Departmental Business Plans

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

What will happen is a series of things that are inconvenient for the responsible Ministers, rising to something that is rather more than inconvenient. In the first place, a report will be made, which will be available to everybody—no Minister likes to see such a thing appear in public. Secondly, the Minister involved will find himself having a discussion with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary and me to explain what has occurred—[Interruption.] I do not know whether Labour Members want to know about this, but I am trying to explain it. The second thing that will happen is that the Minister will meet the Chief Secretary and me, and the permanent secretary will have a conversation with the head of the civil service. Finally, if the problem is still not resolved, the Secretary of State in question will have a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a serious set of incentives; if one thinks about what it was like under the previous Government, or any previous Government, one realises that Ministers do not wish to go through that process and will therefore try to meet their objectives.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

As a member of the Public Administration Committee I welcome the plans to shift some of this on to Select Committees. Will my right hon. Friend set out how the reports could be judged by those Committees and how their powers could be increased, so as to increase further the power of the legislature over the Executive?

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Select Committees play a vital role in that respect. This approach puts vastly more power in the hands of the Select Committees, because the biggest obstacle to their power is, of course, lack of information—and this approach opens the whole thing up. This is not just a question of the structural reform plans and the dates, on which of course Committees can interrogate, as they can interrogate explanations when things go wrong; it is also about the details of the input costs—what we are putting in—the things that have been achieved on the ground and the outcomes, by which I mean how good it is for the final customer. That gives a Select Committee the ability to haul the relevant Secretary of State up before it and say, “Look, you said you were going to do this.” The Committee could then say: “You did not do it”; “You did it, but at a greater cost than you said”; “You did it at the cost but it did not turn out to produce things”; or “It did produce things but the outcomes were not good enough.” That is a very powerful interrogative tool. Hon. Members may ask why we would subject ourselves to this. The answer is because we think that it is how we will produce a better Government.