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Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East) (Lab) rose—
Mr. Willetts: No. I should like the Secretary of State to explain to the House why we should believe that this time, Ministers will be able to save money on the
overhead costs of government, when we know from their own evidence how they have failed before. I have the targets that they set in 2000 for "modernising welfare delivery". The aim was to
- "introduce an improved, integrated modern service for delivering benefits".
- "reduce the average cost of processing retirement pension claims and maintaining the caseload by 20 per cent."
- "reduce the average cost of processing Minimum Income Guarantee claims".
- "ensure that 90 per cent. of MIG claims are processed within 13 days".
The Government have failed to meet their targets in the past. There is no evidence that they have taken the measures necessary to deliver the targets they have now set. The only way to do that is by serious reform of benefits. The only way to save money on the overhead costs of government is to engage in a serious process of public service reform. There is nothing about that in the Budget. That is why the Budget fails to rise to the challenge of the growing costs of government. That is why the Opposition have the correct approach and Ministers do not.
James Purnell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I have your guidance? If I believe the shadow spokesman inadvertently misled the House, and I have a quote that shows that, but he was not able to take an intervention from me during his speech, what recourse do I have to enable him to correct the record?
Mr. McLoughlin: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it be a good idea if the hon. Gentleman came to Prime Minister's questions, where we see that every week?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Let me respond to the first point of order. The point that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) raises is largely a matter for debate. The words that an hon. Member chooses to use in the Chamber must be the ones that he decides to use, and he must take great care with those words.
1.33 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry, North-West) (Lab): I congratulate the Government on yet another fine Budget in a long series, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on his intellectual and sheer physical stamina as he completed his eighth Budget. I think that it is true to say that come July this year he will have overtaken Lloyd George in the office of Chancellor, and looking a little further ahead he might even have Gladstone in his sights, who under Lord
Derby's Administration, I think, did seven years and succeeded him as Prime Minister in the eighth. I am not sure my right hon. Friend would wish me to pursue that scenario any further on this occasion, but it is already clear that the Chancellor is entering the record books for the length of his chancellorship.The Chancellor's achievements are much more than that. This is the longest period of growth that we have had. We have stability, and all the benign aspects of the present economic situation—jobs, interest rates, growth, low inflation—are derived from that overriding objective. We have avoided stop-go, which is a particularly vicious form of economic development. It leads to lost output and makes for terrible inefficiency as businesses wind down when they have only just wound up with investment that can no longer be used. A third aspect of stop-go that is particularly pernicious is that in the stop phase, it is always the capital projects that bear the heaviest burden of the cut. That has led to the progressive decline in our infrastructure.
We tried to deal with that. Some of us remember—some of us were even in the House in the '60s and '70s—under successive Labour and Tory Administrations the Wilson attempt through planning and the Heath attempt through the dash for growth. Both tried to get away from stop-go and, sadly for the country, both failed to do so. Then came the '80s and the '90s and the abandonment of any pretence of credence in investment in the public sector. It was left to deteriorate, with the result that as we enter the new century we must pick up the pieces and try to put back together again not just British Rail, but the outdated infrastructure in our hospitals, our schools and all of our transport. Those are the three prime areas.
Uniquely now we have achieved stability. Uniquely now we have a forward programme. Judging by the Chancellor's Budget arithmetic, there is every chance that we can sustain it and make a real difference. That could not be done in the year or two since we got going. It is no good expecting that after two years of high spending in the health service, we will suddenly reach the European level, the French level or whatever is considered the optimum that we should reach, at least in terms of the service provided. That cannot be achieved so rapidly, but we seem to have the prospect of it.
Just as we are about to sustain that programme and get a national effort behind it—and get the CBI behind it, as well as the unions—the Opposition mount an attack on it. We have hardly got going, but already they want to prove it is not working. On the basis of some tentative, experimental and sometimes quite absurd analysis, they are trying to undermine the national programme of rejuvenation and reinvestment.
Rob Marris: My hon. Friend mentioned earlier his concerns about the Opposition's plans regarding defence spending, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell) mentioned the Conservative party website. May I remind my hon. Friend briefly what that website says? The right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) is quoted as saying:
- "The fifth component of the Medium Term Expenditure Strategy relates to all programme expenditure covered by departmental expenditure limits outside the NHS and school budgets.
I have agreed with my Shadow Cabinet colleagues that the baseline for spending across all of these departmental budgets will be 0 per cent. growth for the first two years".
- "I fully accept that holding programme spending within departmental expenditure limits other than the NHS and schools to a zero increase for the first two years and to what amounts to a zero real terms increase thereafter is a tough constraint."
Mr. Robinson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that telling and pertinent intervention. I tried in vain to get either of the Opposition spokesmen in today's debate to tell us what they meant. One of my hon. Friends pointed out that they were threatening to axe the Eurofighter project to save £20 billion. If only they would come clean with the House, we would know where they stood. I am less concerned about those proposals, however, because I do not think that the Conservatives are ever going to get the chance to implement them. They are muddled, contradictory and impractical, and I think that they will be exposed as such during the months leading up to the general election.
I am seriously concerned about the Conservatives' mentality: as soon as they see the Government's success in investing to restore our schools, hospitals and transport systems, they try to prove that because our approach involves the public sector, it will not work. What grounds do they cite for those criticisms? One is the Office for National Statistics report. Normally, an ONS report would be taken very seriously and checked, but this one was never intended to be such a document. It was put out to provide an experimental look at the issues—and it is correct that we should monitor expenditure programmes that involve huge sums. I agree that we should get value for money and ensure that we are achieving the targets on which our money is being spent.
Let me just point out a few aspects of the ONS report to which the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) and the shadow Chancellor referred. The measurements used in the report are "new" and "experimental"—that suddenly seems to have become the holy gospel—and they use a measure of output which is absurd. The hon. Member for Havant mentioned measuring outputs instead of inputs, so he will agree with that. The measurements also invite us to equate success with having bigger class sizes, more fires and more disease. That seems to be the way it works. The suggestion is that that methodology is bound to work. In fairness, the hon. Gentleman was trying to make this point. Quality is not mentioned, but what could be more vital to all our public services than quality?
When the shadow Chancellor tries to suggest that the difference between the investment going in and the output is equivalent to an inflation rate five times the national rate, he is of course using the same flawed methodology to reach that conclusion. His argument therefore has no intellectual legitimacy whatever. I hope that a better effort will be made by Sir Tony Atkinson, who has rightly been appointed by the Chancellor to examine these issues. I look forward to his report being produced in the summer. Let us hope that we can make sensible progress in that direction.
In yesterday's debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health made some telling points against those who were trying to suggest that the investment that we are making is much greater than any output that is being achieved. I shall not read out all the figures that my right hon. Friend gave to the House yesterday, but some are well worth repeating. He drew attention to the fact that there were 113,000 more cataract operations last year than in 1997—a 70 per cent. increase.—and 19,000 more knee operations—a 69 per cent. increase. There were 950,000 more planned hospital admissions last year than in 1997—a 22 per cent. increase—and 6,000 extra heart operations will have been carried out by April. All that seems to be a very good indicator of the improvements that are being made.
Let us forget what the precise objectives were—I hope that we can also get away from the distortions that they can lead to in clinical priorities and in the organisation of hospitals—and consider the increases that are being achieved, even without referring to the 6.3 million people dealt with by NHS Direct and the 400,000 operations. I speak anecdotally when I say that many people in my constituency and elsewhere are finding a great improvement in the promptness, cleanliness and up-to-dateness of NHS care, along with the new hospitals resulting from the record hospital break-in programme. So there is no need to listen to the Conservatives' rubbishing, pessimism and downright irresponsible criticism. All we need to do is go out, look at the hospitals, and talk to the nurses.
There is a problem with consultants and with the European working time directive, which I shall come to in a moment. First, however, I want to say a word demolishing the argument about the European Central Bank paper, of which the Leader of the Opposition made much and in respect of which he published a plea in a national newspaper for help in solving the £70 billion mystery. That seems like a waste of money to me, but Tory party funds are obviously being replenished at a rate of knots. I am not sure that I can help him in terms of the way he posed his question, but I can help him in a different way.
The European Central Bank study is not an official bank study; the bank publishes side papers such as these which are written by people who happen to work for the bank. In no sense does it carry the imprimatur—let alone the authority—of the World Bank. It shows, among other things, that the UK, compared with about 20 countries—all the major European ones, America and the rest—has the most efficient transport system. That must give us a resounding sense of confidence. It also states that we come third, in terms of public sector figures, in administration, health, education and infrastructure. If the Leader of the Opposition has identified a mystery surrounding £70 billion, let me tell him how to find a $700 billion one. If we take the conclusion of the report on transport and apply it to the United States, we discover that, if the US were as efficient as we are, there would be a $700 billion problem for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to go after. Why is it that we are so much more efficient, and why are the United States wasting resources that, on that basis, could be calculated at roughly $700 billion?
Those examples, the ONS and ECB reports, do not give any objective grounds at this stage for suggesting that the huge investment that we are putting into the
three priority areas is not producing the results that it must produce. We all have a deep national and personal responsibility to see that those results are achieved. I hope that the Tory attitude to this will soon be exposed as irresponsible. However, I would say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Front Bench that, in terms of getting ahead with the proper analysis and monitoring of what we are getting for our public investment—now that it is on such a scale and can be sustained for a period that would really make an impact after the years of neglect—they should set up a small monitoring team in the Department, along the lines of whatever Tony Atkinson comes up with, to ensure that we have authoritative grounds to prove not only that the programme is delivering as we expect it to but to expose the hypocrisy and shallowness of the Tory Opposition towards this major national input.I should like to put to my Front-Bench colleagues one final point on the health service. It was not mentioned yesterday, and I want to take the opportunity to raise it now. There is a problem with the European working time directive, in relation to junior doctors and to the earlier changes that were made, which will pose a great challenge to the health service that could result in a drop in the level of service that it can provide. I would like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health to consider the provisions that we have in place to meet the requirements of the working time directive in relation to junior doctors, the spread of the provision and the worry among many consultants about the speed at which the changes are happening following the earlier structural changes. It is possible that, despite the money going in, we shall not do as well as we could if we could find a way of minimising the effect of the working time directive. That is a major consideration, and a personal worry of mine. I have many friends who are surgeons who never stop lecturing me on it, so I hope I am allowed to lecture my right hon. and hon. Friends in turn.
I am very pleased that, for the first time since the war, we can look forward to a sustained programme to put things right that have been wrong for so long. The Government can take great pride in that, and I would simply say to them, "Hold your nerve, and make sure that everything is clearly explained and justified as we go forward."
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