Select Committee on Governance of the House
Debate between Margaret Hodge and Lord Lansley(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Margaret Hodge
As a member of a committee that promoted an international candidate, of course I agree with that.
We were very mindful of the importance of the procedural duties associated with the job. There are, however, well over 100 people working in the House who are knowledgeable about and familiar with procedure. We were also mindful that the post holder is responsible for spending more than £200 million of taxpayers’ money and employing 1,750 people. This palace lies at the heart of our democracy, yet the way it is run is wasteful and shambolic. We are asking our constituents to bear substantial expenditure cuts and cuts in services, and while they suffer that we are swimming in inefficiencies. Yet, because some Members concern themselves only with what happens in this Chamber, they are willing to downgrade the vital job of ensuring best value from the expenditure of more than £200 million of their constituents’ hard-earned money.
Things are so shambolic that, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, it can take our constituents an hour to get through St Stephen’s to see us. We overspent massively on the building of Portcullis House, yet managing capital projects seems less important than who is sitting in a chair in the Chamber. It is as important to our democracy to run this place well as it is to have somebody in the chair who is knowledgeable about, and experienced in, procedure. However, because we were mindful of the importance of both roles, we held two rounds of interviews. It proved impossible to find a single individual capable of fulfilling both roles, but several of the members of the panel thought that Carol Mills was the only appointable candidate.
Mr Lansley
I am sorry but that was not the view we took. We found more than one candidate appointable, but the panel took a judgment about which candidate should be recommended. I am afraid it is not correct to say that other candidates were not appointable.
Margaret Hodge
We will have to disagree. I think a different view was expressed at the second round of interviews from that at the first.
However, we were mindful of the fact that advice on procedural matters was vital and that Carol Mills would take time to develop her knowledge and skills. That was precisely the reason we proposed that Mr Natzler’s role should be retitled to provide greater status and that his salary should be increased to reflect that status. The successful candidate excelled at interview, and the fact that she has not walked away despite totally unwarranted personal attacks on her integrity and record confirms in my mind that she has the toughness required to bring the House into the 21st century.
I hope that the motion before the House will be carried, but the way we have got here has been unparliamentary and shameful.
Health and Social Care Bill
Debate between Margaret Hodge and Lord Lansley(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
In a moment. I have just answered one question.
Why did spending more not deliver better results? We know why that is—[Interruption.] No, better results should have been achieved. Opposition Members need to realise this, because it has been at the heart of their failure in public service reform over the past decade: the Office for National Statistics said a few weeks ago that productivity in the NHS fell in every one of the past 10 years. It fell by 1.4% a year in hospital services.
Despite a huge amount of money rightly invested in the NHS, taxpayers and patients were not getting the service that they should have had. Billions of pounds have also been wasted on an ever-growing bureaucracy, taking money away from the front line and away from patient care. The number of managers doubled under Labour. I give way to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
Margaret Hodge
I thank the right hon. Gentleman. He is right to draw attention to the fact that productivity has fallen in the past 10 years, but should he not consider whether it is wise in those circumstances to distract people from driving up productivity and achieving savings by the unnecessary institution of reform? That is just taking people away from the thing that they should be concentrating on.
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Lady should understand, as I will go on to explain, that we are not distracting the NHS from the need to improve services for patients. We are enabling the NHS to improve services for patients. In her role on the Public Accounts Committee, she should understand that right across the public services, one of the consequences of dealing with the deficit is that we will have to reduce the costs of bureaucracy and administration.
We will do that in the NHS as much as anywhere else, but we will not do it in the way that the Labour party pressed us to do, which was to cut the NHS budget—[Hon. Members: “What?”] Yes, Opposition Members did exactly that. We will increase the NHS budget. As we set out in the spending review, we will increase the NHS budget by £10.7 billion over the life of this Parliament—investment that Labour opposed—and we are determined to get far more for British taxpayers’ money.