House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 May 1996 (pt 35)

Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North): I apologise for having missed most of the debate, but this is an important issue. When I was in Her Majesty's services, I had to sign the Official Secrets Act. If one had confidential or secret information, it was more than one's life was worth to give that information to people who were not entitled to it. Increasingly these days, there are leaks from the civil service, and these are often politically motivated. Will the Government introduce a proper code of conduct so that any civil servant who rats in this way loses his job and his pension rights and is sent out without any ceremony?

Mr. Willetts: My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) also raised that subject in his speech. My hon. Friend is quite right that leaking confidential information has no role in the modern civil service, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool made clear in a recent speech outside this place. He disappointed some of his supporters by making it clear that he thought it important to maintain the confidentiality of the relationship between civil servants and Ministers.

Mr. Derek Foster: If the Minister wants to take action against civil servants who leak, what does he intend to do about Ministers who leak, as they do that all the time? What does he propose to do about Prime Ministers who leak? Reference has been made to the Westland crisis, when the previous Prime Minister tried to pin the blame on one of her colleagues. What will be done about the big boys who leak, rather than the little minnows?

Mr. Willetts: I am not sure that Ministers leak. Indeed, I should have thought that that was almost impossible by definition since Ministers explain what the Government's policies are.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West(Mr. Hughes) asked about ethnic minority staff. We have a good record in that regard. The proportion in 1989 was 4.2 per cent.; in 1995--the most recent year for which we

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have reliable figures--it had risen to 5.4 per cent., compared with 4.9 per cent. overall in the economically active population.

Mr. Garrett: What about the top grades?

Mr. Willetts: The hon. Gentleman is right to ask that. We are not doing as well as we would like in relation to the top grades, but even in those grades there has been an improvement. At senior levels, ethnic minority representation has increased from 1.5 per cent. in 1989 to 2.5 per cent. now.

A series of questions were asked about public sector research establishments. On behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I apologise again to any hon. Members who did not receive written answers that should have been issued at 3.30 pm. We are conducting prior options reviews of those establishments. On some--such as Horticultural Research International, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman)--no final decisions have yet been reached. As for others, notably the 12 for which the Department of Trade and Industry is responsible, the DTI announced the conclusions of the reviews today.

The policy intentions announced today will now be subject to detailed planning for implementation, and the manpower consequences will form part of that process. No targets have been set for reducing numbers; the reviews are about getting better value for money and more effective research output. A range of options will be examined in the other research establishments that are still being reviewed: anything from privatisation to contractorisation, rationalisation and, indeed, no change. Any potential redundancies will, of course, be taken into account when the options are considered.

In his opening remarks, the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said that we should look forward with bated breath to the speech of the hon. Member for Hartlepool, which would constitute a powerful attack on our proposals for Recruitment and Assessment Services. I kept waiting for that powerful attack, but I do not think that it ever came. We were told nothing that we had not heard time and again in relation to every previous privatisation introduced by the Government. We were confronted by a lurid picture of the private sector, a complete inability to understand the power of legal contracts to enforce standards and, I am afraid, a good many irrational and indefensible claims about--in effect--the inability of the civil service commissioners to monitor standards.

It is the civil service commissioners, quite independently of the civil service, who will audit arrangements when RAS is privatised. None of their auditing powers will be in any way weakened by privatisation. In fact, we shall introduce specific arrangements to ensure the integrity and quality of the fast-stream recruitment process. Civil servants' roles as assessors for the civil service selection board and the final selection board will be unchanged. We shall ensure that selection decisions on candidates remain with civil servants. The tests applied by RAS will continue to be owned by Government and licensed to the privatised organisation, and our Department--the Office of Public Service--will have a strengthened role as a customer in monitoring the fast-stream contract on behalf of customer Departments.

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With those safeguards, the civil service fast-stream development programme will be operated under contract to the new company. The privatised RAS will be able to expand into new markets and capitalise on its expertise. Yet again, we have heard the extraordinary myth that somehow RAS could remain within the public sector and enjoy what is described as full commercial freedom. That is simply impossible. It is unimaginable that private sector recruitment consultants could compete with public sector recruitment organisations, and that public sector bodies would not be obliged to pay tax--that their liabilities would ultimately be protected by the taxpayer. That is not plausible; it is not fair competition. We have repeatedly tried to explain to the Opposition that if there is to be fair competition, and if such bodies are to operate with commercial freedom, there is only one way to achieve that--through genuine privatisation. There is no alternative.

Mr. Gunnell: When will the Minister give the written details that he promised in a written answer on 29 January at column 489? Is he willing to release to us, or place in the Library, the information that was sent to those who expressed an interest in the purchase of RAS when it was advertised in the Financial Times? When will the final details of the privatisation be released?

Mr. Willetts: I hope that that information--apart from some that may be commercially confidential--will be released very shortly. We are working as rapidly as we can.

Let me turn to what may be the Opposition's agenda. According to the amendment, they believe that the civil service is suffering from initiative fatigue. I can only say that, following the Opposition Front Bench speeches, the fatigue from which we are suffering is review fatigue, careful consideration fatigue and calm reflection fatigue, because that is all that the Opposition have to offer.

Mr. Garrett: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Willetts: I am afraid that I must make some progress in the remaining few minutes.

We produced a White Paper on the civil service, which was then carefully considered by the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee, as it then was. The Committee produced a very valuable report. We published a further White Paper explaining our proposals in depth and responding to what the Committee had said. On that basis, we are making progress in modernising the civil service. That includes using the opportunities offered by competitive tendering and privatisation whenever they present themselves.

The Labour party does not seem to understand that, in the words of the Select Committee,

"the quest for greater effectiveness and efficiency in the Civil Service should be an unending one".

The Committee wished to

"stress that the requirement to maximise the return from finite resources will not go away."

I detected, buried in the speech of the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, another Labour spending pledge. The right hon. Gentleman says that he wants to stop the "Competing for Quality" programme, which generates extra public expenditure savings of £200 million per year. We are subjecting £1 billion worth of public

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service work to careful study on that programme every year; as a result, we make savings of 20 per cent. on average. If the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to continue the programme, he must explain to the House how he will finance the higher running costs that will arise from his loss of nerve.

In the absence of any clear statement from Labour today about its possible policies on the civil service, I turned to "The Blair Revolution"--subtitled "Can New Labour Deliver?"--by the hon. Member for Hartlepool. The hon. Gentleman need not blush. In the book, I found quite a good account of the philosophy behind some of the Government's reforms. The hon. Gentleman states: