Oral Answers to Questions

Karl McCartney Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

5. What the cost to the public purse was of the provision of trade union facility time by Government Departments in the last year for which figures are available.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

Total spend on trade union facility time across the civil service is estimated to be around £30 million a year, while in the public sector as a whole the estimate is £225 million. ACAS guidance suggests this system should be regularly reviewed. Strangely, we have not been able to find any evidence that it was reviewed under the last Government.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that very revealing answer. He will be aware of the current scandal of public sector employees spending 100% of their time on union activities while still drawing their publicly funded salary. My constituents in Lincoln expect their thousands of pounds in taxes to be used to pay for public services, not union activities. This situation clearly does not—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. What I want is a question—in one sentence, very briefly, now.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

Will my right hon. Friend assure me that as part of any consultation or meeting, such as the one he had today, he will fully examine this scandal?

[Mr Maude]

As I have said, we are going to consult on this. We will want to look very carefully at the phenomenon whereby large numbers of civil servants and other public servants are engaged full time as union officials at the taxpayers’ expense. There may be a case for some of this continuing, but certainly not on the scale we inherited from the Labour party.