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everything to do with their ideological commitment. Such a commitment should not be the main purpose of Government policy. 9.5 pmMr. Roger Knapman (Stroud) : I shall be brief, as I am aware that two Opposition Members wish to speak and, subject to catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, they will.
I have long sought this opportunity to pay tribute to the ideas and ideals of the citizens charter and to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary on their excellent work. They are putting firm flesh on the bones of the ideas and ideals contained in the citizens charter and raising standards all round in a thoroughly practical way.
I shall also take the opportunity to thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for funding the Agricultural and Food Research Council--theirs is a wide- ranging Department, which is appropriately represented at Cabinet level. We would have liked more money--we would always like more. It came as something of a culture shock to some of the professors on the council when they realised that they might have to co-operate with the private sector to obtain backing for some of their work. That was their initial reaction, but they are now getting thoroughly used to the idea of lunching, and wining-- without an "h"--and dining with industrialists, which is good news.
We must be careful, where we have a successful line of near-market research for which independent backing is obtained, that additional funding is not reduced from traditional methods of funding. I thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for their support and the interest that they take in the council. I can assure them that all those involved are grateful to them.
I heard the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). I am glad to hear that we are even attempting some reform to obtain higher standards in the legal profession. I hope that over the next few decades something might be achieved. I also listened to the excellent speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). I am afraid that they will have to listen to just three or four minutes from this old lag as I comment on the four headings originally identified by my hon. Friends.
The first topic is privatisation where appropriate. I know that when other capitalist countries started to privatise things, the Labour party was against it. When it came to selling council houses, the Labour party was against it. When other socialist countries such as France started to privatise things, the Labour party still opposed it. When Russia started to privatise things, the Labour party went a little quiet. Now that Albania is starting to privatise things, the Labour party is becoming very quiet.
I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) is present. I enjoyed a trip to America, the home of capitalism, with him, and I can see from his expression that he is taking in every idea for privatisation. Perhaps there are ramifications for the Dundee Labour party- -who knows?
It is true that we have sold much of the family silver--I am proud of that and of the fact that so many other countries are following our example. To some extent, in
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cash terms, but not quality terms, we are now talking about the silver plate. Let us privatise British Coal, British Rail, Companies House, the docklands light railway, the driver and vehicle operators information technology department, London Buses, the National Engineering Laboratory, Parcel Force, the vehicle inspectorate and anything else where standards can be increased and we can raise a bob or two. I am not entirely sure, because the period of research available to me tonight was not sufficient, exactly how standards are to be maintained and performance related at the national engineering laboratory, but I am sure that there are no insuperable problems there.Competitive tendering matters and market testing were so capably dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) that I will pass them over. There are very few sectors that are such a natural monopoly that there cannot be some competition, or comparative competition, brought into them. Initially we were criticised because British Telecom, for instance, would have a monopoly, but it is quite clear, after a period of years and the growth of the market, that competitors are increasingly coming to compete with British Telecom. No doubt it will welcome, in due course, the increased competition.
I was very glad to hear that my right hon. Friend has said, with regard to taking decisions close to the customer, which must be our constant aim,
"in those instances where, for whatever reason, there is no choice but public ownership and no chance of competition being applied our role must be to devise and apply disciplines that, in their own way, are no less demanding than open competition."
Since he said those words a few months ago, he would no doubt agree with me that the more we look into things, the fewer the cases we find in which some competition cannot be instilled. The aim of introducing competition, I believe, is that, unlike the monolithic structures of a few years ago, nowadays the buck has to stop somewhere.
I was very pleased to have the booklet "Citizen's Charter News" with the charter logo and the heading "Raising the standard"--I am not sure whether it should not be "raising the standards". From the original ideas, we now have a good idea of the very wide spread of my right hon. Friend's activities, on health, education, travel, street works, services areas-- and, my word, some improved standards are needed there on a bank holiday-- driving tests, railways, London Underground, utilities, post offices, employment service, the Benefits Agency, and much more besides. Everything is to do with the improvement of standards ; that must be our constant aim. There has been some criticism this week of the tables produced for certain schools. It is no great secret that in one or two cases, in the compilation of statistics, the suggestion "might do better" could apply. The basic difference between this side of the House and the other is that we believe that parents are entitled to this information and that they have enough intelligence to know that this is one of a number of factors likely to guide and guard them in choosing schools for their children. This is not a privilege for parents ; it is a fundamental right. It may be that in some rural areas, such as the one that I represent, because of geography parents may not be able to make full use of those extra privileges which are rightly theirs.
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In conclusion, I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench : well done to date ; keep up the good work.9.12 pm
Mr. John McAllion (Dundee, East) : Conservative Members, in particular the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), seemed to take great offence at the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) that privatisation leads to wage cuts. The hon. Lady called for evidence, and she was given some by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson). I will give her some direct from the civil service itself.
The Inland Revenue in Nottingham has recently contracted out its typist and secretarial contracts to the private sector company Blue Arrow. Civil Service rates for typists are in the pay band up to £9, 405 outside London ; the Blue Arrow rate is £7,800, with a 20p productivity bonus. The civil service rate for personal secretaries is in the pay band up to £11,521 ; the Blue Arrow rate is £8, 775--considerably less. If the hon. Lady does not understand now, she had better come to understand in the future that you get what you pay for. If people are looking for real value for money in the public services, they should keep jobs inside the civil service, where people are properly paid and where they reach the proper standards expected of important Government Departments.
When the Chancellor of the Duchy introduced the citizens charter White Paper in the House yesterday, he spoke of a future agenda for further action. A key part of the agenda is the extension of compulsory competitive tendering and market testing. The right hon. Gentleman told the House that these and other measures would be at the heart of the Government's agenda for the 1990s.
Before the right hon. Gentleman thrusts market testing and CCT to the heart of the Government's agenda for the next decade, he should try to understand the full implications of those processes. For instance, does he fully understand the implications of the TUPE regulations? He will know that they are the regulations that protect workers whose employer changes hands as a result of a legal transfer or merger. He will also know that the very core of the regulations is that workers' existing contracts of employment are automatically continued under the new employer. They may move from the civil service to the private sector, but under TUPE they should get the same wages, conditions, holiday entitlements and redundancy agreements.
The Thatcher Government did not introduce the regulations on their own initiative. The natural instinct of her Government was to undercut workers' rights, not to protect them. The regulations were introduced in 1981 as a result of European Community law, because they were meant to implement EC directive 770/187, which first came into force in 1979.
It took the then Tory Government two years to pass the United Kingdom legislation to give effect to this directive. Even then they tried to get off the European hook of being forced to protect workers' rights under existing contracts by excluding from the TUPE regulations transfers in the public sector described as involving non-commercial ventures. The exact words were :
"Does not include any undertaking or part of an undertaking which is not of a commercial venture".
Since then, the phrase
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"not in the nature of a commercial venture"has been interpreted as excluding from the TUPE regulations the contracting out of public services such as catering, laundry services and cleaning services. With the ever closer European union of which we are now a part, the Government could not go on getting away with this for ever. The TUPE regulations are clearly in breach of the European directive.
Recently, the TUPE regulations' credibility received two massive blows-- first, from the ruling by the European Court of Justice in the Sophie Rodmond Stichting case ; and, secondly, from the High Court ruling secured by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, in the judicial review against the Secretary of State for Education.
The European Commission has already begun proceedings against the United Kingdom Government for failure to implement the directive correctly since 1979. Moreover, clause 26 of the new Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill effectively accepts that TUPE is in breach of the directive and goes some way towards trying to remedy that. It is clearly an attempt by the Government to head off the European Commission before it drags them through the European Court for being in breach of the directive--an attempt which is unlikely to work because clause 26 goes nowhere near meeting all the EC criticisms of the Government's failure to implement.
All this leaves us in an interesting situation. A number of civil service departments are already beginning to apply TUPE to contracting out. The Central Office of Information has applied TUPE to the contracting out of its photocopying services. The Department for National Savings has applied TUPE to a catering contract that it is putting out to tender, and many other Departments have delayed their market testing programmes while they seek legal advice. A report in the Financial Times --dear to the heart of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam--is headed :
"FO drops plan for contracting-out".
It goes on to say :
"The Foreign Office announced last night that it had suspended preparations to contract out services because of new regulations protecting workers' pay and conditions when they transfer to the private sector.
The Foreign Office lead is likely to be followed by other departments and underlines the extent to which the government's £1bn programme of contracting out has been thrown into confusion by the regulations."
The Minister may try to deny it, but the source for the story was an official Foreign Office on-the-record briefing, given at its press office to the journalists concerned.
I also have a copy of a letter from the Welsh Office to general managers of district health authorities and other groups which says :
"The issue has arisen as a result of a request for guidance for South Glamorgan Health Authority in relation to catering contracts and we have suggested to the Authority that they should take no further steps to let contracts to a private contractor until we have legal advice. We are drawing this to the attention of all Health Authorities and NHS Trusts so that they can take the fact into account in current market testing exercises."
I also have a letter from the Home Office to the Home Office trade union which says :
"The application of TUPE to contracting out is a very complex area and ought to be considered, and legal advice taken if appropriate, before the tender documents are sent out
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since it will significantly affect the position of any tenderer. The general line the Home Office intends to take is that pending clarification from the centre, Invitations to Tender would make it clear that TUPE does apply unless Legal Adviser's Branch have confirmed otherwise."Some might ask whether all this matters. Yes, it does matter, because if TUPE applies to the transfer of workers from the civil service to the private sector, many contractors will be deterred from bidding for such work. The only way in which the in-house bid can be undercut is by slashing the wages and conditions of the workers involved.
A transcript of the Radio 4 programme "Face The Facts" records John Cutner of Onyx UK, one of the companies involved in trying to win contracts from the public sector, as saying :
"I think it would slightly emasculate what the Government's intention was behind the Compulsory Competitive Tendering regulations which is to reduce the costs to local authorities by opening it up to private sector tendering which would mean that if the private sector win, the employees would effectively be employed on normal private sector conditions."
That means lower wages and worse conditions.
"Therefore, if the regulations are changed, and we would be obliged to take over the ex-council employees on the existing conditions, this of course would mean that our price would be higher and the price of all our competitors would be higher."
Mr. John Hall, chairman of the CBI's competing for quality committee, has already been quoted. He has said :
"On the face of it, there is no longer any point in companies taking part in tenders for public services."
Mr. Hall said that contractors might find it hard to take on existing work forces profitably.
The Minister may argue that it does not matter if the private sector does not try to get the jobs that he is putting through the market testing programme, but it does matter. How else will the 44, 000 new jobs be market -tested and put into the private sector if no private sector companies are prepared to pay for existing wages and conditions in the civil service?
The Minister once said that he was interested only in the most competitive supplier and that whether it was public or private did not matter to him ; he was interested only in value for money. That is what he tells the House of Commons, but I have here a note from the Treasury which was sent to the principal finance officers, principal establishment officers and others, paragraph 2 of which clearly says :
"The Government's policy is to restrict the size of the public sector and in general the presumption is that services should wherever possible be provided by the private sector rather than the public sector".
The Government's policy is to privatise as much of the public sector as possible. If the TUPE regulations are to be applied they will not be able to achieve the aim of privatising those jobs. In the past decade, tens of thousands of workers in local government, the national health service and the civil service have lost their jobs or had their wages cut and their conditions made worse as a result of contracting out. Clause 26 in the new employment Bill cannot be applied retrospectively and nor can the TUPE regulations. But the European directive, which came into force in Britain in 1979, can be applied retrospectively.
Trade unions will be making sure that applications are made to the European Court to apply that directive retrospectively to workers affected by it since 1979. Far from contracting out being at the heart of the
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Government's agenda in the 1990s, the Minister will find that it will be driven off that agenda by the application of the European directive.9.24 pm
Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock and Burntwood) : As time is short, I will go to the heart of the matter. It has been argued that this debate is about different issues. We heard from the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) that it is about the state of a portakabin on Chester station, and from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) that it has to do with matters such as dog training. Earlier, the Chancellor of the Duchy said that it was nothing more than a question of management adjustment, yet important voices outside the House who understand the issues--I do not mean just the civil service unions--say that market testing is a major constitutional change and ought to be treated as such.
A new managerialism is sweeping across public services throughout the western and eastern world, and it encompasses all ideological perspectives. The key issue is the terms on which it is implemented, yet the House has not quite grasped that. I may add that, although it is late on Thursday evening, it is shameful that only a dozen right hon. and hon. Members are present in the Chamber to debate such a major change.
The Government are determined to cut the public sector, costs and size of the civil service using a variety of strategies and from a number of directions. The terms on which they are doing so give everything away. Are the Government really concerned about the citizen rather than consumers? The apostrophe in "The Citizen's Charter" is very important. A consumer is concerned about a school's position in the league table, whereas a citizen is concerned about the quality of all the schools in the league table.
That is the crucial distinction between the approach to public services on this side of the House and that taken by the Government. One attitude is, "I'm all right, Jack," and the other is, "How is Jack down the road doing?" That will always be the fundamental ideological difference between the Labour and Conservative parties. If cost-cutting were not the thrust behind the Government's actions, we would be considering the quality of public services and, for example, measures to extend the activities of the National Audit Office. The most recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General states that there is massive scope for fast dealing--for making a fast buck and for fraud--in the contracting-out process.
We would also be arguing, given the new spread of Government activity, that only 50 value-for-money audits annually are inadequate. If cost-cutting is not the Government's prime consideration, they would not have resisted the establishing of a Select Committee to examine the citizens charter process. We are told that the charter goes to the core of Government policy, yet they refuse monitoring and regulation and do everything themselves. The danger signs are seen every time that a right hon. or hon. Member receives a letter from a Minister--as I have, every week for the past three weeks-- stating, "Don't write to me any more about these issues--write to the head of the agency." The danger signs are seen every time that we see the fragmentation of the civil service and hear from constituents about quality being driven down because of a preoccupation with cutting costs.
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Last week, a local authority carpenter asked me, "Why am I told to use wood that I know is rotten? Because that is the only way that we could get the contract." The same story is told across the length and breadth of the public services, because no independent, external, regulatory agency is monitoring what is happening.Conservative Members completely misrepresent our approach to public services. Two approaches are currently on offer. The first can simply be called "business government". We have heard of it through the ages : it basically means, "Turn the business of government over to business men." In the past, it has been presented from time to time as an eccentric opinion ; this is the first time that it has been taken seriously and placed at the heart of government.
My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley) talked about Stalin, but that approach is really Lenin's idea of getting rid of policy and turning it into administration. What the Government are offering is one version of the end of politics : politics, representation and participation become irrelevant, and everything is dissolved into administration.
The second approach on offer is our approach. We propose a renewal of the public service tradition, to make it much more powerful and responsive to users. One approach renews the tradition ; the other damages it, and may even destroy it.
9.30 pm
Ms. Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) : Despite the small number of hon. Members who are present, I applaud the quality of the debate--even if I cannot applaud the quantity.
Opposition Members feel strongly that we are tremendously well served by our public service--in the civil service, local authorities, the national health service, schools and, indeed, the House. Certainly the civil service is represented in the Officials' Box in terms of quantity, and I presume that there is quality there, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) summed up Labour's position admirably. We are in favour of efficiency and quality, but we are also in favour of extending access and choice. We want to empower people. However, we are also in favour of change when it is proved to be necessary. The Government seem to view the public services purely in terms of a contractual relationship between consumer and provider. We care about the consumer too, but many of our citizens are in no position to have their needs met, and the Government and the community must help to meet those needs. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam), I have no children--indeed, tonight's Opposition Front Bench is very much a childless one. That, however, does not lessen my commitment to extending and developing the provision of good- quality child care for everyone.
Let me mention some aspects that the Minister has not dealt with in detail. First, the citizens charter promised to make the business of government more open and acceptable, and therefore more accountable. Similar claims were made at the launch of the next steps programme. The Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee's last report on next steps made the following recommendation :
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"The provision of information is vital if agencies are to be accepted by Parliament and the public. We consider it a necessary counterweight to the Minister's voluntary relinquishing of control over matters of routine."The Select Committee welcomed the publication of business and corporate plans and recommended that
"all agencies should publish them, unless there are pressing commercial reasons which make this inappropriate".
The Government added that it was necessary
"to protect other sensitive information".
There are, in fact, at least 41 agencies whose corporate plans are tagged "commercial--in confidence", and are therefore unavailable for public scrutiny. At least 30 agencies' business plans are similarly restricted. The situation reaches farcical proportions in some agencies. For example, the Transport Research Laboratory describes its business plans as "commercial--in confidence", but they are available for £995. That is commercial, but it is confidential only to the general public. The only people who will benefit are large motor manufacturers and the road industry lobby ; few members of the public will do so. We heard little about open government from the Minister.
I am pleased that the Government are catching up on our commitment to decentralise such services closer to the communities that they serve, but I repeat that many of their policies often serve to erode local democracy and accountability.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster added little to the prospects for improving the civil service. The announcement that up to 44,000 of the 560,000 civil service jobs are to be market-tested will have been a sharp pre-Christmas blow to the morale of the service. The Minister has conceded that good morale is vital to the implementation of quality public services, and we agree, so how on earth does he expect the morale of the Inland Revenue's typing and secretarial staff in Glasgow to be anything other than at rock bottom when they read in an advertisement in The Times that their jobs are likely to be given to others in January?
Many hon. Members have expressed concern about the serious issue of confidentiality. The independence, impartiality, objectivity and confidentiality of the civil service are being undermined by market testing and privatisation. Much sympathy has been expressed for the personal difficulties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but many of our constituents constantly experience similar problems with debt companies, hire purchase companies and, indeed, banks. That is the reality of private sector involvement in confidential areas. The role of the civil service is solely to serve the Government of the day. The role of private companies is much more varied and they have a number of different interests. Civil servants in the Inland Revenue have an exemplary record on confidentiality. The civil service is respected as being objective and free from outside influence. If we go ahead with this proposal, we shall be going down a slippery road indeed.
Mr. Knapman : Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms. Hoey : I cannot, because I know that the Minister wants 20 minutes compared with my 15 minutes.
If the Government are determined to push through such changes on dogmatic grounds, I hope that they will at least have the good sense to agree to our request to
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implement all necessary measures to ensure objectivity. I call on the Minister to accept our invitation to form an independent body to advise on the maintenance of confidentiality in services being considered for privatisation and to regulate and monitor confidentiality post-privatisation.I move a little from the civil service to draw some parallels with public servants in local authorities. Compulsory competitive tendering has been central to the Government's approach to local government. How can they seriously propose to introduce market testing and privatisation into branches of the civil service at the whim of Ministers, as was stated tonight, and on a strategic basis without considering an in-house bid? The Minister must reply to the questions that we have asked about in-service bids. If a service is efficiently and effectively provided by civil servants and if local managers and workers believe that they can beat off external bidders, are the Government saying that managers and workers will not be allowed to bid? That would not offer a level playing field and would be similar to ordering the team off before they had been allowed to start the game.
Many examples have been given, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley), of good practices by Labour authorities that owe everything to good management and local accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar cited many examples of privatised services getting it wrong, and I shall contrast that with one or two examples of how Labour councils have got it right, in-house. York has already been mentioned, but I also cite the London borough of Merton, which, after moving to Labour control, found itself able to rebuild many of the services which had been dismantled by the former Conservative administration. In the aftermath of the utterly conclusive rejection of opting out by schools, including the Prime Minister's school, the council has been able to offer in-house cleaning contracts of a better standard and at a winning price, compared with the existing privatised service That has been achieved through better management, and by paying a sufficiently decent wage to avoid the problems of low morale, high turnover, frequent sickness and low commitment to the job. Better pay and conditions, happier staff and cleaner schools are all possible, because the council is not trying simply to make a fast buck out of the exercise. Newcastle city council provides another example. It runs an architects department so successful, especially in designing energy conservation schemes, that it is in great demand from the private sector. The market has shown that the service is not only cheaper but better overall. Only the Government's absurd rules prevent the department from selling its expertise to the private sector, insisting that it be sold only to other councils.
I hope that their own experience will enable hon. Members from both sides of the House to see through the Government's boasts about cutting costs. The hon. Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) made an interesting speech, showing an intelligent scepticism and open-mindedness. Unfortunately, he is no longer in the Chamber--or perhaps it is just as well that he cannot hear me praising him. The hon. Gentleman pointed to many of the deficiences in the Government's handling of the move towards privatisation, and he asked, as we all should, whether we are going down the right road to improving quality.
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The hon. Member for Suffolk, Central urged caution over British Rail privatisation, too. Despite the rail charter, InterCity has already applied to the Department of Transport to downgrade some of the standards and Network SouthEast has applied to downgrade the Kent coastal line services on the grounds of inability to maintain operating equipment due to lack of investment and falling passenger receipts. A charter for train passengers is not much good if they do not have a train to travel on in the first place.Elsewhere, in other branches of public service, the Government are forcing through change for change's sake. Will they not concede the basic principle that quality and value for money are improved by good and responsive management and by motivated work forces, working to meet the aims of their local communities? Those shared aims are not achieved simply as a result of being in the private sector or the public sector. They are certainly not achieved by cuts in funding, which inevitably lead to cuts in services.
I hope that the Government have taken on board the many constructive comments which have been made this evening and will feel able to build on the areas of agreement and deal with the concerns raised, rather than simply exaggerating and misrepresenting the areas on which we fundamentally disagree. I hope that the Minister will undertake to return to the House with some answers and some concrete and positive proposals to address those important questions. 9.43 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson) : I begin by welcoming the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey) on what I believe was her debut at the Dispatch Box--and very elegantly she carried it out.
A combination of events this week has given the House a full opportunity to discuss the future of the public services. There was question time on Monday ; we published the citizens charter White Paper yesterday, and there was a statement and a debate on that. We had debates last week on the Second Reading and the Committee stage of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill. Tonight we have this debate.
We can all agree that that has been a welcome opportunity to debate an important set of subjects. I agree with the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) on that, and I share his regret that others have not seen the importance of the issues at stake in this debate.
The debates have brought out clearly the range, the depth and the strength of the Government's commitment to the public service and to the improvement of the public service. They have also brought out clearly the strength of our commitment to the public service, to its staff, to its traditions, to its values and to its ethos. Nothing in our reforms is inconsistent with that commitment.
I was also happy to note how this debate has brought out the extent of agreement between the parties about what our objectives for the public services should be, and about the need to maintain and to improve the quality of our public services. That was very welcome. However, from the speech by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) and from the tone and the temper of many other speeches by Opposition Members, it appears that there
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continue to be some disagreements between the Government and the Opposition about the means to the shared end of public service improvements.I can express the difference simply. The Government are committed to public service : the Opposition are committed to public provision. A real difference in perspective is summed up there. The hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood spoke briefly, but pregnantly, when he pointed out that there was a new managerialism sweeping the world. That has led the Government to seek to identify clearly each particular function within the public service and to put it on to a more businesslike basis. The key to that--I will deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) later--is a clearer specification of the objectives of each function and the embodiment of those clearer specifications in contracts.
The hon. Member for Redcar does not seem to quarrel with that stage of the analysis. She appears to go along with the view of the left-wing think tanks and of some of the progressive Labour authorities in favouring the idea of management by contract. However, she seems to draw back--this is the key point between us--from the next logical stage of the process.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Knapman) percipiently asked, having established a contractual relationship between a Minister and a public sector adviser, why not test the
competitiveness of the potential public sector contractors by enabling the private sector to compete for the contract? I put it to the hon. Member for Redcar that it simply is not logical to say, as she seems to, that she is in favour of market testing provided that the private sector is not permitted to compete for the contract. After all, what else is market testing but testing in the marketplace? Why are the Opposition caught up in that illogicality? I can think of only one explanation, which was sapiently pointed out by the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor), who told me that he could not be here for the winding-up speeches. The explanation is the Labour party's prejudice against the private sector. That was reflected all too eloquently--it made up most of the speech by the hon. Member for Redcar --in the catalogue of petty criticisms of the private sector. It embodied all the old Labour party prejudices against private business.
Mr. McAllion : Will the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 apply to every civil service job that is put out to competitive tender?
Mr. Jackson : I will come to the hon. Gentleman's point about TUPE, so he does not need to remind me of it.
Another old Labour party prejudice was on display tonight--the prejudice in favour of high spending on producer interests. I pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) by referring to a point that was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland).
It is surprising to hear a distinguished member of the Public Accounts Committee speak slightingly of the Government's perfectly proper concern to ensure that the cost to the taxpayer of providing public service is kept at the lowest level compatible with satisfactory quality. How can the hon. Gentleman allow himself to slight that approach--especially as he will, I am sure, have heard what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of
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