IT Recycling

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Weir, for calling me to speak. It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I also thank the Minister for turning up. Our last encounter in an Adjournment debate was on the rather more controversial issue of trade union reform. I can assure him that although this afternoon’s debate may be slightly less spicy, the topic that we are discussing will nevertheless be just as important.

I was prompted to apply for this debate after recently attending the opening of a new IT recycling facility in my constituency by a company called PRM Green Technologies. As a declaration of interest, I am delighted to say that several of the company’s directors have travelled down from Cannock to Westminster to be here for this debate this afternoon. I am very happy to see Richard Manning, Paul Mallet and Tim Hawkins sitting in the Gallery. If I get any of the IT detail wrong, no doubt they will intervene on me from a sedentary position.

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

No, they will not.

[Mr Burley]

Well, perhaps not.

What I learned from my recent visit to PRM Green Technologies was very interesting. Here was a local firm exhibiting strong and sustained growth, and providing much-needed jobs for local people; in fact, it recruited especially from the disadvantaged and long-term unemployed. Yet it appears to be deliberately operating at a competitive disadvantage, because it has long been the IT recycling industry’s standard to charge end users and organisations, including public bodies such as schools and hospitals, to dispose of all their old, unwanted and end-of-life IT equipment. However, PRM offers that service for free while remaining a profitable business.

Whenever an organisation has finished using its IT equipment—whether that equipment is computers, laptops or other hardware—and wants to get rid of it securely, which is an important issue that I will come on to in a minute, the accepted practice is to pay a firm to collect the equipment and take it away. There are sensible reasons for doing so, because a company is paying not only for its items of IT equipment to be collected as people might pay to have household waste collected but for a service whereby the data left on them will be wiped and they will be securely recycled. That is especially important if there is sensitive material on the equipment, as might be the case if the computer had been used in a hospital to store medical files, by the police for criminal records or by a school or care home to store data on vulnerable children. The last thing that we want is British police computer data ending up for sale on second-hand computers in Iraq, as has happened recently.

However, PRM Green Technologies in Cannock offers all those services—the collection, the secure recycling and the data wiping—for free, and does so at a national level. Its business model does not charge the service user a single penny to recycle their redundant and end-of-life or damaged IT equipment. As I learned on my visit, the company already has more than 4,000 customers, who enjoy a service that is completely—100%—free of charge.

Why is all this important, and why have I secured the debate? Well, I have a simple question this afternoon: if this service is available for free, to nationally agreed standards of data cleansing, why would any organisation—public or private—pay for the same service? If we think about it, this process has the potential to be incredibly important for the public sector as a whole, which, as we know, is already struggling to deal with budget reductions in this age of austerity. If a school spends money on paying to have its old IT equipment recycled, that money cannot be spent on teachers, sports facilities or a new playground. If an NHS trust spends money on paying to have its old IT equipment recycled, that money cannot be spent on doctors, nurses or medicine, and if a council spends money on paying to have its old IT equipment recycled, that money cannot be spent on libraries, leisure facilities or resurfacing roads, which are services that we know all our constituents rely on and prioritise.

Let me give just one example. Many of PRM’s customers are education providers, such as schools, colleges and universities. The company calculates that it alone has saved the education sector in excess of £5 million, which is the same amount of money that could have employed a total of 237 teachers. Just imagine what that could mean if the system were rolled out nationally? If a small company from Cannock, with 28 employees, can effectively pay the salaries of 237 teachers, how many more teachers could be provided nationally if school budgets were better managed? This one firm also has 17 local authorities on its books, as well as three NHS health care trusts. Again, think of how many council staff or medical professionals could be employed if all the other local authorities or health care trusts in the UK did not waste their budgets on paying to have their old IT equipment recycled.

I have a number of questions for the Minister. First, what can the Government do to make public bodies aware that there are companies—not just PRM in my constituency but other companies—that will absorb all the costs of recycling all of their old IT equipment? Secondly, what can we do to ensure that public bodies do not waste their budgets on IT recycling and instead spend every penny on the front line? Thirdly, will he start the process with his own Department and write to me to say whether the Cabinet Office spends any of its departmental budget on disposing of its old computers? Finally, will his Department write to the other Whitehall Departments to ask similar questions of them?

I ask those questions now because if so many organisations, bodies and individuals can already see the benefit of using PRM—not only once, but time and again—why are more sections of society, industry and Government not waking up to the fact that, even in these austere times, there are companies run by individuals such as those sitting in the Gallery today that will charge nothing for IT recycling? If they did wake up to that fact, they could—indeed, would—make a difference to their organisation’s ability to serve the public.

Having said that, we need to go slightly further. We must ask ourselves what challenges, real or perceived, prevent Departments or larger parts of the civil service from availing themselves of such a service provision for no cost whatever, and therefore from providing far greater value for money for the taxpayer?

After talking to PRM when I visited its facility, I learned that the biggest issue regarding Government assets would appear to be security. The feedback that PRM receives is that the possibility of events such as data being lost, assets going untracked and personnel entering sites without the correct checks being in place presents great concerns.

People might ask, “Are companies that perform this service for free actually capable of providing the level of data security required, and yet still maintaining zero costs?” To do so, all of a company’s staff would need to be vetted to BS7858 standards. Its premises would need to protected by several layers of physical security, including two external rings of steel, 24-hour security guards, CCTV monitoring 24 hours a day, monitored alarm systems, internal access control and interior steel cages that are protected 24 hours a day. All that security is needed to ensure that the data remain secure once they have been collected from an organisation and before they are deleted and wiped. A company would need to destroy data assets using Government-approved software and devices, as well as special shredding techniques. Its vehicles would need to be fully liveried, satellite-tracked and have CCTV on board, to further protect the assets that the company carries on behalf of its service users. Surely a company cannot do all of that without charging its customers. Well, companies can and do. PRM does all that, and other companies around the country do it too. Quite simply, there is no catch. And if PRM and other companies can do that, concerns about data security need not be valid and need not be a reason to continue with existing paid-for IT collection contracts.

How does PRM manage to offer such a service? It does so because it extracts every little bit of residual value from every kilogram of every item that it collects and processes, and because it has chosen to model its business in this way it ensures that it extracts maximum value from IT equipment, therefore guaranteeing minimum waste and landfill. If a company has to absorb its own collection costs, not least the petrol and the vans, let alone the infrastructure that I have described, it makes sure that it extracts every bit of residual value from every kilogram of every item of IT equipment it collects, because it has to.

However, here is the depressing bit. Although companies such as PRM Green Technologies can offer that service, increasingly Departments and the NHS are unable to respond to its unique offer. In initial contacts, PRM often talks directly to the responsible IT department or the finance department, but often it finds that current contracts blanket-cover all aspects of a service, otherwise known as the dreaded outsourcing, or facilities management. By way of a total tangent, these are the same sort of all-inclusive outsourced contracts that led to the TV chef, James Martin, discovering that Welsh hospitals could not buy Welsh lamb to serve to their patients, because their outsourced contractor bought all its lamb from New Zealand, even though lambs were literally grazing on fields outside the hospital and local farmers could charge almost 50% less than the New Zealand imports. I digress, and that is a debate for another time, but the point is valid. Even if a Department wanted to be involved, it is often tied into a cost-making exercise.

Senior people in a Department or buyers in councils are often surprised that this free service even exists. What should be most shocking of all to the Minister is that often, their tendering model cannot cope with assessing tenders that have a negative or zero value in the calculation. Perhaps the Minister will think about that for a second: because councils cannot conceive of not paying for the service, the computer says no. That being so, we must examine the charges that are incurred across every part of Government and question the structure of contracts. Those charges appear to be part of much larger and more complex contracts of service provision, which we need to investigate to render them more transparent for the public good.

What can be done to ensure better procurement of goods and services throughout the public sector, allowing schools, hospitals, police forces and councils to avail themselves of a free IT recycling service? Perhaps we as a society need to rethink our negative attitudes to people who offer something for nothing. In this instance, that should not apply, because as I have already explained there is always residual value in IT equipment, which all providers need to ensure that their commercial model is viable. In short, even companies that are paid to collect unwanted computer equipment still need to be able to sell them on or break them down for parts to be a viable, profitable business. The difference is that some companies, such as PRM, have the social conscience not to skim extra cream off the top.

All that the organisations need to know, whether police forces, councils, hospitals, or businesses, is one thing: where are their assets going to end up? It makes more business sense for IT recycling providers to ensure that they can extract maximum value from assets without charge to the service user. If they get paid only for what they can repair, refurbish and resell, or recycle in full, it cannot be in their interest to dump or dispose of these items incorrectly, as they will not get a penny for any item dealt with in such a manner. With asset-tracking and reporting systems in place, the customer can be further reassured of their good intentions.

There is no inherent greater security in a firm that charges to pick up IT equipment, and then recycles it and sells it on, than in a firm that picks it up for free before recycling it and selling it on. In fact, the reverse may be true. If a company is making a margin on picking up the goods, they arguably have less incentive to securely recycle them and squeeze out every penny of margin, as they already have some cash in the bank simply from collecting the items.

Perhaps the greatest problem presents itself when the very people tasked with ensuring that assets are disposed of correctly are poorly equipped, through no fault of their own, to make an informed decision about how to deal with that problem. For example, the head teacher of a primary school, who deals with the school’s entire IT assets and support, may receive little direction on how to approach the challenges of safe and correct disposal of IT equipment while ensuring value for money for their school. To that head teacher, paying for such a service might seem a sensible, industry-accepted practice, not least because they might never have heard of alternatives that could mean that they could pay for a new classroom extension, playground, or even computer room.

I do not know how to change those perceptions, but I know that the Minister, wearing his other hat, has responsibility for communicating the not entirely straightforward concept of the big society. In responding, perhaps he will draw on his communications experience, and the power, leverage and tentacles of his Department, in saying how we can change people’s perceptions. Once the benefits are fully realised, many further positives can flow, with public money being better directed to the front line rather than wasted in unnecessary ways.

Even though the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive, the European Community directive that requires all our electrical items to be registered and recycled safely, has placed the onus of the cost of recycling on the producers and importers of these items, that has not filtered down to many of the organisations previously mentioned. Despite computer companies having to adopt membership of approved compliance schemes and having to pay to offset the large tonnages of equipment that they place on the market every year, there are still just as many companies in existence that charge for the service that they provide.

Every electrical item has some degree of residual value, and with modern recycling techniques there is no reason why that value should not be returned in some measure. If a service provider, such as PRM, is prepared to speculate that the residual value in any goods collected will be greater than the overall costs of collecting and processing them, surely that must be to everybody’s advantage.

There is a moral case for public sector organisations to spend as many pennies as possible on their front line, rather than paying for redundant IT equipment to be taken away, and a financial case for spending more money on teachers, nurses, doctors and policemen, and less on IT waste recycling.

How do we make the decision makers in these organisations more accessible to the providers of these free services? How do we make them more aware of the alternative, cheaper options that exist? Should we compel them, by law if necessary, to use free providers, rather than pay for the equivalent service? What can we do about the outsourced contracts that I mentioned, which tie big organisations such as NHS trusts into schemes they cannot opt out of even when they see a better alternative? What can the Government do to help the public sector help itself in respect of bearing the costs of recycling old IT equipment?

Those are the questions for the Minister, who has a huge opportunity to make massive savings across the public sector at no cost to jobs by ensuring that no one spends a single penny to recycle their redundant and end-of-life or damaged IT equipment, and that people instead use firms such as PRM Green Technologies, which is a great example of a private sector firm acting in the best interests of the public sector, taxpayers and society as a whole.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

Mr Weir, I am delighted that I did turn up, not least to serve again under your chairmanship, and to listen to a crackingly good speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley). He is right. This debate is a lot calmer than the previous one he initiated on trade union reform, although not so well attended. However less spicy, he is entirely right. We are debating the fundamental question of how committed the Government are to getting best value for the taxpayer, because every £1 we save by driving greater efficiency in the procurement of goods and services is £1 we do not have to cut from something else and £1 we can invest in the front-line services that our constituents care about. That matters enormously.

I congratulate my hon. Friend both on securing this debate and on the way he made his case. As an excellent local MP, he is a great champion of local businesses. I extend my welcome to the directors of PRM Green Technologies, which seems to offer an excellent service, as is substantiated by its 4,000 clients and counting. The company is clearly working, and it is an example of a good British business that is coming up with new solutions and offering real value at a time when we need to challenge the system, which spends so many billions of pounds of our money, to be more efficient and effective.

As a Cabinet Office Minister, I felt genuine shock when I saw the attitude that we inherited to public money. We embarked on a process of doing straightforward, simple things to make Government procurement more efficient, and it is genuinely shocking that we are already delivering billions of pounds a year in savings to the taxpayer. That should not be possible, but it is, due to the previous Government’s attitude to public money.

The debate draws out the system’s attitude to risk and how good people are at buying things. Too often, and we are trying to break down this frustration, procurement seems to be too much about process and not enough about what we are buying and how we can get best value. There is too much risk aversion and too much emphasis on box-ticking. People are not asking, “What are we really buying? Do we really need to spend this money? Isn’t there a smarter way of doing this?” If there was ever a time to break down that culture, it is now, because of the pressure to be more efficient in how we use taxpayers’ money. That matters, because every £1 we save is £1 we can put to more productive use for the benefit of the people we serve.

The debate is also about the need to create the conditions to open up the system to smaller, more entrepreneurial, more creative and more dynamic organisations. There are such companies across the spectrum, in both the for-profit sector and the not-for-profit sector. There is a similar complaint about the difficulty of getting into a system that is geared to buy from the big, the safe and the very expensive, which we must try to break down.

I have several assurances to offer my hon. Friend. The first may sound a bit motherhood and apple pie, but I assure him that the Government support recycling IT equipment for both financial and sustainability benefits. I would expand on that if I had more time, but it is a point of principle that is worth asserting. Recycling IT equipment matters to us.

We are aware of the value of surplus and redundant IT equipment. Through proper recycling, the Government may not only dispose of redundant equipment at no cost but profit from the sale and reuse of the scarce and valuable resources that it contains. We are voracious in trying to get better value for the taxpayer, and we are working to ensure that as much of that value as possible is extracted and returned to Government.

I refer my hon. Friend to the “Greening Government: ICT Strategy,” which was published in October 2011—I am sure he keeps a copy by his bed—which sets out how Government information and communications technology, including its end-of-life reuse and recycling, will be made green. The strategy includes the adoption of a clear waste hierarchy in which surplus equipment is reused or refurbished to avoid the unnecessary procurement of new equipment, thus saving money and reducing waste. The strategy also includes the donation of surplus equipment to benefit big society initiatives—I am grateful to him for mentioning the big society—and the recycling and reuse of ICT equipment components and materials. The strategy clearly articulates the value of recycling redundant ICT equipment, and metrics are being introduced to ensure that it is done effectively across all Departments.

My hon. Friend asked what we were doing to ensure that public bodies did not waste their budgets on IT recycling but instead spent them on the front line. The Government Procurement Service offers public bodies a method for recycling ICT assets under the supported factories and businesses framework agreement, RM722. The agreement ensures that equipment is recycled responsibly and maximises the cash return from the extraction of valuable components and materials, which has seen limited but growing take-up since launch. In the financial year 2011-12, and in the current financial year to date, the agreement has been used by at least 33 bodies, including schools, councils, agencies and Departments, so it has made a decent start.

[Mr Burley]

I am grateful to the Minister for his bedtime reading recommendation.

IT recycling is an opportunity that will only get bigger as more IT equipment is bought and new ways of working progress into all parts of the public sector. He may be aware that some councils now have a policy that, when an employee leaves and a new employee takes on their role, the old employee’s laptop is not given to the new employee. The policy is that the old machine must be destroyed and that the new employee, even if they are doing the same job, must have a completely new laptop or desktop. The problem, therefore, is only going to get bigger, and the opportunity for saving the cost of recycling will be ever greater.

[Mr Hurd]

If we are ever to break down that culture, now is the time, because there is no organisation in the public sector, or arguably in the private sector, that is not thinking about how it can be more efficient and reduce unnecessary costs.

There is an awareness of the importance of IT recycling, and there is a public strategy to which we can be held accountable—the “Greening Government: ICT Strategy.” The GPS offers a support mechanism to public bodies that is beginning to be taken up.

The Cabinet Office is keen to show a lead—I will write to my hon. Friend on this—but our ICT services are provided by the Treasury under the public sector flex framework agreement as part of a fully managed shared ICT service. I am using this debate to poke at the issue and at the leadership we might be able to show.

If there was ever a time when we have an opportunity to change the culture and to instil much more efficiency and creativity, it is now, because of the financial pressures upon us. We also have a friend in the process, which is the Government’s commitment to much greater transparency on how public money is spent. Down to the last £500, the public and companies such as PRM will know and will be much freer to challenge the spending of local authorities. As we see leadership, and as we see more public sector organisations showing initiative in doing things better, there will be more information available about those that are not doing so. We in this place, and people outside, will therefore be much freer to challenge inefficiency and say, “You can do this more intelligently. Look, they have done it over there.” We have not had such information, and we are only just beginning to get proper information about the cost of IT recycling across Government. That is our inheritance, because previous Administrations did not care enough about the cost of IT recycling, and they did not care about efficiency. We are genuinely committed to changing all that.

Question put and agreed to.

Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust (Inquiry)

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think it very important for the voice of local Members of Parliament to be listened to. The Secretary of State has said that he will ensure that Staffordshire Members of Parliament, and Members of Parliament representing Stoke-on-Trent, can advise him on the issue. Let me refer again, however, to one of the things that may need to change in our political debate. If we are really going to put quality and patient care upfront, we must sometimes look at the facts concerning the level of service in some hospitals and some care homes, and not always—as we have all done, me included—reach for the button that says “Oppose the local change”. I know that that is what the hon. Lady was saying, but I think that this is a moment when we may be able to ensure that our political culture is more in line with what is required in our health culture.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Many of my constituents died unnecessarily at Stafford hospital between 2005 and 2009. Given Monitor’s continuing review of the future of Mid Staffordshire’s foundation trust, I remain astonished that it was given foundation trust status in 2009, when all these problems were going on.

Does the Prime Minister agree that the biggest lesson that can be learned is that when front-line professionals who love and care about the NHS are genuinely concerned about standards of care, we should have a system that allows them to speak out without fear of exposure or victimisation?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to speak up for the victims from Cannock and their families, whom he represents properly in the House. He is right to say that we must listen to the voices of victims and patients, and he is also right to talk about the reform of regulatory bodies, although, as I said earlier, we should be careful about thinking that just reforming regulatory bodies will be enough.

My hon. Friend specifically mentioned the importance of whistleblowers. It should not be necessary to rely on whistleblowing to deal with problems of quality, but sometimes it will be. We have taken measures to fund a helpline to support them, to embed rights in their employment contracts, and to issue new guidance in partnership with trade unions and employers. So we are taking the issue of whistleblowers seriously.

Regional Pay

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I am sure that the 10,300 public sector workers in Stourbridge will be pleased to hear that the hon. Lady wants their pay to be cut.

Paul Callaghan CBE, the Sunderland technology entrepreneur and owner of the Leighton Group who was recognised in the recent Queen’s birthday honours list for services to the north-east, has said:

“I’m very concerned about the negative impact on the North East economy of regional pay rates.”

He went on to say that the

“freezing of regional public sector pay must reduce demand for local goods and services, further dampening an already depressed economy. I have seen no credible research to show that this move will have anything but a negative impact on both the region’s private and public sector.”

James Ramsbotham, the chief executive of the North East chamber of commerce, has said that

“the Government should be working towards making the economy more equal across the regions and not entrenching further disparity by reducing spending power in the North-East.”

The chief economist of the Welsh Government, in reviewing the impact of public sector pay rates on businesses in Wales, said that

“there is no credible academic evidence or research to indicate that crowding out has been happening in practice.”

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I am glad that the hon. Lady read my quotation in The Daily Telegraph this morning. As she has read out a couple of quotations, perhaps I may read one back to her:

“location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local level.”

That is from Unison’s policy paper “Location-based pay differentiation”, which was published in September 2011. Does she agree with Unison, which I understand is a donor to her constituency party?

[Rachel Reeves]

The hon. Gentleman should speak to the 9,500 public sector workers in his constituency. That number is substantially larger than his majority.

What families and businesses in these parts of the country need is not an even tighter squeeze on the wages of the people who are keeping their public services running, but a Government with a proper plan for jobs and growth who will work actively with businesses to get investment flowing into the sustainable, competitive, high-value industries of the future. That is what we need to improve living standards and economic opportunities in every part of the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

First, I want to say how grateful I am to Her Majesty’s Opposition for choosing this topic for debate. Regional pay is an issue that has been swept under the carpet for far too long, and it is about time it was debated in this House. It is an issue that affects many businesses in my constituency, and local business leaders have repeatedly raised it with me since I first became an MP.

The simple truth is that private sector firms have to compete with public sector employers, who in many parts of the country currently offer a comparative premium on salaries, not to mention better pensions and other benefits such as job security. This means competition is distorted and the private sector is stifled because it cannot afford to employ new people or employ the best local people.

There is no way around the fact that private sector pay is, on the whole, set locally, and public sector pay is usually set nationally. It is simply a fact of modern life that public and private sector organisations compete for employees in different markets across the UK. The Opposition and their union supporters are quick to paint regional pay as an attack on the public sector or a race to the bottom, but that is offensive to the millions of people who work in low-paid private sector jobs. [Interruption.] This is not a race to the bottom; it is a race to reality—the reality of what people are paid in the real world. [Interruption.] Opposition Members who are chuntering from a sedentary position should remember that without a flourishing private sector in all parts of our country, there could be no public sector jobs, well paid or otherwise, because without the private sector, there could be no public sector. I therefore say this to Opposition Members: anyone who cares about the public sector should also care about creating the right environment for the private sector. That is why tonight’s debate is so important.

[Richard Burden]

The hon. Gentleman and I represent west midlands constituencies. Will he answer this simple question: does he want to bring down public-service pay in our region, and if so, by how much?

[Mr Burley]

I want the private sector in the west midlands to flourish. One of the most astonishing facts I have learned since becoming an MP is that between 1997 and 2007 the number of jobs in the private sector in the entire west midlands region fell. During the boom years of the hon. Gentleman’s Government, private sector employment went down, and I do not want to crowd out private sector growth in the west midlands. That is why this regional pay debate is so important.

I read an amazing article on the ConservativeHome website, with which I totally disagreed. It stated:

“Many Tory MPs with small majorities need to keep as many public sector workers onside as possible in order to keep their seats at the next election…For this reason, expect Lib Dems and low-majority Tory MPs to have grave concerns about any regional pay proposals—and expect the plans to be significantly changed or dropped altogether.”

Well, I am a low-majority Tory MP, and I believe this House is at its best when it is at its boldest, and I would be greatly saddened if everything we did was driven by narrow regard for our own majorities and saving our own skin and seats.

The fact that the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), read out the number of state workers in each of our constituencies says all we need to know about Labour’s approach: stuff their mouths with gold and buy votes. That is the approach of the Labour party, and the hon. Lady did precisely that tonight.

We must do what is right for the country, and what is right for the country is for the Government to do everything they can to enable the private sector to flourish, so that it can pay the taxes that fund the vital public services that all our constituents rely on, not just fund the pay of the public sector workers who happen to live in our constituencies.

[Phil Wilson]

What advice would the hon. Gentleman give to his party colleague, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who has a substantial majority and who has said that there is no economic case for regional pay?

[Mr Burley]

I am sure we will hear from my hon. Friend in due course, and I will let him make his own arguments, but in the very short time I have left I want to focus on the principle behind this debate, which is whether there are different costs of living in different parts of the country and, if so, whether that should be reflected in state pay. The simple answer to both those questions is yes.

Someone commented in response to the ConservativeHome article to which I have referred:

“Perhaps an experiment over a 2 year period to prove Regional Salaries are such a great idea? Begin with MPs and their staff. No doubt they will jump at the chance to lead by example?”

I propose to do exactly that. I have to hand the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority bandings for accommodation expenditure—the amount that can be claimed by MPs to live in their constituency. Guess what? Yes, they vary by constituency. As MP for Cannock Chase I could claim £10,950 a year to pay my rent and bills, if I were to claim expenses for living locally, which I do not. The Member for Cambridge can claim £15,150—nearly 50% more than I can claim. The Members for North Somerset and North West Hampshire can claim £13,750, whereas the Member of North Swindon can claim just £12,350. So there we have it: there is regional variation in what MPs can claim to live, based on the cost of living in their area. If it is good enough for MPs, why should it not be reflected in the pay packets of other public sector workers?

Let us examine the arrangements for employing our staff. If I employ a senior caseworker in the London area, I have to pay him £23,000 to £31,000. If I employ him in my constituency, I have to pay him only £19,000 to £28,000. A senior parliamentary assistant can be paid up to £42,000 in London, whereas they can start on just £30,000 in my constituency. So the answer to the blogger is that MPs and their staff are already subject to regional variations in pay and allowances, and are living proof of the established principle of regional pay born out of different regional costs of living.

Let us put it the other way round: if the Opposition truly believe in national pay bargaining and public sector salaries being set nationally, will they intervene on me now to say that my staff in London should have their salaries reduced to match those of my staff in Cannock? Or should I be able to claim as much to live in a house in Cannock as to live a house in Cambridge? Of course not. Today’s debate is about whether public sector pay should be relative to private sector wages, and the simple truth is that it must.

The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury has said that regional pay will

“prove costly to the public purse and exacerbate regional inequalities”.

On the contrary, crowding out the private sector in the regions of our country is what will exacerbate regional inequalities, and setting a higher than locally appropriate wage bill means that public sector money is not allocated as effectively as it could be within local areas. I noted that she did not reply to the quote in my intervention, so I will repeat it to her now. Unison has said in its location-based pay differentiation paper of September 2011 that

“location-based pay systems offer increased flexibility and a systematic approach to addressing recruitment and retention issues at a local level.”

Government Members agree with Unison in that analysis, and I shall be interested to hear whether any Labour Members, many of whom will doubtless be taking donations from Unison to their constituency Labour parties, also do.

The Government are right to look at more local, market-facing pay and to end the anomaly of national pay bargaining—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I call Russell Brown.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh]

That is my next point, because the only good reason for taking forward the approach would be if it was thought that it would improve private sector job opportunities in the poor regions on the basis that public sector jobs appear to be relatively well paid and crowd out private sector employment. If that is happening, one piece of essential evidence—one killer fact—is needed to show that, but it is not differences in the rates of pay in the two sectors, because that reflects a range of things such as job profiles and qualifications. We need evidence to show that as the number of public sector jobs increased in such regions, the number of unfilled vacancies for comparable employment in the private sector grew. That would be the clinching fact, but there is no such evidence. In fact, vacancies in the public sector in the north take longer to fill, because 50% of them are out for eight or more weeks compared with 15% in the private sector. Jobs that pay a living wage and for which skills exist get snapped up. Vacancies do not abound in the private sector except where there are definite skills shortages, and that is because of unemployment. There is no parallel difficulty with failing to fill public sector vacancies in better-off areas.

In the absence of that one piece of clinching evidence, which simply is not there, one could take a barrow-boy view that one could none the less get away with paying people less in the public sector in less advantaged areas, and especially get away with lower pay for the less well-paid, thus banking a cash saving for the state. I understand that argument, but it would be a wholly inappropriate way for a state to behave. It would be inappropriate for the state to discriminate simply by doing what can it get away with. We do not pay women or ethnic minorities less because they might be willing to work for less. If it was easy to get people to take the king’s shilling in the north, would we offer them sixpence instead?

[Mr Burley]

We already pay every public sector worker outside London less because of the long-established principle of the London weighting. Would the hon. Gentleman abolish the London weighting and pay everyone the same as people working in London?

[John Pugh]

The special housing problems connected with London have been recognised for about 30 years. No one is arguing about that—it is not what the Government are arguing for, and it is not what divides the House.

I have been in politics for quite a long time and worked hard in my region. I have met oodles of people, worried and fretted about regional regeneration, met industrialists, attended forums and spoken to experts. However, no one outside London has ever said to me, “Do you know what we want in this area? What we really need is regional pay.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)]

Our country’s human capital is becoming more vital to our growth and there is an increasing return to skills in jobs across the world. To have a flexible modern economy, it is vital we have a functional labour market in which there are clear signals about what skills we need and where we need them. The idea, in this day and age, that we can have a one-size-fits-all deal for all locations and all performances across the country is wrong.

We face growing international competition—interestingly, Opposition Members made no mention of what is going on around the world and the competitive pressures we face. Countries such as China, Brazil and India are developing highly skilled people, and the UK’s labour force is already 11% less productive than the G7 average. Western competitors such as Canada, Germany and Sweden are reforming their labour markets. In the 1990s, Sweden abolished national pay scales and gave everybody individual contracts. Salaries in professions that were short of supply rose, so kindergarten teachers’ and tax inspectors’ salaries went up. That did not happen overnight, but the change allowed for the adjustment. Places could get the workers they needed with the skills they needed. The contracts were supported by the unions, even though they had trepidations at first. Once individual contracts were in place, the unions acknowledged that they were a good thing.

There have been extensive labour market reforms in Germany, including the introduction of mini and midi-jobs and exempting small companies from labour regulations. Huge labour market reforms and a highly devolved system of wage bargaining were introduced in Canada in the mid-1990s.

Countries such as Sweden and Canada are not pay-the-bottom-price countries, but countries with highly skilled and flexible labour forces. That is what this country should aim for, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. Under the previous Government, there was greater centralisation, with the exception of academies. There was a national agreement on teachers’ pay and conditions in 2003, which made it much more difficult for schools to organise their work forces. The GP contracts signed in 2004 were disastrous. Such national pay bargaining has made our country’s labour force inefficient and damaged regional economies.

We have skill shortages in key professions. Schools in my constituency struggle to recruit maths teachers. They are subject to national pay scales, so they cannot pay the extra money they need to pay to get the teacher into the school. Therefore, students in my constituency lose out on vital education that they would have were the school allowed to change the wage scales.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) made a good point about the private sector being crowded out. Paying people over the odds of their market wages in places where we could get better value for money is not the best use of public money. The money is not free; it comes from hard-working people who pay their taxes.

[Mr Burley]

Does my hon. Friend agree that paying people above what is necessary to retain and recruit them is economically inefficient, and that more public sector workers could be employed in her constituency with the same pot of money if people could be paid less?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Opposition Members do not acknowledge that this country’s unemployment rates are higher compared with countries that have taken action and reformed their labour markets, such as Germany. Those countries have reduced the differentials between different areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

In the short time available, I want to talk about regional pay in Wales and my constituency.

Over recent weeks, we have been led to believe that the coalition is cooling on the idea of regional pay and that we might be heading for another U-turn. I hope so, but I welcome the chance to reiterate just how unfair, divisive and damaging such proposals would be for constituencies such as mine. If there is to be a change of heart, the message clearly has not got through to the Wales Office, which this morning mounted a valiant defence of regional pay in the Welsh Grand Committee, although the Secretary of State for Wales told us off for calling it regional pay; she said we should call it “local market-facing pay”—she had obviously read the crib sheet. Having listened to the Minister’s definition, which was as clear as mud, I am none the wiser.

Whatever it is called, it is fair to assume that it would not be good news for public sector workers. The direction of travel is clearly downwards. The First Minister for Wales, Carwyn Jones, was spot on when he said it was code for cutting pay in Wales. Wales has 399,000 public sector employees, but the Secretary of State admitted this morning that she would not be fighting their corner on this issue, despite the fact that her party opposes it in the Welsh Assembly—in fact, all parties in the Welsh Assembly are united in opposition to it.

Let us not forget that these are nurses, teachers and police officers who already face two years of pay freezes and job cuts and who will have to endure a further pay cut of 1%, not to mention the Government’s pension reforms.

[Mr Burley]

rose—

[Jessica Morden]

We are pushed for time, and if I give way, I will prevent someone else from getting in, so I will kindly say no.

We have had 9,000 public sector job cuts in Wales, and there are 39,000 more to come, according to the TUC. The stock argument for the Government’s proposal is that it would allow the private sector to grow by enabling it to compete with the public sector for staff. This is clearly nonsense in constituencies such as mine, where any move on regional pay would hurt the economy, including the private sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

As with so much of what this Government are doing, the proposal that we are discussing is tainted by their incompetence and their inability to think things through and fully understand—or, indeed, accept—the perverse outcomes that will result. We have seen it with council tax benefit, housing benefit changes and the rushed strategic defence and security review.

Despite the view commonly held, the south-west has serious poverty. There was a reason why Cornwall had objective 1 status and is a convergence area. Plymouth had the poorest ward in the country in the 1990s. We may not have the dark satanic mills of the north, but there are certainly massive disparities in wealth, which will be further exacerbated should this proposal be rolled out nationally.

The Minister mentioned the previous Government’s consideration of differential pay rates. Indeed, the coalition seems to be clinging to that argument and using it as a security blanket, an excuse for its attempt to take this proposal further. The idea was not extended beyond the Court Service, and there are clearly good reasons for that.

[Mr Burley]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Seabeck]

No, sit down. You’ve had your opportunity.

There are other historical examples of this policy. In the 1990s, the Conservative Government asked the NHS to look into the subject, but after a year’s work, it could find only a 0.1% variation between the regions. That was not the best way for the NHS to spend its time and money.

Party Funding

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Does the Minister have a view on whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayer-funded resources for the Leader of the Opposition and his shadow Cabinet to meet their union funders in their parliamentary offices?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Look, this has had to be relatively wide, and I have tried to be flexible to Members in all parts of the House, but that is no responsibility of the Minister. He might be pleased or displeased about that, but it is nothing to do with him.

Trade Union Funding

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Owen.

I, too, start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this important debate. The level of taxpayer funding of trade unions has clearly become a major political issue. As sunlight is the best disinfectant, it is important that such issues are debated honestly and openly in Parliament.

I am amazed at the churlish comments made by some Opposition Members in not congratulating my hon. Friend on securing the debate. The trade unions, over this Parliament, under a Conservative-led Government, will still receive more than £500 million of taxpayers’ money. I cannot think of any other issue that MPs feel should not be debated at all. We can argue about reforms to the national health service and the police, but when it comes to trade union funding, Opposition Members feel that it is somehow beyond the pale to even debate or discuss it. I can only think that they worry that when the public realise how much of their taxes go on funding the trade unions and not on front-line services, there will be a huge public outcry. They fear that the momentum for reform would be unstoppable.

[Jim Sheridan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burley]

No, I will not.

We, on the Government side of the House, feel that the public have a right to know where their taxes are going. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton has done such an important job this morning in securing the debate on behalf of hard-pressed British taxpayers.

As my hon. Friend said, there is now widespread public and parliamentary concern about paid time off for trade union activities and duties, an issue that has been acknowledged by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and the Minister for Local Government. They are both looking at reforming that practice, known as public sector facility time.

I understand that the Cabinet Office is about to launch a consultation into the extent—indeed abuse, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—of so-called facility time. I would be grateful to the Minister if he could update us on when the consultation will take place, what its parameters will be, when it will be likely to conclude, and what the recommendations for reform might be.

The issue this morning is one of basic principle: is it appropriate for the taxpayer to subsidise trade unions at all, and if so, to what extent? In the brief time I have this morning, I want to deal with the issue of principle, because as far as I can tell, it has never been properly explained or defended in public.

I listened carefully to the response of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) to the ten-minute rule Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on the issue. It was notable that in his response, at no point did the respected former Minister—I am sorry to see that he is no longer in the Chamber—defend or explain the principle of a public subsidy to trade unions. He opened his response by saying:

“This Bill attacks the most basic and most benign feature of trade union work—the day-to-day support for staff at work by their colleagues who are prepared to volunteer as trade union representatives.”—[Official Report, 11 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 201.]

That rather missed the point, because we have no problem with colleagues who are prepared to volunteer as trade union representatives, just with colleagues who think they should be paid by the taxpayer to be trade union representatives. In fact, if I was a volunteer trade union rep, doing a worthy job for a few hours a week because I believed in helping colleagues, I would be rather annoyed to think that whereas I worked for free, other colleagues felt that they needed to be paid to do it; in fact, some feel that they need to be paid full-time to do it. Where is the fairness in that? Why do some trade union reps need to be paid while others do not?

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Perhaps I could defend that by pointing to Germany. Not only does Germany have the most productive manufacturing and industrial sector, it has one of the highest levels of public subsidy, recognising that productivity, health and safety and the competitive nature of its industry benefit from having active union-work force engagement. There is the defence. How would the hon. Gentleman respond to that?

[Mr Burley]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention; at least he has had a go. I find it utterly counter-intuitive to claim that higher public services can somehow be delivered with public sector staff working for the union rather than in their jobs. There may be case studies of union reps doing valuable work, but equally, there are case studies of union reps working against the public interest, as has been exposed by MPs and the media, so I do not think the hon. Gentleman’s point holds.

In the minute that I have left, I want to point out a new statistic. The campaign that we formed, the Trade Union Reform Campaign, has pointed out that the TUC now receives three quarters of its funding from the public purse, runs a surplus of £40 million a year and is sitting on top of £1 billion of assets. The last time public sector organisations operated at that sort of profit was in the ’90s in the privatised utilities, which were struck with a windfall tax by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) in ’97. We have to question now whether the trade unions should be subject to a similar windfall tax. They received £113 million last year and £80 million in paid time for staff. As I have said, under the Conservative-led Government, they will still get more than £500 million. It is right that we ask whether that money could be better spent on the front line. That sum buys a hell of a lot of nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers.

It is unfair for taxpayers to shoulder the burden. Trade unions should pay for representation in the public sector themselves, using their subscription income. An hon. Member said that that would somehow end trade unions. It will not; they can clearly afford to represent themselves, as we have seen with the huge sums that Unison has. Taxpayers should no longer be expected to fund the army of trade union representatives.

Trade Union Officials (Public Funding)

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

The general public could be forgiven for thinking that the funding of trade unions in this country was a relatively simple affair whereby employees who wish to join a union pay their subs and receive the benefits of their membership, and then out of those subs, the unions fund their activities, their offices and their costs, including the cost of the salaries of those full-time officials who spend all day on union activity rather than working on their normal job. Not so, however.

Over the 13 years of the last Labour Government—a Labour Government funded to the tune of £10 million a year by the unions—an insipid, backhanded and frankly dodgy system emerged which ensures that millions of pounds a year of taxpayers’ money is now being used to fund political union activity. In simple terms, the taxpayer is directly funding those organising strikes and chaos, and also indirectly funding the Labour party; and I think that is wrong.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

Could the hon. Gentleman describe to the House his interpretation of a trade union official, because that is fundamentally different from what he is stating? There is a difference between a trade union official and a trade union representative.

[Mr Burley]

If the hon. Gentleman had given me more than a minute to get going, I would have come to that point. To answer his question directly, my contention is very simple: any activities that people undertake on behalf of trade unions should be funded by the trade unions and not by the taxpayer.

Some excellent research by the widely respected TaxPayers Alliance in September last year revealed some absolutely startling results. The TPA submitted freedom of information requests to 1,253 public sector organisations, including councils, Government Departments, primary care trusts, foundation trusts, ambulance services, fire services, and all quangos with more than 50 staff. It found the following to be the case. In 2010, trade unions received £85.8 million in total from public sector organisations. That £85 million is made up of £18.3 million in direct payments from public sector organisations—mainly the union modernisation and union learning funds—and an estimated £67.5 million in paid staff time: the subject of this debate. That total is up by 14% from 2008-09, when trade unions received just £76.1 million from public sector organisations. In 2009-10, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills alone gave unions £15 million in direct subs. In 2009-10, total public funding for the trade unions was 20% more than the combined contributions to the Labour party and the Conservative party. Finally, in 2009-10, 2,493 full-time equivalent public sector employees worked for trade unions at taxpayers’ expense.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

It may interest Members to know that in Leeds city council a white paper was brought forward by Councillor Alan Lamb, a local small business entrepreneur, who said that it was outrageous that the council was spending £400,000 a year of taxpayers’ money on union officials. Does my hon. Friend believe it was right that that was voted down by Labour councillors who received money to get elected to Leeds city council in the first place? Is that not a personal and prejudicial interest?

[Mr Burley]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I find it astonishing that, in this place and elsewhere, anybody with an interest is required to declare it, unless it is that they are a member of a union that funds them and their local constituency party.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I should declare an interest: I am a proud trade unionist. I am a member of Prospect. Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit were also proud trade unionists. Although I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment, does he not agree that despite the abuse, there are many moderate trade unions around the country that do a great job in representing people’s interests? A third of trade union members vote Conservative and Conservatives should do all that they can to build bridges with moderate trade unions.

[Mr Burley]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Few would take issue with unions working on behalf of their members in Departments or other public bodies in their own time and with union funding. My question to him and to the House is: why are taxpayers funding that work?

I want to focus on the fact that 2,493 full-time equivalent public sector employees worked for trade unions at the taxpayers’ expense in 2009-10. The TaxPayers Alliance has even broken down those employees by sector: 813 worked in local authorities, 630 in quangos, 611 in Departments, 130 in foundation and acute trusts, 96 in primary care trusts, 43 in NHS mental health trusts and 41 in fire services. My problem with those astonishing figures is simple: why should we spend hard-earned taxpayers’ money on a huge subsidy to the unions? Full-time trade union officials should be paid for by union members, not by the taxpayer.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman gets the opportunity to make this speech in front of the steel workers whom I have the privilege to represent, because the regulations also apply to the private sector. The Government, who are trying to provoke public sector strikes, should be more fearful of small and medium-sized enterprises in the private sector that are not unionised, where the incidents of wild-cat strikes are increasing. The Government need unions on side to deal with the vast amounts of people and to keep the costs of human resources down. Adjournment debates such as this provoke poor industrial relations.

[Mr Burley]

I think that the hon. Gentleman will come to regret that question—I am not even sure what his question was. I simply point out that what goes on in the private sector does not bother me because it involves private money. It is public money that I am talking about.

Trade unions are an important part of society and of Britain’s big society. However, the support that they get from the taxpayer has got way out of hand. Few would take issue with unions working on behalf of their members, but they must do it in their own time and with union funding. Why are the public paying for it?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Burley]

I will make a little progress.

In the six months to March, the unions had enough money to give almost £5 million of donations to the Labour party, while paying their leaders up to £145,000 a year, which is what the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers boss, Bob Crow, receives. In fact, 38 trade union general secretaries and chief executives receive remuneration of more than £100,000. To name but one, the former joint general secretary of Unite, Derek Simpson, received more than £500,000, including severance pay of £310,000. That is in addition to the fact that the trade unions get £18.3 million—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Although Members on both sides of the House clearly have strong views on this subject, I remind them that this Adjournment debate is being televised. The behaviour of Members does not always reflect well on them. The hon. Member who has secured this Adjournment debate is entitled to be heard.

[Mr Burley]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that all Members will agree that I am trying to be quite generous in taking interventions, but I have only 15 minutes in which to speak.

In addition to what I said earlier, the trade unions currently get £18.3 million in direct payments from the taxpayer every year through the union modernisation fund and the union learning fund, so they have nearly £20 million in their bank accounts before we factor in any time off at the taxpayer’s expense. Surely they can cover their costs with a £20 million annual grant plus all their subs.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I, too, wish to stress that I support the unions, and I met my union representative today for an hour in relation to certain matters. However, what does my hon. Friend feel the money—the £85 million—could be spent on?

[Mr Burley]

The very simple answer to that is front-line services, not full-time union officials.

The legal background to the matter is that under section 168 in part III of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, a union representative is permitted paid time off for union duties. According to ACAS, those duties relate to anything including the terms and conditions of employment, the physical conditions of workers and matters of trade union membership or non-membership. However, under the same Act, any employee who is a union representative or a member of a recognised trade union is also entitled to unpaid time off to undertake what are called “union activities”, as distinct from duties. As defined by ACAS, union activities can include voting in a union election or attending a meeting regarding union business, but there is no statutory requirement to pay union representatives or members for time spent on union activities. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) is chuntering from a sedentary position, but I cannot hear what he is saying.

Union duties and union activities both fall under the remit of a union representative. Some union representatives are therefore currently being paid for undertaking both activities and duties, and I think that is wrong.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Burley]

I will give way in a minute.

In addition, union learning representatives are entitled to paid time off for duties including analysing learning or training needs, providing information about learning and training matters, arranging learning or training or promoting the values of learning and training. I ask the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, who is chuntering, is not all that the job of the human resources department?

In 2004—[Interruption.] Just be quiet. In 2004, the Labour Government made a commitment to boost the number of union learning representatives in the work force to 20,000, a threefold increase. The upshot is that a significant number of union representatives—nearly 2,500 full-time equivalents—are fully paid for by public funds. That means that the trade unions themselves do not bear their own representation costs.

[Phil Wilson]

Speaking as somebody who in the early 1980s was a member of the Civil and Public Services Association and received facility time to work as a trade union representative, may I say that where I worked was 90%-plus union organised, and we did not have any strikes? We had a great working relationship in the building, because we could sit down and talk through problems with the management, who enjoyed it. If we started where the hon. Gentleman wants, we would end up where part of my union ended up. In 1984, the CPSA was banned from GCHQ—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Mr Wharton, I am sure that everybody is aware of what interests they should be declaring when they participate in any debate. That applies to an Adjournment debate, which is normally the property of the Member who has secured it.

[Mr Burley]

I have forgotten part of the point that the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) made, but I simply say that the unions are entitled to do what they like, and I am sure a lot of what he did was very good work. My point is that they should do it on their own time and it should be paid for by themselves, not by the taxpayer.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Burley]

I will in just one minute.

The upshot of all the extra money provided to the unions is that a huge amount of money is freed up, whether from the direct grants or the union fees, that the unions can use on political campaigns. If their other costs are paid at the taxpayer’s expense, the unions can use the rest of their income for political activities.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Burley]

I will not give way.

I would be grateful if the Minister could address the distinction between paid time off for union duties and unpaid time off for union activities. What are the Government doing about union officials who play the system and use their paid time off for political activities?

Further, are the Government planning to mandate public bodies to record more accurately what time is taken off for political activities, which should not be funded by the taxpayer? We know from a written answer from the Department for Communities and Local Government that public bodies do not even bother recording union time accurately.

[Anna Soubry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Burley]

I will just read this out and then give way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

“if he will issue guidance to local authorities on the use of (a) facilities, (b) resources and (c) staffing time for trade union duties and activities.”

The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), replied:

“The TUC have estimated that there are 200,000 union representatives in workplaces across the United Kingdom. Information on the amounts spent on paid time”

on

“the provision of facilities for trade union officials in the public sector is not widely recorded or transparent…Estimates have suggested that…‘facility time’ is more prevalent in the civil service than the rest of the public sector and the private sector, with civil service departments spending, on average, 0.2% of annual pay…on facility time, compared to 0.14% in the”

whole public sector and just

“0.04% in the private sector...We would actively encourage local authorities to reduce the amount of facility time to the norm of private sector levels.”—[Official Report, 25 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 126W-27W.]

[Anna Soubry]

I hope that as a shop steward I represented my members with integrity, vigour and some success. I never took a single penny piece from the public purse. Does my hon. Friend, who has so commendably introduced this Adjournment debate, agree that unions would advance their cause if they stopped taking public money? If they did that, more people might join them because they would not be seen as extensions of the Labour party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burley]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is the point that I was trying to make. My direct question to the Government is this: are they willing to go further and change the 1992 Act, so that trade unions should fund all their activities from their subs? There should be no taxpayer subsidy for those who take time off to spend on union activity.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Mr Burley]

I will not give way.

That would be many people’s preference. By way of an example, the excellent, independent and non-taxpayer funded campaigning website order-order, or the Guido Fawkes blog, has been highlighting the practice of paying union officials out of the taxpayer purse. Following its campaign, full-time taxpayer-funded trade union officials have become known as “Pilgrims” in the media, after Paul Staines exposed one such full-time union rep named Jane Pilgrim as a full-time trade union organiser working in the NHS for Unison. She came to public attention in 2011 after criticising the Government’s health policies. Despite being billed as a nurse, she was found to be a full-time trade union official, being paid £40,000 by the hospital. She is now under investigation by both St George’s hospital and Unison for running a private health consultancy—called The Pilgrim Way—on the side, creating a conflict of interests.

As the website states:

“There is no justification for the taxpayer paying a lobbying organisation to fight for an unsustainable mess in the interests of a vocal minority group. We don’t pay the arms dealers and the tobacco lobbyists’ staffing bills”.

Let us consider this classic example, which was flagged up by none other than the black country’s Express and Star:

“Judy Foster…is employed as an administration officer by the fire service…But for the past seven years the Labour councillor has been devoting all her working time to Unison, representing 280 fire workers…The fire service has now insisted that Councillor Foster…spends half her…time…on fire service duties and half with the union…But Unison has appealed against the offer and says her union work should be full time and funded entirely by the taxpayer.”

My question is why and on what grounds?

[Jim Sheridan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. As a proud member of Unite the Union and the chair of the Unite parliamentary group, I am inviting the hon. Gentleman to come along to our group and tell us where we are going wrong. One of the main factors in a trade union official’s job is identifying and preventing health and safety problems in the workplace—not the office, the workplace. Has he factored in any of the figures from the TaxPayers Alliance?

[Mr Burley]

My direct answer to the hon. Gentleman is to ask what he thinks the human resources department or the Health and Safety Executive are for. Public sector organisations have those people, so there is total duplication.

[Ian Murray]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burley]

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) just asked what has gone wrong, and I will tell him. The Express and Star continued:

“Councillor Foster, who was elected in 1998, already picks up £9,300 in allowances from Dudley Council along with £14,475 as vice chairman of the West Midlands Police Authority. With her £28,000 job, it brings her combined taxpayer-funded salary and allowances to more than £51,000.”

It is no wonder that a YouGov poll in conjunction with the TaxPayers Alliance shows more than half the country would like to see an end to the controversial practice of public sector-funded trade union officials.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, declare an interest as I am the former father of the National Union of Journalists chapel at ITV Yorkshire in Leeds. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) attended the TUC last month in London. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) find it surprising that while representing the union members at ITV Yorkshire in Leeds, the fat cat boss at ITV, who was slashing jobs while taking millions in pay, shares and perks, has now been tasked by the Leader of the Opposition with reforming the Labour party?

[Mr Burley]

I would love to say that I was surprised, but after revising for this debate, I am not surprised by anything anymore.

It is my simple contention that trade unions should pay for representation within public sector organisations through subscriptions. It is unfair that taxpayers should have to shoulder that burden. Unions raise substantial sums through membership subscriptions. For example, subs in the Home Office alone came to more than £2 million in 2009-10. Programmes that give taxpayers’ money to trade unions under the guise of work force improvement should also be scrapped. This includes the union modernisation fund and the union learning fund.

Will the Minister explain what plans the Government have to end full-time trade union work in the public sector? Will he pledge to end full-time representatives who spend 100% of their time on trade union work while being paid their salary by the taxpayer? Will he mandate all public bodies to record accurately time spent on both union duties and activities? Will the Government go one step further? Employment legislation currently requires employers to make available a reasonable amount of time for trade union representatives to carry out their duties. Will he change that so that all time taken off for trade union activities is billed back to the union so that the taxpayer is no longer funding their work?

Finally, given that the unions start the financial year with a £20 million grant from the taxpayer, are the Government looking at reviewing, paring down or abolishing the union modernisation fund and the union learning fund? The taxpayers of this country are currently bankrolling the unions. The equivalent of 2,500 full-time officials are being paid for by the taxpayer, not to do the job of representation but to undertake full-time campaigning activities that should be funded by the unions. This is at a cost of £86 million a year to the taxpayer, with 170,000 days off for union activities and £23 million of perks such as photocopying and phone calls. In an age of austerity, that £86 million is the equivalent of the expenditure of the Office of Fair Trading. Taxpayers expect their money to be spent on public services, not union services. We can no longer afford this Spanish practice, and I call on the Minister to end it.

Public Disorder

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend has been waiting two hours and 50 minutes to say that, but he puts it absolutely beautifully. None of us in the House wants to break with the British model, whereby the public are the police and the police are the public. They come from our communities, they are known to us and we know them, and it is a very special thing that we have, but that model has to be refreshed and updated with new tactics, resources and technology, as appropriate, so that it meets new threats. One message of the past few days is that police chiefs should feel that they have the political backing to make the necessary changes to meet new threats. “Don’t be stuck in the old ways of doing things if they are not working”—that will be one of the real lessons that we learn in the coming days.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Will the Prime Minister consider the suggestion that anyone who is convicted of rioting and who is not a UK citizen should be deported immediately and barred for life from returning to this country?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are now much better mechanisms to ensure that people who enter the criminal justice system and who do not have a right to be here are removed more quickly.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, I am shown all letters that are sent to me by Members of Parliament, and I will do exactly as the hon. Lady says: I will go back and make sure that a robust reply is sent.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Did the Prime Minister receive any advice from the editor of The Guardian, from Lord Ashdown or from the Deputy Prime Minister about the hiring of Tom Baldwin by the Leader of the Opposition?

[The Prime Minister]

No, but I have received quite a number of representations from hon. Members, and quite a few from others as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point is that what the hon. Lady says is not what we are proposing—[Hon. Members: “Yes it is!”] Let me make this point as well: because this Government take the crime of rape so seriously, we have boosted the funding for rape crisis centres. The real need—frankly, the whole House should unite on this—is to change the fact that 94% of rapists are walking the streets free because they have not been convicted. That is what we have got to change.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

There are currently 2,500 trade union representatives across the public sector paid not to provide the service that they represent but to carry out campaigning activities that should be funded by the unions—and because the unions do not pay their salaries, they can spend their subs on other things, such as subsidising that lot over there. Does the Prime Minister not think it time that that was reformed?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. [Hon. Members: “No he doesn’t!”] It is interesting that whenever someone raises a point about union funding they get shouted down by the Labour party, because Labour Members do not want any examination of what trade unions do, or how much money they give to the Labour party. [Interruption.] I think that they protest a little too much.

Oral Answers to Questions

Aidan Burley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Mr Speaker, they are enjoying asking their questions so much that they are not bothering to listen to the answer.

We believe in empowering individuals, communities and families to be able to do what they think is right to improve their lives in the way they think is best.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

T8. On 26 October, the Deputy Prime Minister said that it was the Government’s“intention to set up a commission on the long-standing knotty problem of the West Lothian question by the end of the year.”—[Official Report, 26 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 154.]Today—St Andrew’s day—can the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on the establishment of the commission, its make-up and its precise terms of reference?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend knows, reference is made in the coalition agreement to the issue and to the commission that we want to set up to look into it. I am glad to confirm that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is the Minister with responsibility for constitutional affairs, will be making a detailed announcement on the establishment of that commission before Christmas.