Lord Maude of Horsham
Main Page: Lord Maude of Horsham (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Maude of Horsham's debates with the Cabinet Office
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
Stuart Andrew
Sir Philip Green’s report showed just how little time the previous Government afforded to the basic principles of cost-effective commissioning and procurement. Does the Minister feel that that attitude is embodied in the ill-considered note left by the ex-Chief Secretary to the Treasury as he left his old job?
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.
Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)
Will the Minister be able to publish information in future to show that his aspiration to help small business is not just an aspiration but a reality?
Mr Maude
One of the stark conclusions of Sir Philip Green’s review was that the quality of Government data is lamentably poor. It is not easy to know exactly what the position is. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) referred to the lack of centrally held data about contracts with the voluntary and charitable sector; that merely begins to illustrate the problem.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The Minister talks about small and medium-sized enterprises gaining more from Government contracts, but can he indicate what he is doing to ensure that there is a good spread of that throughout all regions of the United Kingdom?
Mr Maude
All regions and nations across the United Kingdom should be able to benefit from that aspiration. We are going to expose much more widely the tender documents that are available so that small businesses will find it much easier to take part in these sometimes quite intimidating processes that have excluded many of them in the past. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I understand that the House is eagerly anticipating later business, but when there is a constant hubbub it is very discourteous and most unfair both on the person wanting to ask the question and on the Minister deputed to answer it.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
13. What recent progress has been made on his Department’s review of non-departmental public bodies.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Last week I announced the first results of the Government’s review of quangos. This is a work in progress; the principal aim is to increase accountability. We believe that where the state carries out a function it should be accountable to a Minister or to a local council unless one of three rigorous tests is met. To pass, the function must be purely technical, tasked with measuring facts or figures, or plainly required to be politically impartial. We reviewed 901 bodies and intend that nearly 200 will cease to be NDPBs, and we will merge a further 118 and substantially reform a further 171.
Charlie Elphicke
Does the Minister agree that the review should include the misuse of public funds by quangos and public sector balance sheet organisations in paying lobbyists to brief against the Government or elected Members in the execution of their mandates?
Mr Maude
Guidelines already limit the use of external consultants for those purposes, and we intend to tighten them further, because the public find it quite offensive that a quango should be spending taxpayers’ money on hiring external consultants to lobby the Government to encourage them to spend more taxpayers’ money.
Chris Skidmore
Will the Minister tell the House how many quangos were created by the previous Government and, of those, how many will remain as a result of the changes that he is introducing?
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
Last week the Minister announced that many quangos would be done away with and their responsibilities transferred to third sector organisations. Will he assure the House and myself that those organisations, such as citizens advice bureaux, will be properly resourced so that they can provide people with specialised advice? Will he dispel the myth that this is being done on the cheap?
Mr Maude
The aim of the quango review is not particularly to save costs or money—although it will—but principally to increase accountability. When functions are transferred, such as consumer advocacy functions to CABs, there will be a transfer of resources. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait a little longer to hear the extent of those resources.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Why does the Minister intend to disembowel the Equality and Human Rights Commission? Does he not believe that its responsibility to promote equality on behalf of women and ethnic minorities is important? Why is he reducing it to a purely regulatory body?
Mr Maude
Many people felt that that body was not spending taxpayers’ money well. Its function is important and we concluded that it justified the EHRC continuing to exist as an independent body, but given that we are facing a situation in which, as the former Chief Secretary helpfully pointed out, there is no money left, significant savings have to be made. The EHRC will have to play its part in that.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
4. What recent progress has been made on establishing the national citizen service.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
6. What recent progress has been made in delivering his Department’s policies on Government commissioning and procurement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Commissioning is currently too prescriptive; tender documents can be immensely lengthy, specifying every detail of every step in every process. That stifles innovation, excludes new entrants to the market and adds wholly unnecessary cost. We intend that commissioning should be outcome-based, leaving much more scope for innovative providers from the social enterprise, voluntary, charitable and small business sectors to bid. Whenever possible, commissioning should be based on a payment-by-results model.
On procurement, I refer my hon. Friend to my reply to Question 2. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Once again, I understand the excitement and anticipation, but the House must come to order. Such conduct makes a bad impression on the electorate, whose support we so recently sought.
Stephen Metcalfe
I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his answer. Following his earlier comments, I seek assurance that small and medium-sized enterprises in my constituency can access Government contracts. Can he give me any examples of practical help now or in future that would make that easier to achieve?
Mr Maude
We certainly hope that that will be the case. It is our aspiration that 25% of Government contracts should end up in the small and medium-sized sector. We are committed to publishing online, in an easily accessible form, all Government tender documents. That will make it much easier for small businesses, which can otherwise be put off the process, to take part.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
In terms of commissioning and procurement, the public sector procures £13 billion-worth of services from the charitable sector. On Monday, a think-tank suggested that the Government’s statement today will wipe out about £5 billion of that procurement—the whole of the increase that was achieved in the past 10 years. What are the Minister’s intentions for funding the voluntary sector? How does he reconcile cuts in that sector with the Prime Minister’s aspiration for the big society?
Mr Maude
We are very aware of concerns in the sector. The Chancellor is very aware of them, and will have something to say about the matter a little later. However, there must be reductions in public spending for the simple reason that the former Chief Secretary set out with such uncharacteristic lucidity in his valedictory note.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
10. What steps his Department is taking to share best practice in procurement among Departments.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Procurement of basic commodities was carried out without any effort to leverage the scale and buying power of the whole Government—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I understand the excitement, but I hope that that practice, which was discontinued some time ago, will be discontinued in future. The Minister must be heard.
Mr Maude
That led to one part of the Government buying basic office supplies at seven and a half times the cost that other parts incurred. Allowing wasteful spending of that type to remain unreformed would mean that front-line services and the jobs of dedicated public servants would be more at risk. We are mandating that all Departments and public bodies should in future buy through supplier contracts negotiated on behalf of the whole of central Government. That will cut the costs of Government overheads by some—[Interruption]
Mr Speaker
Order—[Interruption.] Order. In so far as we could hear the Minister, I think we have got the drift of it.
Mark Pawsey
I thank the Minister for his reply in as much as I heard it. It is sound commercial practice to maximise buying power by adding together the purchases of all bodies within an organisation and to use that to drive down prices from suppliers, yet Sir Philip Green found waste arising from huge variation in the prices paid by different Departments. What steps will the Minister take to co-ordinate Government procurement in future?
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
Will the Minister ensure that best practice in sustainable and green procurement is part of his briefing in ensuring best practice in Departments, and does he consider that the abolition of the Sustainable Development Commission will help or hinder him in that process?