Business of the House

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. The planning system has failed people. It has not always given them the houses that they want. Surveys have always indicated that people want houses, ideally with gardens—although that may be difficult in my hon. Friend’s constituency—and then clever people have thought that they should be given tower blocks, which they have never wanted; this is shown in surveys going back to the 1940s. I have always thought that we should look at where and in what sort of houses the architects and the politicians live. By and large, that is what we should then provide for our constituents and we should have a planning system that does that.

I am glad to say that the Government are bringing forward ambitious planning reforms that will deliver for the British people, and reinvigorate the home owning democracy of which we used to be so proud and in which home ownership has declined in recent years. This is a fundamentally Conservative thing to be doing: allowing people to achieve their lifetime’s ambition of owning their own home and doing so earlier in their life, rather than later in life. What we were able to do before we were 35, people are now no longer able to do so easily. We must ensure that that is able to happen again, and that will be done through the planning reform Bill.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

The Leader of the House may be aware of a report published today by the Social Mobility Commission into the composition of the civil service. The report found that, among top Whitehall civil servants, some 59% attended private schools, compared with 7% in the general population, and that there is a culture in the civil service that seems to favour polish over performance, creating a class ceiling that prevents people from poorer backgrounds from achieving the top jobs. Would the Leader of the House be good enough to arrange for a debate in Government time to allow Members to discuss the findings of this report, and how we might begin to ensure that ability and potential future contribution—rather than the privileges of background—become the key determinants of success and allow the civil service to become a beacon of inclusivity that sets an example to other employers elsewhere in the country?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I actually think that the civil service is a model of good employment practice. Since the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms in the middle of the 19th century, it has been merit based, and that is absolutely how it should be. People get on in the civil service if they are good at their job and perform it well. Our civil service does a remarkable job, and in some cases—looking towards the Box, if I may—an outstanding job, of serving the people of this country. In my own office as Leader of the House—a small office—we have an apprentice, and we had an apprentice before who has been promoted and is succeeding considerably within the civil service. That is a good way of improving accessibility to jobs within the civil service to a broader range. I have not read the report, although I have heard of it and heard some of the headlines about it. It seemed to be concerned that people in the civil service remained calm in a crisis. It seems to me that it is essential to remain calm in a crisis; that is exactly the sort of thing we need from our civil servants.