Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

1. What recent progress the big society ministerial group has made in its work.

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

The Government have an ambitious agenda for the big society. We want to decentralise power and put it in the hands of local communities. We want to open up public services to small and medium-sized enterprises, voluntary organisations and mutuals, and support the growth of civil society organisations.

The ministerial group, which is co-chaired by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and myself, is helping to drive forward this agenda and has already contributed to progressing our vanguard areas, the renewed compact, the right to provide for mutuals, and our giving Green Paper.

[Graham Jones]

Hyndburn citizens advice bureau has seen a 50% cut in its funding and four job losses, and I think that it is a similar tale at Rossendale citizens advice bureau. I am waiting for its job losses, but it is expecting a 50% cut. The Minister should be mindful that his Government might leave the legacy of a little society. What warm words would he have for Rossendale and Hyndburn citizens advice bureaux?

[Mr Maude]

We urgently hope that local authorities, as they deal with the financial consequences of the budget deficit that the Labour Government left behind—when the Government were spending £4 for every £3 in revenue, having to borrow £1 out of every £4—will ensure that a disproportionate burden of those reductions does not fall on the voluntary sector. That is a matter he should take up with the local council.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Have Ministers considered how to avoid duplication in the work of existing volunteer bureaux, often supported by local councils, and the new community organisers who are being recruited by the Government?

[Mr Maude]

I would expect community organisers to work closely with those organisations and to ensure that there is no duplication of effort. These community organisers, many of whom already exist and do great work in communities, will not carry any kind of bureaucracy or organisational structure with them. Their job is to put people together, give support to organisations and make connections where they are not already being made.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

This morning, figures showed that youth unemployment has rocketed up, and this afternoon we expect the Government to confirm that they will cancel the education maintenance allowance. Without work and without study, surely we need our youth charities more than ever before, yet the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services says that three quarters are now cutting projects. Just what have the Government got against young people, and why is there such a narrow place for young people in the Government’s vision of the big society?

[Mr Maude]

I am pretty reluctant to take lectures on this from the right hon. Gentleman, because he will know, as a prominent member of the last Government, that when his Government left office there were many more young people out of work than when they took office.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to prevent fraudulent charity collections.

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

Stealing from charities is a repulsive crime, but a growing problem, with suspected links to organised crime. It is estimated that up to £50 million a year is lost to bogus collections, which deprive charities of vital income and damage public trust and confidence in them. We are determined to take robust action against people who carry out such crimes.

Last week the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who has responsibility for civil society, and apologises for not being able to be here today, chaired a very positive meeting with charities, their collection partners, and the licensing and enforcement agencies to consider ways to tackle the issue. We want to review the licensing legislation and put much greater emphasis on the co-ordination of enforcement action to combat these criminals.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the Minister for his answer. What assurances can he give the House that in our efforts to clamp down on fraudulent collectors we do not create an overly burdensome system that makes it harder for volunteers, on whom many of the charities in my constituency and across the country rely, to give up their time?

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The Charities Act 2006 is due to be reviewed, in the ordinary course of events, later this year, which we will do. It seems to us that the current laws are outdated; they date from many years ago, from a different world. They are not particularly effective at preventing fraudulent collections, yet they can already be very burdensome on legitimate charities. We want to reverse that to make the law easier for legitimate charities but more effective in controlling fraudulent collections.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

In taking that important matter forward, what consultation does the Minister propose to have with the devolved Administrations so that best practice might be adopted in tackling that serious issue?

[Mr Maude]

I am confident that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, who has responsibility for civil society and is taking the initiative forward, will want to collaborate closely with the devolved Administrations in just the way that the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

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

3. What proportion of the budget of the national citizen service he expects to be spent in the 50% least disadvantaged areas of the country.

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

Analysis by Cabinet Office officials shows that NCS pilots are taking place in more than 190 locations across England and that places are evenly distributed among the most and the least deprived areas of England. Just under half of the places are in the 50% least deprived areas and just over half are located in the 50% most deprived areas. The key criterion for selecting pilot providers was the quality of proposals, including their plans to attract a wide cross-section of 16-year-olds and to support disadvantaged young people to take part. The bidders themselves nominated areas where they wanted to deliver the 2011 pilots as part of the competitive commissioning that was completed in November.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I am sure that the Minister will be aware of the research published by the university of Strathclyde, since it was the Conservative party that commissioned it, which highlights the danger that the proposed NCS would in fact benefit more middle-class and well-off young people, rather than those in disadvantaged areas. What account is he taking of that research and how is he changing the programmes to deal with it?

[Mr Maude]

The essence of that programme is that it is designed to bring together young people from a genuine mix of backgrounds. It is not designed particularly to help disadvantaged young people. It will benefit all young people and help to create a much more cohesive society by bringing together people from all backgrounds at an important and formative stage in their lives, during the rites of passage to adulthood. The social mix is an absolutely crucial ingredient of the programme.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the national citizen service requires that the voluntary sector has adequate capacity to deliver additional volunteering, which is contrary to the unequivocal statement made at the last Cabinet Office questions by the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), that the sector would expand? Will the Minister now admit that that statement was untrue. The latest figures for the voluntary sector show a decline of 13,000 jobs in a single quarter. Does he agree that the House was misled and that the statement—

[Jon Trickett]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The House was inadvertently misled, even though the facts show what actually happened. Finally, would the Minister say that the job losses are a clear disaster for his big society aspirations?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman asked in particular about the capacity of the voluntary sector in relation to the national citizen service. I can tell him that the number of interested providers massively outweighed the number of places that we were able to fund. There is huge interest in the voluntary sector in taking part in the programme. The point that my right hon. Friend the Minister was making was that our approach to public service reform will open up areas of public service delivery to the voluntary and charitable sector and to social enterprise in a way that has not been done before, for all the talk from the previous Government, and the opportunities going forward will be considerable. My right hon. Friend made the point, as we all have, that there will be a tough time immediately, and we have some steps in place to try to help over that period, but the opportunities down the track are considerable.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

4. What progress his Department’s behavioural insight team has made in its work.

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[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

7. What assessment he has made of the effect on public expenditure of his proposals for non-departmental public bodies.

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

The proposals for reform that I set out in the House last October are the most major change to the public bodies landscape that any Government have made in a generation. They will make a significant contribution to reducing the baseline of Government spending as part of the coalition Government’s deficit reduction plan.

[Mr Bradshaw]

While “The King’s Speech” is rightly being feted all around the world, the right hon. Gentleman’s Government are abolishing the organisations here in Britain that helped to make that film happen, as part of what even the Conservative-dominated Public Administration Committee has described as a “botched” bonfire of the quangos. Given that he cannot even say how much, if anything, this is going to cost, is it not typical of what the Government are doing in so many areas—ill considered, ill thought through, rushed and damaging?

[Mr Maude]

Just to be clear, the purpose of these reforms is to increase accountability. The Government will not simply create incontinently new independent bodies in order to avoid Ministers having to make and defend uncomfortable decisions. Ministers should be prepared to make those decisions and defend them themselves—that is what democratic accountability is about, and that is the primary aim. However, we will save money. The changes to the public body landscape planned and announced by the previous Government, of whom the right hon. Gentleman was such a distinguished ornament, were much more minor than the changes that we are undertaking. That Government claimed that those changes would save £500 million a year; our changes are much more radical and will save a great deal more.[Official Report, 2 February 2011, Vol. 522, c. 10MC.]

[Gordon Banks]

I will tell the Minister what the real effects of his proposals are going to be, according to the Public Accounts Committee. There will be no savings. In my constituency, between his actions on Consumer Focus and the Scottish National party’s actions on Waterwatch Scotland, we have a shambles of job losses, reduced protection and no gains. Is the Minister going to be a man, step up to the plate and do the right thing, or continually try to defy gravity?

[Mr Maude]

It would be quite interesting to know which of our plans for reforming quangos the hon. Gentleman disagrees with. His own party had in its manifesto a commitment to cut the number of quangos. It had such plans when it was in government, but sadly, as with so much else, it did not give effect to them. We will save money, but much more importantly, we will increase accountability, which is what this is really all about.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Public expenditure by quangos includes expenditure on lobbying, which is an abuse of public money. Will Ministers ban quango lobbying?

[Mr Maude]

The code for public bodies already purports to make it impossible for quangos to employ lobbyists from outside in order to lobby the Government. However, that code has not been effective, and considerable amounts of taxpayers’ money have been spent by public bodies, frequently in order to lobby the Government for them to spend more taxpayers’ money. We will make absolutely certain that the code is watertight and that that becomes impossible.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

One of the list of quangos to be dealt with in the Public Bodies Bill is S4C. There is genuine anxiety in Wales about the future of S4C. Although there is a debate to be had about funding, can the Minister at least assure the House of S4C’s continued existence?

[Mr Maude]

There is no question mark at all over the continued existence of S4C, which plays a valuable part in the life of the Principality. I will convey my hon. Friend’s concerns to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales. However, S4C appears in the Public Bodies Bill in the schedule to do with funding arrangements, and that has nothing to do with its continued existence. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are far too many private conversations taking place in the Chamber, and far too much noise.

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

One of the main aims of the national citizen service is to create a more cohesive society by mixing participants from different social backgrounds. To ensure that that happens, organisations bidding to deliver national citizen service pilots this summer were scrutinised on their plans for supporting the broadest possible range of young people to participate. A number of the organisations that were successful in bidding to run the pilots have a strong track record in working with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and we will closely monitor the success of the pilots in working with those young people.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. Given that education maintenance allowance is being scrapped and that the Connexions service in my constituency faces huge cuts, how can disadvantaged young people in Houghton and Sunderland South be confident that they will benefit from the national citizen service?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Lady will be glad to know that a number of NCS pilots are taking place in and around her constituency. The Prince’s Trust is running a pilot in collaboration with local partners, including Sunderland football club, and Catch22 is running pilots in Sunderland and Washington. I hope that she will engage directly with those organisations to ensure that the widest possible range of participants is attracted to those pilots.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the effects on the big society initiative of the outcomes of the comprehensive spending review; and if he will make a statement.