External Private Contractors: Government Use and Employment

Debate between Alex Sobel and Julia Lopez

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

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

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing the debate. The Government are the custodian of public money and it is very important that we retain the confidence of taxpayers about how that money is spent. It is similarly important that we have a robust, highly skilled civil service, with the expertise and capacity to deliver projects and services over the long term and at pace, and that we treat those in the private and public sectors who carry out work for the Government with respect. That is why I welcome not only the way in which the hon. Member has raised issues about external private contractors but the respectful way in which she makes her case.

The civil service has historically used contractors, working alongside civil servants, to provide additional capacity and specialist skills and to manage short-notice urgent requirements. Where it is cost-effective to do so and the requirement is temporary, this makes sense, but let me also be clear that we are focused on driving down the use of consultants, improving internal civil service capability and driving greater value. We will do this in a variety of ways: revamping our in-house training; looking again at procurement rules, particularly relating to social value; and continuing the work of my predecessor, now the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in dealing with issues about outsourcing raised following the collapse of Carillion.

Consultants are used to provide advice on the strategy, structure, management or operations of an organisation, and where an external perspective may be helpful or even necessary. We also use professional services firms to support the implementation and delivery of services—for example, PwC supported the delivery of the reform programme for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service—and we use contingent labour to fill gaps in business-as-usual or service delivery activities. It is also right to say that the civil service itself has grown in number over recent years, partly because of the EU exit operations but also because of covid. We have recruited an extra 6,000 civil servants in the Home Office, for instance, to tackle security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing issues.

I will now address some of the points made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree. I met the leaders of the three civil service unions yesterday. I have not been in post for long, so it was simply an introductory meeting, but I know that some of those unions also represent workers within private sector contracting companies, and I will be very happy to look into some of the issues that she raised today about outsourced workers and their pay and conditions, particularly as regards sick pay.

Other Members have also raised issues about working conditions during the pandemic and it is important to say that not everybody can work over Zoom. In many ways, it is a privilege to be able to do so and not to have to go into an office. On the other hand, I am also aware many workers’ office jobs are not easily conducted at home, and it is important for the Government, as an employer, to provide safe work spaces, so that we can take into account those who are in shared or cramped accommodation.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree also talked about delivering social value through contracts, and we quite agree. We recently took a new look at social value, considering how we take into account environmental factors in how contracts are delivered, whether a contractor is improving the skills of their workforce or their approach to apprenticeships, and so on. We will look at social value in quite a comprehensive way, because once the EU transition period has ended, we will be in a position to come up with a new procurement strategy. Indeed, we are working very hard to draw that up. She raised a number of issues about how we extract value from existing Government contracts, and I will take those away to consider them.

The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) made a number of important points, but it is important that we recognise that we could not have responded to some of the challenges of the pandemic without expertise from both the public sector and the private sector. Again, I assure him that social value is at the heart of the new procurement strategy that we are drawing up, particularly on issues such as climate change and waste.

The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) raised a number of important issues about track and trace. We all want this system to work. Let us not pretend that it has been perfect from the outset, but a lot of things have been done to improve that service and we are now conducting hundreds of thousands of tests daily. We hope to be on track to deliver—I do not want to get the number wrong, but there is certainly a much increased capacity when it comes to testing and we have ironed out some of the problems that we saw around September with demand on the system.

It is also important that we understand that this process is a partnership between national and local, and between public and private, and I think that it is naive to suggest that the public sector alone could have built up this service so quickly and delivered it at such a great pace. We appreciate the expertise that we have received from the private sector.

[Alex Sobel]

Local authorities can furlough staff, so many local authority staff who could not do their normal jobs were still employed by the local authority. There was capacity in local authorities to deliver this programme. Should that capacity not have been taken up and used before going to the private sector?

[Julia Lopez]

It is important to understand that the private sector has provided the framework for the system, with local authorities able to plug into that framework. The private sector provides the national call centres and so on, but a lot of the local expertise is provided at local level from healthcare experts on the ground, particularly in some of those harder-to-reach instances where we need to go knocking on people’s doors. Ultimately, we share the hon. Gentleman’s aim to improve the service and build plenty of public confidence in it because it is such a key tool in dealing with the pandemic.

The hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) is a PCS union member, and I met his leader yesterday. It is important to remember that successive Governments of all colours use outsourcers. In a previous life, I was a councillor in Tower Hamlets. There were a number of outsourced contracts there and not very impressive in-house management of them, I should say. Outsourcers can provide a lot of expertise and capacity and it is naive to suggest that the public sector alone has all that capacity and expertise in house. Let us not do down some of the people who work for those contractors and bring a lot of capacity and sense to the system.

Both the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) seem to take an ideological view that effectively says private bad, public good. That is a great shame because it fails to acknowledge what the private sector can provide for public good.

UK Basketball

Debate between Alex Sobel and Julia Lopez

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely apt point, which leads me to my next point. My constituent Baile Beyai wrote to me:

“I’m currently studying Politics at Leeds University and Basketball was a big, big reason that I had the self-esteem to even attempt to study at university, especially growing up as a problem child”—

those are his words—

“in a ‘disadvantaged’ area of London. So thank you; it’s an inspiration that you’re commandeering these efforts as I doubt even you know how much impact it has on kids, especially ethnic minorities in low income families. We face a much…bigger dropout than other sports and more funding would definitely improve the chances of young children playing the sport. Growing up I was jumping trains to go to England Basketball trials and sessions by myself, and remember at age 16 I was forced to skip the regional competition because I just didn’t have the £120 to pay for hotels. I doubt such constraints are put on children who’ve been selected to a high level of competition in other sports.”

Minister, do we really want our inner-city kids driven to petty criminality in order to follow their dreams, or to abandon their dreams, as they cannot pay for hotels?

UK Sport recently announced £226 million for Olympic eligible sports until 2021. That includes £14.5 million for equestrian sports, £25.5 million for sailing and more than £6 million for modern pentathlon—a sport that requires a horse, a sword and a gun. None of those sports is within reach of the young people we see playing basketball. We are funding elite sports for elites.

Temi Fagbenle, who top scored for GB in last week’s win against Israel, started playing in Haringey. That ultimately led her to a scholarship at Harvard University and a contract in the Women’s National Basketball Association, where she plays for Minnesota.

Last week, Temi said:

“I feel…they are literally trying to rip the GB shirts off my and my team-mates’ backs. Just look at the athletes on the basketball teams—a lot of us are from ethnic minorities and/or grew up in working-class households. The youth from these groups, and young people in general, aren’t inspired by obscure sports that are completely alien to them, they are inspired by athletes they can relate with.”

This is the sad reality of where we are. The next game for Temi and the other women players will be in November, but will they be able to play that game and qualify for EuroBasket, as we have heard they are on course to do?

I think it is important, Mr Bailey, that you know the background to how we got here. In 2006, British Basketball was formed, as required by the International Basketball Federation—FIBA—in conjunction with the British Olympic Association, to guide our teams through to London 2012, where we qualified as hosts. Since then, basketball has continued to grow in popularity, with more and more players giving us our best ever base for the future, but funding has eroded and is almost entirely at risk, although our elite teams have continued to improve, especially the women, who finished a best ever ninth at the 2013 EuroBasket tournament. The two main funding bodies in this country are Sport England and UK Sport, but at present our GB teams do not receive funding from UK Sport because basketball does not meet the current performance policy. Sport England provides £4.7 million for the grassroots game in England and allocates £1.4 million for talent, with £150,000 of Sport England’s talent grant in 2018, plus a further indicative investment of up to £150,000 from that talent grant, to ensure that the men’s and women’s under-16, under-18 and under-20 age group teams can compete this summer, but there is nothing for the senior teams.

This temporary reallocation of funds is subject to final approval by Sport England, and I understand that it will be confirmed shortly. Grateful as I am to Sport England, that is not enough to sustain our GB teams, and if no more funding comes forward, we will have to withdraw all our teams. The sum of £1 million a year is enough to sustain all of elite basketball in the UK. The funding that basketball received was equivalent to just £10,000 per player, while so-called—but not guaranteed—podium team sports received £40,000 per player in the old funding regime.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s securing this debate, not least because I wake up every day to the NBA highlights on YouTube as my husband is such a fan. One reason for the great appeal of basketball is that it is a game of the street. That is particularly the case in London, where outdoor courts such as Clapham Common, Turnpike Lane and Bethnal Green can act as a social lubricant for people from all backgrounds. Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that we need not just to focus on funding costly leagues and indoor basketball courts, but to get local authorities to fund outdoor courts properly and get proper facilities for people?

[Alex Sobel]

Absolutely. I am very grateful for the hon. Lady’s point, because I am not going into great depth about facilities, but we absolutely do need facilities, and I will come to the outdoor game later in my speech.

I am sure that most hon. Members think of basketball as a five-player game indoors, but they will also remember the classic movie “White Men Can’t Jump”, starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, in which Woody and Wesley play outdoors on a half-court, two on two. That will not quite become an Olympic sport, but if we add a player on each side, it will: 3 on 3 basketball will debut at the Tokyo 2020 games, in just two years’ time, as a full Olympic sport—an Olympic sport eligible for UK Sport funding. No one knows who the medal challengers will be or what our Olympic potential is.

The game 3 on 3 is played in every urban constituency, as the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) has pointed out. In fact, 3 on 3 basketball is the largest urban team sport in the world, according to a study commissioned by the International Olympic Committee. The Netherlands base their youth basketball development programme on the 3 on 3 style of play, and as a result the country is ranked second across all genders and ages. Ball Out 3x3 is pioneering 3 on 3 basketball in the UK and is endorsed by FIBA 3x3. It will deliver the nation’s biggest 3 on 3 tournament this summer. We will become one of the leaders of 3 on 3 if this continues.

In the United States, rapper Ice Cube has teamed up with former NBA stars to launch a 3 on 3 league. Cube said:

“It was to bring a style of basketball that I grew up playing, watching, and loving, which is 3-on-3 basketball.”

That is the same urban sport that our young people play outdoors. As this is the first debate I have led in Westminster Hall, I hope you will indulge me, Mr Bailey, and let me quote from the Ice Cube song, “It Was a Good Day”, which is about a day in south-central Los Angeles, a very urban and difficult area. It was a day without any gang violence, air pollution or police harassment. He raps:

“Which park, are y’all playin’ basketball?

Get me on the court and I’m trouble”.

The game 3 on 3 is global, urban and an Olympic sport. It has a bright future, but we are not even considering its potential for our own programme. UK Sport revealed in its annual review that athletes in para taekwondo, para badminton, sport climbing, karate and BMX freestyle will receive national lottery support, as they enter the Olympic and Paralympic programme for the first time, but not 3 on 3.

GB Basketball wrote to UK Sport in June last year seeking a meeting about a 3 on 3 programme, but a meeting did not take place until January this year. GB Basketball has asked for help, as it needs expertise to research the position of the 3 on 3 game and strategic support for 3 on 3. I am sure that UK Sport will say that GB Basketball did not apply, which is true, but it took six months for UK Sport to engage with GB Basketball, and support was not forthcoming to put in a comprehensive application for Olympic funding. GB Basketball is waiting for UK Sport to confirm that it will support it in the process. We are missing an opportunity with 3 on 3. However, if we do fund it, we still need to keep our elite basketball teams on the court.