John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)
My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) is right to ask this question. We attach a huge amount—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but I think he seeks to group the question with a number of others: Nos. 9, 11 and 12.
Mr Letwin
I do indeed, Mr Speaker; I am very grateful to you.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to ask this question because we attach a huge amount of importance to trying to open up contracts to small and medium-sized enterprises. We have launched the Contracts Finder website, which is of enormous advantage to them, and we are getting rid of vastly burdensome pre-qualification materials. Opposition Members may be interested to know that a document such as the one I am holding is what small and medium-sized enterprises had to fill out over and over again in pre-qualification. We are now reducing that and eliminating it in many cases.
Mr Letwin
In a word, yes. We are determined to achieve a change in culture, and the dictum that nobody ever got sacked for hiring IBM is one that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office is putting to the test. We are determined to go for innovation and excellence, and we will do that on a wide scale. Looking at the figures for contracting, I see that we have already achieved an enormously wide spread in the past few months.
Mr Speaker
Order. There are really far too many noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. I want to hear the questions and, indeed, the good doctor’s answers.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
What proportion of Government contracts were won by small and medium-sized enterprises in Yorkshire, and what are the Government doing to ensure that small companies in the north of England get a proportionate share of Government contracts?
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The informal ministerial group on the big society and decentralisation supports progress across government on cross-cutting issues, such as the role of the voluntary community and social enterprise sector in public service delivery, the progress made in vanguard areas and the compact between the voluntary sector and the state.
Mr Speaker
Order. The House must come to order. This is very unfair on the Minister. He is offering the House an informative answer and it must be heard.
Anas Sarwar
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I also thank the Minister for his answer. Given that opinion polls show that the majority of the British people have not even heard of the big society and that the majority of those who have think it is just a cover-up for the cuts, does the Minister believe that the work of the ministerial group has been a resounding success? Does he not believe that Ministers’ time would be better spent doing credible work in their own Departments?
Mr Maude
I refer the hon. Lady to the remarks made by the Communities Secretary yesterday. We do believe in localism; we believe in local authorities being accountable, not to Whitehall, but to their own local residents. Each local authority has to justify its decisions but, as my right hon. Friend said yesterday, we have expectations that local authorities will not impose greater cuts on their funding for voluntary organisations than they do on their own costs. We would expect them to have regard to that.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to reduce the risk of fraud in public sector procurement.
Mr Maude
It is actually difficult to know exactly how much is being lost. The numbers are increasing each year, but that is largely because there is a better handle on the data. The quality of much Government data is lamentably poor and it is particularly difficult to obtain accurate figures on some procurement fraud, such as collusion or bid rigging. However, in one of the taskforce pilots, the Department for Transport is using data analytics to detect overpayments from the Department’s accounts payable systems. A similar exercise undertaken by the Home Office detected and recovered no less than £4 million in overpayments as a result of fraud or error.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
13. How many valid bids the transition fund received.
The Prime Minister
What we are doing for children in this country is funding education for two-year-olds for the first time, putting money into the pupil premium—something the right hon. Gentleman did not do for 13 years—and making sure that money is focused on the most disadvantaged. That is what is actually happening. When the party opposite looks at his performance—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Let us have a bit of order in the House. I want to get to the bottom of the Order Paper and the House needs to help in that process.
The Prime Minister
The money for Sure Start is there, so centres do not have to close. [Interruption.] Yes, and I think that when the Opposition consider the right hon. Gentleman’s performance it could be time for a bit of “Brother, where art thou?”
The Prime Minister
I would advise my hon. Friend to ignore the voices from the Opposition. They are just furious at the fact that he liberated a long-held Labour seat. He makes a very good point. One of the things that we are doing, currently and in the coming days, is making contact with the opposition in Benghazi to ensure that we have good contacts with them so that we can help to bring about a peaceful transition in Libya.
Mr Speaker
Order. We come to the urgent question. Will right hon. and hon. Members who are not staying for this business but are leaving do so quickly and quietly so that the exchanges on the urgent question can take place properly?