Oral Answers to Questions
Anna Turley Excerpts(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)
The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
This Labour Government are proud to be taking historic steps to end child poverty. We are extending eligibility for free school meals to all children and households receiving universal credit next September in an unprecedented boost for children. That is going to benefit over half a million more children and put around £500 back into parents’ pockets every year. We believe that every child can better fulfil their potential if they are well fed, nourished and ready to learn in their school day.
Charlie Maynard
As many as 11% of pupils are missing out on the free school meals to which they are entitled. In many cases, they are not registered for reasons such as a fear of stigma or language barriers. In my Witney constituency, that means that around 230 children from the most disadvantaged homes may be missing out on a hot, healthy meal to get them through the school day. Council pilots of auto-enrolment have been shown to be effective. If implemented nationwide, auto-enrolment would make a huge difference to struggling families and it has overwhelming support from parents, so my question to the Minister is: what is the hold-up?
Anna Turley
We want to ensure that all families can claim the support they are entitled to, and we recognise that there is some great best practice happening around the country, so we will continue to keep the matter under review. By broadening the criteria to everyone on universal credit, it will be a lot easier for people to know that they can access free school meals. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is as excited as Government Members are for the child poverty strategy that will be published later this week. We look forward to many more exciting opportunities in that strategy to lift our children out of poverty and give them the future they deserve.
Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
Our great civil service serves citizens from across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them, and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. Through our places for growth programme, we are moving more roles from London to locations across the UK, including York, where 2,600 civil servants are already working across numerous Departments, including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
Public Bodies: Governance and Accountability
Anna Turley Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to take a moment to pay huge tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz). She is the epitome of a first-class MP and a doughty champion for her constituents, picking up local issues that people care passionately about and bringing them to the heart of Government. If anyone can knock heads together and make things happen, I believe it will be her. I look forward to seeing over the next few years all those problems solved.
I wish I could stand here with the power to wave a wand and give my right hon. Friend all the things she has asked for, but she has put them on the record, which is the purpose of this place. Ministers and Secretaries of State will hear what she has said, and I will do anything I can to support her in taking these matters forward. I have every confidence that the people of Walsall and Bloxwich could not ask for a better representative, and I completely agree with everything she has said.
Public bodies should be accountable and responsive, with democratic oversight. That is the foundation of our democracy. I understand my right hon. Friend’s frustration, because it is one that I share as an elected representative—even as a member of the Government. It can sometimes feel that decisions are taken too far away from the people we are meant to serve. People expect their Member of Parliament to have power and their Government to be responsive to them. When they vote for change, they expect those they voted for to be able to deliver.
Too often we see layers of bureaucracy building up over many years. We see power handed to unelected officials and arm’s length bodies that no one has ever heard of. All too often democratically elected Ministers—who are accountable to the public—pull the levers, but arm’s length bodies do not respond, and control sits in the wrong place. Far too often, such bodies have been an easy solution when there has been a problem in government and no policy solution; it is a case of saying, “Create another body, create another commission,” but all that does is to take decisions further away from the people they are there to serve.
I am delighted to say that in April this year, the Government ordered a fundamental review of arm’s length bodies. I am really excited to be the Minister playing a part in delivering that review. We no longer live in a world where we can simply spend our way to better public services. We have to rewire the state through system-wide reform, which is what we are undertaking to do.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for raising this issue. She is right to recognise that the existing landscape of public bodies is overly complex, needs streamlining, and needs to be accountable in order to deliver our plan for change. The Prime Minister himself said in his speech earlier this year:
“It is not about questioning the dedication or the effort of civil servants. It is about the system that we have in place. That system was created by politicians… But…over a number of years politicians chose to hide behind a vast array of quangos, arm’s length bodies and regulators”.
I am pleased to tell my right hon. Friend that we will hide no more. Through our programme of work to reform the state, of which arm’s length bodies are a part, we will ensure that Ministers have the right accountability where services are delivered, and that those public services are delivered in the simplest, most effective way, ensuring value for money for taxpayers.
We launched the review on 7 April. It is examining the Government’s more than 300 arm’s length bodies and asking Departments to assess them against four key principles. The first key principle is ministerial policy oversight. Nationally important policies must be steered and controlled by Ministers. The public expect that level of accountability. The second is duplication and efficiency. We have to root that out wherever possible, including overlaps between arm’s length bodies and Departments.
The third key principle is stakeholder management. The Government have to engage with partners and constituents—the people—at every stage, but that cannot in its own right justify an arm’s length body’s existence. The fourth is independent advice. The Government think that arm’s length decisions should be justified only where there is a clear case for it, such as the need for operationally independent regulatory decisions. There should not be any other reason for decisions to be taken at arm’s length. If those challenges are not met, arm’s length bodies should not exist—it is that simple.
Our aims are straightforward: we will drive out waste and inefficiency across Whitehall, save the taxpayer money and cut the cost of doing government. More importantly, we are bringing democratic scrutiny back to the major decisions that affect people’s lives through ministerial control.
The review is ongoing, but we have already announced a number of changes to arm’s length bodies, which my right hon. Friend may have heard about. For example, we are abolishing NHS England and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Doing so has returned nearly £250 billion of Government funding to direct ministerial oversight, ensuring that decisions about the NHS and the school system—a crucial issue mentioned by both my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—are taken by the Health and Education Secretaries, as they should be.
Rachael Maskell
I want to draw another two bodies to the Minister’s attention. Integrated care boards are completely unaccountable as they make clinical decisions about our constituents. They need to be evidence-based, but they are simply not working. Multi-academy trusts, too, are certainly not accountable—I have felt as though I was in the matrix, unable to escape or to nail the behaviours of some of the chief executives of those organisations, which have huge resources but are not delivering in the interests of students. It is so important that we get democratic accountability into those systems.
Anna Turley
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. She articulates the struggle that so many of us find in picking up bits of casework and trying to champion our constituents’ needs and wishes; we can get lost in the matrix, and it can be deeply frustrating. I know that Secretaries of State, including the Health and Education Secretaries, see that. They want to know that their decisions are having a real impact, and that there are not unaccountable people making decisions against the grain of what we are trying to achieve on behalf of our constituents. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point.
We are also repatriating the Valuation Office Agency into His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to speed up tax administration. We are abolishing Ofwat and creating a single regulator to cut water pollution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich will be delighted that we are folding LocatED into the Department for Education to accelerate school building, combining property knowledge with schools’ needs for better value—I urge her to focus her campaign about the free school she referred to on the Secretary of State. We are also repatriating the UK Space Agency into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. We are taking action on a number of fronts, but that is just the start. We want the body of the state to be accountable to those elected to bring about change and deliver for their constituents.
I will briefly set out some of our existing processes that ensure effective arm’s length body accountability. Where possible, robust but fair departmental sponsorship is the key way to ensure clear lines of accountability between the arm’s length bodies and the Department. Those sponsorship arrangements promote regular interaction between bodies and sponsoring Departments to ensure that bodies are held to account for their use of public money and operate in line with the priorities of the Government of the day. I urge right hon. and hon. Friends with concerns about particular bodies to write to the sponsoring Secretary of State about those issues, because ultimately, those arm’s length bodies do have accountability arrangements in place.
Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)
My concern is about interim officers in local government, and CEOs who pop up in one place and then pop up somewhere else a couple of months after they have resigned. What safeguards are in place to ensure that negative behaviours or actions in one organisation do not appear in another where the same individual is involved?
Anna Turley
My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important issue. Far too often there have been departmental silos, and silos within other public bodies, and they are not talking to each other. As she says, people can bounce around, failing upwards, and far too often there have not been channels of accountability and scrutiny to enable us to look at and manage performance. As part of our broader approach to public service reform, we are keen to look not just at how we manage recruitment, retention, training, accountability and performance within the civil service, but at how we ensure that people in the broader public sector are not failing upwards and are accountable to those they should be accountable to. I thank her for raising that.
To further raise the bar on accountability, we are committed to the continuous improvement of day-to-day checks and balances. A sponsorship code has been available since 2022, but we will look at it in the light of the arm’s length body review. Arm’s length bodies are also consistently reviewed through long-established lines of accountability, and through their boards and sponsoring Departments. Those boards scrutinise the arm’s length body’s executive decision making and oversee compliance with statutory and non-statutory guidance issued by the Government. Again, though, we will look at all those levels of compliance and accountability to ensure that they are fit for purpose.
As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, the public are impatient to see the change they voted for. They want it to become a reality. For them, it is not an abstract question of public service reform; it is about whether their local station has a lift to make it accessible, or where a school is built.
The Leather Museum that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich mentioned sounds fantastic—a significant local and national asset that deserves to be recognised and supported. I urge her to continue her doughty campaign, along with Linda, Adam and Lauren, who sound as though they are doing a fantastic job. That museum deserves to have a bright future and I know she will do all she can to make that happen. I hope the Government will support her in that.
At a time when people are impatient to see change, I want to assure everybody that the Government are committed to transforming accountability across our arm’s length bodies.
Rachael Maskell
Could the Minister quickly say how we can participate in the review the Government are undertaking?
Anna Turley
That is a great question. I will take it on myself, as an outcome of this discussion, to write to colleagues to invite them to submit the kind of examples and evidence that we have heard here to the relevant Departments, and to me, as the Minister responsible for arm’s length bodies, to identify areas where public scrutiny and accountability have fallen short. There may be some more formal mechanisms that we can also undertake in the review but, in the meantime, I ask all them to write to Secretaries of State and to me with those examples; we would be happy to incorporate them into the review.
I will take this opportunity to repeat my sincere thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich for securing this debate, which is important for her constituents as well as all our constituents across the country. We put ourselves forward to serve because we want to bring about change and make things better for people in our communities, on our doorsteps and in our local areas. Only by reforming the way that accountability, transparency and power are delegated in this country can we have that effect.
It is right that the public expect public bodies to be accountable, to run effectively and to be aligned with our Government’s priorities. We only want them where they offer best value for the public, ensure that money is spent efficiently and effectively and, crucially, are democratically accountable. That is exactly what we are seeking to achieve through our programme of ALB reform. I thank my right hon. Friend and all hon. Members present for adding more grist to the mill on this issue.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Anna Turley Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
This Government’s aim is to recruit the brightest and best talent into the civil service—brilliant people from across the UK with the skills to deliver the priorities of the British people. We have already taken steps to improve recruitment, with the first ever cross-Government standardised recruitment processes and benchmarks, to strengthen accountability and bring faster, higher-quality and more inclusive recruitment. Fast, fair, inclusive: that is our recruitment vision.
Joe Robertson
The Government are restricting applications to the civil service fast stream summer internship programme in favour of those kids who they deem to be from working-class backgrounds. What does the Minister have to say to the children of hard-working nurses, police officers and teachers who will now not get the same opportunities because of decisions made by this Government?
Anna Turley
The fast stream programme, of which I am proud to be a graduate, is the No. 1 graduate employee scheme in the country. We are proud that we have had over 70,000 applicants for just 754 appointments. We know that we have done very well in increasing diversity, with applications from ethnic minority candidates, women and people with disabilities, but we are falling short in applications from those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I make no apologies about taking proactive decisions to ensure that people who do not necessarily have the same social capital or relationship strength as those from other higher social backgrounds can take internships. The number of working-class people in the civil service is three times smaller than the broader UK workforce, and we are taking action on that.
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
Last year, the Government promised us that they were going to slash the size of the civil service, but instead the latest figures showed that the size of the civil service has increased by 7,000 compared with last year. It is not only other Departments that have failed to get a grip: the headcount of the Minister’s own Department is up by 7%. Will the Minister guarantee that when the next set of figures is published, it will show a reduction in the size of the civil service and the size of the Cabinet Office?
Anna Turley
Under the last Tory Government, Boris Johnson said that he would cut the number of people employed by the civil service by 91,000, but that figure went up. Jeremy Hunt said that he would cap numbers in the civil service, but they went up. The Conservatives lost control of the civil service, just as they lost control of our borders, our streets and our prisons, but we are taking action to bring those numbers down.
Mike Wood
I think that the Minister is missing the fact that she is in Government now and has been for well over a year, but the numbers are going up not down, as they promised. The Minister is correct when she says that the civil service must be able to recruit the brightest and the best, but surely she can see that that is not helped when the most senior civil servant, hand-picked by the Prime Minister barely months ago, faces a barrage of media briefings from within Government. Will the Minister and her Department commission an inquiry into the breach of the code of conduct for special advisers following the personal attacks on the Cabinet Secretary, and will she condemn the vicious media briefings that have clearly come from within No.10?
Anna Turley
We have full confidence in the Cabinet Secretary and we condemn all leaks and breaches. We undertake to look into how any leaks from Government take place.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)
The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
Our great civil service serves all the people across the UK, so it should look like them, sound like them and come from the same towns, cities, regions and nations as the communities it serves. By 2030, half of the senior civil service will be located outside London, with half of the fast stream placements also in the regions and nations. This Government are absolutely committed to radical reform to ensure that people from all parts of the UK can have a full and rewarding career in His Majesty’s civil service.
Mr Alaba
The Government’s plan to relocate civil service jobs outside London will bring high-quality jobs across the United Kingdom and ensure that policy is delivered closer to the communities it serves. However, none of the areas identified for that relocation is in the east of England, and notably, none is in Essex. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that these opportunities exist in every region, including my constituency of Southend East and Rochford, and will the Minister meet me to discuss the opportunities that are available?
Anna Turley
My hon. Friend is a real champion for his constituency. We greatly value the contribution of the 23,000 civil service staff who are based in the east of England, and are determined that the people of Southend East and Rochford should have the same opportunities as those in Redcar, or anywhere else in the country. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this matter further.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Correction to Parliamentary Question HL8160: Anti-money Laundering Supervision Reform
Anna Turley Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
It has been brought to my attention by officials that the Cabinet Office’s written answer to Lord Booth’s parliamentary question [HL6032] was inaccurate. Through this statement, I would like to apologise for the inaccuracy on behalf of the Department. The Department takes its responsibility to provide accurate information in response to parliamentary questions seriously.
On 5 June 2025, Lord Booth asked His Majesty’s Government the following question: “further to the written answer by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent on 10 April [HL6032]: what estimate they have made of the annual cost of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body.”
On 19 June 2025, the Lords spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Baroness Anderson, answered: “HM Treasury is responsible for assessing the potential cost of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body as part of their business case development. The Cabinet Office does not centrally estimate costs for departments’ proposals. The Government has conducted a full line-by-line Spending Review which covered the proposed costs of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision Reform Body to ensure value for money is being delivered for the taxpayer.”
I now wish to correct the record by providing the following response:
“HM Treasury ran a public consultation on potential reforms to the UK’s anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing supervision system in 2023, which included the potential establishment of a new public Supervision Reform Body. A decision on the policy to pursue has not yet been made, meaning that no such new anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing Supervision Reform Body was included in the recent spending review. The Government remain committed to anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing supervision reform and will announce a policy in due course.”
[HCWS947]
Correction to PQ HL8160
Anna Turley Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)
We will issue this statement at a later date.
[HCWS932]