Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the potential role of the open government partnership in promoting openness and transparency.

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

Transparency is an idea whose time has come. It makes choice possible, it encourages accountability, and it can change lives. The United Kingdom Government are already the world leader in transparency, and the open government partnership will enable those huge benefits to be promoted to many other countries around the world.

[Mr Clappison]

The open government partnership is an interesting and exciting concept. Can my right hon. Friend tell me the key UK transparency commitments within it?

[Mr Maude]

All the principles underlying the partnership reflect things that we have already introduced: openness about Government spending, openness about salaries, openness about the internal workings of government, and an increase in the publication of outcome data about the way in which public services operate. We have said that commitment to and implementation of the principles of the open government partnership will increasingly be a material factor in decisions by the Department for International Development about where to place direct budget support for developing country Governments.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

In the interests of open government, will the Minister agree to publish all the credit card expenses of Ministers and officials under the sum of £500 in all Departments, starting with the Housing Minister?

[Mr Maude]

It is good to hear the right hon. Gentleman being so enthusiastic about transparency. We have already published Government payment card data covering transactions between April and August this year, and we will continue to do so. We will publish the data for 2010 and 2011, and Departments will also have the option of publishing data for the previous year, when the last Government were in office. I look forward to enthusiastic support from the Labour party when the transactions made when it was in office are made public.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that response, and in particular for what he said about the last Government. I believe that the limit should be zero rather than £500, because we would not have known about the expenditure of the NHS on finger puppets if a higher limit had applied.

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend makes the purist case for the disclosure of absolutely everything, but we have gone infinitely further than any Government have ever gone before in exposing the spending of Departments. Of course we will keep that under review, but the first thing we need to do is complete the publication of the data on transactions below £500, including some that took place under the last Government.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Given the pride the Minister obviously takes in transparency, is it not slightly odd that his Department, which leads on these matters for the whole Government, has the worst record in responding to freedom of information requests? Indeed, some people might think that is almost fishy. Since coming into office, the number of FOI requests answered on time by his Department has nosedived from 90% in March 2010 to only 42% in March this year. What do they have to hide? Will the Minister now tell us when he intends to get his house in order on FOI?

[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—

[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.

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

But is there not also a point to be made about how much money is saved to the public purse by having good industrial relations? Instead of going backwards, should not the Minister be going forward and talking about how he could improve industrial relations?

[Mr Maude]

If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make the case for why more and more taxpayers’ money should be spent on subsidising union officials, let him do so, and let him explain to his constituents why that is good value when what they want is taxpayers’ money to be spent on front-line public services, on which the most vulnerable people in our society depend.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

6. What recent progress he has made in increasing the number of central Government contracts secured by the third sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

8. What plans he has for the future of the role of the head of the civil service.

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

The roles of Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service are very different and were indeed separate roles until 1981. Following the announcement of the retirement of Sir Gus O’Donnell, the role of head of the civil service will, once again, be separated from the Cabinet Secretary role. The two individual roles will be more focused, and people can be appointed to each on the basis of the skills match to each role. An internal competition is under way to recruit the post holder from among existing permanent secretaries.

[Mr Speaker]

We need to leave time for the question.

[Mr Jenkin]

Change is the watchword of the Prime Minister and change in government is a vital ingredient of the Government’s reform programme. How will the head of the civil service be able to lead and implement change if he does not have equal authority and equal access to the centre of government as he does now?

[Mr Maude]

He or she will have equal access and will exercise a decisive role in leading the reform of the civil service so that we can create a genuinely modern, progressive civil service that a modern Britain requires.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Is the Minister satisfied that with the split of the new roles, the various questions of probity, propriety and procedure that were aired in the O’Donnell report on the Werritty affair will be clearly brought to a known figure in the future, or will there be confusion?

[Mr Maude]

We will make sure that those issues are properly scrutinised, as they were on that occasion, and that there are proper arrangements to ensure that that is the case.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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

My responsibilities as Minister for the Cabinet Office are for the public sector efficiency and reform group, civil service issues, industrial relations strategy in the public sector, Government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber-security.

[Katy Clark]

The average pension for a woman retiring from the NHS is £3,000 and the average local government pension is £4,000. Does the Minister accept that if we increase the contributions for a worse pension, more people will simply opt out and we will end up paying more through the state benefits system?

[Mr Maude]

It is in no one’s interest that public sector workers should opt out of pension schemes. The numbers to which the hon. Lady refers do not in any way reflect the pension that people retire on after a full career. That is the average, including many people who serve relatively short times in the public service. At the end of these reforms public sector pensions will still be among the very best available, much better than those available to most people in the private sector, who have no chance of enjoying such pensions. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are far too many noisy private conversations taking place. The House will want to hear Stephen Mosley.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

T3. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can the Minister update the House on the progress of negotiations with the trade unions on public sector pension reform?

[Mr Maude]

We have made progress and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and I met the TUC again this morning. My right hon. Friend will make a statement to the House later. As I said, our intention is that public sector pensions will continue to be among the very best available, but fair both to public sector staff and to the general taxpayer, who has had to bear an increasing burden of the cost of paying for these pensions in recent years.

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

During last week’s debate on the Public Bodies Bill, the Government voted to scrap the role of the chief coroner, despite opposition from Opposition Members and from Back-Bench Conservative Members as well. Responding, the Royal British Legion said that it was

“saddened that this opportunity to do the right thing by bereaved Service families was not taken”

by the Government. As we approach Remembrance Sunday, is it not time that the Government did the right thing and listened to the Royal British Legion?

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard Ministers in the Ministry of Justice talking about this when we debated the matter last week, and I think they made a very good case for what the Government intend to do.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

T4. Can my right hon. Friend say how the British Government compare with the French Government when it comes to the number of contracts they procure with domestic suppliers?

[Mr Maude]

The procurement practice that we inherited from the previous Government militates heavily against the interests of UK suppliers and UK jobs, especially when it comes to very large contracts. Both France and Germany, which do not operate protectionist regimes and which obey the rules, give away fewer jobs to other countries. We are looking at this to see how we can support UK suppliers in a way that the previous Government signally failed to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

T5. People in Edgworth in my constituency found out that their bus service is being scrapped for want of £10,000, although the local authority can still find almost £100,000 to support trade union activity. What action will the Government take to end taxpayer-funded activity within the public sector?

[Mr Maude]

I have already said what we are planning to do in relation to the civil service. Obviously, local authorities must answer for their own affairs, but the guidance is that those arrangements should be reviewed regularly. I urge my hon. Friend to put pressure on his local authority to explain how it justifies spending money that should be spent on front-line public services supporting vulnerable people on subsidising trade union activity instead.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues who are responsible for the Work programme about openness and transparency? They are yet to publish any performance data on the programme. Moreover, they have banned Work programme providers from publishing their own performance data, as many of them would like to do.

[Mr Maude]

All the indications are that the Work programme is a successful move, and I will make those representations to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We are generally the most open Government ever. We lead the world in transparency and have gone much further than the Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a distinguished member ever dreamt of going.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

T6. Having heard the excellent news this week on the increase in apprenticeship places, which are up 50% to 442,000, does my hon. Friend agree that the national citizen service can also play a key role in helping our young people into work?