House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jan 1993

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Mr. Brooke : I met representatives of the pools companies on 9 December last year.

Mr. Hughes : Whatever the merits or otherwise of a national lottery, does the Secretary of State appreciate that Britain has 3 million people out of work? It now appears that several thousand more jobs in the pools industry are at risk, including 1,000 in Cardiff. What plans do the Government have to alleviate the position?

Mr. Brooke : I totally understand the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman asks his question. Although it is difficult to calibrate the precise consequences, I believe that one of the consequences of the national lottery will be a considerable expansion in the construction industry because it is envisaged that the majority of the projects on which the money will be spent through the distributors will be capital projects.

Tourism

15. Mr. John Marshall : To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what is the latest estimate of the number of tourists visiting Britain.

Mr. Key : In the first 10 months of 1992, there were an estimated 15.4 million visits to the United Kingdom by overseas residents--8 per cent. more than in the equivalent period of 1991.

Mr. Marshall : Does my hon. Friend agree that those are encouraging figures and that they have probably been accelerated by currency movements since 16 September? Does he also agree that if we are to attract more tourists to London, it is essential that we improve public transport within London, especially the Northern line?

Mr. Key : My hon. Friend is right. Some 70 per cent. of all tourists coming to this country start their visits in London and then move outwards. Transport is one of the items discussed by the Cabinet committee on London, a member of which is my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London, who, I am delighted to say, is in the House today.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

Citizens Charter

27. Mr. William O'Brien : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what assessment he has made of the effect of the introduction of the citizens charter on people of pensionable age ; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson) : The citizens charter calls on public servicesto take account of the needs of all their users, including pensioners. Where appropriate, charters include specific standards for pensioners. The Benefits Agency charter, for example, contains a standard for dealing with claims for retirement pension.

Mr. O'Brien : How does the Minister explain Government policies on the financing of local government which result in further cuts in warden services, meals on wheels and home help services? How does he equate the cuts in those services with the promise made by the Prime

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Minister, when he presented the citizens charter, that there would be an improvement in services to everyone? Will the Minister explain?

Mr. Jackson : Whatever the resources provided--the amount of resources provided to support pensioners has increased substantially under this Government--they can be best applied if they are properly managed. The citizens charter is all about improving the management of public services. The people who most depend on public services are those who have most at stake in the citizens charter.

Mr. Fisher : What would the Minister say to a pensioner who looks through the citizens charter first annual report and who finds scarcely a single mention of the words "pensioner" or "pension"? Is not that yet another example of how the Government ignore the needs of 10.5 million pensioners? In addition, pensioners in this country have lower incomes than pensioners in any other European Community country. What exactly will the Minister do, through the citizens charter, for pensioners or for other groups, such as the 1.5 million people with disabilities? They are totally ignored by the citizens charter.

Mr. Jackson : The hon. Gentleman, speaking for the Labour party, is in no position to lecture us about pensioners. Pensioners' total net incomes under this Government have increased 10 times more than they did under the previous Labour Government. The citizens charter is for citizens, and pensioners are citizens. Pensioners resent being put into a special box by the hon. Gentleman and by people who think as he does. Pensioners want to be treated alongside others. They are users of public services as others are. They may use a given public service more extensively, so to that extent they will benefit from improvements in the delivery of that service. We have to think of the charter as a citizens charter, not as a charter for special interest groups.

28. Mr. Flynn : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what new citizens charters he intends to introduce.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave) : We plan to publish a new charter for further and higher education, for Scottish and Welsh heritage and for the Northern Ireland buses and courts services. Existing charters will be revised to raise standards on a continuous cycle.

Mr. Flynn : Does the Chancellor know that more people are robbed and cheated by their own banks and insurance companies than are burgled and mugged by the criminal fraternity? May we have a charter that will protect people against exorbitant bank charges, against fraudulent home income bonds and against poor-value endowment policies and personal pensions? When does the Chancellor intend to act to protect people against the greed, incompetence and dishonesty of banks and insurance companies?

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman goes much wider than my brief. The citizens charter is about the management of public services and that is a big enough task for now.

Mr. Thurnham : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that other Governments are now following our lead? Will he

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consider introducing a new charter--an adopters charter--for couples wishing to adopt, as many couples currently face far too many bureaucratic obstacles?

Mr. Waldegrave : I can certainly accept the first part of my hon. Friend's comments. At the conference just before Christmas, representatives from a number of countries were interested in our approach and we had much that was positive to discuss. On his second point, I know, from my experience as Secretary of State for Health, that my hon. Friend is a considerable expert and has been a campaigner in respect of adoption. I do not believe that a specific charter would necessarily be the right way forward, but I should be happy to discuss it with him.

Charter Programme

29. Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what has been the total cost of the charter programme ; and what proposals there are for more charters.

Mr. Waldegrave : The charter applies to all public services and is reflected in their individual expenditure programmes. Centrally, the charter unit spent £1.6 million in 1991-92.

Mr. Banks : When is the Minister going to accept that this is a complete waste of public money? The charters are just a public relations exercise : it is rather like putting make-up on a corpse. The best way to make public services work is to invest in them and not to issue glossy pamphlets which are nothing more than a PR puff for the Downing street train spotter.

Mr. Waldegrave : The hon. Gentleman is perhaps the definitive member of the chattering classes. The citizens charter is of more interest and of more use to those who rely primarily on those services. That is why we are putting such political force behind achieving those improvements. The hon. Gentleman might direct his London weight to improvements closer to home-- perhaps in some of the services provided by Labour Lambeth council.

Mr. Tracey : May I take my right hon. Friend further on that point? Will he send in advisers to suggest an appropriate charter for the unfortunate people in Lambeth who have, it seems, been so ill-treated recently by their local authority?

Mr. Waldegrave : A number of Opposition Members, including most honourably the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey), would support what my hon. Friend said. Members of the Tribune group are also much committed to that. Tribune recently wrote :

"Labour local government is lacklustre and incompetent. In a few cases it is simply corrupt and nepotistic. This is nothing new." That is the view of the Tribune group, members of which are present on the Opposition Benches at this very moment.

Ms. Mowlam : I think that we will leave the question of lacklustre when it comes to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Would not it be more appropriate to consider whether there may have been any conflict of interest or morally dubious practices in respect of the market testing part of the citizens charter and consider also the London conference, to which the Chancellor has just referred,

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where KPMG Peat Marwick, which hosted the reception, also received at least 36 contracts last year from Government Departments in respect of market testing? Will the right hon. Gentleman give a commitment today that, in the interests of open government, in his forthcoming paper he will publish the names of those companies which applied for contracts and at what price they were awarded? Surely the British public have a right to know.

Mr. Waldegrave : I do not know whether the hon. Lady is making a serious allegation of fraud. The contracts were all properly placed according to all the rules of contracting. Those matters are entirely open. If the hon. Lady wishes to pursue the matter, perhaps she had better consider what she says a little more carefully.

Science (White Paper)

30. Mr. John Marshall : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what meetings he has recently held with representatives of the engineering industry to disucss the scope of his forthcoming White Paper on science.

Mr. Waldegrave : I have had a wide range of meetings with engineering interests and have also received a large number of excellent submissions from representatives of the engineering industry, copies of which have been placed in the Library. I shall be publishing a White Paper in the spring which will address not only science but technology and engineering, too.

Mr. Marshall : Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in view of the importance of engineering to the national economy, his White Paper on science should emphasise the role of engineering research?

Mr. Waldegrave : I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend and the White Paper will cover that ground in, I hope, a thorough way.

Mr. Simon Hughes : In the year of the 150th anniversary of the Brunel tunnel under the Thames--the first tunnel under the Thames--from Rotherhithe to Wapping, will the Secretary of State make sure that the Engineering Employers Federation gets maximum support in its objective of maximising the number of young people who go into engineering and are excited by engineering as good training and a good career thereafter? The federation is to run a course and a programme of events in London in the autumn. Will the right hon. Gentleman give it full Government support?

Mr. Waldegrave : I certainly honour the centenary and a half to which the hon. Gentleman refers, although I hope that some of our modern engineering projects are slightly better financed than some of those of that great engineer. There is good news that the number of engineers is increasing--by about 2 per cent. for those on engineering first degree courses over the past five years. That is a recovery from the previous dip. I will certainly study the action in the autumn to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Citizens Charter

31. Mrs. Angela Knight : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what plans his Department has to publish more public service performance indicators as part of the citizens charter campaign.

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Mr. Robert Jackson : Extending performance indicators across the public sector into matters such as local government and the NHS is at the heart of the citizens charter commitment to give people more information about the way in which their public services are working.

As a result of the citizens charter, people now have access to information on the performance of schools, local authorities, the NHS and British Rail.

Mrs. Knight : Does my hon. Friend agree that publication of those performance indicators has resulted in a sea change in the amount of information that local people receive about their council services? Does he agree further that the reason why Labour has been so critical about the proposals is that they have shown up the fact that Labour local authorities, not just Lambeth, but my council, Derbyshire county council, too, provide poor services at high cost?

Mr. Jackson : The league tables of performance of local authorities will, of course, be critical in enabling people to make good choices and sensible decisions about not only what kind of services they want but what they will do when they go to the ballot box.

Mr. Pike : Would not the many millions of people, particularly women and elderly people, who feel trapped in their homes in the evening feel better about the Government's performance indicators and charters if there were more police on the streets, more street lighting and more manning at railway stations so that they could go out at night and be able to enjoy their lives to the full? Is not that the type of indicator that we should have for the people of this country?

Mr. Jackson : The issue is not just the level of resources provided, but the way in which they are managed. If we look at the way in which Labour local authorities have spent money, we will see that of the top 20 community charge-levying councils, 17 are Labour controlled and the other three are under no overall control, yet they all show up badly on performance. That is what we need to focus on.

Scientific Research

32. Mr. Simon Coombs : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what is his estimate of the value of the private sector contribution to scientific research within the universities.

Mr. Robert Jackson : In 1990 British education institutions received around £300 million from non-Government sources in support of research and development, about half of which came from business.

Mr. Coombs : Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to study the Economic and Social Research Council's report entitled "Turning New Ideas into Business Success"? What role does my hon. Friend envisage for the private sector, in conjunction with universities and other places of higher and further education, in ensuring that the new ideas for which this country is so famous are turned more successfully into prosperity for our people than was the case in the past?

Mr. Jackson : I like to think of my hon. Friend as the Member for the research council because its headquarters is in his constituency. We have looked at the ESRC report

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on the innovation agenda--it is an interesting paper--and we shall draw conclusions in the White Paper, but it has been one of our themes in the 1980s and through the history of this Government to promote stronger mechanisms of interaction, which is one of the themes of the innovation agenda, between people who use technologies and the people who are developing them. It is not a one-way process of inventing ideas and then transferring them into the marketplace. We need to have a marketplace sending signals back into the communities that produce ideas. That is very much the theme of that paper, the theme of our policy and the theme of our thinking on the White Paper.

Public Servants (Secret Society Membership)

33. Mr. Mullin : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will require public servants to disclose publicly membership of secret societies.

Mr. Robert Jackson : No, Madam.

Mr. Mullin : May I put it to the Minister that there is absolutely no point in standing at the Dispatch Box mouthing platitudes about the need for open government if he is not prepared to lift a finger against the greatest secret society, which has an iron grip on many of our most respected public institutions?

May I put it to him further that nothing undermines public confidence in public institutions so much as the knowledge that many public servants are members of a secret society, one of whose aims is mutual advancement?

Mr. Jackson : I am sorry to disturb the even tenor of the hon. Gentleman's prepared supplementary question. I do not regard it as a platitude to say that we are against unjustified invasions of privacy. I think that that is the point here. I point out to the hon. Gentleman, perhaps in a more constructive way, that we already have rules that require individuals in the civil service to avoid any conflicts of interest. There are rules already in place in the civil service code. When civil servants become aware of a conflict of interest, they must remove it and, if appropriate, report it to the senior officer. We are looking again at the civil service code to see whether those provisions need to be sharpened.

Mr. Fabricant : Does my hon. Friend have any information about whether the Labour party has any secret societies, especially in local government?

Mr. Jackson : One of the interesting things about secret societies is that one never knows who the members of them are.

Edinburgh Summit (Science and Technology)

34. Mr. Jon Owen Jones : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what action he has taken on measures on science and technology agreed at the Edinburgh summit.

Mr. Waldegrave : Following the agreement on future financing that the Community reached at Edinburgh, member states were able to agree, under my chairmanship of the Research Council, to a top-up of the third research and development framework programme of 900 mecu.

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That will give stability to European Community research in the period before the fourth framework comes into effect.

Mr. Jones : Will the Chancellor confirm that, in those negotiations, he insisted on a budget for European science and technology of £500 million less than the original proposal? Does he believe that that is a great achievement for someone who is supposed to be advancing science and technology across Europe?

Mr. Waldegrave : The finally agreed figure was 700 mecu lower than the highest figure proposed by the Commission. Spain, Germany and a number of other countries did not believe that the figure was realistic at all and nor did we. A reasonable compromise was reached which will protect European science. We value European science and the United Kingdom does well out of it. It was a sensible compromise.

Mr. Maclennan : Is the Minister aware that the Government's unilateral decision to cancel the fast reactor programme and pull out of the European collaborator programme was a slap in the face for the development of the European initiative and simply passed a long-established British technology to the Japanese? Is he proud of that?

Mr. Waldegrave : I know of the hon. Gentleman's commitment to the project. I believe that the right decision was taken.

Citizens Charter

35. Mr. Ottaway : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what recent contacts he has had with academics and research groups, in the United Kingdom and abroad, to discuss the principles of the citizens charter initiative.

Mr. Robert Jackson : My right hon. Friend and I, and the citizens charter unit, regularly meet a wide range of academics and research groups. The dialogue helps to ensure that the charter stays at the forefront of public service reform.

Mr. Ottaway : I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Has he noticed that, despite the banter from Labour Members, many on the left have warmly welcomed the principles of the citizens charter? The Guardian , referring to the publication of exam results, said the other day :

"Parents have more information than they had before. No democrat should regard this as a reverse."

Does the Minister agree with that?

Mr. Jackson : My hon. Friend is right. In general, the Government strongly welcome new thinking from the academic community which can help to foster new ways of providing public services. For example, the influence of Messrs. Gaebler and Osborne on the theme of reinventing Government is a positive force in the United States and is having a big impact on the new administration there. We were delighted to welcome Mr. Gaebler to our European Community citizens charter conference last month and Dr. Osborne will be coming here shortly.

My hon. Friend made particular reference to people on the left. There are home-grown think-tanks of academics, some of them leaning to the left, who have been useful and

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have made interesting comments. For example, Anna Coote from the Institute for Public Policy Research said of the citizens charter : "There is much to applaud in the charter. It is genuinely trying to shake the public sector out of a complacency induced by decades of monopoly supply."

Mr. Winnick : Without wishing to put forward too bold a proposal, when the Minister is discussing charter initiatives and the rest, would it be possible to have another charter for the 3 million or more unemployed people in the United Kingdom to be able to work ? What about their rights ? A genuine charter, not simply cosmetic nonsense, for the unemployed would be useful.

Mr. Jackson : People who are unemployed benefit from the operation of the charter because they make extensive use of Government-provided public services. All those services are operating according to charter standards. The mechanisms of the charter exist to help people to obtain better public services. That is what it is all about.

Mr. Duncan : Is my hon. Friend aware that, increasingly across the European Community, administrations are examining their decisions by comparing them with government across Europe ? Does he agree that many countries in the Community, such as Germany and France, want to visit London to see how the citizens charter operates ? Will he do all that he can to ensure that our experience is shared with them ? [Laughter.]

Mr. Jackson : Despite the jeering from Opposition Members, my hon. Friend is right. The experience of the

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1980s was that we led the world in privatisation. The experience of the 1990s will be that we shall lead the world in public service reform. The conference in London to which I referred was attended by people from throughout the Community and the world, who were extremely interested in what we were doing to improve the management of public services.

Statutory Instruments, &c.

Madam Speaker : With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to statutory instruments.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.),

Veterinary Surgeons (Qualifications)

That the draft Veterinary Surgeons Qualifications (EEC Recognition) (Amendment) Order 1993 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Scottish Hospital Trust Scheme

That the draft Scottish Hospital Trust Scheme 1993 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

Railways Tariffs

That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (International Railways Tariffs Agreements) Order 1993 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.-- [Mr. Patnick.] Question agreed to.

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