Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out sub-paragraph (iii)
Member’s explanatory statement
These amendments would remove private utilities from the ambit of the Bill which at present allows the government and devolved authorities by order to regulate industry and its procurement practices.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that we have been able to move on to this group of amendments, all of which were tabled in good time. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his apology, tone and constructive response on the last group. I have some sympathy with him since, when I was on the Front Bench, I used to do Lords starters and they can be difficult because you have less stakeholder involvement and input than in the Commons. However, there is more scope to change a Bill that starts in the Lords, and that can be a good thing. I thank the Bill team for passing me its copy of the Keeling schedule, and I look forward to the child’s guide to procurement.

I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading. If I had been able to, I would have brought my experience of procurement in government and in the EU, and in buying and selling everything from services to beans at Tesco. We were even stopped from selling cars alongside groceries by EU rules. I am a former director of Capita, and I register a current interest as chair of Crown Agents, the not-for-profit international development company with considerable expertise in procurement.

First, I am particularly interested in delegated powers and in supporting the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on that issue. Secondly, I am keen to find a way of helping small businesses to better access procurement opportunities and encourage productivity and growth. Thirdly, as ever, I am concerned about costs to businesses and citizens—I know the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, is too.

I also want to understand and test the reach of this legislation, which is the subject of my 12 amendments on private utilities, starting with Amendment 2. It is kindly supported by my noble friend Lord Moylan and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. We all sit on the Built Environment Committee together and are steeped in the problems of public transport in towns and cities at present.

In his Second Reading speech, my noble friend Lord Moylan questioned whether we needed this Bill at all, certainly on its current scale, and he bemoaned the bureaucratisation of procurement. I also worry about this, because of its enormous cost both to the state and to bidders and deliverers of contracts. When I was in retail, we always tried to reduce red tape and cut costs, and pass on the benefits in lower prices, which helped to attract customers. There is less sign of that here than I had hoped. There are fewer regulations, but I fear that the burdens imposed are in fact greater than those being removed, particularly in this area of public utilities. In my direct experience, it is not only the number of rules that matters but their impact.

It seems wrong for a Bill about public procurement to cover private utilities. I appreciate that there is an EU directive and UK implementing regulations that the Government want to replace, but I am not entirely sure that this should be done here. Indeed, the Government seem a little hesitant themselves, as they have taken a power to remove private utilities from the scope of the Bill or alter the rules as and when they legislate elsewhere. This is wrong and novel. As the excellent report by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says, this appears to be the use of

“a tool to cover imperfect policy development.”

I compare the situation to my time as a civil servant heading a Bill team—imagine it—when we were generally obliged to have the subordinate legislation in draft to accompany a Bill and, as a result, we avoided a lot of errors that would have required corrective Bills or regulations later. In the EU, many utilities are in public hands, as some are here, which I am sure explained the need for the original utilities directive. In the UK, many transport, water and telecoms utilities are in private hands and make a huge contribution to the economy as a result. I see that electricity has already been taken out in Schedule 4, at least in some respects.

Some might say, “Why not cover private utilities and force them to embrace transparency and comply with the many cross-compliance measures set out in this Bill?” “Government knows best” seems to be the modern approach. Because they are in private industry, not government or local government, we should be extremely careful about regulating private utilities. If I worked in a private utility, my advice to my shareholders on reading the Bill would have been to get out of the sector. It is proposed that they should embrace public sector bureaucracy—which is still very substantial, despite all the good efforts of the Cabinet Office in putting the Bill together—but they continue to have a private sector degree of risk.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I hesitate to appear to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkely, but I shall humiliate myself by doing so. I venture to suggest that there is a definition of a “private utility” in Clause 5. It is only to be understood in its fullness if read with Schedule 4, at page 84, which specifies what “utility activities” are. If one looks at Clause 5 and Schedule 4, one can see what the Government are trying to do. However, I am not sure that what the Government are trying to do is worth while or appropriate. To that extent, I support the comments of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

The background is that we are starting from an EU procurement directive that applied to the whole single market of 27 states, and which needed to take account of the fact that most utility activities in most of those states are effectively provided by arms of the state, whereas in the UK we have blazed a successful path of privatisation, so many utility activities that in other parts of the single market are carried out by the state are carried out here by private companies. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, makes a very important point when he says that those private companies are, in nearly all instances, subject to some form of regulation.

Before I go further, I draw attention to Schedule 4, which specifies those activities. The subheadings, which I know are not technically part of the Bill, include “Gas and heat”, “Electricity”—

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think electricity is later taken out, as I mentioned.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

Oh well. I shall just work on the text I have; I mean, what is one meant to do? There is “Water” and “Transport”. “Ports and airports” and “Extraction of oil and gas” are also mentioned, but it is the first few that matter. It is striking that the rollout of broadband, the internet and such things do not count as a utility; I should have thought that they were characteristically examples of a utility. My noble friend will no doubt be able to give me a compelling rationale why they are not included.

I come back to the point I made a moment ago about the regulator. I read out the subheadings because noble Lords can see that the activities we are discussing are nearly all regulated, funded by the commitment of private capital with an assumption that private capital will be reasonably efficient in procurement, even if simply for the benefit of shareholders. This does not preclude defalcation, fraud, bribery or giving contracts to your best mate but, as I explained at Second Reading, the Bill does not deal with those issues. If they arose, be it in a public authority or a private company, they would be dealt with through the criminal law because they are all criminal offences. One would not pursue them for a trivial breach of a procedural requirement under the Bill; one would go after them for fraud, taking bribes or all these other criminal things, which are nothing to do with the Bill.

All that makes me think that including private utilities is not entirely appropriate. If it were felt that procurement undertaken by private utilities needed some form of statutory control it would be better in a separate Bill that actually focused on the principles, rather than the procedure, allowing private companies to pursue those procedures appropriate to achieving their shareholders’ ends, just as we allow Tesco to do—with the exception of selling cars next door to fruit. I cannot contemplate for a moment why the European Union should take exception to that, but apparently it did. Essentially, we leave Tesco to decide what procurement processes to follow because it is a private company risking private capital. That is the essential ground on which I make my point.

Finally, I turn to transport, because I have more direct experience of it as a utility than I do the others. There are some distinctions to be drawn. I take as an example Transport for London; as noble Lords may know, I served on the board. Transport for London perhaps should be subject to procurement regulations of this character, but Transport for London is in part categorised as a local government body. It is covered by some local government legislation, as well as by its own Act. That might be the rationale for including a body such as Transport for London, or some of its equivalent bodies that have been created around the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, my Lords. I have committed to write in relation to that and I will pick up other questions that have been raised, including by the noble Lord. Obviously, there are existing international agreements that are, if you like, deposited, and which we have to work with, as well as issues of how we move forward case by case, but I will certainly address in a letter the point the noble Lord asks about. It is a legitimate question. The status of international agreements was also raised from the Front Bench opposite, and I will write to the noble Lord on that matter and copy it to colleagues in the Committee.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a workmanlike discussion, the unpeeling of the onion—the first of many unpeelings of onions, I think. I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for his support, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox—the philosophy of scope is a good phrase. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, made a strong point about the WTO, which leads me to ask the Minister whether in his follow-up letters he will be able to give us a little more feeling about what is in and what is out for each of the utilities.

I am concerned about that because when we come on to talk about what is covered, it makes a difference—for example, doing special things for small businesses, could we have rules that are not too bureaucratic? Schedules 6 and 7 look quite burdensome through the eyes of a small company. It seems that a lot is covered and then there are executive powers to decide what is taken out and excluded, so the power is with the Minister. I would like to come back to that when we debate the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on delegated powers. It is an important issue.

Can we find a way of not making things too bureaucratic? The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, made the same point from the other side. Can we improve productivity and growth, which we all desperately want to do in the current circumstances? Can this Bill be a vehicle for that and for improving our international competitiveness? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak on this set of amendments, particularly Amendment 42. It is the first time that I have been able to speak on the Bill. I was not able to participate in Second Reading, but I have followed the debate and, like many noble Lords, spent the weekend probably losing a little hair trying to make sense of the number of amendments that have come out. I thank the Minister for the withdrawal of Amendment 1 and for looking to find a way forward with some of the issues that those amendments made.

Particularly with Amendment 42, I raise my interests in the register, particularly as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as an adviser to the Robertson group of organisations, which does work with the public sector. Amendment 42 is genuinely probing. It addresses what is in, what is out and what is the autonomy and the role of local authorities within the Bill. In particular, when a local authority works with others, how do some of the provisions within the Bill work—whether it is a central purchasing authority or not—particularly when they overlap with other procurement legislation in, for example, the Health and Care Act?

I shall put a couple of scenarios to the Minister and genuinely look forward to hearing some of his replies. First, local authorities are being asked to significantly integrate social care and health. They will be part of integrated care boards, which are purchasing organisations. Some public sector money from local authorities will come forward as part of that. When they are purchasing as an integrated care board and significant amounts of local authority money is put in there, which provisions will the local authority be asked to enact? Will it be the provisions within this Bill or the provisions under Sections 79 and 81 of the recently enacted Health and Care Act? There will be potential conflicts of interest as to by which procurement rules two different partners procuring a public good will be bound. I hope the Minister can help to explain that scenario.

There are also lots of local authorities that have significant public-private partnerships. Again, what rules will the public-private partnership be bound by, particularly when the local authority purchases significant services or goods with a private sector organisation which are to be used for public procurement? How will the private sector organisation be bound by that? For example, what rules will there be for that public-private partnership when purchasing a good, depending on whether the 51% amount has been put forward by the public sector—the local authority—or by the private sector entity?

I understand from reading the Bill that there will be the national procurement policy statement. I just need to understand from the Minister what autonomy local authorities will have to move away from the procurement guidelines that will be in the NPPS.

Finally, it would be helpful if local authorities could be put in the Bill as centralised procurement authorities. Is there any particular reason why the Government did not take that on board in the Bill?

There are many general questions about local authorities; those are a number that I wish to probe. I genuinely look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the question of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, about local authorities. They are so often underappreciated and undervalued, and we need to know what can and cannot be done in a collective way—the question he is rightly probing. For example, a simple question would be: for planning services—where my committee has identified a huge shortage of talent and resources in some planning authorities—could you have a collective procurement, and would that be caught by this Bill?

I also ask what the GPA does on telecoms and the internet infrastructure. I must say that I tried in vain, as a Minister, to get contracts for the roll-out of infrastructure around Washington DC—there was not a level playing field. I fear that overseas interests will benefit preferentially from this Bill, as they have done in some other areas, such as contracts for difference in energy. Can the Bill help to hold the GPA to level the playing field?

I strongly support my noble friend Lady Noakes, both on her brilliant technical points, which I barely understand, and on ARIA. On the latter, I agree with her that it must be free from hassle—I think we agreed that in our debates in this House. It probably does not have enough money, but it is important to ensure that it can proceed without the benefit of lots of new regulations, which could be quite bureaucratic to them.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 7. I do not think I need comment on any of the other amendments in this group. I tabled this probing amendment to ask why this particular piece of text is here:

“This Act does not apply to Her Majesty acting in her private capacity.”


That is quite unusual in Bills. Usually at the end there is a clause that says something along the lines that Her Majesty and, often, the Duke of Cornwall have given their consent to that piece of legislation. Sometimes when I ask the Minister what relevance the Bill has to the Duke of Cornwall they cannot answer; no one seems able to because it is nicely confidential.

Obviously I can see why Her Majesty acting as the Crown is included in this Bill because effectively the Crown is the Government. However, why is the Duke of Cornwall not included in the Bill in his private capacity? He usually appears alongside Her Majesty. The Duchy of Cornwall has said it is in the private sector, which means, whatever we are going to call it, that it is a private sector organisation that presumably will have to comply with every other part of the Bill.

It is interesting to see where the sovereign grant for transport comes in. I happened to get a Written Answer today. I asked who funded the return charter flight of the Duke of Sussex from the United States for the jubilee. According to media reports, it was the most expensive charter plane that you could possibly get, and it seemed to me that, as in so many of these matters, they could actually have gone on the scheduled service. The answer I had was that it was not funded by the sovereign grant because that

“only covers expenses incurred by other Members of the Royal Family when they undertake official duties on behalf of Her Majesty”,

and clearly that was not the case. When it comes to the sovereign grant and the award of contracts for helicopters or planes across the world that the Royal Family—or even occasionally members of the Government—might take, presumably that will be subject to competitive tendering because they are acting in their public capacity.

It would be good to hear from the Minister what correspondence, if any, took place before Clause 1(9) came into the Bill. Are the Government quite happy with it? I look forward to hearing his answer.

EU Retained Law

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, we are at the stage now where the dashboard has been published; submissions and comments will be made on it, and it will be refreshed quarterly. We will then have to consider the mechanisms. If it is decided that the regulation needs to be either repealed or substantially altered, we will have to consider the legislative mechanism, which would have to be case by case. When we publish the Brexit freedoms Bill, it will include elements that allow for the Government to implement their policies. At that stage, noble Lords will obviously be able to debate the appropriateness of the proposals that we put before them.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is agreed by everyone that we have a productivity problem in the UK. As we have seen from history, one way of dealing with that is to sweep away anti-competitive legislation, including some that has been referred to in the debate. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that some operators benefit preferentially from their very existence and that it is essential to have the toughness needed to face them down? That can help small businesses, as my noble friend has said, and growth, and can, I hope, reduce bureaucracy. I am in danger of speaking for too long, but I mention that I have worked for most of my career in business and particularly welcome the promise to the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, of an impact assessment on the Bill.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend. It seems quite a long time ago that we were working in Downing Street on the aspiration of reducing regulation. She makes interesting points which one does have to bear in mind in consulting on and considering the way forward.

It is important that we make it easier for small businesses, and it is also true—I am not criticising anybody or any organisation in particular—that familiar regulatory environments, particularly complex ones, are not necessarily as perturbing to very large organisations which have large departments to deal with them as they are to small businesses and would-be innovators and entrants. That is a balance one has to consider across the regulatory environment, including in this exercise before us today.

Office for Demographic Change Bill [HL]

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the perceptive remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon. I also look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord True, from his pivotal position in the Cabinet Office.

I support my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and his Bill. It is simple, will cost little and deals with a subject of the first importance; I say “of the first importance” because, in the long term, the effects of demographic change are perhaps the most important factor in the world.

By way of illustration of the truth of that proposition, I draw the House’s attention to a recently published book, Youthquake, by Edward Paice, which deals with the demography of Africa. In it, I learned that, by the middle of the century, Nigeria is expected to be more populous than the United States; that the extraordinary rate of growth of population in many African countries shows no signs of lessening, so far, at any rate, and despite forecasts to the contrary by those believing that increases in prosperity inevitably lead to a slowing birth rate; and that, by 2035, the African workforce is likely to exceed that of both China and India—today’s huge battalions—and be increasing at a greater rate. I defy anyone to say that all that will not have an impact on global and national politics, including in countries far from Africa, such as the UK.

I will increasingly focus on these trends—both the challenges and opportunities—in my work as chair of Crown Agents, a development organisation, and chair of the UK-ASEAN Business Council, both of which listed in my register of interests. However, we lack a strong foundation of accessible and objective data on demographics.

The UK’s demographic position is of course different, but the importance of demography in policy formation is every bit as important. I have the honour of chairing your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee. We recently produced a report on housing that drew heavily on all sorts of population estimates, including on ageing, on household formation—hence on divorce and other social mores—and on many other factors. Policies in almost all areas are influenced by demographics

I have on many occasions debated, particularly with my noble friend Lord Hodgson, my concern that the lack of proper dynamic projections of population means that these are not taken properly into account in policy-making and planning in key areas of importance to citizens. These include schools and universities, hospitals and primary care, transport provision, flooding, energy security and, of course, housing and green spaces. The new office would help to fill that gap.

If you do not know the facts, you will in general adopt worse policies. Arguing for the advantages of ignorance is always a hard task, yet when my noble friend has suggested a demographic office previously, that is effectively what the Government have done. Perhaps I am being a little unkind, in that the actual argument given was that such an office was unnecessary—no doubt said with a straight face.

The real reason why the suggestion does not commend itself is political fear, and we all know why. Among many concepts conjured up by the word “demography” are immigration and race, and they have rarely been linked with political advance. However, to my mind demography is much wider than that, and I urge the Government to show some courage, even if that might not follow the advice of Sir Humphrey. Government policies need the firmest possible foundations in fact and they need long-term thinking, not the short-term, narrow, business-led approach of the Migration Advisory Committee, which was mentioned the last time the matter was debated. Some of us are already tiring of the relentless short-term decision-making fuelled by 24-hour rolling news, Twitter and other social media. I think the new office would provide a powerful antidote.

In conclusion, the establishment of an office for demographic change of the kind recommended by my noble friend Lord Hodgson would be a good way of providing firm foundations in fact. It would bring new long-term thinkers and experts into government to the benefit of us all, and it would publish objective, impartial data on which we could all draw. The House of Lords should certainly be behind that.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s Bill and congratulate him on bringing it to your Lordships’ House.

European Union: Border Control Checks

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is reasonable that we should bring in controls as we see fit, in a staged and controlled way over time, so that companies have time to adjust to them. That staging means that the process is spread over a year or two, but that is reasonable and makes life as easy as it can be for businesses both exporting and importing.

The noble Baroness is correct to refer to the substantial sums we have spent on implementing the Northern Ireland protocol. That demonstrates that the accusation sometimes made against us that we are not interested in implementing the protocol is not correct. We have spent a lot of money in an attempt to mitigate the burdens, but there are obviously simpler ways of mitigating the burdens than requiring every good moving to Northern Ireland to go through a customs process and paying the heavy costs of that—and it is those new solutions that I hope we can find in the coming months.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for all he has done in very difficult circumstances this year. What positive news can we expect on EU and UK matters in the years ahead?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I think we are ending the year on a positive note. We have had a year’s experience of running the Trade and Co-operation Agreement; we have the governance arrangements in place; all the disasters predicted about threats, problems and the collapse of trade—one set of difficulties after another—have not materialised and we end the year in a good place. It is my hope that we will have a constantly improving and very friendly and warm relationship with our EU neighbours, based on free trade and friendly co-operation. That is where we want to get to, and that is where, I am sure, the Government will be taking things forward next year.

EU Relations

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. I have said before, and say again, that Article 16 is not an on/off switch for the protocol. It is not a sort of self-destruction mechanism for the protocol; it is a safeguard. There are constraints on what can be done with a safeguard. The legal limits of it are to be defined but, if you use Article 16, it is clear that you are left with a protocol with safeguards operating. That is why we find it so difficult to really understand the volcanic reaction that we get to the suggestion of using the safeguards provisions. It is a safeguard, and it is designed to support stability and ensure that the protocol fulfils its task of supporting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. If we do use the safeguard and Article 16, that will be the spirit in which we do so.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for giving us an update, and for doing so in prime time, not at 7.30 pm. I also refer to the helpful reply that he gave to the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, about contingency arrangements on R&D. Could he talk more widely about contingency planning in the event that Article 16 had to be triggered? What conversations have he or his officials been having with interested businesses and Northern Ireland interests, about, for example, the impact of any tariff or bureaucratic changes that the EU might implement here or on the island of Ireland, and what we might do by way of response?

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Impact on Trade

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I think the question is based on a slight misconception that the legal text that we sent in represents some new stage or evolution in our position. It does not. It reflects the position that was set out in the Command Paper on 21 July and puts it into legal form. It is a negotiating document for the purposes of negotiations. It does not change the UK Government’s position in any way. Of course we discuss with elected politicians in Northern Ireland all the time what our position is, and we did that while preparing the Command Paper.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am interested in trade and especially in exports, because they are vital to UK growth and success. We heard from the Minister about trade within the island of Ireland, but how does he expect the pattern of UK trade within the EU 27, both in goods and services, to change in the years ahead?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend identifies an important point, which is that trade in both goods and services is subject to a lot of noise at the moment—the ongoing Covid pandemic, the effects of leaving the customs union and the single market, stock building and so on—and it is difficult to isolate trends. Nevertheless, our goods exports are nearly back to the levels of 2019. Services exports and imports are down somewhat, but of course the huge impact on the movement of persons, tourism and so on has very significantly affected those figures. So it will be a long time before we reach a steady state, but I have huge confidence in the ability of our exporters and traders to manage that situation.

Imports from EU to UK: Grace Period

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Does the Minister realise that the grace period puts British industries at a substantial short-term disadvantage? Are there any upsides beyond those already described by my noble friend Lord Moylan? I am very glad to see that my noble friend Lord Frost is still a Minister. What diplomatic and other steps will he take to put this matter on to a more satisfactory long-term basis?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we are obviously in constant touch with the European Union through the institutions created in the trade and co-operation agreement and many others. We sought last year to negotiate more relaxed arrangements at the border in both directions, on food and drink and on other issues. Unfortunately, the EU was not open to that at that point, but if it were to become open to it in future, we would obviously wish to engage in that discussion. That is clear, and we will keep making that case, because we believe that it is in the interests of both parties.

Government: Leadership Training

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on this very interesting debate. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is right about the importance of accountancy and the dangers of transience. I rise to speak because I was both in the senior Civil Service for 14 years—much of this at its heart in the Cabinet Office and No. 10 —and a government Minister for three years, at BEIS, DCMS and the Treasury. Today, I will emphasise the importance of education and experience as well as training, the need for apposite training and the importance of diversity of thought and cost-benefit analysis.

In my experience, what happens in early life and in your career before reaching senior positions is every bit as important as any training. Even William Pitt the Younger would have struggled as Prime Minister at such a young age without his elite education. Most good Ministers have had a number of government roles on the way up, learning from discussions on Bills, in debates, from crises and how to get departments to act effectively in the desired direction. They learn leadership on the job and from effective, and ineffective, Secretaries of State.

Most leading civil servants have strong academic credentials and many years of experience in different but related roles. Many serve Ministers extremely well. Many of us will have specific examples in mind. This was the Northcote-Trevelyan model, and it is a pity that it is being steadily undermined. Most of the best Ministers are bright and educated, and they bring wider experience—for example, in the services, the law, business and so on—and not just years as spads, good though some spads definitely are. Spads’ focus is usually on their Minister’s star, not on the longer term, and their value is limited accordingly.

How can training help? Here I draw on my 15 years of experience as an executive director of Tesco, at a time when we were a growing and global business. Many were from modest backgrounds, and all shared a laser-like focus on the end goals and an ability to lead, motivate people and get them to deliver—or go elsewhere. We had good training programmes, but they were sponsored and led by the key directors, not just by the training function. Every manager helped their staff to do better where they were weak or had potential, and training was designed to help with that. We gave our teams wide discretion. We were all taught not to spend time on doing things just because we liked doing them but to delegate wherever we could and to address training needs. We cut out needless layers of management so that everyone’s jobs were more challenging and satisfying. These are not skills that you can suddenly learn when you get to the top.

My observation of Civil Service training was that it is self-selecting and that those who needed it did not get it, although they might be attending other courses that they fancied, at public expense. Training should be directed at those who need it, not at those who want it. My only training in my ministerial capacity was in dementia, which was a rather good initiative of David Cameron’s, I have to say. I also learned some excellent Dispatch Box skills from my noble friends Lord Howe and Lady Noakes.

Another problem is the prevalence of fashion in politics, which has, in my lifetime, extended down into the Civil Service. Diversity is a good example. As a woman who started her career as often the only female fast-streamer or executive in the room, I welcome aspects of diversity and have tried to help others on the way up. However, diversity of thought seems to have gone out the window as a desirable characteristic. Unfortunately, this reflects the position in even our best universities, where holding certain political opinions seems to be almost a requirement for employment. The sooner the Civil Service and universities reverse this unwelcome trend, the better. Overall, a great deal of attention is given to diversity, without dealing with this area where it is lacking: diversity of thought.

Finally, I want to make a specific point. I am well known as an enthusiastic supporter of impact assessments. The principal reason for my enthusiasm is that they enable all of us to judge the cost benefit of the action that the Government propose to take. This is the most important area of decision-making in government. The academic side of the process is well developed, and all Ministers and senior civil servants, without exception, should be properly trained in its mysteries—another one for the list of my noble friend Lord Norton. A broad cost-benefit assessment, prepared while decisions are being taken, can help a Minister and a senior civil servant to identify the likely perverse effects of a policy—one that may even end a successful career—and reach a sound conclusion.

I do not have time to deal with all the ideas outlined in the helpful Library Note. Suffice it to say that some are more realistic than others. I look forward to a further discussion with my noble friend Lord Norton.

Security of Ministers’ Offices and Communications

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, as a Minister, I cannot comment on matters on the Parliamentary Estate, but I understand that the Lord Speaker has recently written to colleagues. This is a security breach—I repeat what I said earlier. DHSC is running an investigation, which will be done with support from the government security group and will take into account all the considerations that the noble Lord has mentioned.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, having been both a private secretary and a Minister in my time, I had always thought that the private offices were there to protect and assist Ministers. Does my noble friend find it odd that this does not seem to have applied in the office of the Secretary of State for Health?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I hear what my noble friend says. I have referred to the different bounds and responsibilities that take place within the normal life of a Minister. I am not going to comment on what may or may not have gone on within the Department of Health, not because it is not my responsibility to answer on behalf of the Government but because those matters are currently being investigated.

Finance Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the perceptive remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Empey. I thank my noble friend Lord Agnew for his crisp summary of the financial situation and of the Finance Bill. I have also benefited from reading the explanation given at Second Reading by the Financial Secretary, Mr Jesse Norman, who has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Butler.

So we are well informed, but, unfortunately, the picture painted is a grim one. Pleased though we all are by our success on vaccination, I do not believe that the country has yet taken on board the full gravity of the financial situation that we face. The level of the national debt and the deficits that we continue to add to it are of a staggering dimension. It will be the work of many years to right the ship.

In case there are some who might want to claim that reducing the debt from its present size is unnecessary or can be put off to the Greek calends, I point out that the only reason why our financial response to Covid—with vast government grants and loans, furlough and all the rest of it—was feasible was because we had reduced debt as a proportion of GDP greatly since World War Two. The markets would not have accepted the levels of unfinanced expenditure that we have adopted in the last 15 months or so to deal with Covid if we had started with our present level of national debt. Everything that I say today is subject to the overriding necessity of improving the national finances. I am not sure that we, or indeed most other countries, are focusing enough on this issue.

That said, I thank the Treasury, where I served as a Minister, for the speed and creativity with which it provided support for the Covid crisis. I particularly commend the furlough scheme, although I think the rate was set too high, which will cause difficulties as it is phased out. However, the idea of using the PAYE system backwards is an excellent example of simplicity, a theme that I want to emphasise today. The aid to business, especially the simple suspension of VAT and the rates, has also shown bravery and flexibility. I hope that such imagination will now be applied to the long overdue review of rates.

The Treasury and HMRC have done well during Covid as they have been allowed to take risks and innovate. That reminds me of the wartime example of rationing. I know about this from my mother, who served on the Board of Trade in the rationing team in World War Two. In the dark days of 1941, with shipping disrupted, they were asked to extend rationing to textiles. Luckily, my mother’s boss was a clever academic from Cambridge. His idea was not to start again but to make the back pages of the food ration book into clothing coupons. Rationing came in overnight. This was an example of speed and simplicity similar to the furlough scheme.

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley and his committee for a clear and compelling report on the Finance Bill, and for his new point about powers in relation to digital platforms, which might impose new burdens or costs on millions of businesses without proper scrutiny. I think that is in paragraph 125 in our fat book of Explanatory Notes.

I particularly agree with the concern that the committee expressed about the new tax checks linked to licence renewal applications for taxi drivers. This could even have the perverse effect of reducing compliance by taxi drivers nervous of the taxman. Like my noble friend, I also dislike the proposed removal of the important taxpayer safeguards in pursuing information requests. I believe the Government should think again on both points.

Ministers and civil servants do not understand how frightened people and businesses are of HMRC, how its powers to fine summarily are resented and how the complex web it spins confuses people. The lack of simple advice at the end of a phone is a real problem to the honest citizen and to the smaller enterprises that are the lifeblood of our economy. We are constantly told that stakeholders are involved in compiling the rules. Over the years, I have found this assurance less and less comforting, as most of the bodies being consulted are too similar in their thinking to that of the Treasury and HMRC.

Moreover, I was concerned to see the briefing from the Chartered Institute of Taxation, which suggested problems with the penalty provisions—see the notes on Clauses 112 and 113. These include a risk of disproportionately high penalties—so more reasons for people to be fearful. My noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean is right to argue for a look at the Bill and, perhaps more importantly, the whole tax code in the spirit of simplification and, I suggest, with an eye to encouraging enterprise and SMEs.

There is a wider point that is relevant here. A book that I have been reading from our wonderful Lords Library, by Eric L Jones, suggests that the rate of economic growth back to the Middle Ages reflects, in part, the removal of institutional and environmental barriers. Examples would be the ending of tithes and the lifting of rationing. The very process of opening up fuels growth and productivity, which generates a greater tax base in turn. So I say no to licences, where they can be avoided, and to new cross-compliance, as proposed in this Bill. I add a no to the continuation of needless or new EU-based rules. On the same principles, I say yes to free ports, to the two-year super-deduction for plant and machinery investment proposed in the Bill and to the right kind of planning reform.

Probably the biggest example of new burdens on business in the Bill is the new tax on plastic packaging. I am as keen on reducing plastic packaging as anyone in this House, as my contributions in many debates have shown. However, I wonder whether all this is worth the candle, given the detail and scale of intervention involved. I doubt whether it is the best way to reduce use and encourage recycling. I recommend massive simplification. Plastics are oil-based and there may instead be a case for a simple duty like that on petrol or alcohol, albeit at a much lower level.

As my final contribution to this debate, I will mention skills, especially technical and vocational skills, which are essential for improved productivity and levelling up. We are at last making some progress in technical education, and youngsters can see that practical skills are vital and that university is not always a wise aspiration. However, from day one, the apprenticeship levy scheme has been complex and unimaginative. I know from direct experience that some businesses and organisations are not even spending their levy pot, because of these complexities.

I am glad to see the attention that the Chancellor gives to vocational skills, with well-publicised visits to talk to apprentices and online seminars. Could my noble friend, who I know is expert and sympathetic to this issue of skills, explain how the Government will improve outcomes in this vital area?