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In the debate, the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) rightly observed that while we should concentrate on saving money in quantifiable terms, we should also consider the social and environmental benefits,
which are not so easy to quantify. He referred to the report on the Chinooks, as did other Members. That episode has been well documented and lessons have been learned, but I think we can all agree that it is important that the aircraft are available as soon as possible. We envisage that the first aircraft will be available for training before the end of this year; I am sure that we would all welcome that.
I was a little confused by the hon. Gentleman's comments about Trident. The PAC report clearly states that the time line is very tight, but he said that we do not have to make a decision now and can delay it. In that case, there would be plenty of time to rethink the policy.
Mr. Breed: It depends on whether the life of the existing hulls can be extended, which is a possibility. If there is an undertaking to obtain new hulls, then yes, the time line is quite tight, but many of us believe that the existing ones are perfectly satisfactory for at least another four years, which would offer that period for further reflection.
Sarah McCarthy-Fry: As the policy of the hon. Gentleman's party is not to have Trident at all, I am sure that he is not particularly bothered whether that would leave us with a bit of a gap in procurement.
I was interested in the hon. Gentleman's comments about his bargain rail fares, available on his senior railcard; I look forward to the time when I may get one and take advantage of similar bargains.
As regards Northern Rock, the hon. Gentleman spoke about success fees. We share his concern that costs should be tightly controlled. In fact, in this case the success fee was at the discretion of Her Majesty's Treasury, and none was paid. I want particularly to pick up his point about the mutual sector and the possibility of returning Northern Rock to it, because I want to make it clear that no doors have been closed. Obviously, as a Co-operative MP I am particularly interested in the mutual sector. In our White Paper, "Reforming financial markets", we examined the need for diversity of provision to balance risk across the financial services sector, and how the mutual sector could help to provide that. I am aware of a research paper from Oxford that offers a suggestion on how that could be done. Officials at the Treasury are looking into that, and I would welcome it if the PAC and the Treasury Committee did so too.
We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby. For a short time, I overlapped with him on the PAC, so I am well aware of his forensic investigations when he questions witnesses. Today he returned to one of his favourite themes-consultants. When used correctly, consultants can provide great benefits, but we certainly recognise that we can do more to improve value for money. As he knows, we have introduced the consultancy value programme to implement the NAO and PAC recommendations. Our approach is that a business case needs to be made to ensure that consultancy adds value and that consultants are not used in circumstances where civil servants could meet the need, but there will be occasions when the use of expert consultants is the most efficient option. I took his general point about policy decisions needing to be taken in good faith; I picked up on that at the start of my remarks. They also need to be implemented effectively, and that requires effective planning and risk management right from the start.
I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk for his kind remarks, and I well remember our visit to Boston and Washington. He talked about defence expenditure. Before I entered Parliament, I spent my time on the other side, trying to win MOD contracts, managing MOD contracts, and accounting to the MOD for the cost of those contracts, so I have a little insight into that. Changes in requirements and specifications cause the biggest headaches, certainly for the supplier, and probably for the MOD as well. Moreover, our armed services obviously want the latest and best equipment, and that causes pressure and tension. Again, it comes back to the need for effective planning at the start and effective project management. The newly formed defence acquisition reform project is currently working on the matter and addressing the recommendations of the Gray report.
We all acknowledge that the NHS IT project is hugely ambitious and that it is essential that we get it right. It is obvious to everybody that many challenges remain. We still believe that Cerner Millennium and Lorenzo will be able to support the NHS in the long term. Local service providers have been set a deadline of the end of November to demonstrate significant progress in the acute sector. They will have to demonstrate that Lorenzo has been successfully deployed by Computer Sciences Corporation across a non-acute site and is on track to be deployed in an acute site by March 2010, and that there is a high degree of confidence in CSC's ability to deploy across the NME-north, midlands and east-area by January 2016. BT will have to have successfully deployed Cerner in an additional acute site, and there must be a high degree of confidence in its ability to deploy across London by October 2015. As set out in the Treasury minute, the Department of Health will provide a note on progress by the end of this year. I shall examine the Hansard record of the detailed points that the hon. Member for South Norfolk made and write to him with a detailed response.
Finally, we had the contribution of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands), who shares my respect for the hon. Member for Gainsborough as Chairman of a very important Committee and for the work of the PAC. I had the pleasure of serving on the Committee and believe that it is the most important Committee in the parliamentary system.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham touched on many defence projects, including the defence information infrastructure programme, which I have not mentioned so far. It has now been delivered to all the Ministry of Defence's major headquarters, and roll-out rates for the past 18 months have been significantly higher than those of early 2008. Although there were originally delays, I hope that we are making progress.
The hon. Gentleman moved on to the Office of Government Commerce, which regularly assesses Departments' procurement functions. It is working closely with the NAO to finalise new guidance on contract management in complex procurement, which should be published before the end of the year. It is also working to embed the joint NAO and OGC good practice contract management framework and share best practice across Departments.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the CDC and the Department for International Development, and he touched briefly on the paper about working in insecure environments. It is not an option for DFID not to work in such environments-the question is how we manage that work. Pay levels reflect market-beating performance and are closely linked to delivery of the Department's objectives. Independent evidence from the World Bank suggests that financial performance is a good proxy for the likely impact of CDC investment in reducing poverty.
The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill received its Second Reading two days ago. Some Members have taken a close interest in such measures as those on judicial appointments and the standards of the civil service. Those are important, and I would not suggest in any way that they do not matter, but to my mind the provisions to modernise the governance arrangements of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the NAO also have considerable importance. They implement the recommendations of the Public Accounts Commission in its 15th report.
As the House knows, the commission wanted to ensure that the CAG had authority to form completely independent judgments about the audits and value-for-money studies conducted by the NAO, while maintaining systems of governance and internal controls consistent with best practice. I believe that the Bill will achieve those aims and set the NAO on a confident course towards even better performance. The new NAO board, which I wish well, should help to guide its staff to stronger and more incisive insights into the use of public funds, and we can all look to benefit from that. I am grateful for the helpful way in which the NAO has assisted the Treasury in getting the provisions right.
I welcome the appointment of Mr. Amyas Morse, who took up his post as Comptroller and Auditor General on 1 June. He is the first CAG with extensive private sector experience, and I know that he has already set about his task with diligence and integrity and is working closely with the new NAO board under the chairmanship of Sir Andrew Likierman.
I express my gratitude for the hard work of the Committee and the NAO, which provide able support. Everyone will agree that together they make a lasting contribution to the performance and delivery of public services across the UK. They keep the Government and public servants on their toes, and their work will continue to be as effective as it has always been.
If this is indeed to be the last PAC debate before the general election, it will be the last time that the hon. Member for Gainsborough moves the motion, because he is to relinquish his chairmanship having served through two Parliaments. I believe that he chaired his first PAC hearing on 22 October 2001.
I pay tribute to an important innovation that the hon. Gentleman made as Chairman: Committee reports that look across Whitehall. In particular, the Committee's 17th report, from December 2005, in which I was involved, "Achieving Value for Money in the Delivery of Public Services", was a tour de force that looked through some 400 Committee reports going back 10 years. The conclusion was that there were seven key aspects of public service delivery that Departments needed to improve to achieve value for money:
"Plan carefully prior to implementation...Strengthen project management...Reduce complexity and bureaucracy...Improve public service productivity...Be more commercially astute...Tackle fraud"
"Better and more timely implementation of policies and programmes".
We can see from today's debate that those things are as important today as they have ever been, and I encourage all public servants to read the report and take heed of the advice.
Finally, I wish the hon. Gentleman well. He is a most assiduous Chairman of the PAC and during his tenure has enhanced its fearsome reputation as a robust and challenging scrutineer of public finances. I am proud to have been a member of the Committee under his chairmanship and I am delighted to have been able to respond to this debate.
4.21 pm
Mr. Leigh: With the leave of the House, perhaps I could say a few words of thanks to the Minister for her kind personal words and for her tribute to the Committee, on which she served. I also thank those who have taken part in the debate. There have not been a huge quantity of Members present, but we have made up in quality what we lacked in quantity. All their comments were interesting. I shall not repeat them-they have been summed up very well-but I shall offer some personal reflections.
I do not want to go back over the CDC in any great detail. We know that it has made itself more efficient, but I say to the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) that some of the salaries in some parts of the public sector-close to £1 million-are frankly obscene and not called for. My personal view, for what it is worth, is that nobody in the public sector should earn more than the Prime Minister. People in the public sector receive many other compensations and I do not think that we need such enormous salaries.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Northern Rock. Our report was interesting-I am not going to get into the politics of whether it was right to nationalise-and I hope that if ever such a situation arises again, officials will look at it, because many lessons can be learned about timely action.
I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who kept our debate going with great verve. We are grateful for his forensic examination in
our Committee. Again, I will not go through all his comments, but he mentioned the Rural Payments Agency-we are to have another hearing on that agency on Monday. The key point is that the English system was just far too complex compared with the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and continental systems. That goes back to what the Minister said in her concluding remarks on our generic report about making Whitehall more efficient, reducing complexity and planning carefully. We really have to cut through the complexity if we are ever to deal with what is going wrong in the RPA.
As usual, my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) gave us a masterclass on the NHS computer system. He is the House's expert on it. Again, if we are to make any progress on the system, we must cut through many of the knots that are binding hospitals to a failed concept and allow them to break free; otherwise, we may go on sinking good money after bad.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) for what he said. He mentioned the major projects report. The truth is that the MOD is trying to do too much. Without getting into the wider politics of it, we will probably have to cut the number of Trident submarines. These programmes are constantly being shifted sideways and some very difficult decisions will have to be made after the general election.
Lastly, I thank the Minister for what she said. She made a very important announcement today when she said that we would extend full audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General to the FSA. She also hinted that the Treasury has a much more open mind about the BBC and the Bank of England. We have scored an important victory today-one down, two more to go-and we will carry on working. I am grateful to all those who have taken part in the debate. In the past six months there has been so much publicity about what Members of Parliament have cost the taxpayer, but some Committees and some Members provide a good deal for the taxpayer. Saving £4 billion over eight years is not to be sniffed at. I am proud of what we have achieved and I wish the Committee and my successor every success for the future.
That this House takes note of the 1st to the 6th, the 8th to the 11th, the 13th to the 23rd and the 31st Reports of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2008-09, and of the Treasury Minutes on these Reports (Cm 7568, 7622 and 7636).
UK Border Agency
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Mark Tami.)
4.26 pm
Miss Ann Widdecombe (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con): I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise this important issue in the House tonight. I think that the Adjournment debate on Thursday is your selection, Mr. Speaker-if not, please do not disabuse me-and I am delighted that you have understood the importance of this issue.
I shall make some rather critical remarks about the UK Border Agency in the course of this debate, so I should first say that I fully recognise the scale of the task that confronts it. I also recognise that it does its best to discharge that task and I have always found its staff perfectly courteous and as helpful as they can be within the rules that they operate. When one meets the immigration officers at airports, they are much more friendly than those po-faced mortals who seize manicure scissors from little old ladies on the rather improbable basis that they might be about to assist Osama bin-Laden.
I do not want to suggest that I think for one moment that the agency is in any way useless or in some way hostile to proper judgments, but it does take completely the wrong approach. Anybody can see that, if they look at the sort of cases that the agency pursues with supreme strictness. In order to meet the multiplicity of targets that the Government have set, it aims at the softest targets, when it should be aiming at those who have eluded it for years, who have abused the system, who are in the country unlawfully, who do not comply with the conditions placed on their stay, or who do not observe their reporting restrictions. They are the people on whom the agency should concentrate. They are, of course, the hardest cases. They are not generally sitting around with their addresses on display. The agency does not pursue them. Instead it spends a disproportionate amount of its time pursuing people who have done the reverse-who have complied with conditions, kept their addresses notified to the agency and have circumstances that other people would recognise as reasonable.
I have three particular cases in my constituency that have come up not over the course of the last year, or the last six months, or even the last couple of months. They have all come up within the last three or four weeks-two of them in a single day at my constituency surgery. That suggests a pretty concentrated effort to up the performance measurements by going for soft targets.
When I served on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, one thing that we expressed considerable concern about was the sudden removal of settled persons-persons who had been at an address for a substantial period, had married or had other commitments in this country, were working, or in some cases had even obtained property, and whose whereabouts were beyond all reasonable doubt. The Committee felt that where people had become citizens of substance, so to speak, they should at least be given proper notice before being seized and deported.
If the Border Agency deports somebody, that is a tick in a box, but there is a difference between deporting somebody who has been steadily eluding detection, and
deporting somebody who has an appeal outstanding, who has been observing reporting restrictions or who has explained why he is still in the country. Suddenly removing that person will come as a considerable shock not only to them, but to their family.
One of the cases I shall raise tonight is just such a case. It concerns a deportation order served on somebody who had faithfully observed his reporting restrictions. He arrived to report and was immediately arrested, put in a detention centre and deported soon after. I do not object to such action being taken against somebody who is, so to speak, underground or in deliberate defiance of an order, but I do object when it is done to somebody who is obeying orders.
The second case concerns a woman who has been married to a British citizen for five years, has two British children and has been told that it is the opinion of the Secretary of State that not only she, but her husband and two British children, can continue their lives outside the United Kingdom.
In the third case, we have an employment issue and a civil penalty. I strongly support, and always have done, both in government and opposition, the contention that the immigration authorities must be very vigilant about employers who take on people who are not entitled to work in this country. However, I again submit that they should be vigilant about employers doing that either deliberately or because they have been careless, and unjustifiably so, and not where an employer has taken reasonable steps to ensure that the person he is engaging is entitled to work. If that person gets indefinite leave to remain, the Border Agency sometimes says, "Ah, there was a gap between the two when the person was no longer entitled to work, so we will inflict the maximum penalty, and we will not reduce it, even a little, in recognition of the fact that the employer acted wholly in good faith." Given the economic position, £5,000 of civil penalty is quite an imposition on a small employer, so it should never be imposed unless the employer is genuinely and seriously culpable.
I turn now to the detail of the cases. As I have already informed the Minister's office, the person involved in the employment case does not wish to be named. I must therefore refer to him as Mr. K. He runs a small business in my constituency and employed a Mr. J. Mr. J had permission to work here and Mr. K checked the documents upon engaging him. Since that time, Mr. J has paid tax and national insurance throughout, and he has recently been granted indefinite leave to remain. He says that he has a letter that both he and Mr. K, his employer, interpreted as meaning that he could continue with his current status-that is, he was entitled to work-until 2011.
I should give a little background to the case. When Mr. K took on Mr. J, he photocopied the documents. The Minister will know that it is a Home Office requirement that it is not enough just to look at documents and say, "Yeah, yeah, I saw that this man was entitled to work." Rather, the documents have to be photocopied. That is what Mr. K, being a law-abiding citizen, did. His solicitors explained the position to the Border Agency in a letter dated 26 March 2009, in which they enclosed all the documents that Mr. K had seen and copied before agreeing to employ Mr. J.
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