Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I am afraid that some wildly inaccurate reports have been floating around, but it is certainly true that the review that the Cabinet Secretary and the head of the civil service are leading on, which I mentioned in my previous answer, is looking right across the board to try to work out what a modern civil service ought to look like, bearing in mind all the technology and other advantages we currently have, in order to deliver innovation, change and the delivery of policy in the most effective and efficient way possible.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The Minister has announced the closure of the Central Office of Information, which provides politically independent public information from professional civil servants, and he will instead locate the service in various Departments, with the consequential inherent risk that the Government information service might become politicised. We would of course support any sensible measure to deliver a more economic service, but is not the current flood of leaks, on an industrial scale, in relation to today’s Budget a portent of the public information service’s politicisation, which he is opening the door to?

[Mr Letwin]

In a word, no. The changes that are being made in the structure and character of the information service are being made in order to have a modern service that can actually do the job properly. The hon. Gentleman ought to pause before talking about politicisation of the civil service, as under the previous Government efforts were made on an unparalleled scale to politicise the service’s activities. By contrast, this Government in all our information have been extraordinarily transparent, providing data on an unparalleled scale and operating a much more open Government than he and his colleagues ever dreamed of doing.

[Jon Trickett]

But that is all flim-flam, frankly. The leaking of Budget information on that scale is without precedent, and it is in clear breach, Mr Speaker, of your strict admonition that such statements should take place first in the House and not in the media. There is no way that professional civil servants in the COI would have undertaken such leaking, so does the Minister agree that there should be a Cabinet Office inquiry to identify the leakers? If it was civil servants, they are clearly in breach of their code of conduct, but, if it was Ministers, they are playing fast and loose with our democracy.

[Mr Letwin]

First, if the hon. Gentleman recalls his time as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Prime Minister, he will be aware that he was serving a past master at giving foretastes of Budgets. Secondly, I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman feels he knows what is or is not a leak, as he has not seen the Budget yet, and nor has the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

It is completely consistent with that, because we need particular skills to drive out the waste we inherited. Particularly, there is a need for commercial and IT skills. While those skills exist in Government, we do not have enough of them. Every single one of those external recruitments by the Cabinet Office will have been approved by me personally, and I make absolutely no apology at all for approving them. Where those skills are needed and a rigorous search has shown that they are not available within Government, we will recruit from outside and we will pay people properly for work that is essential.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is it not a fact that the Minister’s Efficiency and Reform Group will achieve no savings at all if the most senior officials in Government are distracted into chaotic breaches of the Cabinet Office code of conduct? Will he confirm that the Cabinet Secretary has now restored efficient Government by launching an investigation into such destructive breaches of the code as that reported in The Times yesterday of a senior No. 10 aide saying the Health Secretary should be “taken out and shot”?

[Mr Maude]

Frankly, coming from the hon. Gentleman—the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the previous Prime Minister, who operated in a No. 10 that was widely reviled as a snake pit of back-biting and anonymous briefings—that is pretty rich.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

As I said the previous time the hon. Gentleman asked such a question, he is extraordinarily assiduous in this area. I have done some further research on where he has been recently and the Saffron Lane centre that he describes is, I am glad to say, one area where the community organisers to which I referred will be located. While I am at it, it is clear that the hon. Gentleman drags the Government with him every time he goes anywhere. He also visited the Eyres Monsell centre and that is now receiving a £50,000 grant from the community grants system. We can be said to be delivering not on the cheap but on the expensive in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

This year, 40,000 households were made homeless. As we approach Christmas and with today’s rise in unemployment, Shelter estimates that every two minutes someone else faces losing their home. Now we hear that Government cuts to the big society have resulted in homeless charities facing 25% reductions in their funding. Will the Minister at least immediately agree to restore the social exclusion taskforce, which the Government shamelessly abolished when they entered the Cabinet Office, so that in the future the homeless and others who suffer from social exclusion will at least have a voice when he and his colleagues make such hard-hearted decisions?

[Mr Letwin]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the changes in the machinery of government that have taken place under this Government. It is perfectly true that the social exclusion taskforce has been abolished, and the reason for that is that we have set up instead a fully fledged first-rank Cabinet committee on social justice—

[Jon Trickett]

It meets in secret.

[Mr Letwin]

It is not in the least secret, as the hon. Gentleman mutters from a sedentary position, in the sense that it will produce a social justice strategy that he will be able to read along with the rest of the House. I think he will find that we are putting absolutely at the centre of our activities the fostering of the big society in order to help, among other things, those who are homeless. That is also one of the reasons why we recently issued our housing strategy, which does more than the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues did in many years to try to improve housing in this country.

Industrial Action

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

As always, Mr Speaker, I will do as you encourage me to.

Contrary to claims being made this morning by trade union leaders—and by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor—talks are very much alive. They are intensive and they are making good progress. I deeply regret the misleading claims to the contrary.

All this underlines how indefensible today’s strike is while talks at scheme level are moving forward. It is inappropriate, untimely and irresponsible. The ballots for strike action, particularly in the bigger unions, had a turnout of between a quarter and a third—a very low turnout indeed. Our latest data suggest that, as of 11 am today, 135,000 civil servants—well below a third, indeed not much more than a quarter, of civil servants—were on strike. Most civil servants are going to work today as normal.

We have put in place rigorous contingency plans to ensure that, as far as possible, essential public services are maintained during such periods of industrial action. I have an update on what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said a few minutes ago: only 16 of the 930 jobcentres are now closed to the public, and UK borders are open and operating with only very minor delays in some seaports. In the airports services are being maintained. I pay tribute to all the dedicated people who are keeping those borders both secure and open.

Across the other sectors the impact has been varied. According to estimates early this morning, across all state-funded schools in England, some 60% are closed but a great many are open or partially open. I am very grateful to those who have worked hard to keep their schools open across the country—head teachers, governors, support staff and teachers, all of whom may have concerns about their own pensions but have chosen to put the needs of pupils and parents above their own to minimise the impact of this strike. I deeply regret the fact that there will have been disruption to the lives of so many hard-working parents across the country, and to hard-working pupils, many of whom are facing mock exams in the near future; they need a closed school like they need a hole in the head.

Overall, the national health service is coping well with industrial action. Early indications are that the strike is having only a minor impact on patient services, and that has largely been mitigated by robust contingency planning. Several trusts have been forced to make cancellations of elective surgery, which is deeply unfortunate and I deeply regret it, but many organisations in the health service are reporting that they are operating at near normal levels. There is some disruption taking place in the local government sector, but councils have worked hard to secure essential services in areas such as dementia care and homelessness, to protect some of the most vulnerable members of the public from the most serious potential impacts of strikes.

Let me finish by saying this: I have huge respect for the dedicated women and men who keep our public services running. Their work is demanding, essential and highly valued. They deserve to be able to retire on decent pensions. Our reforms will ensure that their pension schemes will be decent, and that they can be sustained for the future. They deserve no less.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his courtesy in letting me have advance sight of the statement, which I received 20 minutes ago.

Clearly, the whole House regrets that industrial action is taking place today and that millions of families now face disruption to the services on which they rely and depend. Strikes are always a sign that negotiations have broken down, and if a deal is to be reached it is essential that both sides—let us be clear that that includes the unions, but the bulk of the responsibility lies with the Government—get around the negotiating table and show willingness to give ground.

Is it not true that the Government bear the greatest burden of responsibility for what is happening today? We accept that there is a need to continue the reform of public service pensions, which we in fact began when we were in office. We found the unions to be tough but ultimately reasonable negotiators. and we achieved a settlement without any industrial action.

The Government refer to Lord Hutton. He provided rigorous analysis of the current situation, laid out the ground rules for the negotiations, and persuasively argued that there was a need for further change. For example, he was right when he suggested we should look again at career average schemes, which might be fairer in many cases.

The unions need to show they accept the need for change, and indeed they have said they accept the continued need for negotiation and further change. The Government arbitrarily announced a 3p in the pound levy on the incomes of public sector workers, but this imposition has nothing whatever to do with Hutton. Is it not the case that the money that will be garnered from that 3p is not going to the pension schemes but is instead going into the pockets of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? The Minister says negotiations are ongoing, but will he tell us whether or not the 3p imposition, which is a form of tax on public sector workers, is negotiable? It clearly is not in the Government’s mind. Will he also respond to the question about when he last met the unions as part of the negotiation, and when Treasury Ministers last met them, as the leader of Unison said today he had not met them at all since 2 November? It is remarkable that the Government can say negotiations are ongoing when the key Departments have never met the trade unions.

At the core of today’s industrial action are 750,000 low-paid workers. These people provide daily services to all of us and to all the people we serve in our constituencies. They are mainly women, they are almost exclusively low paid, and they provide the essential services on which our whole country depends: they are school dinner ladies, teachers, nurses and others. The House must not underestimate the difficult decisions each of those people must make in deciding whether to take action. Many of them never thought, when they entered the service of the public, that they would have to go on strike. It is a difficult personal decision for each of them, and I assure the House that they take it only with the greatest reluctance. They feel a burning sense of injustice that, low paid though they are, an additional burden is now being imposed on them. Equally, they face a significant deterioration in their pensions, which is why 750,000 low-paid workers—mainly women—have taken that difficult personal decision.

There is a risk that many of those people will opt out of their pensions.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently say that I know that in pretty short order the shadow Minister will want to come to his questions on the statement?

[Jon Trickett]

I thought I was asking questions as I was going along.

What estimate have the Government made of the number of people who might opt out of their pension schemes, and what damage might the schemes incur?

It has been suggested that the Prime Minister thinks he can gain political advantage from the strike. He told The Daily Telegraph that he was delighted that a strike would take place. What is the Minister’s strategy? Will he and the Treasury again meet the trade unions to begin negotiations? We have consistently argued that negotiations should be ongoing. Will he call the unions today to ask for meetings tomorrow?

Let me turn to the disruption that has been caused today. How many people are staffing the borders? Will the Minister confirm that there has been no relaxation of border checks?

This is a strike that did not need to happen—nobody wants strikes. The Government must show that they are willing to negotiate sensibly.

[Mr Maude]

It is easy to tell from the tone of that response who pays for the hon. Gentleman’s party. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Given the pride the Minister obviously takes in transparency, is it not slightly odd that his Department, which leads on these matters for the whole Government, has the worst record in responding to freedom of information requests? Indeed, some people might think that is almost fishy. Since coming into office, the number of FOI requests answered on time by his Department has nosedived from 90% in March 2010 to only 42% in March this year. What do they have to hide? Will the Minister now tell us when he intends to get his house in order on FOI?

[Mr Maude]

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and congratulate him on his elevation to the shadow Cabinet.

The Cabinet Office deals with FOI requests in respect of Cabinet papers under the last Government, and that takes some time to deal with because we need to consult former Ministers in that Government. Any FOI requests relating to the royal family also need to be dealt with sensitively, with a lot of consultation. I notice that the hon. Gentleman does not raise the issue of Government procurement cards, and does not echo the response of his colleague, the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), who said, when we published these data, that we had gone on a spending spree, when, in fact, we had cut spending under Government procurement cards by 10% compared with the record of his party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

The chair of the Efficiency and Reform Group is me, so I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend, who, when he was leader of Barnet council, showed how much can be done. We do, absolutely, have a huge amount to learn from what is being done best in local government, particularly the sort of savings that can be made by much better use of office accommodation. It is such a pity that when the current Leader of the Opposition was Minister for the Cabinet Office he did not do this stuff himself. The country would be in less of a mess and the public finances would be in better shape if he had done his job properly.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Of course everybody welcomes cuts to wasteful expenditure. However, will the Minister explain why the Cabinet Office website indicates that in January a contractor charged the taxpayer £5,867.66 for flying flags? Will he explain why the Government paid a single taxi fare of £324.14, which would almost get me from here to Yorkshire and back again? Finally, will he explain why the taxpayer paid £181 for a single individual’s eye test? What a waste of money.

[Mr Maude]

I shall be absolutely delighted to provide the hon. Gentleman with full and detailed replies. I just point out to him, however, that if we had not opened up public spending to public scrutiny, he would not have a prayer of even asking the question.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I have particular concerns about two bodies that were taken out of the Bill by the House of Lords but that the Government intend, as the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has suggested this afternoon, to put back into the Bill in Committee. I remain hopeful that Ministers are still listening and are prepared to change their minds.

The Youth Justice Board has brought leadership and coherence to a system that was deeply fragmented. The creation of youth offending teams has been very impressive, as has the reduction in the number of young people going into custody: a 30% reduction over the lifetime of the board. I would expect the Government to be interested in that if for no other reason than because it represents a saving, in relation to the places that have now been decommissioned, of £38 million a year. If the Youth Justice Board is abolished, that might lead to a saving of a few hundred thousand pounds, but if the Government lose their grip on the youth offending system, and particularly of youth custody, because the board is not in place to grip it, that could produce incredibly high costs in future.

I am also deeply worried about the Government’s intention to dilute the office of the chief coroner. I hope that the House will forgive me for setting out the history so that Members and Ministers can appreciate the depth of betrayal that many individuals, families and organisations are feeling. In 2003, I was given ministerial responsibility for death certification and coroners’ services. One of the first things I did in that role was to receive the report of the independent review of coroner services led by Tom Luce. He found that the system was outdated, inconsistent and unsympathetic to families, and he proposed fundamental reform. A little time later, the then Home Secretary and I received the third report of the Shipman inquiry, which was the product of painstaking work by Dame Janet Smith into the failure of the death certification system to identify and stop the murderous activities of Harold Shipman. Dame Janet concluded that coroners and the coroner service must be independent of Government and that it was simply unacceptable for the coroner service to be administered from within a Government Department. That conclusion is hugely relevant given what the Government now propose.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that quite frequently the Government may be judged as culpable in contributing to a death and that it is therefore bizarre that a member of the Cabinet—the Lord Chancellor—should have some responsibility for the coronial service?

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. In December, when this matter was debated in the other place, Lord Lester made the important point that unless there is a properly independent system of investigation of deaths, the Government cannot be confident about satisfying their article 2 obligations on the investigation of deaths. That is particularly relevant in relation to deaths in prison and police custody.

In March 2004, I set out proposals for reform in which the bereaved and their families were to be placed at the heart of the system. Ministers should be reminded of the importance of putting those people at the heart of the system. Under the proposals, a chief coroner was to be appointed with complete judicial independence to lead a streamlined and modernised service, to ensure training and high standards and to carry responsibility for undertaking appeals and presiding over more complex inquests. Eventually, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 enacted those proposals. I pay tribute to Bridget Prentice—a good friend and very able Minister—who with characteristic energy and determination turned the countless words of the public inquiries, reviews and consultations into legislation, which was passed with the support of all parties in the House, including those that now turn their backs on it.

The need for a chief coroner is even greater now, with inquests becoming ever more complex and high profile. Only recently, we have had the Tomlinson and 7/7 inquests—cases in point. Another change since 2003, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) referred to in his very powerful speech, has been the experience of bereaved families of the servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their experience screams out for a system that is sympathetic, that understands the circumstances they face and that has their confidence.

The Government’s arguments about costs do not hold water and cannot be justified. Ministers should not simply accept the figures in the impact assessment but should challenge them. There is not one Member of this House who does not believe that the set-up and running costs of the office of the chief coroner could not be reduced. It is the business of Ministers to get those costs down, not to hide behind what was in the impact assessment. Of course, they are not counting the costs of failing to implement the reforms that were agreed in the last Parliament, such as the £500,000 or more that is spent every year on judicial reviews—not to mention the costs that will be incurred by transferring some of the functions of the office of the chief coroner to the Lord Chief Justice. Those matters will still need to be overseen by judges, and judges do not come for nothing—they cost money. Those costs still are not being counted.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I want briefly to make two simple but related points. Elected Governments—even unelected coalitions—have the right to determine the administrative arrangements they consider best suited to implementing their policies. However, there is such a thing as good governance. As the Public Administration Committee’s original report set out, good governance involves undertaking a proper review of structures, consulting the organisations and individuals involved, clarifying objectives and then having good, clear drafting of the legislation.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is not in his place, but I think that he hid his light behind a bushel, because last December’s PAC report was one of the most hard-hitting reports that I have ever seen in this House. It referred to the review process as “poorly managed”, and said that “no meaningful consultation” had been undertaken, that the criteria and tests set for the reform were “not clearly defined” and that the Bill was “badly drafted”, so it is no wonder it received a mauling in the House of Lords. In addition, the Committee said—I have never seen this sentence in a Select Committee report before—that the Government had

“failed to recognise the realities of the modern world.”

One element of that was the need for thorough consultation, a point that I want to discuss in relation to the staff.

Whatever the structures of government, whatever they determine those structures should be and whatever reforms to those structures they want to undertake, any Government will need an essential ingredient: well trained, professionally competent and motivated staff. However, in this Bill the staff are barely mentioned or considered, if at all. I chair the PCS trade union group, which involves Members of all parties in this House. The PCS has 30,000 members in non-departmental bodies, many thousands of whom are affected by this Bill. Many of those staff are facing compulsory redundancy, forced relocation, a deleterious impact on their terms and conditions and their pensions, an almost certain increase in their work loads and the end of job security—all in a situation of absolute uncertainty. The most common thing that I have heard from members of staff whom I have met in those bodies is that they are completely in the dark about their futures. There is a complete lack of clarity about what role their organisations and they as individual professionals will be playing, and they are worried about the future of the services that they deliver.

[Jon Trickett]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that redundancies are taking place now, before the Government have even taken these legal powers, which is damaging the capacity of those bodies to perform what continue to be their statutory duties?

[John McDonnell]

I can confirm that. Redundancies are taking place, and there is near chaos in some organisations, not only because of jobs being lost and redundancies being forced on people, but in the organisation of the services that they deliver. A number of staff are worried about the impact that the proposals will have on the users of their services. I refer in particular to those who manage the independent living fund and the 300 workers involved with the Youth Justice Board, whose jobs are likely to go. Morale is understandably at rock bottom in those services, so the important thing is consultation. However, I see that consultation with staff unions is not even listed in the Bill.

Also, there is an agreement stemming from the last Government—an agreement that I thought this Government had signed up to—on TUPE. The Cabinet Office statement of protocols adopted by the last Government and inherited by this Government, which I thought this Government had also signed up to, states that where TUPE does not apply—for example, in the transfer of staff into the public sector, which includes most of the bodies in this Bill—an explicit reference should be added to the Bill. That is the agreement that was signed up to, but all that this Bill contains is a reference in clause 24 to transferring people on conditions similar to TUPE. The legal advice provided to the union is blindingly obvious: conditions that are similar to TUPE are not TUPE. Therefore, a whole range of conditions of service and protections that staff now enjoy will be put at risk. I believe that this is an act of bad faith on the part of the Government. The least that they could do now is add TUPE to the Bill. It was included by the last Government in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and by this Government in the Localism Bill. In that way, staff gained some security for their futures.

Let me conclude. There is a view in many of those bodies that there is near chaos when it comes to what the future will hold for the staff and what the implications for delivering the service will be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting debate, but at certain times Members walking into the Chamber might have wondered whether they had accidentally walked into a discussion on Welsh affairs, because so much of the debate focused on S4C—a mystery to me, as an MP representing a Yorkshire constituency, until I was allocated to this Bill. I can assure the House that by the time we reach Committee stage, I will be as expert as everybody else. However, the real reason for the contributions from so many Welsh Members might be a certain boundary review that will be taking place in Wales in due course, but perhaps that is idle speculation.

The sub-debate about S4C was ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones). Other contributions were made by the hon. Members for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). They all made interesting speeches, although it seemed to me that some of the points made by Government Members were hardly supportive of the Government’s position on S4C. The Opposition can assure the House that this matter will be explored in great detail in Committee.

Many other matters were raised, often with great authority, including the Government proposal to transform the chief coroner post. Very significant contributions were made on that matter by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). There is a significant problem with the Government’s proposals, which suggest that the coronial service, in part at least, should be made responsible to the Lord Chancellor, who, as we know, is a member of the Government. From time to time, a death that has been examined by a coroner may have been caused, in part at least, by the Government’s actions—we can all think of examples where a Government failure contributed to the death of a fallen hero in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on. If the coroner has to report to the Lord Chancellor, would that not immediately raise questions about the independence of the coronial service in investigating the deaths? Deaths at war are as tragic as any other, and they obviously involve people who were fighting for our country. Those people are entitled to an independent coronial service, and I do not believe that the Government’s proposals give us that independence.

Powerful points were also made strongly on behalf of rural communities by my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). They discussed not only the beauty of our rural countryside, but the need for fairness. The Government are proposing to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales, and that retrograde step, again, needs to be debated very carefully in Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East also spoke about youth justice, on the basis of his great experience, and the House listened carefully to the point he made.

What was striking about the debate was the fact that few Government Members were wholly in favour of the Bill and that they did not make the case for the Bill in the terms used by the Minister for the Cabinet Office. He made a case on the basis of democratic accountability—I shall address that in a moment—but his right hon. and hon. Friends largely chose to make an argument on financial grounds. They said that we should simply be taking an axe and making financial cuts to the service, irrespective of whether the service being provided is good or bad. For example, the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) referred to the financial imperative to cut services. We accept that there is a degree of financial imperative, particularly in relation to waste, where that is identified. However, I do not believe that the argument made by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) that we should abolish any quango where even a small amount of waste has been established necessarily provides the correct answer. Notably, the Minister for the Cabinet Office did not make that case.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) gave an extraordinary motive for cutting quangos, basing her argument on inequality of pay. Those of us on the left, who have long argued for greater equality, welcome her as a recruit, but her case was that we should abolish quangos on the basis of the size of the chief executive’s salary, and that is a bizarre argument. The hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) was the star of the show. He began his speech by saying that he had no experience whatsoever of any quango, ever. He felt that that gave him the basis for making a speech to say that quangos should immediately be reformed, abolished and so on.

The Government rested their case on the need for greater democratic accountability, and we agree that the quango state should be tackled on those grounds. However, they would be well advised to listen carefully to the case made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who chairs the Public Administration Committee. He pointed out that in a modern society accountability takes many forms. I have just discussed the coronial service and it may be that rather than the coroners being made accountable to the Lord Chancellor, as the Government would have it, they should be accountable to the relatives of the dead. In that sense, I agree entirely with the point made by the Public Administration Committee.

Considering that it dealt with such important bodies, the process the Government entered into was incredibly rushed. There was little or no consultation in advance with the interested parties, with the bodies themselves or even with Parliament. The reform of these bodies through proper legislative processes is clearly one thing that the Government are entitled to do, but instead, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), they are already proceeding effectively to abolish or at least to weaken through underhand administrative methods those very organisations that the Bill is intended to reform, even before it has gone through Parliament. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, for example, has already had its budget cut by 68%, yet it still exists in law. The staff numbers have been cut by 66%. Only one in three staff remain in the EHRC yet it still has statutory duties imposed on it by Parliament until this Bill becomes law. That is no way for a Government to proceed. It completely ignores the need for parliamentary assent and is once again reflective of a Government who are unwilling to listen or consult.

What we have here is a Government who are simply not listening, so much so that that they are not allowing witnesses to appear before the Public Bill Committee as part of the Bill’s scrutiny. We were told that this would be a listening Government. Why then will they not allow witnesses to appear before the Public Bill Committee when the Bill goes upstairs? The Government do not want to hear the voices of the Royal British Legion, who will defend the rights of fallen heroes to a proper inquest. They do not want to hear the voices of low paid workers in the agricultural industry who will be affected by the changes to the Agricultural Wages Board. They will not allow the voices of witnesses from the disabled community, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), to be heard on the EHRC or the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, which is to be abolished. We will therefore oppose what we regard as a gross misuse of Government authority in seeking to prevent witnesses appearing before the Committee. I therefore urge the House to reject the programme motion, which does that.

On top of all those things, the Bill fundamentally alters ministerial powers to control quangos. It will concentrate far more authority in the hands of the relevant Ministers, who could merge bodies, transfer bodies or even abolish them without proper reference to Parliament and without listening to witness statements. The costings on which the Bill relies are also riddled with incompetence. The Minister for the Cabinet Office has made outlandish claims in The Sun newspaper that are totally unfounded. We have tabled freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions that show that rather than the £30 billion he claimed, the actual savings will be a fraction of that: £2.6 billion at most. When we considered individual Departments, we found the Government’s claim was often twice as high as the savings that they will make. Our research, for example, demonstrated that although the Government claimed that they would save £18 million from the Department for Work and Pensions, they will save less than £500,000.

Finally, the proposals will have a human cost both to the millions of people who receive services from the quangos and to thousands of employees, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington referred. Let me ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, a straightforward question, which I would like him to answer in his reply. What will happen to those whose jobs may be transferred into the private sector, the voluntary sector and elsewhere in the public service? What will happen to their rights? Does he envisage that their rights under TUPE will be properly protected, as they ought to be?

Hon. Members’ contributions today have revealed that the Government have not considered staff, have not listened to the users of services, have not produced proper costings and certainly have not listened to the millions of vulnerable people who will be affected by the Government’s actions if this Bill is passed. The Government do not realise that when they are taking decisions, they need to see the big picture—on which we can agree: that quangos should be reduced—but equally the detail. Government is about making decisions but it is also about listening and the Government simply do not have the humility to listen, the patience to debate or the ability to implement the detail properly. We will be voting for the reasoned amendment and fighting the Bill line by line in Committee, and we reserve the right to vote against the Bill on Third Reading unless there are substantial improvements to it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Only three of the unions have done that. The majority of unions are continuing to engage in good faith with the discussions that are still taking place. It is our determination that at the end of the reforms proposed by Lord Hutton, Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary, public sector pensions will continue to be among the best available, but we will ask people to work longer because they are living longer and to pay a bit more, to achieve a better balance between what they pay and what other taxpayers pay.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

How can the Minister possibly justify the announcement on the No. 10 transparency website that since November the Government have spent more than £5 million on tarting up offices in Whitehall, including £680,000 on No. 10 Downing street? How can he justify that when he is laying off nurses, policemen, servicemen and so on? Will he now publish a line-by-line account of how the money was spent?

Cabinet Office

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Ministerial Corrections

Public Bodies

[Jon Trickett]

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office pursuant to the answer of 21 March 2011, Official Report, column 838W, if he will publish the departmental estimates that were collated to arrive at the stated estimates of savings.

[Official Report, 1 April 2011, Vol. 526, c. 540-41W.]

Letter of correction from Mr Francis Maude:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on 1 April 2011. The HO and total figures were incorrect.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Maude]

[holding answer 31 March 2011]: On 16 March 2011, I announced that we estimate cumulative administrative savings of £2.6 billion will flow from public bodies over the spending review period.

The departmental estimates that were collated to arrive at that figure are:

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Speaker.

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the big society is an idea with a very wide application. The big society bank is a fund that will have a very wide application, because we believe it is extremely important that it should be able to foster all sorts of voluntary and community enterprise which, in one way or another, enormously support the alleviation of poverty—the subject of the article to which he refers.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

The idea of such a bank to help to develop the centre of civil society is a good one, but effective government requires a mix of big ideas and getting the details right. In this connection, has the Minister seen today’s report by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, which suggests that if the big society bank lends purely on commercial terms, it will be

“failing to support those that it is set up to support”?

What can he say to ensure that the lofty rhetoric of the big society bank does not founder on the rock of inadequate administrative detail?

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman is of course right to say that the big society bank could not operate as it is intended to operate if it were lending, or investing, on purely commercial terms. It will have what is often described as a double bottom line: it will seek to achieve the highest possible social returns alongside reasonable financial returns. Indeed, part of the point of the big society bank is to show that there is no conflict between achieving high social returns and achieving modest but reasonable financial returns.