Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

We do not feel that it is necessary to legislate for strategies at a national and local level. The previous Government specialised in having lots of strategies and fulfilling none of them. By contrast, we are in favour of taking action, which is why we are working with my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) to ensure, as I mentioned in answer to the previous question, that there is provision for social outcomes and social value to be measured in contracts. That is, of course, part of his Bill. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure that when the Minister was conducting his philosophy seminars he had a rather more respectful and attentive audience, and that is what we should grant him.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Allia and Future Business are promoting social bonds to support social enterprises, such as the future business centre in my constituency. There has been a very good uptake by individuals and companies, but not by the banks. Will the Minister have discussions with the banks to encourage them to invest in these bonds, which provide a secure social investment asset?

Open Public Services White Paper

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The right hon. Gentleman is too much of an expert to need me to tell him this, but I will tell him because he asks for it. We have, of course, established a two-level system. For most planning decisions, we hope that the neighbourhood will take charge by engaging in neighbourhood planning. We believe that the incentives that we have built into the financial system—including the ability to get a meaningful proportion of the community infrastructure levy paid to the neighbourhood if it has more housing and development in its area—will lead neighbourhoods on the whole to prefer development. The presumption of sustainable development means that their neighbourhood plans will have to include development of an appropriate kind in order to pass muster. There will be an assessment of local housing need that contributes to that, which plans will have to observe.

However, nobody is going to pretend in our Government, any more than in the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, that any neighbourhood will welcome a nuclear power station just next to it or a railway line running straight through it. Of course there will be objections in those cases, which is why we have maintained and democratised the very system that he and his colleagues set up—because they, too, operated a two-level system—in order to accelerate planning applications for major pieces of national infrastructure. There is no disagreement between us and the right hon. Gentleman on that, and there is no reason for him to invent one.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. As befits a distinguished former philosophy don, the Minister much enjoys conducting a Socratic dialogue with the House, and we all invariably feel enriched by it, but in the interests of time, we should be grateful for the abridged version.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I very much welcome what we have heard about employee involvement in the running of organisations, and mutuality is a subject that my party has advocated for a long time. I also welcome the greater role for parish councils in local services. I am concerned, however, about local assets being run by community groups and the accountability of that mechanism. Will the Minister ensure that, as these proposals move forward, accountability lies at the heart of any change?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman’s question reminds me of Maynard Keynes’s dictum when asked about the IMF and the World Bank. I think he said that the World Bank was a kind of fund, and the IMF was a kind of bank. There are often these oddities in the naming of things. Shall we just call it the BSB and know what it does, rather than worry about the name?

[Mr Speaker]

We are now better informed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I commend the intellectual ideas behind the whole concept of the big society? May I also commend to my right hon. Friend an article by Tim Montgomerie that appeared on ConservativeHome earlier this week entitled, “Conservatives can win the poverty debate but not if the Big Society is our message”? Is the big society more accurately described as a label for a collection of policies rather than a policy itself?

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that the Minister will answer with particular reference to private sector applications and the big society bank.

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Speaker.

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the big society is an idea with a very wide application. The big society bank is a fund that will have a very wide application, because we believe it is extremely important that it should be able to foster all sorts of voluntary and community enterprise which, in one way or another, enormously support the alleviation of poverty—the subject of the article to which he refers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) is right to ask this question. We attach a huge amount—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but I think he seeks to group the question with a number of others: Nos. 9, 11 and 12.

[Mr Letwin]

I do indeed, Mr Speaker; I am very grateful to you.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to ask this question because we attach a huge amount of importance to trying to open up contracts to small and medium-sized enterprises. We have launched the Contracts Finder website, which is of enormous advantage to them, and we are getting rid of vastly burdensome pre-qualification materials. Opposition Members may be interested to know that a document such as the one I am holding is what small and medium-sized enterprises had to fill out over and over again in pre-qualification. We are now reducing that and eliminating it in many cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Letwin]

In a word, yes. We are determined to achieve a change in culture, and the dictum that nobody ever got sacked for hiring IBM is one that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office is putting to the test. We are determined to go for innovation and excellence, and we will do that on a wide scale. Looking at the figures for contracting, I see that we have already achieved an enormously wide spread in the past few months.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are really far too many noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. I want to hear the questions and, indeed, the good doctor’s answers.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

What proportion of Government contracts were won by small and medium-sized enterprises in Yorkshire, and what are the Government doing to ensure that small companies in the north of England get a proportionate share of Government contracts?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I am glad that my hon. Friend asks that extremely interesting and important question. Of course, there has to be legislation about some things, but legislation has strict limits. The Opposition should be well aware of that, as they wasted £1.1 billion on ID card legislation—a totally ineffective example of authoritarianism. They also proposed to engage in bin taxes, and the evidence is now very clear: those measures would have increased fly-tipping and burning at home and have had counter-productive effects. The comparison with the RecycleBank initiative that Windsor and Maidenhead council and others are taking up, which nudges people into successfully recycling, is very striking. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that we can do—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just very gently say to the right hon. Gentleman, whose mellifluous tones I always enjoy—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The greatest protection for small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector and elsewhere is, of course, a macro-economic framework that enables them to survive the recession, prosper and grow. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken the steps that have led the world in providing a solid macro-economic framework and low interest rates that enable—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I call Mr David Amess.

Departmental Business Plans

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on today’s publication of departmental business plans. When we formed the coalition in May, we committed to a programme of fundamental structural reform that would change the nature of government. Of course, I recognise that it was the aim of the Labour Government to improve public services, to get value for money and to deliver their stated aims. The problem lay in the fact that, to achieve those laudable aims, they set up a system of bureaucratic accountability in which almost everything was judged against a set of centrally mandated, politically determined performance targets. They then used a succession of short-lived bureaucratic interventions to try to make people fulfil the targets.

Alas, the evidence of the past 13 years shows that targets and short-term bureaucratic interventions simply do not work. Despite all the new learning strategies in schools, the gap in educational achievement between the richest and the poorest widened; despite all the NHS targets, cancer survival rates in Britain were among the lowest in Europe; despite all the police form-filling and bureaucracy, there were more than 100,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour every day; and, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) has famously remarked, the money ran out.

So, we have argued for a power shift that will take power away from Whitehall and put it into the hands of people and communities, rebalancing the relationship between the citizen and the state. We recognise that Britain can make progress only if the Government establish frameworks that help people to come together to make life better. We have also argued for an horizon shift—[Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] Opposition Members will hear a lot of that term over the next four years, so they should get used to it. We have argued for an horizon shift, moving away from short-term bureaucratic interventions towards governing for the long term, establishing the right frameworks of incentives in the public services, sorting out the public finances and investing where it counts to create sustainable economic growth.

The publication of our departmental business plans is a significant part of achieving both that power shift and that horizon shift. In June, the Prime Minister launched a series of draft structural reform plans, in which Whitehall Departments publicly set out their reform priorities and the actions that they will take to achieve them, with a specified timetable. In July, August, September and October, we issued monthly reports on the draft plans, setting out the actions that had been completed or started, and giving explanations of any missed deadlines. Today, taking into account the results of the spending review, we are publishing the final departmental plans, setting out the vision, priorities and structural reforms of each Department.

These plans are a key part of our transparency agenda. They do not set out hopes for what we might achieve by micro-managing all the public services. They set out what we need to do, to manage the Government properly. That is, after all, our business, and we expect to be judged on whether we do it properly. The publication of the plans will bring about a fundamental change in how Departments are held to account for implementing policy commitments, replacing the old top-down systems of targets and central micro-management with democratic accountability. Every month, Departments will publish a simple report on their progress towards meeting their commitments—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In a way, it is a good thing that the House is in a jocular mood. I realise that the right hon. Gentleman is no longer a philosophy tutor, but I feel sure that he is accustomed to a slightly more cerebral response and deferential hearing than he is getting.

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, for that help, but I have to say that I had not anticipated anything better than I received, because Labour Members presided over a Government who acted like a magazine and we intend to preside over a Government who act like a Government. That is a profound difference and I recognise that it is very uncomfortable for Opposition Members.

Before I go on, I should correct myself as I believe I slipped into referring to 100,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour when I meant 10,000. I apologise to the House. That is an example of transparency and straightforwardness, which I hope will be replicated as we move forward.

In addition, the second part of each business plan explains how Government will give people unprecedented access to the data they need—in a simple, easily accessible form—to scrutinise how we are using taxpayers’ money and what progress we are making in improving society through our reforms. These transparency sections of the plans are being published in draft to allow Parliament and the wider public to say whether each Department is publishing the most useful and robust information to help people hold each Department to account.

Select Committees will, of course, play a vital role in the task of holding the Government to account. My Cabinet colleagues are therefore contacting Select Committee Chairmen to inform them of the new processes and to invite them to discuss the business plans in more detail in their Committees.

Once the reforms described in these business plans are fully implemented and the transparency reports are fully in place, we will have a real people power revolution— where people themselves are equipped with the power and information necessary to improve our country and our public services, through the mechanisms of democratic accountability, competition, choice and social action. I commend this statement to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her part in getting that to happen, and her council on taking that admirable attitude. One reason why we are so keen to decentralise and to give councils much more responsibility and power is precisely that they can then take sensible local initiatives of that kind to encourage local and community groups to flourish, which of course is part of our big society agenda.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to face the House so that we can all enjoy his mellifluous tones?

[Mrs Grant]

What plans does my right hon. Friend have to extend longer-term funding to voluntary sector organisations so that they can do more?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and John Bercow

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The trend towards elections is indeed one that the Government have in general sponsored, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware. Many Members have put themselves forward and are in the course of being elected for many important posts in the House. But the reality of Cabinet government does not depend on elections, it depends on whether the Prime Minister of the day and, indeed, in the coalition Government, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of the day are willing to see collegiate decision making rather than elective dictatorship. They are not only in this instance willing, but keen to do so. If I may point it out to the hon. Gentleman, one of the advantages of the new politics of coalition Government is that it enforces on us collective decision making, because we have to agree between the two parties in the coalition as well.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to be unkind to new Ministers, but answers are, frankly, too long. They need to be shorter.