we held a review of errors in the benefits system and it was suggested that £1 billion might be some kind of irreducible minimum. It is inconceivable that that discussion would take place in the private sector with that conclusion being reached.

I support the comments that have been made about leadership. I describe the people who the Committee sees as the good, the bad and the slippery. We get some very good ones, but we certainly get some of the other types too. I was going to talk in detail about the consultancy area, of which I have direct experience, but time does not permit me to do so. I shall therefore pick up just one point on that, which was that consultants tend to be engaged on a time basis, rather than on the basis of fixed outcomes, fixed prices.

So many of our reviews have huge time scales; it is common to be talking about issues that have taken longer than the second world war to sort out. That raises questions about the way the Government contract, engage consultants and so on and whether they really get things done in a timely fashion.

I recognise that there are challenges ahead. Although I welcome some of the Government’s movements on accountability and business plans, there are challenges involving the comprehensive spending review as well as two issues that have not been mentioned yet. The first is the abolition of the Audit Commission, and I still think we need to decide what the post-life is on that. Secondly, crucially, much Government money is now going to outside bodies that are beyond the reach of the National Audit Office. For example, in the consultancy world, £700 million is estimated to go to outside bodies versus £1 billion in departmental spending.

I welcome the motion, which seems a step in the right direction. It is right that we should not engage in political discussion or decision making, but many of our conclusions are not just about the Treasury—they require ministerial action. I commend the motion to the House.