Civil Service Reform

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge]

I know where my hon. Friend is coming from, but we need the capability in government effectively to manage contracts whenever and by whomever they are delivered. There is a legacy in the civil service of focusing on policy, which is valued, but not implementation, which is vital, so we must challenge that culture.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Was the right hon. Lady as impressed as I was by Michael Spurr, the new head of the National Offender Management Service, who started his career as a prison officer, has front-line experience and is now chief executive? He was a breath of fresh air when he appeared before our Committee, because he really focused on what we have to do to deliver good public services.

[Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree, and that takes me very neatly to my next point. Promotion in the civil service is all too often about moving to a job in another area, rather than focusing on one job and seeing it through to the end. I think that the hon. Lady would agree that the worst example the Committee has seen was the attempt to implement the new FiReControl policy, for which we saw 10 senior responsible officers in a matter of five years. It is no wonder the project went horribly wrong.

I think that there is still a culture in the civil service of being hostile to outsiders, rather than embracing the talents that can be brought in from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, which I think are often seen as a threat. When I was a Minister, I brought three incredibly talented women into the Department for Education to try to implement policies. None of them now works anywhere in Government, even though they could contribute to policy implementation.

I also think that too often the civil service and Government are—dare I say it?— exploited by consultants. My Committee will shortly be looking at the sale of Royal Mail, which might be just the last in a line of examples of that. I recognise that some steps are being taken, such as the development of the Major Projects Authority and the academy for training in project management. They are all steps in the right direction, but they are not enough and they are not happening fast enough.

Secondly, Government are just poorly organised for delivering what is wanted and needed. Government still work in silos, which always leads to unintended consequences. To take a current example, local authorities have had massive cuts, which inevitably has an impact on their social care expenditure. At the same time, we have a health policy that is trying to get people out of hospitals and into the community, but without any money to support it.

Working in silos leads to a failure to learn from mistakes, with one Department simply replicating the mistakes made by another. The Committee has seen that in the mistakes made during the early implementation of the private finance initiative, for example. If we look at how the contracts for energy have been implemented, we see that lots of those errors have been duplicated in the current contracts that have been signed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

There is a failure at the centre to recognise the importance of a strong centre. My Committee has just received a letter from Sir Bob Kerslake, Nicholas Macpherson and Richard Heaton. We had written to them about the importance of having a strong centre. I will quote a few lines from their letter:

“Your Committee urges the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to take a strong strategic lead, as the Government’s corporate centre, in civil service reform and associated issues… However, the… central direction and integration that you appear to recommend does not reflect the model that this government and previous governments have operated.”

I do not know whether that is true. I have asked the Minister whether he agrees.

The letter goes on to state that

“the Centre does not and cannot take decisions or set a strong direction on every item of the £720 billion of public expenditure… the government machine is not like a holding company dominating its subsidiaries from a corporate centre.”

Well, I do not know what business of that magnitude would not have a strong centre and would wash its hands of its responsibility for the performance of its constituent parts. Since when have we, as politicians, signed up to the mantra? It is almost like claiming that there is no such thing as Government; only Departments with their Secretaries of State. Reform, if it is to ensure that coherence, efficiency and effectiveness are delivered across Government, must mean that we have strong central direction and much better integration than we currently enjoy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

We in this House can make whatever decisions we like, but unless the machinery of government is fit for purpose we will not achieve the policy outcomes we desire and we will not achieve value for money for the taxpayer. It is therefore very important that we come together and debate the future of the civil service to ensure that our machinery of government is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

I pay tribute to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude). He is delivering a quiet revolution and is one of the unsung heroes of the Government. Dare I suggest that the kind of the leadership we are getting from the top of Government in driving change is far more effective than any initiative, such as a commission, think-tank or anything else? He is driving change from the top and showing real leadership.

As the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) told us, we on the Public Accounts Committee are witnesses to, and becoming experts in, government failure. It is a bit like “Groundhog Day”: over and again we see the same reasons for that failure. She has described some of those reasons today: poor skills and a failure to have consistent management and senior responsible owners who see projects through from start to finish. We need real accountability in the system. The Committee found that only a third of big projects are delivered on time and to budget. We see the same failings over and again, and there is no excuse for that. The machinery of government should learn from what works and what does not.

I welcome the introduction of the Major Projects Authority. It has started to do a good job to improve performance, but I think it could a lot more. I have a plea for my right hon. Friend the Minister: we would like see another performance review of major projects and I would like it to be as candid as possible. Departments need to be put on notice when they fail to deliver what the Government expect of them. In particular, I would like to know what is happening to deliver items in the national infrastructure plan. The Major Projects Authority can play a positive role in holding Departments to account for delivery.

Skills are hugely important. I completely agree with the right hon. Member for Barking that the culture in the civil service puts too much emphasis on rewarding people who pursue policies and interests rather than commercial skills. That reflects the culture of a civil service that was borne out of a 19th-century approach to government administration. Today, the emphasis is not on government administration, but on delivering services to the public, often through third parties. We therefore need to reward commercial skills, not focus on policy. That will require behavioural and cultural change throughout the civil service. Ministers can only do so much: those values need to be adopted by those at the top of the civil service.

I welcome the Minister’s efforts to deliver the Government’s capabilities plan to address skills shortages, but over and again we see that these values are not being adopted throughout government. Every permanent secretary needs to be a champion of ensuring that those behaviours are rewarded. If we do not, we will see poor value for money for the taxpayer. We have already seen that when Departments are not comfortable with managing commercial contracts, they tend to go with one supplier. That is creating new private sector monopolies funded by the taxpayer, which is bad for performance and bad for accountability. We need to ensure that our civil servants have the skills that will give them the confidence to manage contracts properly; otherwise those monopolies will get bigger and bigger. Let us have more rewards for civil servants who are actively grasping commercial challenges and actively pushing competition. There have been some good examples of that.

As I said during the speech of the right hon. Member for Barking, it was refreshing to see a prison officer reach the top of the offender management service, and to note the perspective he brought to that position. We are always encountering permanent secretaries who talk in a policy-wonkish way, but I am talking about real service delivery and real operational performance. Someone who becomes a chief executive after being a prison officer working on the front line will understand the whole business. He will know where the bodies are buried, and what needs to be changed. That is so much more effective: let us see more of it, please.

We have become used to very poor management of transport projects, but the senior responsible owner of the Thameslink project was the same person throughout. Let us see more of that as well.

I do not think that we need a commission. I think that we have seen enough government failure on the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration Committee. We know what is wrong; let us just get on with fixing it—and my right hon. Friend will.