Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

1. If he will undertake an impact assessment on the effect of changes in resource for the civil service on delivery of Government policy.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. If he will undertake an impact assessment on the effect of changes in resource for the civil service on delivery of Government policy.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

Our aim is to maintain the superb quality of our civil service while reducing its quantity. Under this Government the civil service headcount has come down from 487,000 to 435,000, which is smaller than it has been at any time since the second world war. Of course, this reduction helps to reduce the deficit, but it is also a natural consequence of our intention to reduce bureaucracy, improve public services and promote the big society by shifting power to people on the front line.

[Mr Barron]

A recent National Audit Office report on cost reduction in central Government suggests that the staffing departures revealed an unplanned and haphazard redundancy drive that has paid off 18,000 civil servants since 2010, at a cost of £600 million, to save just £400 million. One of the report’s conclusions is:

“Few departmental systems can link costs to outputs and impacts, making it difficult to evaluate the effect of cost changes”.

Does the Minister agree, and what will his Department do about it?

[Mr Letwin]

The right hon. Gentleman has a distinguished career, which includes at one time being Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Kinnock, so presumably he has some experience of figures that go completely wonky, and the ones he is presenting give a very wonky picture. What the NAO report actually revealed is that the cost to the Departments was £600 million, the payback to the taxpayer was over 10 to 16 months and the total savings in this spending review period alone, in net present value, will be between £750 million and £1.4 billion. There is a massive saving there, which he would see if he read the whole report.