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Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): I am listening to the hon. Gentleman very carefully. Is he referring to organisations that have assets to manage or to the notional schemes with which the public sector is concerned? It seems to me that providing information rapidly on the basis of an entirely notional scheme is much less problematic than providing information rapidly on a scheme in which there are real assets and real investments to measure up.
Mr. Foster: I was making the point that problems have already been discovered in those companies that have out-sourced their pension schemes. This is recognised by Government Departments, such as the Department of Social Security. Clearly, existing pensioners and members of the scheme are more than satisfied with the service that they currently receive. They do not want to risk that standard of service by being contracted out to organisations that do not have the expertise or the experience of large schemes.
In preparing the efficiency unit scrutiny, the Treasury commissioned two independent surveys by the Wyatt company to ascertain the views of recent leavers from the civil service and current members of staff about the pension scheme. Of the leavers, more than 60 per cent. responded positively. They thought that the service was efficient and sensitive. I contend that the figure would be much higher now given the in-house improvements in efficiency that have been made.
None of the surveys showed any support for market testing or contracting out. However, if Ministers are so convinced that their current proposals are in the best interests of civil servants and of civil service pensioners, they should have the courage of their convictions. They should commission yet another survey, perhaps again from the Wyatt company, to test support among civil servants and civil service pensioners.
Dr. John Marek (Wrexham):
My right hon. Friend is making a most telling case. He must know that the Minister is a civil service leaver, and I wonder whether he has a preserved pension. Perhaps the Minister is not concerned about the proposal and has given precedence to dogma over common sense. I should have thought that
Mr. Foster:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and I am sure that his remarks have been well noted by the Minister, who may have the opportunity to reply to them when he responds to the debate.
I am inviting the Minister to conduct another survey to test the opinion of civil servants and civil service pensioners. After all, the Government readily concede that members of pension schemes have rights. That principle should apply as much to civil servants as to former employees of Robert Maxwell.
On behalf of the Opposition, I join the civil service unions and the Civil Service Pensioners Alliance in challenging the Government to let civil servants and civil service pensioners decide the future administration of their scheme. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that challenge when he replies to the debate.
I must ask what the order is for. Why are the Government so determined to make themselves so unpopular with so many people, for so little return? The current scheme is efficiently administered, as admitted in the scrutiny report. The members of the scheme are perfectly content with the current arrangements. If the Government's intention was to squeeze further efficiency from the administration of the scheme, they could do that within the internal market now operating. So why is the Minister bothering to create all that hassle for his Government? Is not the real reason the Government's wish to privatise Paymaster? Without the order, a privatised Paymaster could not tender for the contract. Without that substantial contract, Paymaster would be a far less attractive proposition for privatisation.
So here we go again. I think that Ministers have become privatisation junkies. As they stumble from crisis to crisis, beating the retreat towards the general election, they scorch the earth as they go. They are completely in the hands of the ideologues who are now running the show. They are appeasing the right; they are ignoring the view of 1 million floating voters, who perhaps more than any other group represent middle England.
Sir Edward Heath (Old Bexley and Sidcup):
The debate gives me the opportunity to say a few words that I have long wanted to say about the position of the civil service.
I must immediately declare an interest that I had long before Nolan decided to treat us all as criminals. When I left the Army, in 1946, I decided to enter the civil service
if possible. I therefore sat the administrative examination, and I have always been rather proud of the fact that I came top of the whole administrative service. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] I am glad to know that my party appreciates it--it has taken 50 years, but it is nevertheless very gratifying.
I entered the civil service, and I was there for a year. I found that I could not get anything done, so I left and entered politics. I will not make a comparison between the two--that might be invidious--but, at that time, those of us who had been at university before the war regarded it as one of our main objectives to get into the administrative civil service because it was so highly respected, in this country and elsewhere. The civil service was certainly the envy of the whole of the English-speaking world, and of what were then the colonies.
What is the position today? The morale of the civil service has never been lower--never. One knows that full well from all one's contacts with the civil service. Is that healthy? Of course not. Therefore, one should pay attention to every possible factor that affects the civil service.
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) rightly mentioned the political impact in our country at the moment. I am not putting it in the forefront of the argument, but it is a very important political factor for my constituency and others like it on the outer ring of London. It certainly will not help the Government to recover from the position in which they found themselves last Thursday.
In the past 15 years, too many people have tried to gain credit by discrediting the civil service; the only thing they have done is to decry the number of people in the civil service and claim great victories when the number went down. That was mostly bogus, because people were moved out of the civil service into other organisations that do the same job. The number was not greatly diminished, but great uncertainty in the civil service was produced. The exercise has therefore achieved nothing.
The hard facts of the case are that, if one wants to reduce numbers in the civil service, one must provide not some outside organisation, but an alternative means of tackling the problems that the service must handle every day. That means that one must have some mechanisation--newer developments in equipment and so on--to enable fewer people to do the job. At the moment, jobs are simply not being done.
I do not know the experience of other right hon. and hon. Members, but I have done an analysis of the first three months of this year, and time and again I have waited two months before receiving a letter from a Minister in response to a constituent's problem. I have now received such a letter after a wait of three months. If I may say so very humbly, if it takes two or three months to answer my letters, I do not know how long it is taking to answer those of other hon. Members. That is the situation the Government have to deal with, and it is another reason why our voters are entirely disillusioned with the service that Government and Ministers give them regarding their day-to-day problems.
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