Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

As we try to bring the books back into balance and reach surplus, making the Government more efficient is crucial in ensuring that as much money as possible gets to front-line services where it is needed. We have a widespread efficiency and reform plan, which we are driving through as part of the spending review to ensure that every taxpayer pound is spent as wisely as possible.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I welcome the new ministerial team to their places? The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is being a little sheepish and, if he does not mind me saying so, a bit disingenuous about the numbers on the electoral register. We all know that the last election was the high-water mark with people automatically put on the register, but with the Electoral Commission saying that nearly 2 million people will fall off that register, will he say today whether he will accept its recommendations on the early bringing forward of the IER scheme? Does he really want this Government to go down in history as the first to reduce the franchise in this country?

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

As I have already told the House, we will look at the Electoral Commission’s recommendations seriously and come back to the House when we have made our decision on them, but there is a clear distinction between those people who are on the electoral register who should not be on it because they are not resident in the place that they are registered for—that is what the cleaning is about—and what I take it is our joint endeavour to get all those people, estimated by the Electoral Commission at 7 million, who should be on the register but are not, on to the register. That is why we are spending money and helping local authorities to attract those people on to the register.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

In the course of this Parliament we have saved more than £50 billion through efficiency and reform savings. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for the support he has given throughout the process. He is a completely brilliant local MP, and I am confident he will be back here after the election.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, given that this is likely to be his last appearance in this place. He has a long record of public service, which he has always pursued with principle, dignity and drive. Even when it has not served his own career, he has never been afraid to speak out, and I have always respected him for having a clear agenda. He is a moderniser and impatient for reform, and despite our disagreements, I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will want to pay tribute to his distinguished career.

Looking to his future, I wonder whether he wants to follow in the footsteps of his friend Michael Portillo. If so, I am happy to arrange some practice sessions for him cosying up on the sofa with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I wish him well with his future plans, albeit with me taking his place in the Cabinet Office, and I wondered whether he wanted to take this opportunity to tell us some of his fondest memories of this place.

[Mr Maude]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind and warm words; they are hugely appreciated. We have pursued a difficult and often controversial agenda of reform, but one of things that has given it strength has been the robust support from her and her predecessors. Whatever the result of the election—I hope it will not be the one she foresees—this programme of reform must continue and be followed through.

Government Efficiency and Reform

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement. His statement today has a little bit more content than his empty statement of two weeks ago, but only a little bit more. One has to wonder again why it is that I keep being called to this House for his statements. Is it perhaps because he wants to continue his very long career of public office in the other place after May and is using Hansard to scrub up his CV? Or is it, more seriously, to distract me and this place from the disarray that is now besetting the Conservative party’s election campaign? Perhaps his and his colleagues’ time would have been better spent today deploring the despicable actions of the Tory candidate for Dudley North or by explaining to the public where the axe will fall, following last week’s confirmation of the Chancellor’s extreme spending cuts in the next Parliament.

The Minister has carried out his job in government of identifying efficiency savings with zeal and his work to reduce the cost of government bureaucracy is welcome. While I might disagree with him on occasion, I do not question his motives to reduce costs. I also commend the civil service for its work on the shared agenda.

The Minister for the Cabinet Office thanked the Chancellor for his support on this agenda, but I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that it really should be the other way around. It is clear from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies that after the Chancellor’s Budget last week, unprotected Departments will face huge and colossal cuts to meet his spending plans and unfunded tax cuts. With all due respect to the Minister, no amount of back-office efficiencies will save front-line police, armed forces or social care services, or working families from the Government’s secret VAT plans. Only so much can be got from efficiency savings and even with his savings in this Parliament, the Government are still only halfway to their own deficit reduction targets. That is why, even with his savings, public services would face even bigger cuts in the next Parliament than they have in this one. Opposition Members have a better plan. We will balance the books in a fair way, ensuring a recovery for the many, not just for the privileged few.

We broadly support the approach to land and property that the Minister has outlined. On digital government, I am pleased to see that he has been reading our independent review on this topic. Just weeks ago, he was saying that the Government Digital Service could not work with councils to improve services and save money. Now he is championing this, and I welcome his conversion today. We agree that stronger functional skills in the civil service are important, and we will examine in detail the Minister’s plans for new commercial directors and a new project leadership programme.

Any new Government will have to think about how we can provide better and more responsive public services with less, but with just a few weeks to go, the country faces a clear choice at the election. No amount of spinning on efficiency savings will hide the Tories’ true agenda of cutting front-line public services and hitting families with a rise in VAT.

[Mr Maude]

I am very sorry that the hon. Lady has been so mean-minded about this. She has cast some unworthy aspersions on the reasons for my statement. The historic purpose of the House is to vote Supply and scrutinise the way in which Governments spend their money. I am astonished that, when I come to the House to explain how this Government have delivered savings running into tens of billions of pounds, and have protected front-line services by taking out the cost of government, the hon. Lady should trivialise something that is at the core of the historic mission of the House of Commons. She has done no honour to her position.

The hon. Lady should reflect on the fact that the Office for National Statistics, which began its series on public sector productivity in 1997, has shown that during the years of the Labour Government, up to 2010, productivity in that sector remained flat, while productivity in the nearest analogue, the private services sector, rose by nearly 30%. She should reflect on the difference that could have been made to the deficit of historic proportions that her party bequeathed to the coalition.

The hon. Lady talked about the future, and about the contribution that could be made by what she described as back-office efficiencies. We are talking about much more than back-office efficiencies; we are talking about the introduction of very different and improved ways of delivering public services. That can be done, and we have shown that it can be done. The public’s expectations in terms of the quality of public services are, properly, rising; the demand in terms of the quantity of public services is also rising as people—happily—live longer; and the amount of money that is available to support those public services is less, thanks to the deficit that we inherited.

We therefore must do more, and do it better, with less money. We have shown over the last five years that that can be done, and we have also shown that it needs to be done again. There should never be an end to efficiencies. The most efficient organisations in the world always look for further efficiency savings every year, and that is what this Government, under a Conservative leadership, will do in the next Parliament.

Trade Union Reform (Civil Service)

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement—it is good to see that at least this member of the Cabinet is not ducking difficult questions in Parliament today.

It is election time, so we have a Tory Minister coming to the House as part of a pre-election union-bashing exercise. There is absolutely nothing new in this statement, so one wonders what his motives are. The Government have a clear strategy towards public servants up and down the country: “The Government do not value the work you do and are hellbent on disfranchising you and weakening your rights at work.” Government Members, especially those in marginal seats, should be worried about the impact this is having on public sector voters in their constituencies.

One has to ask whether this so-called statement is just a smokescreen for a Prime Minister running scared of a debate about the future of our country and a Chancellor whose economic plans threaten £70 billion of cuts that would take us back to a time before there was even an NHS. This Minister is a reasonable man, and I support what the Government are doing on many aspects of civil service reform, but I will not support the steps he has taken under the name of trade union reform, which have resulted in souring relations, low staff morale and unnecessary industrial action, and have scuppered some of his otherwise valiant attempts to change how government is run.

Facility time is an important resource not just for union members and employees but for the employer and, in this case, the taxpayer. Labour is clear that facility time is not political time; where well deployed and not abused, it reduces many human resources costs to a company, such as by reducing the number of disputes going to an employment tribunal, recruitment costs and the number of days off sick and workplace injuries. That is why some of the biggest companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, support facility time—because it is part of an effective HR strategy and a productive workforce.

Of course, we support genuine attempts to eradicate abuse, but the Government’s rhetoric tells a different story—one that is more about their political ideology than good accounting. Check-off is another example. Many major private employers use it: in construction, there is Balfour Beatty; in pharmaceuticals, there is AstraZeneca; in manufacturing, there is BAE Systems, GKN and Rolls-Royce. All of these private sector companies recognise its benefits, but unsurprisingly this Conservative-led Government have done everything they can to end check-off. Given that the cost of check-off is relatively low and that most unions are happy to pay the cost of administering it themselves, it is clear that this is another stage in the long campaign to weaken trade unions and disfranchise their members. Would it not have been better to give the trade unions and their tens of thousands of members across government proper and ample time to move members on to a direct debit system, which I am sure we all agree is more sustainable in the long-term? That is what we will do, and I want to put it on record that when we win in May, we will ensure that this is made possible across all Departments.

The Minister has come to this House today with his Lynton Crosby route 1 election strategy: bash the unions and duck the leaders’ debates. Hard-pressed public sector workers will see this for what it is, and they know that they deserve better than this.

[Mr Maude]

It is lovely to see the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) taking time off from her pressing duties of holding the Labour party’s election campaign together. It is good to have her here. I thank her for her gracious support for most of what we do. It is important to stress that much of what we have done on civil service reform has commanded widespread support across the political spectrum. I am grateful to her and her predecessors for the constructive way in which they have done that—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) makes a comment that is rather less graceful than his colleague.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. There is much more to do. According to the Office for National Statistics, public sector productivity remained flat throughout the Labour years and it has started to increase, but there is much more that we need to do. We have said further savings and reductions in the cost of delivering public services can be made while the quality of the service increases. We have shown over this period that we can do more for less, but we are going to need to continue with redoubled effort in the future.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given his laudable aims to improve access to Government contracts for small business, is the right hon. Gentleman as disappointed as I am about revelations in The Independent today that Capita faces allegations of using a major Government contract to short-change small companies, forcing many out of business? He described this contract as a model of how to open up the public sector, yet it has catastrophically failed. Given his championing of the Maude awards for failure, will this contract be a winner of such an award, and what lessons has he learned from this contract?

[Mr Maude]

We have learned a lot of lessons from this contract, and I absolutely am as disappointed as the hon. Lady. It should not be working like this. I am aware of the concerns and we are investigating them very rapidly to get remedial action; it is not acceptable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

This is a very real and live concern. Our cyber-security strategy—I reported to the House on its third year of operation in the last month of the year—has been backed with £860 million of new money. We take this very seriously, but much more will need to be done because the threats are moving on very quickly, as well as the need for the defences.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

In February 2010, when he was shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Gentleman wrote to the Cabinet Secretary to complain that in asking Treasury officials to cost Conservative party policy, Labour had

“compromised the impartiality of the Civil Service and used the taxpayer funded service for political attacks.”

What discussions has he had with the Chancellor about special advisers using civil servants to propagate political smears and fiction this week, and has he redrafted his letter to the Cabinet Secretary?

[Mr Maude]

I am confident that the permanent secretary to the Treasury, who was the permanent secretary to the Treasury at that time, has followed exactly the same practice as he would have done then.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see the Deputy Prime Minister this morning talking up family-friendly working, but what is the right hon. Gentleman doing to ensure best practice on family friendly across the civil service, in particular on access to high-quality and high-level part-time and flexible opportunities? Is it not about time that the Government showed leadership, instead of lecturing others on what they are not doing?

[Mr Maude]

I warmly welcome the hon. Lady to her post. I have slightly lost count, but on my reckoning she is the fifth incumbent of the shadow post and I am sure the best. I look forward to a warm relationship with her over the coming period.

On the hon. Lady’s valid point about the need for the Government to exercise leadership in providing family-friendly opportunities for flexible working, I very much agree that we should do that, and we are already doing that. We are providing more opportunities and we think there are significant productivity improvements in enabling people to work more flexibly. However, it is always to be stressed that it is not an entitlement; it has to be according to the needs of the business.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

LEPs are elected in the sense that every one of them contains the democratically elected leaders of their local councils, but they also contain the business leaders of the area, which is important. For example, in the deal we did with Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, the technology director of Rolls-Royce, which the hon. Gentleman will concede is a very important employer in Derbyshire, said that the focus in the LEP strategy on growth and investing in infrastructure is exactly what is needed, and that it aligns with the company’s objectives. Bringing business and the democratically elected council leaders together is the right way to go.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What steps he is taking to improve social mobility.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

No one should be prevented from fulfilling their potential by the circumstances of their birth. What ought to count is how hard people work and the skills and talents they possess. Of course, the UK is still a long way from achieving that ideal. Income and social class background have a significant and lasting impact on a child’s future life chances. That is why our 2011 strategy, “Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers”, established improving social mobility as the principal goal of the Government’s social mobility policy. We have committed to reporting regularly on a set of key indicators and have created a new social mobility and child poverty commission. I chair a group of key Ministers to oversee delivery of the strategy.

[Lucy Powell]

The Deputy Prime Minister will know that a child’s life chances are determined in the first few months and years of their life. We have previously discussed getting the right kind of quality into child care, but does he agree that supporting families to encourage children with their language, their bonding and their security is also critical? What, therefore, does he make of the Government’s record? There are 628 fewer Sure Start centres, despite the huge increase in the birth rate over the same period.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is aware that the number of families using children’s centres has actually gone up very significantly. Support to families is, of course, provided in lots of different ways. That is why we have the pupil premium—in particular, the early years pupil premium—channelling money precisely to the early years in a child’s education in the way she describes. That is something that this Government have done; it did not happen under her Government. It is why, for the first time, all young children in the first three years of primary school are getting a free, healthy hot meal at lunch time. It is why we have expanded the amount of free child care and pre-school support available to all three and four-year olds, and to two-year-olds from the 40% of most disadvantaged families. These are very big steps, all of which are devoted precisely to the objective she describes, which is helping children when they are young.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

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

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of Government policy initiatives. Within Government, I take special responsibility for the Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.

[Lucy Powell]

I support the Deputy Prime Minister’s policy to get some of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds into free child care. However, does he share my concern that nearly two thirds of councils recently reported that they have vulnerable two-year-olds in poor quality settings? What is more, the Sutton Trust says that that is likely to get worse in September as the scheme is expanded. What assurances can he give that no vulnerable two-year-old will be in a poor-quality child care setting?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am glad the hon. Lady takes such an interest, because providing that free pre-school support to two-year-olds from the most disadvantaged families is a progressive and significant policy. I believe she is referring to the data released on 26 June which, it is worth pointing out, were from a census carried out in January. We are obviously looking at the data very carefully. As it happens, there are now around 280,000 vacant child care places available around the country. As she will know, the offer to two-year-olds will be expanded to twice as many families, so we need to ensure that there is a funded place available to around 260,000. The demand and supply are there, but she makes a valid point that the care needs to be of a high quality and standard. I am keen to take on board any ideas she has about how we can ensure that happens.

Local Growth Deals

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has personal responsibility for that power, since he, with me, piloted the Localism Bill through Committee. The power is available to local authorities and I hope they will take it up.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I first respond to the Minister’s more partisan points before I move on to the less partisan point? People in Manchester will judge his Government on all their policies, including local government cuts 10 times those of other, more prosperous areas and the welfare reform agenda that is hitting my constituents the hardest. On the less partisan point, which is what I had hoped the statement would be about, given the reports by Michael Heseltine and Lord Adonis and today’s statement by Sir Richard Leese, we now really have cross-party consensus for dramatic decentralisation, and I hope the Minister will ensure that it goes further and faster over the coming months.

[Greg Clark]

I had also hoped that this statement would be less partisan, but that was not entirely evident from the earlier exchanges. Greater Manchester has been doing very well in recent years. If we look at the cross-party leadership of Greater Manchester, including Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour leaders, we will see that they get on well together in the interests of Greater Manchester. The hon. Lady should take a leaf out of their book.