| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton): You must be joking--weren't you a Conservative?
Sir Edward Heath: If my hon. Friend denies that fact, he is not a sound Conservative economist. I am prepared to argue that point. In pursuing the privatisation path, particularly regarding civil service arrangements, my hon. Friend the Minister is making a grave mistake.
I hope that the Government will reconsider their attitude and distinguish between the privatisation sphere and the sphere of services that can be provided only by organisations such as the present civil service. I know that my hon. Friend will not take any notice of my suggestion, and I am sorry that I cannot stay to listen to his refusal to do so, but I am quite prepared to read his comments in Hansard tomorrow and see on what grounds he repudiates my request.
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury):
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), not least because he echoes the comments that we on these Benches have made for much of the Government's tenure of office. I am delighted to welcome him to our point of view. Given that the Government's majority has been reduced to one, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity--which he obviously did not have in the civil service--to do something really dramatic and join us in the Lobby to defeat the Government tonight. I look forward to that moment with considerable pleasure.
The Liberal Democrats are not dogmatically opposed to market testing or to contracting out--we have never said that and we never shall. On the contrary, we believe that such matters should be considered individually on their merits. Benefits may be derived from market testing or from contracting out. We may benefit from outside expertise, knowledge and new ideas or opportunities. The competitive process may lead to an increase in the number of new choices which may lead, in turn, to a better solution, but that is not an inevitable consequence and
there are points to be made on the other side of the argument. I believe that, in this case, the points against outweigh any advantages that may be gained.
The first point that we must make is that administration of a pension fund is not a negligible matter, as the Minister seemed to imply in at least part of his speech. We are talking about those who will not be the investors in pension funds, but that does not diminish the importance of their work--particularly for the pensioners concerned. The fact that a pensioner may be paid the right sum, but paid it three months late due to an administrative error, is crucial for that pensioner. For example, a pension might be paid into the wrong bank account and the money might not reach its rightful recipient for some time. Good administration of a pension fund is just as important as good investment or getting the sums right.
The Minister skated lightly over the problem of confidentiality which is immensely important to some civil servants. Those who work in the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are obvious examples of civil servants who may not wish their private affairs, their addresses and their financial details to become public knowledge. Of course there is some risk of that, and those people fear that there will be a greater likelihood that their affairs will be more widely known, if their pension fund is administered by a private contractor instead of a civil service organisation.
Mr. Nigel Jones (Cheltenham):
Can my hon. Friend think of any way in which my constituents who work at GCHQ could benefit from the order and protect the confidentiality of their pension arrangements?
Mr. Rendel:
No, indeed. My hon. Friend has raised an important point. His constituents are at the heart of the problem of confidentiality because of the work in which they are involved and the risks that they will take if their whereabouts or personal details become known in the private sector.
Moreover, the Government have failed to dispel the suspicion that the process has been driven by a dogmatic desire to extend the amount of private involvement in the public sector. In his opening remarks, the Minister said that steps would be taken to maintain confidentiality, but that was all he said about it. I do not consider that a sufficient guarantee that confidentiality will be properly maintained.
There is a further concern that the Government seem to be driven by dogma rather than by a rational consideration of what is needed. The Government may be moving towards a greater break-up of public service pension funds than they have so far admitted.
The current service is well received by civil servants and those who have recently retired. Recent enhancements, some of which have been described, have been made to the current service. The efficiency scrutiny that has been mentioned accepts that, for a very large number of employees and pensioners, in-house administration is almost always more efficient and cost-effective than going to an outside contractor. That is almost common sense, so it is difficult to see why the Government do not accept it.
The most important objection to what the Government are doing brings me back to the point made by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup. Civil service morale is so low that to give it a further blow, as the Government are doing tonight, is no way to proceed.
The main reason why the measure will be a further blow to civil service morale is the lack of consultation with those covered by the scheme. Although those involved may have been formally consulted, their views were not taken into account and that makes the consultation rather superficial. The Government have talked about the need for private sector businesses to improve communication with their employees. That is an important consideration for all businesses, following numerous examples of bad practice, yet the Government are ignoring their own advice and the right of current and former civil servants to have a real say in the administration of their pension scheme. If it is right that that should happen in the private sector, it must be even more right that it should happen in the public sector.
Mr. Willetts:
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) complained about insecurity in the civil service, then went about stirring up insecurity with a series of lurid claims about the future of the civil service pension scheme that bear no relationship to reality. The right hon. Gentleman accused us of having a plan to break up and destroy the principal scheme, but that is simply not the case. We are talking simply about creating the opportunity for competitive tendering for the administration of the scheme, which will have no effect on benefits.
The proposal is, in the best sense of the word, permissive. It simply creates a new opportunity for Departments to invite the private sector to tender for the business of administering civil service schemes--something from which they are stopped by law from doing. We are removing that obstacle.
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland made great play of the efficiency scrutiny. I am perfectly willing to accept all the quotes that the right hon. Gentleman gave, provided that he will accept the point made at the beginning of the report:
We are now implementing that proposal.
The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland asked why we are not balloting members. I am not aware of any precedent for balloting members of any pension scheme, public or private, on its administrative arrangements--that would be an extraordinary and unprecedented step.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) for remaining in his place for the remainder of the debate. He raised important questions about the civil service as a whole. My right hon. Friend spoke as a former civil servant; I shall reply to him as a former civil servant myself.
"The scrutiny has established that there is a range of services which the private sector could offer with advantage, including pensions administration. It recommends that market testing should proceed as soon as the legal position has been resolved."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |