House of Commons Administration and Savings Programme

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the medium-term financial plan for the House of Commons Administration as set out in Appendix A to the First Report from the Finance and Services Committee (HC 691); endorses the intention of the Committee to recommend to the House of Commons Commission a House of Commons Administration Estimate 5 for 2013-14 of £220 million; notes the intention of the House of Commons Commission to make savings of 17 per cent in real terms from 2010-11 level by 2014-15 in line with the wider public sector; and endorses the Savings Programme as set out in Appendix B to the report.

May I begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for having allowed this debate to proceed and by thanking you, Mr Speaker, for having encouraged me to go ahead and seek it? It might be helpful to say at the outset that I intend to address: first, the reasons for having this debate; secondly, the principles behind the savings plan and the medium-term financial plan; and, thirdly, some of the detailed issues. I will then say something briefly about the amendments. It might be helpful to tell the House that I hope to make progress in the first part of my speech, but will welcome any interventions in the second.

The debate is something of a first, so let me begin by setting out why we are having it and what I hope it might achieve. Its purpose is to set before the House the advice that the Finance and Services Committee will give the House of Commons Commission on the administration estimate, which is the estimate of funding required to operate the House. I stress that it is neither the Members’ estimate, which concerns all the parts that affect us, such as our staffing and other arrangements, nor the capital estimate, which affects the refurbishment of the House. The administration estimate is for the running of the House itself. The Committee will also advise the Commission on the underlying financial plans, including the activities, strategies and principles that have informed the savings programme. This is an opportunity for Members to debate and, if required, to vote on the proposals.

The Finance and Services Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, has scrutinised with considerable care over some period of time the financial plans and savings proposals. Our findings and recommendations are set out in our report to the House. Our terms of reference charge us with advising the Commission, which is the statutory body required to take the decision, so this is the opportunity for Members to debate the advice that the Finance and Services Committee proposes and to amend that advice if they wish. For the first time, they will be taking a full part in the debate about how House services are provided.

I am pleased to see that there are three amendments and that Members wish to engage in the process. I look forward to the contributions that are to come. I believe that this is an important step in wider scrutiny of how we operate internally and it is therefore important to us and our constituents. I also believe that it is an important debate for our staff and the management of the Palace. I want to reiterate the tribute I paid in a recent Westminster Hall debate: we are served by dedicated and loyal staff who take immense trouble to ensure that we are looked after. They undertake their duties with great efficiency and the minimum of fuss and they are led by a team of officials and managers who set out to satisfy us and who usually succeed. I want to place on record my appreciation of all they do, which is, I am sure, shared by Members on both sides of the House.

At a time of financial constraint, it is wholly right and proper that we are seen to be seeking to operate in the most cost-effective way, consistent with our overarching parliamentary duties of scrutiny, legislating and representing our constituents. To achieve this, we have set a savings target of a 17% reduction in the estimate from the baseline estimate of 2010/11, which was £231 million. By 2014-15, the estimate will need to be £210 million to achieve that target. We are on track to achieve that and the estimate of £220 million, which we are advising the Commission to accept, undertakes that task.

From the outset, it was agreed that simply salami slicing 17% of everything across the board would be inconsistent with achieving the targets for quality of service that we require. Each area of activity has therefore been carefully considered and analysis was made of what was required and then of how to achieve it. In management speak, it is called re-engineering, but I was determined to try not to get that in—I have clearly failed. That is at the heart of the plans to deliver an improved service for our parliamentary duties in a more effective and efficient way. I should stress that our goal is as much quality of service as efficiency and the core principle that has informed all the activities is to ensure that parliamentarians can properly, fully and effectively carry out their duties in this place and can do that at the best value.

Now that I have set out the broad principles behind the plan, let me touch on some of the key areas. I preface that by saying that a considerable amount of saving has already been achieved by simply looking at what we do and how we do it and working out how it can be done better. In addition, the House has adopted the same strictures on pay as the civil service and I draw Members’ attention to the appendices that analyse many of these areas. Today’s proposed estimate of £220 million is, as I have said, a stepping stone on the way to £210 million in 2014-15. The proposals for achieving it are set out in appendix B.

The first key area is what is known as market testing. It is completely appropriate for any organisation to consider what it does and how it might best deliver what are known as the non-core activities. In this place, an obvious example is the Travel Office, where we employ travel professionals on a competitive basis to provide the best service for us. At the other end of the scale are core activities, which are the things that our House service does and that we would never expect to be done by anyone else. They are core to delivering the service. In between, there are areas that are vital to us but not necessarily core activities. Those are the areas where it is proper to see whether an in-house service is providing the best value. The concept behind market testing is to ensure that the services we provide internally are benchmarked against outside provision to show that we have the best value for money.

Detailed analysis of the potential to market test in four areas of the House service, including catering, has been completed. We have reached a point where the in-house teams have developed thorough plans for making improvements and reducing costs internally and have conducted market research to provide comparators. Staff in the areas concerned have been closely involved and have come up with imaginative solutions, supported by people with expertise from outside.

Our colleagues on the Administration Committee have considered the internal improvement plans for catering and have welcomed their approach. The decision now is whether to proceed with the improvements in-house or formally to test the market with the possibility of those services being outsourced. I observe that the Chair of that Committee, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), has tabled an amendment based on a meeting the Committee had earlier this week. I would certainly be minded to accept it and I believe that it is acceptable to other Members of the Finance and Services Committee with whom I have been able to have a word. I look forward to hearing his speech in due course.

The second key area is what is known as print to web. The aim is to move to a more digital-first approach to publishing, with less use of paper and hard copy. The printing of the soft-bound weekly Hansard has already ceased. Some while ago, under the previous estimate, we gave up publishing the weekly compendium of early-day motions. We are considering written questions, which will not be published in the daily Hansard from 2014 but will be published far more quickly and accessibly on line. Clearly, in this project it is important that the quality of the digital access is improved to ensure that the quality of the overall service is better as a result. It is a classic example of the quality of service being the more important goal rather than the saving. As a result of the initial work, nearly £2 million was saved. In the last year, about £1 million was saved and in the coming year, more than £1 million will be saved. If this year’s plan is accepted, we will already have achieved a saving in excess of £5 million.

The perhaps slightly contentious part of all this concerns the leather-bound volumes of Hansard. I have written to all those Members who find this a deeply cherished part of their parliamentary experience. Only 14% of Members currently subscribe to the service and, of those, only a small number feel that it would be a gross inconvenience to lose it. We have negotiated a discount and the bound volumes will be available to Members who wish to purchase them, but for the rest, we will be making a saving of some £970,000 a year by discontinuing them.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

May I reassure my hon. Friend that that is a reasonable saving? I discovered early on in my 39-year parliamentary career that the accumulation of bound volumes of Hansard was not very practical from a domestic point of view.

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I can tell him that I have had particular praise from the wife of one hon. Friend, who thanked me profusely for having relieved her of the duty of piling those up in the loft. So all in all, it is a wise move but, as I say, for those who wish to continue to receive bound volumes of Hansard, we have made provision for them to be purchased.

The next point that I would like to touch on is the provision of ICT. The aim here is to move to a more cloud-based system. This will allow Members to access all the services they need from virtually any equipment they choose to use. It moves the security aspects—one of the most important points—from their individual pieces of hardware on to the cloud system. So cloud e-mail and office services which are designed to provide flexible access from anywhere and virtually any device should be a truly enabling feature for Members.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

As a Member who is trialling the use of iPads in Select Committee—which, by the way, is proving very effective—I can report that we cannot put information on the cloud at present because the servers for Apple products are in the United States and are therefore covered by the Patriot Act. That presents some interesting problems. Has the Committee given any thought to how we can solve them?

[John Thurso]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The Committee is not yet engaged on the Patriot Act. What we are engaged in is ensuring that these questions are asked of Parliamentary ICT. That is the important point. PICT is currently running what is called the cloud-readiness project to look at all these issues. If we want to arrive at the point where all the benefits that I have sought to outline are available to us, ensuring that the system is secure and that storage and transmission facilities are available are clearly prerequisites for any provider of cloud services. If a provider cannot offer that, it will not get the custom.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

As someone who, when she was a Minister, was responsible for the early stage of planning of the census, where we came across a similar problem with data storage, issues of privacy and the US Patriot Act, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to make sure that he asks the appropriate questions to ensure that when we finally get a cloud, it will be a cloud whose storage is in the UK so that we can avoid the Patriot Act issues?

[John Thurso]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. Had I not thought of those questions before, it is now firmly planted in my mind to ensure that they are all properly asked.

The last point that I wanted to touch on is the plans to increase revenue. The Administration Committee has done considerable work on this, and we had a debate in Westminster Hall which featured that topic. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden will speak in this debate and I am sure that he will cover this in greater detail. It is also the subject of an amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). Notwithstanding the fact that I am about to disagree with him, I respect hugely the point that he puts and I am extremely grateful to him for having raised it in the debate. It is one of the core points and it is absolutely right that we as Members should discuss that. He has therefore done us a service by tabling the amendment, and I am grateful that it has been selected. However, I will now proceed to disagree with him, if I may.

The House has operated a number of facilities for staff, visitors and Members, including cafes, restaurants, bars and shops, for a considerable length of time. I hope it will be uncontroversial to affirm that these should be correctly priced and effectively costed. All these are details that the Administration Committee goes into. However, the Palace not only houses Parliament, but is a world-class heritage asset and one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions. I suggest that as such, we have a duty to make the Palace available to visitors who want to visit it, and an equal duty to ensure that the cost of that does not fall on the taxpayer, but is recovered from those visitors.

The key point is to ensure that there is no conflict between Parliament as a working institution and the Palace as a world-class visitor attraction, so I shall set out my principles in that regard. They are three. First, Parliament is a working institution and while it is sitting, those activities take precedence over any other activity. Secondly, all citizens have the right to visit their Parliament and to engage with their Members of Parliament and the parliamentary process without any charge at any point. Thirdly, subject to those first two principles, the Palace is a world heritage and tourist asset which should be made available for tourist visitors, provided that the costs of such provision are recovered and not passed on to the taxpayer.

I believe—and I think this is where I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow—that provided we have absolutely ensured that parliamentary proceedings are sacrosanct and that citizens can visit the Palace without a charge and without fear of a charge, we have a duty and a right to open it to wider visits and to charge to recover the costs.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In his document he talks about respect for Parliament. This sums up the nub of my argument. The effect of what he proposes is that people who are rich, such as corporates that can pay more money, will have special privileges to get into the Palace of Westminster. That is what I find objectionable. I do not make the distinction between when Parliament is sitting and when it is not sitting.

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I entirely respect that point of view. I just fundamentally disagree with it, in the nicest possible way. Let us take, for example, the fact that we are putting up the prices for commercial filming in certain parts of the Palace. We have done that for many, many years. All that we are currently doing is making the prices roughly equal to the charges for any other commercial activity. Let us consider another example. My fellow Commissioner, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), is Chairman of Mr Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art and has done a power of work to open up the art work in this building by offering specialist tours in secure areas to people who would not otherwise be able to get there. Those tours mean that members of staff have to be assigned to that duty. The choice, it seems to me, is that we either recover the cost of those members of staff so that we can widen the access, or we do not do it and do not pay the staff so that we can stay within budget. An ever-increasing openness of the Palace that takes no account of the costs is plain wrong.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Surely this is about striking the right balance: the costs should not fall totally on the taxpayer, but at the same time the charges must not be so high that only the rich can afford them and people are deterred from coming here.

[John Thurso]

I completely agree. There is a need for balance. I cannot give an assurance on the part of the Commission, or indeed any sister Committee, but my view is that we should proceed gently and with caution, just as we did when we introduced charging for entry during the summer recess. We opened up the Palace hugely to tourists and charged a fee that was broadly in line with what people pay to access other tourist attractions. That seems to be the right and proper way to do it. It also creates employment, which I think is good news. My view is that we should do it, but let us move at a reasonable, considered and measured pace without rushing into anything. I would certainly advise whoever introduces it that going with the grain of what has been said is the best way forward.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that his formulation of “cost recovery”, is actually the opposite of the “commercialisation” of facilities that the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) refers to?

[John Thurso]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend—I call him that because he serves with me on the Finance and Services Committee. I absolutely agree. I read in one of the newspapers that it was proposed that someone from Disney World do something in Westminster Hall. That is not on the agenda and never has been—if it was, I would join my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow in the Lobby like a shot. What we are talking about is the recovery of cost for the proper opening of the Palace to visitors. There will come a moment when it is a matter of judgment in some areas, but I believe that we are capable of making those judgments sensibly when we get there.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

I find myself in sympathy with both sides of the argument; I very much see the point my hon. Friend is making, but I also sympathise with the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). Will my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sunderland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) consider some sort of sunset clause that would allow Parliament, after a period of time, to reflect on how well the changes have operated so that, if some of the concerns that have been raised appear to have been justified, we might consider changing once again?

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I observe in passing that I have managed to attract both sides of the argument—clearly, I am sitting in the right place in the Chamber. I do not think that a sunset clause is necessary, because it is my hope that we will regularly, perhaps annually, have a debate of this kind. If at any time we reach a point where Members clearly feel as our hon. Friend the Member for Harlow feels, that debate would be the time to say that enough is enough. If we reach that point, I am confident that is precisely what the House would do. That is the reassurance I can offer my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles).

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the following two points? First, we are privileged to work in a palace, rather than some modern, purpose-built place that would be a lot cheaper to run, so we must find some way of defraying the costs of maintaining and repairing it, and it is right that not all of that cost should fall on the taxpayer. Secondly, we are also privileged to enjoy many services, functions and eating places. Unless we can find a way of generating more revenue to support those facilities, we will lose them, because the public will not stand for ever for that being subsidised to the extent it has been in recent years.

[John Thurso]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. On his point about catering “subsidy”, the actual sale prices in most of our outlets are comparable to either, in the case of the dining rooms, private sector outlets or, in the case of the cafes, a normal work canteen. The prime cost is that of food, which in the trade we used to call the kitchen cost, and that is comparable to similar commercial operations, so the gross profit, or kitchen profit, is comparable. The problem is that we occupy the facilities for only part of the week, so for the remainder of the week they cost money because they are serviced and there are staff. Therefore, the gross profit is insufficient to cover the total fixed cost, and on that basis we have a subsidy. I think that it is an appropriate subsidy, particularly if we are looking at this debate. Equally, his point that we should be reasonably expected to reduce that subsidy by the way we operate in order to give the best value is absolutely correct.

[Andrew Miller]

Furthermore, the fixed costs are higher here because of the nature of the building.

[John Thurso]

I am happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman.

I am conscious that I have occupied the crease for far longer than I had intended and do not wish to upset you any further, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will crack on. My last point regarding the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow is that it essentially asks for more time. I say to him, with the greatest respect, that I have spent two years circulating e-mails, writing reports and seeking to consult Members, some of whom have engaged and some have not—he has been a great engager. We have had a Westminster Hall debate on the matter and today we are debating it in the Chamber on an amendable motion. It does not get any better than that, as far as parliamentary time is concerned, so I suggest that now is the time to make the decision, whatever the House chooses.

Two other amendments have been tabled. I have already referred to that tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden, who chairs the Administration Committee. I believe that other members of my Committee are content to accept it if the House wishes. The other amendment was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and relates to an extremely important point about the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. I know he is hoping to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not go into detail. Suffice it to say, on the basis of the briefing he gave me, I have talked at length with officials and am certain that we will be able to secure the necessary discussions between him, his board and the relevant people to ensure that those points are properly taken on board. I hope that the result will be the correct accommodation.

Members have an historic opportunity to take their destiny in their own hands in considering what services we want and how they should be funded. I am delighted to see so many Members in the Chamber and delighted that there are so many amendments, even though I ask the House to reject at least one of them. Let us have a debate, make a decision and settle the matter. I end by thanking the members of the Finance and Services Committee and the officials who have helped them, both at Management Board level and below, to ensure that the work we have done has been thorough and solid, which has enabled me to lay before the House a report and plans that are well considered, well structured, thoroughly thought through and that, I think, offer a solid way forward. I commend them to the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Thurso]

I am extremely grateful to all Members who have spoken. In the short time that is available, I cannot answer all the questions that have been asked, but I undertake to write to every Member.

A very good point about staff contingencies was made by both the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I will respond to them fully at a later stage, but I can tell them now that all staff of the House are paid more than the living wage if they are not in apprenticeship or training.

Before the debate, I was asked by a colleague how I thought it would go. I said, “I have not the slightest idea. It could be a damp squib, or it could be a car crash.” It has certainly not been a damp squib—it has been a very constructive debate, which has allowed serious issues to be considered—and it has most certainly not been a car crash, because those issues have been considered very fully.

I urge the House to accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). I hope that the reassurance that I gave the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) will persuade him not to press his amendment, and I undertake to ensure that the meetings that I promised will take place.

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for raising the issue he did and for allowing it to be debated. He has done the House a very important service. He has told me that he wants to press his amendment, and I ask the House to resist it, but I hope that the motion will be passed.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Does the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) wish to press his amendment (a)?