Civil Service Reform

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Maude of Horsham

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been urging me to publish a civil service reform plan for some time. I have said many times that I am keener on civil service reform than I am on civil service reform plans, but we have set out the plan and what we aim to achieve. It will require concerted political leadership, and there must be no hiding place. The political leadership of the Government and wide consensus across the party divide, which I think there is, together with the leadership of the civil service, will provide the best chance of implementing the plan successfully. I completely accept his point that the civil service is an important component of our stability, but we need to ensure that stability does not equate to a lack of any movement.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I welcome the substance of what the Minister said and the bipartisan tone in which he put it. In particular, may I welcome his proposals for greater involvement by Secretaries of State in the appointment of their permanent secretaries? I say by way of confession that, although I am not sure what the rules were at the time, in each of the three permanent secretary appointments that I made—in the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice—I insisted that there was a shortlist of at least three candidates from which I should choose. There was not the least allegation that I had acted in a partisan or cronyist way. The point that I made to those Departments was that if I was to take responsibility for the whole Department and for the work of that permanent secretary, I needed to have some confidence in the individual at the official top of the organisation.

[Mr Maude]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of view, which I think most people who have been Ministers would recognise and respect. As Ministers we come to the House of Commons and, more or less cheerfully, take responsibility and are held accountable, sometimes in very robust terms, for what our Departments deliver and how they perform. The relationship between a permanent secretary and a Secretary of State is the most important one in a Department, and it is not reasonable for a Secretary of State to feel that he or she has no real choice in the appointment of that permanent secretary.

Party Funding

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Maude of Horsham

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. It was a pity that the opportunity was not taken in the Hayden Phillips discussions to go ahead with the reforms that were so close to agreement, because one of the proposals was to have more state funding to match smaller donations. That would have achieved exactly what my hon. Friend is talking about, which is increasing the spread of those who support political parties. We sometimes lose sight of the fact that it is good for people to support political parties. Democracy depends on it.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman first confirm that the only legislation on party funding of any significance was put through by the previous Government in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009?

Secondly, will the right hon. Gentleman explain to the House what is wrong with having Sir Alex Allan, a distinguished civil servant who has served Labour and Conservative Governments, including the Thatcher Administration, so well, hold an inquiry into this scandal, which differs wholly in its character from those that have gone before, because it goes to the role of the Prime Minister?

Thirdly, the right hon. Gentleman, who was at the talks in 2007, as was I and as was the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), is right to recall that we came “agonisingly close” to an agreement—so close that we almost initialled the agreement in June 2007. However, to use not my words but those of the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the Conservative party walked away, and he described the right hon. Gentleman’s approach as “bogus”. What guarantee can we have that if new talks take place, the right hon. Gentleman will not operate in the same way?

[Mr Maude]

The investigation is not fundamentally about ministerial propriety, but about party funding. No money changed hands, nor was it ever likely to, because what was suggested by Mr Cruddas was fantasy and could never have come to fruition. If it was good enough for a former general secretary of the Labour party to investigate the Labour party’s scandal over donations by proxy, it is good enough for a distinguished lawyer to conduct the investigation into this matter.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about the breakdown of the talks with Sir Hayden Phillips, I refer him to what was said by Peter Watt, the then general secretary of the Labour party, who represented the Labour party with the right hon. Gentleman. He said in absolutely clear terms how frustrated he was that it was the Labour party that was blocking reform. Those are not my words, but those of Peter Watt.

Public Bodies Reform

Debate between Jack Straw and Lord Maude of Horsham

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says, rather regretfully, “Not very much.” It sounds as though he wants us to be more regulated and bossed around—that is somehow in his nature.

The answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) is that some functions will not be carried out at all. The key point is that the presumption will be that where there is a state activity, at least he and the rest of the House will be able to hold a Minister to account for what is done. What people find so irritating is the sense that there has been incontinently set up, in large part by the previous Government, this huge amount of activity by bodies that are in no way accountable: no one can hold them accountable for what they do. That is what we are seeking to change.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I first invite the Minister, in the spirit of consensus that we certainly want on this, to show just a tiny bit of humility in recognising that the high point of the unaccountable quango state was under the Major Government, of whom he was, I think, an adornment? At that time, outrageously, as I found when I became Home Secretary, having endured it in opposition, even parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State about prisons were being answered not by a Minister but by the chief executive of the agency concerned. That was preposterous and it happened under a Conservative Government, but we ended it very quickly. I hope that he recognises that the history goes right back to the Major Government.

Secondly, may I ask the Minister a specific question about the Youth Justice Board? I set that up; I accept that it does not have life eternal and that there is a case for reviewing its future. However, will he ensure that as its future is reviewed, its key functions of delivering effective youth justice are preserved?

[Mr Maude]

It is a pleasure to welcome the right hon. Gentleman into our big tent; it is open to all-comers, and it is a delight to have him as a resident. I think that he confuses the role of Executive agencies with the function of a quango. It seems to me perfectly proper that when Members of Parliament inquire about an activity they receive a reply from the Executive agency’s chief executive. That does not mean that that agency is not accountable to Parliament through what a Minister says and does. The right hon. Gentleman will have found himself, as Home Secretary, directly accountable to this House for those functions.

Some of the functions performed by the Youth Justice Board will continue to be very important, but we take the view that the need for independent oversight of the process has now outlived its usefulness.