Civil Service Reform

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Lord Beith

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree, and that takes me very neatly to my next point. Promotion in the civil service is all too often about moving to a job in another area, rather than focusing on one job and seeing it through to the end. I think that the hon. Lady would agree that the worst example the Committee has seen was the attempt to implement the new FiReControl policy, for which we saw 10 senior responsible officers in a matter of five years. It is no wonder the project went horribly wrong.

I think that there is still a culture in the civil service of being hostile to outsiders, rather than embracing the talents that can be brought in from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, which I think are often seen as a threat. When I was a Minister, I brought three incredibly talented women into the Department for Education to try to implement policies. None of them now works anywhere in Government, even though they could contribute to policy implementation.

I also think that too often the civil service and Government are—dare I say it?— exploited by consultants. My Committee will shortly be looking at the sale of Royal Mail, which might be just the last in a line of examples of that. I recognise that some steps are being taken, such as the development of the Major Projects Authority and the academy for training in project management. They are all steps in the right direction, but they are not enough and they are not happening fast enough.

Secondly, Government are just poorly organised for delivering what is wanted and needed. Government still work in silos, which always leads to unintended consequences. To take a current example, local authorities have had massive cuts, which inevitably has an impact on their social care expenditure. At the same time, we have a health policy that is trying to get people out of hospitals and into the community, but without any money to support it.

Working in silos leads to a failure to learn from mistakes, with one Department simply replicating the mistakes made by another. The Committee has seen that in the mistakes made during the early implementation of the private finance initiative, for example. If we look at how the contracts for energy have been implemented, we see that lots of those errors have been duplicated in the current contracts that have been signed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

There is a failure at the centre to recognise the importance of a strong centre. My Committee has just received a letter from Sir Bob Kerslake, Nicholas Macpherson and Richard Heaton. We had written to them about the importance of having a strong centre. I will quote a few lines from their letter:

“Your Committee urges the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to take a strong strategic lead, as the Government’s corporate centre, in civil service reform and associated issues… However, the… central direction and integration that you appear to recommend does not reflect the model that this government and previous governments have operated.”

I do not know whether that is true. I have asked the Minister whether he agrees.

The letter goes on to state that

“the Centre does not and cannot take decisions or set a strong direction on every item of the £720 billion of public expenditure… the government machine is not like a holding company dominating its subsidiaries from a corporate centre.”

Well, I do not know what business of that magnitude would not have a strong centre and would wash its hands of its responsibility for the performance of its constituent parts. Since when have we, as politicians, signed up to the mantra? It is almost like claiming that there is no such thing as Government; only Departments with their Secretaries of State. Reform, if it is to ensure that coherence, efficiency and effectiveness are delivered across Government, must mean that we have strong central direction and much better integration than we currently enjoy.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I agree with the point the right hon. Lady is making. It comes back to what I was saying about the role of the Prime Minister’s office, which often seems to get involved in specific policies because they are politically significant, rather than to exert the central management she describes.

[Margaret Hodge]

I entirely agree with that comment.

Finally, I want to talk about the conventions on responsibilities and accountabilities within the civil service and between civil servants and Ministers. The system is no longer working, and we need to rethink it. That is the extent of the complexity of the issues we are confronting. We need to deliver this in a sustainable way that will work across the political parties. The current position is frustrating for Ministers and for civil servants. We can look at the situation at the Ministry of Justice and at the Department for Work and Pensions, where I think there is a reluctance to speak truth to power, or at the Home Office, with the experience regarding the UK Borders Agency and the frustrations felt by Ministers.

As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex said, the doctrine of ministerial accountability is constructed on a basic lie. If Ministers are to be held accountable for the work of their civil servants, it is nonsensical that they can neither hire nor fire them. If we do not challenge that basic lie, we will never achieve the effective changes that we require.

Liaison Committee Report

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Lord Beith

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s work on this as Chairman and that of his whole Committee. Clearly, almost all Governments have an in-built resistance to reform. That is a short-sighted view, however, because Governments need a civil service that can respond to the programmes that they want to carry out. The other problem that his Committee has rightly identified is that it is vital that civil servants tell the truth to power and feel enabled to do so. In our report, we identified examples where we felt that things had gone wrong because Ministers were told what they wanted to hear.

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on a full and important first report to the House from the Liaison Committee and, with him, endorse the importance of cross-party consensus on civil service reform if we are to ensure more effective government. Does he agree with my Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, based on the evidence we took from private contractors delivering public services, that if the Government want to see more effective and efficient delivery by those private contractors, there should be open-book accounting, the National Audit Office ought to be able to access those contractors as and when it deems it necessary, and freedom of information provision should be relevant and in place when private contractors are using taxpayers’ money to deliver public services?

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady and, of course, the Public Accounts Committee produced a number of reports that are considered in the report to which I am referring today. My Committee, the Select Committee on Justice, believes that, just as the public pound should be followed wherever it goes, the information to which the public are entitled should remain their entitlement when services are carried out by private contractors, and that contracts should be written in such as way as to ensure that that access to freedom of information is not impaired by any privatisation process.

Public Accounts Committee Report (CAFCASS)

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Lord Beith

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge]

I am extremely puzzled by the allegation that has been made by the hon. Lady’s constituent about the veracity or otherwise of reports that are considered by the courts. I think that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that, but I urge her to take it up through the appropriate mechanisms, because it is clearly an area of concern.

The Committee had grave concerns as to whether CAFCASS was fit for purpose. We all accept that it was hugely difficult for CAFCASS when it was faced with a 34% increase in the number of care cases, but in our view it was ill-prepared to respond appropriately and the reasons for that failure go beyond the crisis created by the sudden influx of new cases. The facts established by the NAO, and accepted by the permanent secretary in signing off the NAO report, cause us grave concern. At the height of the crisis, it was taking 40 days on average to allocate fully a care case to a family court adviser. I understand that it currently takes 27 days—nearly a month in a child’s life—just to start the work that will lead to a decision for that child’s future. The goal that CAFCASS has set for itself is to allocate cases within two days, but two years after the end of the baby Peter case in the courts, CAFCASS is still not meeting its own standard.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The report and what the right hon. Lady is now saying are depressingly similar to what we in the then Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs said in 2003, which led to the removal of the entire board of CAFCASS. Does she think that what she is now describing can be resolved by changes at the top, either at board level or in senior management, or do we also have to look at whether the remit and work of CAFCASS can be refocused as part of the family law review?

[Margaret Hodge]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, I was the Children’s Minister when his Committee considered that report. We had hoped that putting in a new chief executive and a new board would enable the organisation to manage the transition to the new arrangements and provide an effective service for children. It is particularly depressing in coming back to this issue a few years later to find that that has not taken place. I agree with the implication of his assertion—the time has probably therefore come to review the arrangements that were put in place and to see whether they are appropriate to ensure the proper care of children. I take that point seriously.

CAFCASS’s ability to respond to private law cases, where demand is still increasing, was also woefully inadequate. One third of the section 7 reports required by the courts are more than 10 days late and CAFCASS also faces the ongoing challenge of an ever-increasing number of open care cases remaining on its books. At the end of September, CAFCASS had nearly 12,000 open care cases—over 2,500 more than a year before.

During 2009-10, CAFCASS reached an agreement with the judiciary which enabled it to prioritise new and delayed cases, to introduce a duty system to support the courts in care cases and to write fewer reports in private law cases. All sides agree that, although those temporary changes were necessary, they were not desirable and the duty system for public law cases did not serve the needs of children well. The guidance underpinning those practices has now been amended to minimise the use of duty guardians, but that simply adds to my Committee’s concerns about the capacity of CAFCASS as an organisation to respond to the demands placed on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Hodge]

I urge the Government, as they are considering financial cuts to services across the board, not to place at risk the response we should collectively make to the needs of the most vulnerable young people in our society.

Question put and agreed to.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are all grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for enabling the Select Committee report to be presented, but I hope you will encourage the various parties involved, including the Backbench Business Committee, to review the procedure. Perhaps a little longer is required—such as a half-hour slot—in order that the Chairman may present the whole case and then take questions, including from the Minister. I saw that he tried to intervene. On behalf of Committee Chairs in general, I would like to encourage further consideration of the exact procedure to be followed for this excellent innovation.