| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Adam Ingram (East Kilbride): I do not know whether the Minister has seen the four questions on today's Order Paper, relating to the prior options review and the future of the public sector research establishments. As he is responsible for the civil service, and as thousands of civil servants will be affected by those announcements, which have not yet been made available to the House, does he share my concern that the morale of those civil servants will go into major decline and that the announcements will be seen as an attack on the science base in the United Kingdom? Why are those announcements being made by way of written answers and not by way of debate in the Chamber?
Mr. Freeman: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the prior options process has now been in operation for a good number of years. It is a routine method of examining whether a certain function should remain in the public sector and, having decided that it should remain in the public sector, whether any particular aspect of that service needs to be market-tested. I shall certainly look into the specific points that the hon. Gentleman has raised, and I am grateful to him for reminding me of them. I was not personally aware of them or briefed--
Mr. Freeman: As the motion in the name of the Prime Minister makes clear, I am dealing with certain specific issues. If the hon. Gentleman would like an answer, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will seek to address that point when he replies to the debate.
I conclude by dealing with the Civil Service College. For more than 25 years, the Civil Service College has provided training and development for civil servants, particularly those at senior levels. As well as training more than 30,000 students a year on more than 500 different courses, the college makes an important contribution to the articulation and preservation of the values enshrined in the civil service code. In addition, the college is highly regarded around the world and receives a steady stream of eminent foreign visitors.
The college is an executive agency within the Office of Public Service, and as such, its strategy and operation have recently been reviewed. The review of the Civil Service College has been designed to ensure that the college achieves its full potential for developing the best traditions and the international reputation of the civil service. A wide range of options has been considered, including continuing as now in the public sector and partial or full transfer of ownership to the private sector. The Government concluded that the college should proceed within the public sector to develop new activities in partnership with the private sector.
The Government will ensure that the essential link between the civil service and the Civil Service College is preserved. The college will build on and extend already established and successful partnerships, which include the delivery of a public sector MBA in partnership with Cranfield university and Manchester business school, the delivery of courses on the private finance initiative with Price Waterhouse and a project in the Czech Republic together with a Dutch private sector partner.
New partnerships currently under negotiation cover a variety of training courses, seminars, conferences and consultancy assignments. With them, the Civil Service College will have the means and resources to extend and enhance the quality of the services that it provides. What the Government are seeking to achieve with those further developments is the continued development of training for civil servants, particularly those with professional and senior management responsibilities, and that the college should become a centre of excellence in public sector management and reform, recognised in Britain and worldwide.
Later this summer--before the recess--I hope to publish a White Paper on training and development in the civil service, dealing not only generally with enhancements and improvement to those processes, but specifically with Investors in People, and commitments that the public sector should be making to support that initiative.
Mr. Derek Foster (Bishop Auckland):
I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West):
Did you not use that line last time?
Mr. Foster:
No, I did not. The hon. Gentleman is a veteran of such debates, and should remember what goes on.
We are witnessing a sea change in British politics. The Conservative party once had the reputation of being the most formidable vote-winning machine throughout Europe. Now, it is so riven by ideological division that it cannot address the concerns of the British electorate, and certainly cannot address the concerns of the civil service.
Even with the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary at the heart of the Government, each one a pro-European, one-nation Tory--the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confesses to be of the same persuasion--the Conservative party cannot drive to the middle ground of British politics, which is now commanded by the Leader of the Opposition and new Labour. Stung by the charges of inadequate leadership, incompetence and rift, wherever the Tory high command tries to create an impression of momentum, the inner dynamic of the party drives to the right.
Since the Deputy Prime Minister took charge less than 12 months ago, he has driven to the right on civil service issues with frenetic glee. Frustrated in his plan to sell off the Post Office, he is privatising every tiddler that moves or is stationary in the civil service. The civil service has been so privatised, market-tested and contracted out that job insecurity is widespread.
Although the President of the Board of Trade thinks that job insecurity is only a state of mind, it strikes me that Ministers and Tory Back Benchers take their own job insecurity seriously enough. Even if we grant that the President of the Board of Trade might conceivably be correct and that job insecurity is a state of mind, I remind Conservative Members that being a Tory voter is also a state of mind.
The Deputy Prime Minister dispatches his messenger the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to the House to persuade us to approve the motion; yet the only reason why we are having this debate is that the Government suffered a humiliating defeat in another place. The privatisation of the Recruitment and Assessment Services agency needs, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, no primary or secondary legislation. The proposal was smuggled out in a written answer one Friday
afternoon. There would have been no debate in either House without Lord Bancroft, who initiated a debate in the other place on Friday 8 March.
Of the 20 people who spoke in that debate, only one supported the Government. Those taking part included a former Prime Minister, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, a former Conservative Minister of Transport, a former Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment, and a former Secretary of State for Education. Others included many who have reached the most senior positions in the civil and diplomatic service or in academic life. The result was that the Government lost the vote by 124 votes to 64. When I heard that news, I immediately wrote to the Chancellor asking him to initiate a debate in the Commons. Two months later, he has responded with this debate just before the recess.
In the debate in another place, Lord Bancroft referred to
Lord Jenkins doubted that it was constitutionally proper for a Government who were clinging on to power
'welcomes the statement in the White Paper "Continuity and Change" that "the Government recognises that the Civil Service is not the property of any single administration", and commends the Government for constructing consensus around the Civil Service code; regrets the Government's refusal to manage other Civil Service reform by seeking consensus or properly consulting staff; recognises the widespread feeling of job insecurity and "initiative fatigue" throughout the Civil Service; urges the Government not to proceed so late in the Parliament with the privatisation of HMSO, RAS and OHSA and to join opposition parties in seeking consensus by requesting the Public Service Committee to conduct a thorough independent review of all recent Civil Service reforms.'.
As I listened to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I realised why he has his job. I am sure that he could present the slaughter of the innocents as the most acceptable and humane of happenings.
"the flippant destruction of an essential pillar."
He was referring to the civil service. Lord Callaghan reminded the House that the civil service was
"not the private property of temporary, fleeting Ministers to trifle with as they please. It is the property of us all to guarantee its neutrality, independence and integrity".
He went on to suggest that Ministers
"have been so long in power that they are insensitive to the limits of their responsibilities."
He called for a royal commission or a Select Committee to review the matter, as has happened on many occasions since the great Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the mid-1850s.
"to force through a totally unnecessary change on a subject which goes to the heart of the delicate balance between party government and wider national interest".--[Official Report, House of Lords,8 March 1996; Vol. 570, c. 545-48.]
Lord Hunt of Tanworth said that the process would deserve the most careful consideration at the best of times, but that these were post-Scott times, when the whole question of the public service ethos was under serious discussion.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |