Departmental Business Plans
Julian Smith Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Letwin
The first thing that I should say is that the Government have not made any such announcement; the Government accept the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast about the net effect on public sector employment. That does not mean anything like that number of current employees losing their jobs—nothing of the kind. Secondly, of course, had this initiative been introduced now by a Labour Government —to judge by what the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said it might have been, and that is a delightful prospect—it would have been accompanied by various things. Large numbers of consultants would have been hired to set up complicated websites and there would have been large reviews, huge expenditure and so on—and probably great expenditure on advertising. The total that we have spent on this exercise to date is zero. We have not employed a single consultant, we are constructing the websites ourselves and we are not advertising, because we are a Government and not a magazine.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Let me invoke the spirit of “Dragons’ Den” and ask my right hon. Friend which Department has done the best business plan?
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Smith Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
2. What steps he has taken to increase the efficiency of his Department’s mechanisms for Government procurement.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
8. What steps he has taken to increase the efficiency of his Department’s mechanisms for Government procurement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Procurements of major projects by the British Government have typically taken 77 weeks. They have frequently involved the extensive use of external consultants. That process is costly and wasteful, excluding small businesses, social enterprises, and voluntary and charitable organisations. That results in procurements that are too often uncompetitive, delayed, expensive and ineffective. We are taking steps to streamline the process. In the meantime, we are renegotiating contracts with the bigger suppliers to the Government on a single-customer basis, thus leveraging the Government’s buying power. That will deliver some £800 million-worth of savings in this financial year alone.
Mr Maude
If the last Government, including the right hon. Gentleman, had bothered to spend the time that we are spending getting into the unglamorous parts of Government spending to find out just how much money can be saved, he might not have felt it necessary to leave a note in quite the stark terms that he did, true though it was. The fact is that there is a huge amount of wasteful spending. Sir Philip Green has done a sterling service in picking up some stones and providing the evidence for that, and we will be acting on his recommendations to see how we can take costs out of the overheads of Government. That is the best way to protect front-line services and to protect the jobs of dedicated public servants, which the right hon. Gentleman claims to care about.
Julian Smith
Does my right hon. Friend agree that small business has been locked out of the procurement process for far too long? Will he start to give small businesses, particularly those in Yorkshire, a fairer crack of the whip?
Mr Maude
A big benefit arising from the changes that we are proposing to make to the way in which services are procured is that they will open the door to smaller businesses. Over-prescriptive procurements make it very expensive for small businesses to take the risk of committing to tendering, and they tend to be excluded on a self-selecting basis. We want to change that. It is our aspiration that 25% of contracts should be let with small and medium-sized enterprises. That is the direction in which we hope to go, and I am sure that my hon. Friend’s constituents in Yorkshire will take full advantage of it.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Julian Smith Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Davidson
May I first make some remarks as Chairman of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs? We held a seminar with the Electoral Commission, in which the point was made very strongly by Members of Parliament representing Scottish constituencies who were also Members of the Scottish Parliament that the Scottish Parliament was absolutely and utterly outraged by the fact that there had been no consultation on the proposal to hold the AV referendum and Scottish elections on the same day. They also indicated that the Scottish Parliament had been made aware of the fact that that was the widespread political view in Scotland. The matter certainly had not been drawn to our attention quite so forcefully in other arenas as Members of the Westminster Parliament, but we decided that the best way to explore it was to test the waters by seeking a consultation. Because of the time scale, that would not involve the Committee coming to a firm conclusion one way or the other on the merits of the case, but it would allow Scottish public opinion to express its views. We would post that on and put it before Members of Parliament in the Chamber to inform their discussions. I am glad that many Members have read that evidence, and have drawn on it in their contributions.
It is regrettable that the evidence was made available only yesterday, and I apologise for that. I understand that some Members have not seen it at all. I can only hope that more attention will be given to it by the other place, which will have the opportunity to refer more clearly to the views that have been expressed to us by Scottish stakeholders and by political opinion.
It is also worth drawing Members’ attention to the fact that when the Committee met the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government and Communities Committee on an informal basis, that multi-party Committee was unanimous in wishing to see the date changed. It wanted the AV referendum to be transferred from 5 May to another date—it did not specify when. It felt, as one of the Members said, “We were here first,” as the timetable had already been set for the Scottish election, so the electoral test, which was proposed afterwards, should be shifted. I am glad to have the opportunity to draw that to hon. Members’ attention.
Julian Smith
It is important to clarify the fact that the Scottish Affairs Committee did not take any view on the proposal, and I hope that its Chairman can clarify that.
Mr Davidson
I think that the hon. Gentleman has just entered the Chamber, so he may have missed my saying that we agreed that we would not take a position; otherwise I would be speaking to that position. However, we took the view that it was important—indeed, vital—that political stakeholders in Scotland should be consulted by somebody, because that had not been done by the Government, so we gave people the opportunity to express their views. I am glad that in such a short time many strong views were expressed. To be fair, some people expressed one view and other people another, but there is an opportunity for all those views to inform the debate. The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is regrettable that we have not had longer to discuss those views.
Speaking as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, I was initially agnostic about AV, and in many ways I remain agnostic about the principle of AV. I oppose the single transferable vote and other forms of proportional representation, but I could live quite easily with AV. I am much more concerned about the context in which the proposal has been introduced. It was in my party’s manifesto, so it must be a good thing and should be supported. [Interruption.] It is early in the Parliament. I am in favour of the principle of a referendum, but it was never proposed in my party’s manifesto that it should be held on the same day as the Scottish elections. There has been some interesting illumination of why that is the case by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).
I want to make my views known on two points: why we are having the referendum, and why so soon. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made clear, the Conservatives have agreed—I am sorry if I am not quoting her exactly—that the referendum was the price they had to be pay for tackling the economic crisis. To put it in simpler language, it is the reward to the Liberals for supporting Tory cuts. That is basically why this is happening. Cuts would not go through and would not necessarily command a majority in the House if the Conservatives did not have the support of the Liberal Democrats, who have signed up to a vicious set of proposals on cuts and public expenditure to obtain the reward of a referendum on AV.
The referendum is coming soon, because the Liberals trust the Conservatives no more than the rest of us, and they want to make sure that they are getting the reward sooner rather than later, lest they are simply fobbed off and it does not arrive at all. They do not want to be taken for mugs, so they want to make sure that the opportunities for the referendum are pressed quickly before negative publicity attracts too much opprobrium. In those circumstances, the fact the AV referendum is taking place as a reward for Tory cuts means that certainly in Scotland big campaigns will be run on the basis of saying no to the Tory cuts, no to the coalition’s dirty deals, and no to AV.
The way in which that will spill over into the Scottish elections will undoubtedly be beneficial to my own party. It will be immensely damaging, thank goodness, to the Liberals. The Conservatives, who are essentially irrelevant in Scotland, will not suffer much damage, because they cannot go much further down. No one can argue in those circumstances that holding the referendum and the elections together will not contaminate the Scottish elections. Admittedly, that benefits my party—and I look forward to that—but it means that the AV referendum will not be conducted on its own merits.
Returning to the lack of consultation with stakeholders, I am genuinely shocked by the fact that the coalition Government chose, as far as I am aware, not to ask anyone in the Scottish Parliament or in civic Scotland what they thought of the idea of having the AV referendum and the Scottish parliamentary elections on the same day. That was entirely a top-down decision. We have heard a great deal about a new politics. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether that was an approving heckle, or just a heckle, but I accept that the Member concerned is demonstrating that he is still alive. The fact that there was no consultation or discussion at all very much harks back to the old politics of drive and control, and shows immense contempt for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and—[Interruption]—the Northern Irish Assembly; I knew that there was another one. To add insult to injury, it is my understanding that the AV referendum will be described as the senior poll to be given priority when decisions are made about counting, publicity and all these other things.
To hold Scottish parliamentary elections on the same day as the AV referendum is bad enough, but we have been told that those elections will be subsidiary to the referendum, which no one particularly wants. It is not the first choice of anybody, as far as I am aware. It is coming about simply because of the shabby, shoddy and disgraceful deal that I described earlier. That really is an insult—
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Smith Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 15 September.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
I am sure that the House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Kingsman Darren Deady from 2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment who died on Friday after being injured in Helmand province on 23 August. We are for ever indebted to him for the sacrifice that he has made. We send our sincere condolences to his family, friends and comrades who all miss him very much. He will not be forgotten.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Julian Smith
May I add my sympathies to those of the Prime Minister?
At a time when we need to maximise growth and restore our public finances, is it not the height of irresponsibility that the unions are planning to go on strike, and should not former Ministers be ashamed of themselves for encouraging it?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Everyone in the country—the trade unions included—knows that we have to cut public spending, that we have to get the deficit down and that we have to keep interest rates down. It is the height of irresponsibility for shadow Ministers to troop off to the TUC and tell it that it is all right to go on strike. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julian Smith Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
10. What progress has been made in setting up a national citizen service.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
13. What progress he has made in establishing a national citizen service.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The coalition Government are committed to introducing a national citizen service to give young people an opportunity to develop the skills needed to be active and responsible citizens, mix with people from different backgrounds and get involved in their communities in order to promote engagement, cohesion and responsibility. Details of this programme will be announced by the Cabinet Office later this year, with a launch expected in 2011.
Mr Speaker
Order. An enormous number of private conversations are taking place in the Chamber, and it is not only unseemly, but unfair on the Member asking the question and on the Minister to whose reply we all wish to listen.
Julian Smith
North Yorkshire county council has four fantastic outdoor education centres, including Bewerley park in Nidderdale in my constituency. I suspect that my right hon. Friend does not have time for potholing, but would he come and meet me so that I can show him how those four centres could deliver on the national citizens programme?