Clause 19 - Power to require information relating to network management
Traffic Management Bill
2:45 pm
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham, Conservative)
My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) makes a good point, although his period of three months is rather generous.
Before I entered the House, I worked in the private sector. At all levels, until someone becomes the ultimate boss, one is asked for information in the normal course of the business that one is conducting. If at any stage I had said to my bosses that I would deliver the information in three months, I would have been out of the door or pensioned off to a very early retirement because they would have decided that I was not up to it. If I had offered to send them the information in three weeks, I would also have been out of the door. If information is required and it is connected with, and collected for, the purpose of the authority or the business, it should be made available more rapidly.
I understand that the public sector works to different time scales compared with the private sector. It can take six months to get enough of the 550,000 civil servants to answer a letter that a Member of Parliament has sent to a Minister or a Department. None of us find that satisfactory. I always say to my constituents that they will get an answer from me by return because it is just my secretary and I, but that when we need an answer from the Government it takes six months because there are 550,000 people helping to give it.
We must move on from that culture. One month would be a more sensible time frame. It is still three or four times as long as it would take anybody in the private sector to produce information for their boss or higher authority. It is, however, right that my hon. Friend should ask the Minister to initiate better habits in the public sector in the timely provision of needed information, as it has to collect that information anyway.