Committee on Standards in Public Life (Triennial Review)
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I am today announcing the start of the triennial review of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL). Triennial reviews of non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) are part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that NDPBs continue to have regular challenge on their remit and governance arrangements.
The review will be undertaken by an independent external reviewer, Peter Riddell, Director of the Institute for Government, who will want to consult widely with relevant stakeholders, including Parliament, the devolved Administrations, the main political parties, academics, ethics regulators and others with an interest in the work of the Committee. He will be issuing an issues and questions paper in due course and the findings of the review will be published. Peter will be supported in the review by the Cabinet Office. At his request, he will not be paid for his time.
In common with all such reviews, Peter Riddell will undertake the following:
to challenge the continuing need for this NDPB—both its functions and form; and;
if it is agreed that it should remain as an NDPB, to review its control and governance arrangements to ensure that it is complying with recognised principles of good corporate governance.
The aim will be to complete the review in the autumn.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
2. How much money was saved as a result of his Department’s cross-Whitehall spending controls in 2012.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
To deal with the enormous budget deficit that the coalition Government inherited from the Labour party opposite, in the days after the general election in May 2010 we introduced tough new spending controls. In the year to March 2012, those controls helped to save the taxpayer no less than £5.5 billion, on top of the £3.75 billion that we saved the year before.
John Howell
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on those figures and ask him whether he agrees that this shows just how wasteful spending was under the previous Government.
Mr Maude
I am afraid that that is the case. It was open to the Leader of the Opposition, when he sat in my position in the Cabinet Office, to introduce the same kind of controls, but it is very unglamorous hard work; one needs to get into the detail. It is a pity that he did not do it; if he had done, we would not be in quite the fiscal mess that the coalition Government inherited two years ago.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has previously made great play of the contracts finder website as an indication of cross-Whitehall spending. Before the summer recess, I tabled a series of questions to all Government Departments about the level of spending on contracts with Atos and Atos Healthcare. It turns out that despite the claim that all the information is on the website, a significant number of contracts with Atos across Whitehall are not on it. Will the Minister review the website to ensure that it is absolutely accurate?
Mr Maude
I must start by saying that we inherited a complete lack of transparency about Government contracts. It was impossible for potential suppliers to the Government to find out what contracts were available. We are gradually reaching a stage at which more and more contracts will be made available transparently, but provisions relating to confidentiality are built into many of the contracts with suppliers that we inherited. We will seek to avoid that in future, but I think the hon. Gentleman will find that many of the Atos contracts stem from the time when his own party was in government.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
14. I welcome the savings that my right hon. Friend has already found, but what more can he do to reduce the burden of excess in Whitehall which has existed over the last few years and which was fostered by the Labour party?
Mr Maude
The longer we stick at this task, the more possibilities of saving yet more money we will find. It is important to protect spending on the front-line services on which the public depend, and we will continue to do that. I am delighted to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) to her post: she will give huge support to me in my role of seeking out wasteful spending and driving efficiency through central Government.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
3. What his policy is on the provision of trade union facility time across the civil service.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Unions can play a positive role in the modern workplace. [Interruption.] On the subject of paying, it is nice to know who is paying that lot on the Labour Benches.
However, the Government believe that taxpayer-funded facility time arrangements in the civil service should reflect good practice across the private and public sectors. That is why I launched a consultation to review facility time, and will ensure that future arrangements are subject to rigorous controls and monitoring.
Neil Parish
Can my right hon. Friend tell me what arrangements for the monitoring of union facilities and activities were in place when he entered Government in 2010, and how much they were costing?
Mr Maude
The arrangements for the monitoring of facility time were very mixed indeed, and in most cases almost non-existent. It has taken a long time—many months—to tease out of Whitehall the data on how much is being spent and how much facility time there is. We estimate that the cost to the taxpayer of facility time for trade unions in the civil service alone is between £33 million and £36 million a year. That is too much, which is why we are consulting on how it can be significantly reduced and controlled.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
When measuring the costs, the Minister should take account of not just the cost of the time to the taxpayer, but the benefit of the work done by trade unions throughout the civil service. How will he estimate the cost of what he is doing in terms of benefit?
Mr Maude
I am confident that our consultation will tease out the benefits. I absolutely accept that the trade union duty to support union members in employment disputes can have a benefit, and for that reason we are not suggesting that all facility time should be removed; indeed, it would not be lawful for us to do so. However, the amount is excessive. It has been allowed to creep up over time, and it now needs to be reduced and controlled for the future.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
4. What recent progress his Department has made on its programme to abolish and reform non-departmental public bodies.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (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, cyber-security and civil society. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber, which is very discourteous to the Minister and to the Member. I want to hear Jenny Chapman.
Jenny Chapman
In Darlington, post offices are seen as vital community hubs. Will the Minister update the House on his discussions with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on how better to exploit the community value they offer?
Mr Maude
I have had a number of discussions about that with the BIS Minister who has responsibility for post offices, and we are doing what we can to encourage the post office network to be, as much as it can, a front office for a number of Government services. We think that is a valuable function.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
T4. The Minister will be aware that Unison has instructed its members to secure as much paid or facility time as possible for union activity, including campaigning. Will he confirm that not a penny of taxpayers’ money will go to subsidise such trade union activity?
Mr Maude
There is a distinction between trade union duties, which are to do with genuine representation of employee rights, and trade union activities, which are not. There is no legal obligation to provide paid time off for trade union activities, which is why we are consulting on the reduction or elimination of that.
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
Further to the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), in recent weeks the Minister will have received a number of letters regarding the future of the post office network and the importance of Government services and their expansion. Will he endorse the campaign by the National Federation of SubPostmasters and, as the campaign slogan says, help make it happen?
Mr Maude
I have had discussions with the federation of postmasters and we are very alert indeed to the desirability of more business being available, but the federation understands that there is a need for Post Office Ltd to improve its activities and productivity. I know that that is under way.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
T5. Over the summer, I had the pleasure of hosting a visit by a group of young people as part of the National Citizen Service, organised by the Challenge Network in the black country, which was a fantastic success. Will the Minister outline his plans for the further roll-out of the NCS next year?
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T2. Reshuffles are always a busy time. Does the Cabinet Office have any specific plans to ensure that Cabinet Office staff do not have communication difficulties with the overwhelmingly male, rich and white Cabinet who have just been appointed?
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
T6. Last week, I was privileged to see the hard work of the NCS volunteers at the New Scene centre in Chester. However, a number of the young people were from over the border in Wales. While they were delighted to be able to do their NCS activities in England, they were disappointed that they were not able to do them in their own communities. Will the Minister join me in calling for the Welsh Assembly Government to introduce a national citizen service in Wales next year?
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
T3. Earlier this year, Ministers announced the closure of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency office in my constituency, which was widely used by small local motor traders to get their vehicle licences. Will the Minister confirm that he is having discussions, and urging colleagues in BIS to have discussions, with the motor trade about whether the Post Office might pick up that slack?
Mr Maude
The public can already carry out a number of functions and transactions relating to the DVLA through the post office network, and the DVLA has one of the best online applications for renewing car tax, but we are looking, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, at how it can be further modernised to improve service and save more money.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
T8. In July 2011 the Department for Work and Pensions introduced a new standard contract that encouraged its suppliers to hire 5% of their work force as apprentices. A year later, more than 2,000 apprenticeships have been created, at no extra cost to the Government. Is the Minister aware that rolling that out across Whitehall will create thousands of new apprenticeships?
2011 Census Results (England and Wales)
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The 22nd decennial census of population for England and Wales was taken on 27 March 2011. Today, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes the first results in a report that I have laid before the House this morning.
Everyone in the country uses public services at various times—such as schools, health services, roads, public transport, job centres and libraries. These services need to be planned to keep pace with the changing demographics of the country. Government, local authorities, the health service, the education and academic community, commercial business, professional organisations and the public at large all need reliable information on the number and characteristics of people and households if they are to conduct their activities effectively. This need is currently best met by conducting a census every 10 years covering the whole of the population, and by updating the population estimates each year from the census benchmark.
Throughout the UK, broadly the same questions are asked and the information recorded in the same way. This allows the comparison of different groups of people and small areas across the entire nation. It also provides the opportunity of comparing various characteristics of the population and, owing to a high degree of consistency between censuses, allows the measurement of change over time.
The results of the 2011 census for England and Wales, which will in total comprise many hundreds of detailed tabulations designed to meet a wide range of users’ needs, are being published in a series of phased releases over the next 12 months. This first release will establish the new baseline for ONS’s population estimates for the next 10 years, and will help to determine the allocation of future local government funding. The release covers estimates of:
the usually resident population by single years of age and five-year age bands, by sex for England and Wales together, for England and for Wales;
the usually resident population by five-year age bands, by sex for regions, counties and local authority areas;
the number of households for England and Wales together, for England, for Wales and for regions, counties and local authority areas;
the number of non-UK short-term residents for local authority areas.
The final figures show that the usually resident population of England and Wales was 56,076,000, an increase of 7% since 2001. The response rate to the census was 94 % nationally, representing a small improvement on the 2001 census. However, response rates have improved markedly in many of the areas that were found to be most challenging in the 2001 census. The published results make full allowance for those people who did not complete a census form.
Although additional processing has been carried out this time, and an intense programme of quality assurance has been undertaken, publication of these figures is six weeks ahead of the corresponding report from the 2001 census. These first results are being made publicly available via the ONS website and are accompanied by a range of supporting information, including the response rate for each local authority area.
The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency will today publish a similar but separate first release from the census in Northern Ireland. The first release from the census in Scotland will be published by the National Records of Scotland in December.
Further releases over the next 12 months will cover the more detailed results. Within these, data from the full range of questions included in the census will be cross-analysed and presented for a range of geographies down to the lowest level—“census output area” (an output area is, on average, 125 households or 250 people). Strict measures of statistical disclosure control will be applied to each release to ensure that no individual person or household will be identified from the information released.
In line with Government policy on open data, these later releases will be available via the ONS website in a format that will make it easy for organisations and individuals to use the detailed results in their own systems and websites, increasing the use and exploitation of the census results.
As part of the preparations for the future, the Office for National Statistics last year instigated a review of a number of different methods of collecting demographic and socio-economic data from a variety of sources with the aim of providing a viable alternative methodology for collecting census data. The outcome of that review will be reported in 2014 in time to implement plans by 2021.
Regional Pay
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“notes the importance of recruiting, retaining and motivating staff and keeping tight control of public spending; further notes that the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, first proposed a fair framework for local and regional flexibility for pay in his statement to the House of 9 June 2003; supports the Government in asking the widely respected independent pay review bodies to consider how public sector pay can be made more responsive to local labour markets; and believes the Government is correct in awaiting the conclusions of those deliberations before making a decision on bringing forward proposals in respect of public sector pay’.
The shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), began by quoting the Chancellor, so let me quote the Chancellor a little more extensively:
“I can tell the House that the British economy is…better placed to recognise local and regional conditions in pay”.
He continued that, in future, we therefore plan that
“remits for pay review bodies and for public sector workers, including the civil service, will include a stronger local and regional dimension”.—[Official Report, 9 April 2003; Vol. 403, c. 283.]
That was the Chancellor in 2003, the previous Prime Minister. He set that proposal out at time when his advisers were the current Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor. I do not know whether the shadow Chancellor wrote that passage for the Budget speech—a lot of the Budgets around that time turned out to be “Balls”. Did he write it? Does he agree with it? If not, what has changed in the meantime? [Interruption.] It was clearly the best the right hon. Gentleman could do at that time. I shall come to the history behind the current Government’s approach, because the idea that it is a dramatic new departure is absurd. There is quite a long history, but we now have the opportunity to explore it.
Mr Maude
I shall get started, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in due course.
Let me begin by setting out the Government’s approach to this important issue. First, we believe there is a strong case for looking at introducing local market-facing pay and at how that can be done, but let me say clearly that our approach is not about ending national pay bargaining. Pay can be made more responsive to local labour markets within a national bargaining framework. Any benefits from localising pay can be realised without any need to get rid of national pay bargaining.
Secondly, the proposal is not about making further savings. We will continue to operate within tightly constrained overall public sector pay remits.
Mr Maude
I am going to make a little progress, but I will give way in due course.
Those pay remits are currently set at 1% a year. We need those constraints in order to address the appalling legacy of the biggest budget deficit in the developed world, which was left by exactly the people who now complain about its effects. Our approach is not about making further savings, but entirely about creating greater flexibility within those pay remit constraints.
Thirdly, this is not about cutting anybody’s pay. Even if we wanted to, we would not be legally able to do so.
Huw Irranca-Davies
Will the Minister speculate on why the Chief Secretary to the Treasury thinks the sun shines out the backend of this policy, while the Liberal Democrat leader in Wales has told him to stick it where the sun don’t shine?
Mr Maude
That was about as laboured a joke as I have heard in this place, but we will let the hon. Gentleman know.
Like the previous Government, we have said that it is important to look at the level at which public sector pay is set in each labour market over the longer term, which is why, in the autumn statement, the Chancellor announced that there was a case for considering how local pay could better reflect private sector labour markets. He invited the independent pay review bodies to consider the evidence, which is exactly what they are now doing.
Mr Donohoe
I do not know whether the Minister has ever been involved in wage negotiations, but if he looks at the public sector and then at the private sector, he will see that some multinational companies do national negotiations and do not have local rates. Is that not the case?
Mr Maude
They may well have national negotiations. If the hon. Gentleman had listened, he would have heard me say that our proposals do not involve a change to national pay bargaining mechanisms. Actually, though, plenty of companies have preferential pay rates in different parts of the country, as might well make sense in some circumstances. But he clearly did not listen to what I said earlier.
Pay decisions in the civil service, below the senior civil service, are delegated to individual Departments, so it is for each Department to consider the case as it applies to its own work force.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It has occurred to me that Conservative Members were against the national minimum wage when it was introduced. Will the Minister confirm beyond doubt that this is not the thin end of the wedge and that there will not be any attempt to undermine the national minimum wage through regional pay?
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I am trying really hard to understand what the Minister is saying. Will he please tell me whether I have got this right—he does not want to dismantle pay structures or cut pay, but he does want to introduce bargaining and flexibility? Does that mean that there could be no pay cuts for any current or future employee as a result of that flexibility? What would that mean in the west midlands, where to get a house, someone has to raise a deposit of twice the average regional salary? In practical terms, is he talking about those pay levels rising or falling?
Phil Wilson
I think the Minister has been a bit selective in quoting Treasury Ministers in the previous Government. Treasury guidance notes put out by Ministers in 2003 also stated:
“At the extreme, local pay in theory could mean devolved pay…to local bodies. In practice, extremely devolved arrangements are not desirable. There are risks of workers being treated differently for no good reason. There could be dangers of leapfrogging and parts of the public sector competing against each other for the best staff.”
In other words, the previous Labour Government were never going to do what this Government intend to do now.
Mr Maude
Given that the hon. Gentleman has not given me the chance to talk about our plans and approach, perhaps he will be patient and contain himself until that moment.
As I was about to say, nothing has yet been decided. Any proposals for each work force must be based on strong evidence. We want to hear from everyone with a contribution to make, and we are committed to making any future decision on the basis of evidence, which is the right way to approach the matter. That is why we have invited the various pay review bodies to consider the matter on that basis.
However, as I said earlier, we are not the only Government to think that there is a case for looking at this issue. The case was recognised by the last Government, and they gave it, I presume, serious thought. Indeed, in 2003, the then Chancellor announced a stronger local dimension to pay review body remits, noting that there was significant scope to increase the flexibility and responsiveness of public sector pay. He told the House:
“With this national framework for fairness in place, it makes sense to recognise that a more considered approach to local and regional conditions in pay offers the best modern route to full employment”.—[Official Report, 9 June 2003; Vol. 406, c. 412.]
Does anyone on the Opposition Benches disagree with that? It seems a considered and sensible approach to me.
Mr Maude
I will not give way, if the hon. Lady will forgive me, because I need to make some progress and Back-Bench contributions are already likely to be constrained because the debate started rather late.
The then Chancellor also said that pay for the civil service should include a stronger local and regional dimension, while in that year’s Budget he set out
“action to increase regional and local flexibility in public service pay”.
As I have mentioned, the then Chancellor’s advisers included the current Leader of the Opposition and the current shadow Chancellor. It seems pretty opportunistic for Labour, at the 11th hour, to produce this motion, when its own Government took the public sector further down this path than we are at this stage contemplating.
Indeed, Labour did not just talk about localised pay; it actually introduced it. In 2007, the last Government introduced localised pay for civil servants across the courts service. They did so in response to the Treasury’s pay guidance, issued in 2007, at a time when, as far as I can make out, the current Leader of the Opposition was the Minister in the Cabinet Office responsible for civil service matters and the shadow Chancellor was the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. Yet that pay guidance, which went out across the civil service, asked Departments that operated across different locations to differentiate between pay levels across regional labour markets. Following that guidance, which was issued under the aegis of the current Leader of the Opposition and the current shadow Chancellor, the previous Government introduced localised pay in the courts service across the country. That was, if I may say so, a sensible and unusually well-judged move, and it has been successful.
Mr Maude
I am going to make progress now.
That policy was introduced at a time when those who are now on the Opposition Front Bench were intimately involved, so it is worth the House asking itself what happened. Did devilish civil servants somehow slide this wicked measure through, as the attention of the current shadow Chancellor and Leader of the Opposition was elsewhere, no doubt overly occupied in trashing the then Prime Minister?
Why is the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury taking up valuable parliamentary time attacking in opposition a policy that her own leaders actively promoted in government? It is not as if the Labour party immediately abandoned the idea in opposition that local and regional variations in the cost of living are important. In January, The Guardian reported that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)—another previous holder of my post—told a private meeting of Labour MPs that housing benefit
“varies locally and so should a benefit cap”.
In fact, he was reported to have said:
“It makes much more sense to have localised caps…in different parts of the country”.
That revealed that the Labour party still recognises in private the very principle that it is today seeking to oppose. It is humbug, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yet again, the Opposition oppose policies that they introduced in government and that they still support in private.
We know what is behind this. It is the Labour party’s union paymasters who are calling the tune. We know that the Labour party ask their union backers which amendments to vote for and which to oppose. We know that under the current Labour party leader more than 80% of Labour’s donations come directly from trade unions—even more than under the last Prime Minister. No wonder Charlie Whelan boasted that it was Unite that won the current Labour party leadership. Yet again, it is Unison and Unite that are calling the tunes. But even the unions are confused on this matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) said, Unison itself has made the case for local variations.
There is a serious case to be made for local market-facing pay. While private sector pay is typically set according to local markets, public sector pay is usually set on a one-size-fits-all basis at national level. As a result, public sector workers are often paid more than private sector workers in similar jobs in the same area. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the overall gap between public and private sector pay averages 8.3%. However, the gap can be as low as virtually minimal in some places and as high as nearly 20% in others.
Academic research also shows that public sector pay is only 40% as responsive to local labour markets as private sector pay. That has potentially damaging consequences for the public sector and the economy. A one-size-fits-all system for public sector pay could limit the number of public sector jobs that could be supported in lower-cost areas. It militates directly against the relocation of public sector jobs to more deprived parts of the country. Private employers looking for staff to set up or grow their businesses might need to compete with much higher public sector wages. The evidence has yet to be examined, but the public sector could be crowding out the private sector in that way, and holding back the private sector-led recovery that the economy needs. Arguably, this makes private sector job creation less attractive. Importantly, it also makes it less attractive to move public sector jobs out of London and the south-east because, without any differential in pay rates to reflect the differential in living costs, it is much less easy to justify the relocation costs and loss of continuity that relocating inevitably involves.
So this approach is about investigating whether this could be another way of supporting local economies, by helping to provide more public sector jobs for the same level of spending and by helping the local private sector to become more competitive and to expand. This could help poorer areas to grow—[Interruption.] Exactly that point was recognised explicitly by the previous Prime Minister. He made exactly that argument. The hon. Member for Leeds West might want to argue with him, but we think that this is one of the few things on which he was right.
More broadly, this Government are determined to support regional private sector growth. Since the last election and the formation of the coalition Government, 843,000 private sector jobs have been created, and promoting regional growth—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry, Minister. It is not necessary for Members on either side of the House, especially those on the Front Benches, continually to shout across the Floor. This is an important and heated debate—[Interruption.] I do not know why you are tut-tutting, Ms Bray; you have been doing a fair bit of shouting as well.
Mr Maude
We would have made better progress if, every time anyone stood up, the hon. Member for Leeds West had not recited the number of public sector workers in their constituency. She could just have laid the document before the House and we could have taken it all as read. It was a pretty poor substitute for an argument, but I suppose it was the best that she could do.
We are committed to supporting regional private sector growth. As I was saying, 843,000 private sector jobs have been created since the general election, and promoting regional jobs is at the very heart of our growth strategy. In the autumn statement, we announced an additional £30 billion of investment—
Rachel Reeves
I do not think that the Minister wants to cut their pay. Does he think that teachers in Horsham should be paid more than those in Leeds West?
Mr Maude
Under the hon. Lady’s own Government’s policy of introducing academies, it will increasingly be a matter for the management of those academies to set their own pay rates. So the policy that her Government set in train will, over time, lead to differentials coming into existence. Perhaps she will tell us whether she supports the policy of giving academies more freedom to make their own decisions—or is that another subject on which she is going back to her old, left-wing, statist ways?
Rachel Reeves
The last Labour Government did not give less money to schools in Leeds than they did to schools in Surrey. Is that this Minister’s policy?
Mr Maude
Under the last Government, a lot of schools in a lot of places found they were getting a lot less support than they were in other places—funny, that. The fact is that we announced an additional £30 billion of investment in major infrastructure projects across all regions of the UK, and in the Budget we laid out an additional investment of £420 million to stimulate local economic growth.
We have already taken considerable action to achieve strong sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country, but there is a lot more to do. It is not easy, but we have not shirked our responsibility and we will leave no stone unturned to promote a sustainable balance and fair private sector recovery across the UK. First and foremost, that has meant tackling the record deficit that we inherited, ensuring that the UK remains to the greatest extent possible insulated from the storm that undermines our eurozone neighbours. Public sector pay restraint has to play a vital role in that fiscal consolidation. At the same time, by considering the case for local public sector pay, we can ensure that we continue to have high-quality public services across the entire UK and help to support a private sector recovery. I commend the amendment to the House.
Civil Service Reform
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the civil service.
The British civil service plays a crucial role in modern British life. It is there to implement the policies of the Government of the day, whatever their political complexion. Its permanence and political impartiality enable exceptionally rapid transitions between Governments. Most civil servants are dedicated and hard-working, with a deep-seated public service ethos. Like all organisations, the civil service needs continuous improvement, and I want today to set out the first stage in a programme of practical actions for reform.
In 2010 we inherited one of the largest budget deficits in the developed world, and despite success in improving Britain’s financial standing, we still face significant financial and economic challenges, as well as rapid social, technological and demographic changes. The Government have embarked upon a programme of radical reform of public services to improve quality and responsiveness for users and value for the taxpayer. We need a civil service that is faster, more flexible, more innovative and more accountable in order to succeed. Our civil service is smaller today than at any time since the second world war, and this has highlighted where there are weaknesses and strengthened the need to tackle the weaknesses.
We need to build capabilities and skills where they are missing. We need to embrace new ways of delivering services. We need to be digital by default. We need to tie policy and implementation seamlessly together. We need greater accountability, and to require much better data and management information to drive decisions more closely. We need to transform performance management and career development.
Today, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, and I are publishing a civil service reform plan that clearly sets out a series of specific, practical actions to address long-standing weaknesses and build on existing strengths. Taken together, and properly implemented, those actions will deliver real change. They should be seen as a first step in a programme of continuing reform for the civil service. This is not an attack on the civil service, and civil servants have not been rigidly resistant to change, but the demand for change does not come just from the public and from Ministers—it comes from civil servants themselves, many of whom are deeply frustrated by a culture that is overly bureaucratic, hierarchical and focused on process, rather than outcomes.
That was revealed in the responses to our “Tell Us How” website, aimed at getting fresh ideas from staff about how they could do their jobs better. Civil servants themselves bemoaned a risk-averse culture, rampant grade-ism, and poor performance management. The action plan is based heavily on feedback from civil servants themselves, drawing on what frustrates and motivates them, while many of the most substantive ideas in the paper have come out of work led by permanent secretaries. Reform of the civil service never works if it feels like it is being imposed on civil servants by Ministers, but neither would it succeed if the civil service were simply left to reform itself. Because we want this to be change that lasts, we have discussed the proposals widely, including with Ministers of the previous Government, to draw on their experiences and ideas.
The civil service of the future will be smaller, pacier, flatter, more digital, more accountable for effective implementation, more capable, with better data and management information, and more unified, consistent and corporate. It must also be more satisfying to work for. These actions must help to achieve that. Under published plans, the civil service will shrink from around 500,000 in 2010 to around 380,000 by 2015—it is already the smallest it has been since the second world war. Sharing services between Departments will become the norm. That has been discussed for years; it is now time to make it happen.
Productivity also needs to improve. For too long, public sector productivity was at best static, while in the private services sector it improved over the same period by nearly 30%. Consumer expectations are rising and, as we have been told, there is no money. The public increasingly expect to be able to access services quickly, conveniently and in ways that suit them. We are conducting a review with Departments to decide which transactional and operational services can be delivered through alternative models. Services that can be delivered online should be delivered only online. Digital by default will become a reality, not just a buzz phrase.
We should no longer be the prisoner of the old binary choice between monolithic in-house provision and full-scale privatisation. We are now pursuing new models: joint ventures, employee-owned mutuals and new partnerships with the private sector. MyCSP, which manages the civil service pension scheme, became the first joint-venture mutual to spin out of Government recently, and it provides a model for future reforms.
The civil service culture can be slow moving, hierarchical and focused on process rather than outcomes. Changing that would be really hard in any organisation. We can make a start by cutting the number of management layers. There should only exceptionally be more than eight layers between the top and the front line, and frequently many fewer. That will help to speed up decisions and empower those at more junior levels. Better performance management needs to change the emphasis in appraisals emphatically towards delivery outcomes and reward sensible initiative and innovation.
We also need to sharpen accountability, which is closely linked to more effective delivery. Management information in Government is poor, as the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Institute for Government and departmental non-executive board members have vigorously and repeatedly pointed out. Therefore, by October this year we will put in place a robust and consistent cross-Government management information system that will enable Departments to be held to account by their boards, Parliament, the public and the centre of Government.
We will also make clearer the responsibilities of accounting officers for delivering major projects and programmes, including the expectation that former accounting officers can be called back to give evidence to the PAC. The current arrangements whereby Ministers answer to Parliament for the performance of their Departments and the implementation of their policy priorities will not change but, given their direct accountability to Parliament, we believe that they should have a stronger role in the recruitment of permanent secretaries.
We will therefore consult the Civil Service Commission on how to strengthen the role of the Secretary of State in the recruitment process for permanent secretaries. The current system allows the selection panel to submit only a single name to the Secretary of State. At other levels, appointments will normally be made from within the permanent civil service or by open recruitment but, where the expertise does not exist in the Department and it is not practicable to run a full open competition, we are making it clear that, as now, Ministers can ask their permanent secretaries to appoint a limited number of senior officials for specified and time-limited executive/management roles.
By common agreement, both inside and outside the civil service, there are some serious deficiencies in capability. Staff consistently say in surveys that their managers are not strong enough in leading and managing change. In future, many more civil servants will need commercial and contracting skills as services move further towards the commissioning model. While finance departments have significantly improved their capabilities, many more civil servants need a higher level of financial knowledge. As set out elsewhere in the plan, the civil service needs to improve its policy skills and fill the serious gaps in digital and project management capability.
By autumn we will have for the first time ever a cross-civil service capabilities plan that identifies which skills are missing and sets out how those gaps will be filled. Staff consistently say in surveys that their managers are not strong enough in leading and managing change, so, for the first time, leadership and potential leadership talent will be developed and deployed corporately.
As long ago as 1968, the Fulton commission identified that policy skills in the civil service were consistently rated more highly than operational delivery. That is still the case today. We will establish, therefore, the expectation that permanent secretaries appointed to the main delivery Departments will have had at least two years’ experience in a commercial or operational role, and we will move over time towards a position in which there is a more equal balance between those departmental permanent secretaries who have had a career primarily in operational management and those whose career has primarily been in policy advice and development.
A frequent complaint of civil servants themselves concerns performance management. They feel that exceptional performance is too often ignored and poor performance is not rigorously addressed. In future, performance management will be strengthened by a senior civil service appraisal system that identifies the top 25%, and the bottom 10%, who will need to show real improvement if they are to remain in the service. Departments are already introducing similar appraisal systems for grades below the senior civil service.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the civil service will be a good, modern employer and continue to be among the best employers in the country. Departments will undertake a review of terms and conditions to identify those that go beyond what a good, modern employer would provide. We will also ensure—again, meeting a consistent concern of civil servants—that staff get the IT and security arrangements that they have been asking for, so that they can do their jobs properly. That is a part of doing what is necessary to make civil service jobs more satisfying.
Another key goal is to improve and open up policy making so that there is a clear focus on designing policies that can be implemented in practice. Too often in the past policy has come from a narrow range of views, but Whitehall does not have a monopoly on policy-making expertise, and in future open policy making will become the default and we will create a small central fund to pilot policy development commissioned from outside Whitehall.
I repeat that this plan is just the first stage in a programme of reform and continuous improvement. It responds to concerns expressed by Parliament, by Ministers and former Ministers and, most importantly, by civil servants themselves. None of the actions in the plan is in itself dramatic, and none will matter unless it is properly implemented, but together, when implemented, they will represent real change.
I will oversee the implementation of the plan, and, as the paper sets out, Sir Bob Kerslake, as head of the civil service, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, will be accountable for its delivery through the cadre of permanent secretaries.
Change is essential if the civil service is to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world. I commend the plan to the House.
Mr Maude
I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s welcome for much of what we have said, although I regret the tone of some of his contribution.
On the hon. Gentleman’s last point about potential politicisation, we are very concerned that that should not happen. Any proposals about the involvement of Ministers in appointments, which has operated in various ways for a long time, must be regulated properly by the Civil Service Commission, whose task it is to ensure that there is no taint of cronyism or favouritism. There have been many suggestions, particularly in the time of the previous Government, that cronyism has been a feature of the way in which Governments operate. Because of that, the Civil Service Commission is particularly concerned to ensure that any changes are made extremely carefully. I and my colleagues strongly support that.
I have not announced any further reductions in the size of the civil service. The figure of 380,000, which is the consequence of the plans that Departments already have, is already out there. The reductions are obviously taking place in a planned and considered way by Departments, and they are alert to the need for front-line services to be protected wherever possible.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned issues of morale in the civil service. However, the people survey, which is a consistent survey across the whole civil service that is done every year—a welcome innovation by Lord O’Donnell under the previous Government—suggests that morale has remained remarkably stable at a time of uncertainty, a pay freeze, the reform of pension schemes and significant downsizing. Turnover, as measured by resignations from the civil service, has also remained stable. There is obviously a reduction in the size of the senior civil service, but that is simply a consequence of the overall reductions in size across the civil service.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for our plans for digitisation. That will not always be without controversy, but it is important. The Government lag behind most providers in making services available to consumers online. Too many online Government services fail, meaning that the non-digital delivery of transactions by post, phone or physical contact has to be retained. That is much more expensive and a lot less convenient for the user. It is important to tackle that problem. He will be aware of the invaluable review that was done by Martha Lane Fox 18 months ago, on which we are drawing heavily to drive our plans forward with urgency.
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about interaction with the private sector. I do not make the assumption that the answer to every problem in the civil service is to bring in people from the private sector. In fact, much more needs to be done to equip existing civil servants with skills. That is where interaction is so important. The culture in the civil service needs to feel much more recognisable to people from the private sector, so that when there is interaction, they do not feel like they have stepped on to a different planet. We believe that enhanced interaction will contribute to that.
The only moves that there have been towards regional pay were made under the previous Government, when the Ministry of Justice introduced a degree of regional pay. No final decisions have been made on the matter and we will not proceed without good evidence and a strong rationale for doing so.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman’s response reflected the widespread consensus that there is a need for change. Our proposing change which responds very much to concerns within the civil service does not mean that we think that the fundamental model is wrong. Arguments are made for a more American approach, but one would lose many important benefits such as the institutional knowledge, continuity and ease of transition through that approach. We have therefore worked within the constraints of the model as it is, but much can be done within those constraints. None of the changes need be massively controversial or dramatic, but together they will make a real difference to the way in which the country is governed.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for publishing a civil service reform plan, which will prove to be the comprehensive cross-departmental change programme that the Public Administration Committee has long been calling for. Will he engage all his fellow Ministers to ensure that they lead the programme alongside permanent secretaries? Without effective leadership, no change programme will succeed. Finally, will he reaffirm that the civil service must remain one of our great institutions and a force for the stability of government, our constitution and our nation?
Mr Maude
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been urging me to publish a civil service reform plan for some time. I have said many times that I am keener on civil service reform than I am on civil service reform plans, but we have set out the plan and what we aim to achieve. It will require concerted political leadership, and there must be no hiding place. The political leadership of the Government and wide consensus across the party divide, which I think there is, together with the leadership of the civil service, will provide the best chance of implementing the plan successfully. I completely accept his point that the civil service is an important component of our stability, but we need to ensure that stability does not equate to a lack of any movement.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I welcome the substance of what the Minister said and the bipartisan tone in which he put it. In particular, may I welcome his proposals for greater involvement by Secretaries of State in the appointment of their permanent secretaries? I say by way of confession that, although I am not sure what the rules were at the time, in each of the three permanent secretary appointments that I made—in the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice—I insisted that there was a shortlist of at least three candidates from which I should choose. There was not the least allegation that I had acted in a partisan or cronyist way. The point that I made to those Departments was that if I was to take responsibility for the whole Department and for the work of that permanent secretary, I needed to have some confidence in the individual at the official top of the organisation.
Mr Maude
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of view, which I think most people who have been Ministers would recognise and respect. As Ministers we come to the House of Commons and, more or less cheerfully, take responsibility and are held accountable, sometimes in very robust terms, for what our Departments deliver and how they perform. The relationship between a permanent secretary and a Secretary of State is the most important one in a Department, and it is not reasonable for a Secretary of State to feel that he or she has no real choice in the appointment of that permanent secretary.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Will the Minister reiterate that one of the great strengths of the reform agenda that he has put forward today is that it responds to the demands of ordinary civil servants themselves? History shows that if the Cabinet Office acts in isolation, the project is doomed to failure. We require much wider leadership of the reform agenda, right across the civil service.
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes the point very well that it would not work if we tried to impose reform that went against the grain of the hard-working majority of civil servants, who come to work to do a good job and serve their fellow citizens, and who want to go home at the end of the day feeling that they have been able to make a difference. The plan would not have a chance of being successfully implemented. We need to call on the leadership of the civil service, but also on those throughout the civil service who see a need for change and want to be part of it.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It is opportune that the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary reception is taking place at the moment, to which all Members, including the Minister, are invited. That union represents staff who have had job cuts, privatisation, pay cuts and pay freezes and who have had their pensions undermined. They have even had their redundancy payments cut. Will he call in and explain to those staff what is meant by “Departments will undertake a review of terms and conditions to identify those that go beyond what a good…employer would provide”? Does that mean that there will be more cuts to job security, maternity cover, paternity leave or sick pay? Will he explain precisely what it means?
Mr Maude
Depending on how long this statement goes on, I would be delighted to call in to the PCS reception and renew old acquaintances and friendships.
To which terms and conditions does the statement refer? Civil servants hate it when outlandish and archaic terms and conditions, many of which they will not have known exist, get picked up by the media and lampooned. Such terms and conditions enable the media to project civil servants—quite unfairly—as feather-bedded and pampered, which is demoralising for them. We want the civil service to be a good, modern employer, and among the best employers, but that means that such outlying terms and conditions, which are hard to defend in the modern world, must be addressed. They include, for example, the fact that as soon as people become civil servants, they are entitled to six months’ full sick pay. That is out of kilter with anything that exists in the wider public sector or the private sector. That sort of thing will need, over time, to be addressed.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s talk of sharpening accountability and of better accountability upwards to departmental boards. He even talks of giving Secretaries of State more of a say on appointments. Why has he not considered enhancing accountability to the Select Committees of the House? Surely without that change, the mandarin is not truly outwardly accountable to the public.
Mr Maude
I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. He will know that the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who is away on Committee business at the moment, strongly takes that view. The Government have not opined on that suggestion at this stage, because the House of Lords Constitution Committee is conducting an inquiry into exactly that issue and we do not want to pre-empt its deliberations. My hon. Friend’s point, however, is a powerful one.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
In his statement, the Minister said that the “demand for change…comes from civil servants themselves”, and yet went on to say that changing the civil service culture would be “really hard”. There seems to be a contradiction in that. Can we be sure that the reorganisation of the civil service is in the interests of service to the community, and not simply a cost-saving exercise?
Mr Maude
We need to save costs—that almost goes without saying—and every Department is working under a severe financial constraint, one consequence of which is the significant reduction in the size of the civil service, to which I have referred. The proposals are about ensuring that, in such circumstances, when there is a smaller civil service and less money around, citizens can be served and receive public services of a good standard, and in many cases we hope a better standard than they currently receive.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
Is it fair that businesses outside London and the south-east must compete for staff against public offices whose pay and conditions are set nationally? If local pay works so well and flexibly for the Courts Service, why would we be squeamish about extending it?
Mr Maude
At the risk of my hon. Friend’s eyebrows going into overdrive, may I say that no final decisions have been made? He makes the argument. We have invited the pay review bodies to look at that proposal but no decision will be made until the evidence has been properly examined and the existence or otherwise of a strong rationale has been established.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I would like to return to the issue of accounting officers being recalled to Select Committees. In his statement, the Minister referred only to the Public Accounts Committee. May I urge him to consider other Committees, such as the Defence Committee, given that procurement decisions can cover 10, 15 or 20 years? Will he consider not only making that clearer, as he said in his statement, but making it a duty?
Mr Maude
For the PAC, it is becoming the practice that, in the right circumstances, former accounting officers can be called back. I hear what the hon. Lady says; it is a powerful case. Actually, I would not find it objectionable if former Ministers were called back to Select Committees to talk about decisions they were involved with in a previous life. I see the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Lord Chancellor, nodding assent, which is courageous of him.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend said, as long ago as 1968 the Fulton commission identified that policy skills were consistently rated more highly than operational delivery. Forty years later, during my time on the PAC, we found out that not a single permanent secretary had ever run a project. After all these reviews, will he really achieve where everybody else has failed, and get fewer permanent secretaries who have an Oxbridge degree in Latin, can write a beautiful minute and are charming, and actually get people who can run a project and be on the right pay scale for it?
Mr Maude
I hope that my hon. Friend, who stewarded the PAC with such distinction and speaks with great authority on this subject, would recognise that the appointment as head of the civil service of Sir Bob Kerslake, who has a formidable history of operational delivery in local government and running big local authorities, is a step in the right direction. If my hon. Friend looks across the piece, he will see that there are more, but not yet nearly enough, permanent secretaries with a background in operational delivery. We need to go further, however.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
On 23 May, in answer to my question about bonuses, the Prime Minister told the House that there was
“no place in the modern civil service for a presumption of good performance.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 1130.]
Why has the Minister not taken the opportunity, in his excellent paper, to outlaw the culture of bonuses for senior civil servants, especially in failing organisations, such as the UK Border Agency? Giving senior civil servants bonuses of £3.5 million cannot be right.
Mr Maude
Performance pay is always controversial, whether in the public or private sector. The paper suggests that a voluntary earn-back scheme, such as that suggested by Will Hutton in his report on fair pay, might be worth considering. We will invite the Senior Salaries Review Body to consider such a scheme for the senior civil service. Civil servants would be invited to put, say, 5% of their basic pay at risk, so that they have to earn it back, with the possibility of exceeding it with exceptional performance. That would not feel like a one-way bet.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
How will these reforms enable the civil service to deliver much higher quality and with greater accuracy, given the high error rates typical in areas such as benefit distribution?
Mr Maude
For a start, there needs to be better performance management and much better management information. It is a constant complaint that the quality of data is poor and inconsistent. It is hard to hold Departments and parts of Departments to account when we do not know how well they are performing. I point out to my right hon. Friend that when we turned MyCSP, the organisation that delivers the civil service pension scheme, into a joint venture mutual, its levels of productivity and accuracy, doing difficult processing work, improved markedly as it moved towards the vesting date.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I hope I am not alone in having a great sense of unease about the greater involvement of Ministers in selecting permanent secretaries. When permanent secretaries have to succumb to ministerial favour, is there not a danger of moving towards a presidential system, with more politicisation, less impartiality and civil servants fearing to speak truth unto power lest their careers not advance? I hope that I am not alone in saying that, and I hope that the Minister has a good answer.
Mr Maude
The answer is that we are absolutely not moving to the presidential-type system. I recommend that the hon. Gentleman talk to his right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who has experience of this. The simple truth is that if a Minister is to be accountable for what their Department does, it is not that unreasonable to suppose that they should have a better degree of choice in selecting the principal instrument for the performance of their Department.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
If local residents in the borough of Kettering phone Kettering borough council, of which I have the honour and privilege of being a member, they speak to a human being who answers the phone within 10 seconds. We ran the British empire with fewer civil servants than we have now, and if Kettering borough council can do that, should not organisations such as the Inland Revenue helpline be told that they have to do the same?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case, not just for the merits of Kettering borough council, but for what central Government and the civil service can learn from the best in local government. We make that point in the plan. There is, for example, good experience in local government of local authorities sharing services to a much greater degree than in the past—including, in many cases, sharing chief executives. We have suggested that this is also something that central Government could learn from.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I listened with great interest to what the Minister said about opening up policy development work. I note what he said about the Civil Service Commission, but I wonder whether he will expand on it. I am not making a partisan point, but he will recall answering questions recently about suggestions—allegations and so on—that, for example, Mr Peter Cruddas had influence over the No. 10 policy making machinery. If policy making is outsourced to think-tanks, there are bound to be occasions when suggestions are made that outside bodies—donors and so on—have undue influence over those think-tanks, so is the Minister anticipating some sort of regulatory framework? Will he expand a little further on that for us?
Mr Maude
The first thing to say is that this proposal is only a modest move. It will be piloted and reviewed to see what works and what does not. I completely concede the hon. Gentleman’s point that the work needs to be done carefully. It is not, I hasten to add, a recipe for giving more business to consultants—we have massively cut the business that central Government give to consultants—but we think there is scope for commissioning policy development work from academics, for example, which seems to be a fruitful idea that is worth pursuing to see what the benefits are.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
It is important that those who choose the civil service as a career path should still have a wide experience and keep up to date with the knowledge, skills and experience that will be useful. Has the Minister considered whether the parliamentary term and timetable—our cycle—might offer time for development and training opportunities for those staff, or time for fast-track staff in particular to take paid sabbaticals in industry, commerce and the voluntary and philanthropic sectors, which are at the cutting edge of personnel development?
Mr Maude
That is a valuable point, which we address. Such development is available and possible, but it happens to a much lesser extent than is desirable. Exposure to different worlds and different experiences can enrich the ability of senior civil servants to deliver effectively for citizens.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Minister referred to a central fund. How much will be in it, and will it come from separate Departments? Will he be using a tendering process, or will he just be appointing one particular person?
Mr Maude
It is a modest fund of £500,000 from the Cabinet Office, to be matched by Departments, if they want to bid to use it. I would not generally expect there to be a single appointment. Under the circumstances, we would want to get different groups in to pitch their ideas for how they would develop the work and so on. However, these are early stages. We want to explore how to do the work effectively, but we think it is worth pursuing.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend clarify whether he will be publishing the personal objectives of permanent secretaries and the interim project milestones of senior responsible owners? Further to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) asked, given that 70% of civil servants work in operational roles, will he clarify how many permanent secretaries do not have two years’ experience in such roles?
Mr Maude
I do not have the last fact immediately at my fingertips, although it could no doubt be there soon. On my hon. Friend’s first point, yes, we do plan to publish permanent secretary objectives. They ought to be set in a rigorous way through agreement with the Secretary of State, with the lead non-executive on the Department’s board, with the Prime Minister and with the head of the civil service. That needs to be done. We will then publish those objectives, because the public need to be able to see the extent to which they are being met. My hon. Friend also asked about milestones. We are becoming much more open and saying much more about the way in which the major projects are governed, and about their performance, than has ever been the case.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
As well as suggesting a greater role for Secretaries of State in the recruitment process for permanent secretaries, the right hon. Gentleman referred to Ministers being able to ask permanent secretaries to appoint a limited number of senior officials to time-limited executive or management roles. Has he any plans to circumscribe or, better still, proscribe any involvement, interference, intervention or influence by special advisers in relation to such matters? Does experience not teach us that special advisers should not taste, touch or handle any aspect of such a process?
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I welcome the thrust of the reform, but will the Minister clarify one point? Does he support the idea that a Secretary of State should have the final say in the recruitment of a private sector individual to the post of permanent secretary, provided it is done on a fixed-term, performance-related basis?
Mr Maude
Yes, I do believe that. Obviously, that would need to follow a selection and recruitment process that had been regulated by the Civil Service Commission to ensure that the appointment had been made on merit following fair and open competition, as the law requires. Given that degree of regulation, however, and the assurance that that should give that the individual was an appointable candidate for not only the current Secretary of State but any future ones, there is no obvious reason why that should not happen.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
The Minister said that there was nothing dramatic in his plans. Is it not time for a bigger reform than one that simply involves the appointment of permanent secretaries? Should not a change of Government mean a change at the top of those agencies delivering the most important parts of the new Government’s programme? Perhaps we should consider a system closer to that of the United States, in which Ministers would propose appointments which would then be confirmed or rejected at hearings in this House. Those who were appointed would then, like Ministers, be publicly accountable as well as directly accountable to Parliament.
Mr Maude
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. As an experienced former Minister, his views attract respect and deserve careful consideration, but his suggestion would involve a fundamental change to the model that we have in this country. That is not unthinkable, but a deep change would be involved. We believe that our system works really well—or is capable of doing so—and that we can make these changes within the current model to deliver real change. We can also get on with that quite quickly.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend rightly began his statement by saying of the civil service: “It is there to implement the policies of the Government of the day, whatever its political complexion.” He will be aware, through his role as a constituency Member of Parliament and as a Minister, of the frustrations expressed by many Ministers at the lack of determination of some in their Departments to implement the programme on which the Government of the day were elected. What assurances can he give us that this programme of reform will keep its central facet—namely, that the civil service is there to implement the will of the people as expressed by those elected to the House of Commons?
Mr Maude
That is a fundamental tenet of our system, and if there were widespread concern that that was not happening, pressure to change the system along the lines that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) has outlined would become hard to resist. The key point, however, is that the permanent secretary of a Department is under an obligation to provide Ministers with officials who are capable of delivering the Minister’s priorities. If that is not happening, Ministers are entitled to—and should—make quite a fuss.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
While I fully agree that we need to deal with poor performance effectively, and I look forward to seeing the Minister’s capabilities plan, will he tell me why he has chosen to use norm-referencing at an arbitrary 10%, which is going to encourage colleagues to have a dog-eat-dog approach and to vie with each other to get out of the bottom 10%, like in some ghastly TV game show, rather than to deal with poor performance where and whenever it occurs?
Mr Maude
All the evidence suggests that without some, by its very nature, relatively arbitrary way of ranking performance, we will not get the focus on dealing with poor performance. I do not take a simplistic view of poor performance that suggests that anyone who is underperforming should immediately exit the civil service because the first thing that should be done is to provide proactive support and development of the individual to get them to improve. If that does not prove possible, then it is not right and it is not fair to the rest of the civil service, who work hard and are dedicated, to see the civil service’s reputation pulled down by those who are consistently underperforming.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
When looking at civil service reform, will my right hon. Friend continue to ensure the curtailing of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent on civil service management conferences? Will he also curtail the huge spending on expensive head-hunters by civil service departments, often staffed by former senior civil servants themselves?
Mr Maude
Spending on all those things has massively reduced since the coalition Government were formed. We can often do these things much more effectively. Management-type conferences, away-days and all that sort of thing now take place largely in the Government’s own property at much lower cost. It is sometimes necessary to use head-hunters to do particular recruitments, but this should be the exception rather than the rule.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
I thank the Minister for his statement, in which he said that the civil service of the future would be smaller. In light of that, what will be the staffing head count implications for those parts of the civil service that reside within the devolved regions, such as the Northern Ireland Office and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs?
Mr Maude
Those decisions will be taken by those Departments themselves. We do not expect to do that by central diktat. So far as civil servants in the devolved Administrations are concerned, that is of course the responsibility of those Administrations. The Northern Ireland civil service is slightly different as it is separate, but in Scotland and Wales, the permanent secretaries of both those Administrations have been involved in the development of these plans.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Civil servants at GCHQ and elsewhere in my constituency already deliver what I call a gold-plated service to government, despite serious challenges to recruitment and retention. Will these reforms strengthen the hand of unique institutions such as GCHQ in the face of serious private sector competition for highly expert staff?
Mr Maude
I am very aware of the amazing work done by GCHQ and of the extraordinary talents that get attracted to Cheltenham, and by and large retained there, in support of work of the highest importance for the safety of the nation. There is certainly nothing that we are doing that will inhibit the ability of organisations such as GCHQ to do what is necessary to recruit and retain the very best.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
There are many talented public servants at all levels of the civil service, but will my right hon. Friend assure me that these plans will allow that talent to be recognised and advanced by rewarding innovation and successful outcomes?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a very good point—that the system does not always reward those who innovate. We make the point in the paper that no one’s career ever seems to suffer if they continue to preside over an inefficient status quo, but if people try something new that does not work, they can feel very exposed. We need to be as rigorous in examining, testing and challenging the status quo as we are with innovation and change. We need to be supportive of those who try new things. Not everything new that gets tried will work, but the best organisations learn at least as much from things that are tried and do not work as they do from things that are tried and do.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Prime Minister recently stated in Malaysia that “Yes Minister” remains true to life. The Minister has said today: “There should only exceptionally be more than eight layers between the top and the front line…That will help to speed up decisions and empower those at more junior levels.” Could we not be a little more ambitious?
Mr Maude
I am always open to encouragement of that nature. In a really big organisation—and some parts of central Government are very big organisations—eight is not an inordinate number of layers. Those are still quite big spans of authority. In most cases, however, the number should be significantly lower. We particularly want the changes to empower people at the front line to make decisions and judgments without constantly having to refer them up the hierarchy, because that will make their jobs more rewarding and satisfying.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that a reduction in the size of the civil service will not be offset by an increase in the number of former civil servants who are subsequently re-employed as consultants?
Mr Maude
I have no control over whether former civil servants obtain employment as consultants. I can say, however, that the amount of money that the Government spend on consultants has fallen by some 60% since the election, that it remains at a much lower level, and that it will continue to do so.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is prepared to learn from local government. The Communities and Local Government Committee is conducting an inquiry into the operation of mutuals and co-operatives, and other forms of working. The evidence is still coming in, but it is clear that such arrangements lead to better services, more job satisfaction, and innovation. However, in order to go forward, people need support: they need financial backing, and they need to be encouraged to take the work on. What measures will my right hon. Friend take to provide them with that opportunity?
Mr Maude
We have set up a mutuals information service so that we can provide ready access to information. We have also set up a small fund that can buy legal and commercial advice for groups of public sector workers who want to establish themselves as mutuals. That is beginning to succeed, but what is needed above all is for the managers in such public sector organisations to support those who want to spin themselves out as public service mutuals. There is a tendency for managers to feel that that is somehow a threat and to resist it, but they should see it as a big opportunity, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend has so eloquently cited.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
The 2001 reforms of the Foreign Office led to a torrent of management jargon, and to officials managing themselves instead of getting to grips with foreign countries. Will the Minister reassure us that this round of reforms will not promote people on the basis of abstract management skills at the expense of the energy, imagination, practical wisdom and courage which are at the heart of good administration?
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Bristol is currently negotiating its exciting city deal, which will create a revolution in regional growth. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the reforms will enable the civil service—particularly in the vital Department for Transport, which oversees the infrastructure for growth—to be as dynamic, growth-focused and, indeed, business-minded as Bristol, our regions and the nation need it to be?
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I welcome the statement. Does the Minister agree that one of the most important things the modern civil service needs to do is look at new ways of delivering public services, particularly given the challenges of the digital era?
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend touched on the importance of importing the very best of transformational change from the enterprise sector. Will he say a little more about that?
Mr Maude
We want a civil service culture that is much more recognisable to those who come from the private sector so that there can be greater interaction. Where people do move from one sector to another, frequently it does not work because they feel like they have landed on a different planet. It is particularly valuable for civil servants to spend some time in the private sector as they will pick up additional skills, as well as vice versa. There can be very valuable cross-fertilisation. This has often been tried, but it has worked far too rarely. We are going to have another go.
Cabinet Office
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Maude
By looking at the Contracts Finder website, which is the main source of Government contracts over £100,000. That is the place where they should look, and I hope that they will, but since February 2011, when we announced our new approach, about a third of new contracts have already been awarded to SMEs.
[Official Report, 13 June 2012, Vol. 546, c. 308.]
Letter of correction from Francis Maude:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given on 13 June 2012 to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney).
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Maude
By looking at the Contracts Finder website, which is the main source of Government contracts over £10,000. That is the place where they should look, and I hope that they will, but since February 2011, when we announced our new approach, about a third of new contracts have already been awarded to SMEs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
1. What savings to the public purse have resulted from changes to the Government estate in the last two years.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The moratorium on new leases and on passing over breaks in existing leases has helped us across central Government to save the taxpayer some £278 million from property in just the first 10 months of the coalition Government’s time in office. To date, central Government have got out of more than 900 leases and released freeholds, and last year alone the size of the estate fell by 6%.
Graham Evans
Will my right hon. Friend reassure the House that the Government will get value for taxpayers’ money by ensuring that, wherever possible, the publicly owned freehold estate is used to avoid the need for expensive leases?
Mr Maude
That is exactly our approach. Far too much of the freehold estate is under-occupied and far too many expensive leasehold properties are occupied in a very inefficient way. In Bristol alone we discovered that central Government, in their different forms, occupied 115 separate addresses, which is very inefficient and not at all conducive to joined-up government.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
As you know, Mr Speaker, we should always watch what Ministers do, rather than simply listening to what they say. The problem with this Minister is that he promised millions of pounds of savings from other Departments while sneakily building up his own empire. In truth, his Department’s agencies had 23,000 square metres of office space when he came to office, but that figure has more than doubled to a staggering 56,000 square metres. Squeezing others while fattening up his own Department is hardly a policy that will incentivise colleagues to reduce their estate. When will he deliver the savings, and not just mythical ones?
Mr Maude
The hon. Gentleman ought to look a little more carefully at the facts. He will see that the National School of Government and the Central Office of Information, which had been part of quangoland under the previous Government, have been brought in-house and so have been closed down.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
May I satisfy the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman and give the Minister for the Cabinet Office good news by suggesting that even more money could be saved by relocating out of London and coming to Wellingborough?
Mr Maude
I am confident that, under my hon. Friend’s benign guidance, Wellingborough is an incredibly good place for people to work. The size of the civil service is falling to its smallest since the second world war and we are reducing the number of people who need to be in central London, but if the opportunity to relocate people out of London arises, I am sure that Wellingborough will have a very good case to make.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
When it comes to making savings for the public purse, a constituent of mine has written to me: she works for the civil service and is travelling two to three times a week from Nottinghamshire to London to attend meetings that last about an hour. Is that not a ridiculous waste of money, and what are Ministers doing about it?
Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)
2. What steps he plans to take to measure the social impact of Big Society Capital.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
3. What steps he is taking to support civil servants facing redundancy.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
All Departments are rightly required to maximise opportunities for redeployment within the Government and to make all reasonable efforts to avoid compulsory redundancies. All Departments also have in place appropriate support for those employees affected, including retraining, career coaching and advice, and help with CV writing.
Mr Maude
As I said a little earlier, the size of the civil service has already fallen to its smallest since the second world war, and there will be further downsizing, as we have made clear. The resignation rate of senior civil servants is stable: there is no higher turnover than before.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that next week the Government are going to publish their civil service reform plan, and that this issue may be one that the plan addresses as the Government try to set out a clear change programme for the whole of government?
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
4. What steps he is taking to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to bid for Government contracts.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
It is our aim and aspiration that by the end of this Parliament 25% of central Government spend with outside providers should be with small and medium-sized enterprises. We have launched a series of radical measures to simplify the procurement process in order to make it easier and cheaper for all companies to see the business available with the Government and to bid and compete effectively. Our direct spend with SMEs since the Labour party left office is already on track to double.
Jason McCartney
How can SMEs in my constituency find out more about how to do more business with the Government?[Official Report, 18 June 2012, Vol. 546, c. 3-4MC.]
Mr Maude
By looking at the Contracts Finder website, which is the main source of Government contracts over £100,000. That is the place where they should look, and I hope that they will, but since February 2011, when we announced our new approach, about a third of new contracts have already been awarded to SMEs.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
Will the Minister advise the House on what help or education have been given to small and medium-sized businesses regarding online e-procurement? Many small businesses in my constituency find it quite challenging to go online.
Mr Maude
I will look into that, but the hon. Gentleman might like to bring some of those suppliers to me to talk through the difficulties, because we want to make the process as easy as possible. Suppliers tell me that bidding for public sector contracts costs them typically four times as much as bidding for private sector contracts. The changes that we are making will radically reduce that, but we want to make sure that the process works, so I should be grateful for his help.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
According to the Federation of Small Businesses, 40% of businesses still say that the tendering process is too complex. There are some very good messages in the procurement pledge on the website that the Minister mentioned. What steps is he taking to encourage people to adopt the principles of the pledge?
Mr Maude
That is policy within central Government, and it should happen, although I am not for a moment claiming that it is universal yet. We want to hear about procurements that are not being done in the right way. In the wider public sector, we can do no more than exhort and encourage, and we will do so. However, it remains the case that if we are alerted to procurements being done in the old-fashioned way, which is very antagonistic to small businesses, we will intervene. We have got a number of those changed for the better.
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The latest official figures continue to show that the proportion of procurement spend going to SMEs is decreasing in the majority of Government Departments. A recent survey by the FSB found that 40% of SMEs believe that the tendering process is too complicated, while 37% believe that they are being “sidelined” by the Government. Does the Minister agree with Mark Thompson, an adviser to his own Department, who said:
“The reality is, government has very little idea of how to deal with SMEs and has very little in the way in terms of concrete plans here”?
Mr Maude
The main change is that for the first time there are official figures for this spend—the previous Government did not even bother to count it—and the numbers are going up. Obviously within each Department there will not necessarily be an even progress all the time—I would have thought that even the hon. Gentleman ought to be able to understand that—but across the whole of Government spend with SMEs has doubled. I would hope that he would enthusiastically welcome that.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
5. What steps he is taking to reduce the administrative and regulatory burdens that affects the number of people who volunteer.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
6. What progress he has made on his plans to place civil service pensions on a sustainable footing.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
We are committed to ensuring that the reform of public sector pensions means that public servants will continue to receive pensions that are among the very best available. These now provide a fair deal for public service workers while being an affordable deal for the taxpayer and a good deal for the country that is sustainable in the long term. We have spent months negotiating a new scheme that was put to the civil service unions some months ago. I am pleased that four unions have now accepted the proposals.
Andrew Bridgen
I am sure that the 85% of the work force in my constituency who work in the private sector will welcome that response given that their pensions are, on average, far less generous than those available in the public sector, which they are also expected to fund. Will my right hon. Friend give the House an estimate of the sum that the taxpayer would be expected to pay for public sector pensions over the next 25 years if these reforms did not take place?
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
7. What discussions Ministers in his Department have had with their ministerial colleagues on charitable donations.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
10. What steps he has taken to ensure clarity and efficiency in the delivery of policy across Government.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
On 31 May we published business plans for 17 Government Departments, which clearly set out the actions that Departments will take to implement the Government’s reform priorities and by when. The No. 10 website publishes monthly updates on which actions have been completed and which are overdue.
Debbie Abrahams
Will the Minister explain how one Government policy operating in direct conflict with another—for example, the withdrawal of the right to flexible working conflicting with support for carers—amounts to efficiency?
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to reduce fraud in Government procurement.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
We are committed to tackling fraud and error in all areas of Government business, including public procurement. We believe that we can save the taxpayer billions of pounds a year by doing that across Government. Every central Government body will carry out a spend recovery audit by the end of next year, which should generate savings of between £50 million and £100 million. The Home Office and the Department for Transport have already recovered significant amounts by doing this.
Mr Carswell
In welcoming the greater efficiencies and economies of scale that come from centralised procurement, does my right hon. Friend recognise the danger that centralised procurement can, in effect, throw up barriers to entry for smaller suppliers? Might this not help to explain why small and medium-sized enterprises are not always getting their fair share?
Mr Maude
As I said earlier, SMEs are increasing their share of Government business. It has doubled since the election and is set to continue further. I point my hon. Friend to what happened with the Government’s aggregated travel contract when we brought it together: one of the two contracts for travel across the whole of Government was won by a small business, which is rapidly becoming a bigger one.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
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 are the public sector Efficiency and Reform Group, civil service issues, the industrial relations strategy in the public sector, government transparency, civil contingencies, civil society and cyber security.
Duncan Hames
In March, Ministers confirmed in this place that the Department was conducting a review into the long-term funding challenges facing the charity advice sector, as was promised to me by the Prime Minister last October. Will the Minister tell the House and the busy advisers, such as those at Wiltshire’s citizens advice bureau, what conclusions he has reached?
Mr Maude
Advice providers, like other parts of the voluntary sector, are facing a difficult funding situation. In the Budget, the Chancellor made £20 million available in each of the next two years to support the not-for-profit advice sector as it adapts. Our transition fund also provides support to 45 CABs and 17 law centres, and the Ministry of Justice is increasing funding for mediation services by £15 million to encourage greater use of mediation in disputes.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Twelve months ago, the Minister for the Cabinet Office gave the Work programme as an example of the big society in action. A year on, some of the charities that signed up originally have gone bust and almost 100 have withdrawn their welfare-to-work expertise from the programme completely. Is this yet another example of the lack of leadership from Cabinet Office Ministers for charities across Whitehall, or can we finally expect some action to sort this mess out?
Mr Maude
I do not know from that question whether the hon. Gentleman believes it is right for social enterprises to play a major role in the provision of public services. We do, and more than 500 social enterprises and voluntary organisations are involved in the supply chain. I would have thought that he welcomed that.
Mr Speaker
Order. Far too many noisy private conversations are taking place in the Chamber. Let us have a bit of order for Nicola Blackwood.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
T2. The Department for Work and Pensions has no right to data. Absurdly, its Ministers have banned Work programme providers from publishing any data on their performance. That is the opposite of this Minister’s open data policy. What is he doing about it?
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
T7. What assessment has the Minister made of last year’s National Citizen Service pilots?
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
T3. The Government came to power promising a bonfire of the quangos. Will the Minister confirm, however, that the Health and Social Care Act 2012 creates more quangos than the Public Bodies Act 2011 abolished?
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
T9. The Minister for the Cabinet Office must be praised for his efforts in driving forward the open data agenda, through which dusty Government datasets are beginning to provide the jobs and economic growth that the country so desperately needs. What further measures does he have in mind to open up such dusty public sector datasets?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend has been a formidable, expert and passionate advocate of the open data agenda. Open data are the new raw material and can drive a huge amount of business growth. The Government are already the world leader in opening up data, but there is more to come. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. It is very unfair on the Minister that he is not being heard. He should be heard, as should all Members.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
T4. The Government have sold off 250 freeholds of the nation’s buildings and land. If they are going to continue to do that, will the Minister ensure that there is a covenant in the conveyancing to ensure that the public have access to public land?
State of the Estate 2011
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I have today laid before Parliament, pursuant to section 86 of the Climate Change Act 2008, “The State of the Estate in 2011”. This report provides an assessment of the efficiency and sustainability of the Government’s civil estate and records the progress that Government are making in this area. The report is published on an annual basis.
Ministerial Pensions
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
On 15 March I laid before the House an amendment scheme to the ministerial pension scheme to introduce an increase in member contributions from April 2012 and set out the detail in a written ministerial statement, Official Report, column 33WS. In order to ensure that this change in contributions does not inadvertently increase the benefits earned by the members of this pension scheme, which are determined by a complex calculation, it is now necessary to make some further small technical changes by way of an amendment scheme.
I have notified the trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the Government Actuary of the need for this further technical amendment scheme to deliver the contribution increase on which I consulted last year.
The details of the amendment scheme have been laid before the House.
Ministerial Responsibilities
Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The new list of ministerial responsibilities has been published today. Copies are available in the Vote Office and have been placed in the Library. A copy will also be sent to every hon. Member.
The list can also be accessed on the Cabinet Office website at
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/government-ministers-and-responsibilities.