Public Accounts

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 2:35 pm on 12 March 2009.

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Photo of Angela Browning Angela Browning Conservative, Tiverton and Honiton 2:35, 12 March 2009

I join the Chairman of our Committee, my hon. Friend Mr. Leigh, in thanking all those who help to support the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office, which provides us with so much information through its reports.

Today, we are considering 14 reports that have been produced since the House last debated the work of the Public Accounts Committee. I shall do as others have done and pick out some of the themes that recur in departmental reports. Many of the reports deal with a specific issue or responsibility within a Government Department, and sometimes not only the core Department, but the agencies for which that Department has responsibility. Increasingly, common themes emerge about which we have particular concerns, yet the same themes recur in subsequent reports.

We take a Department-by-Department approach, but sometimes one wonders whether there should be not only a cross-departmental approach but a cross-Government approach to the commonly recurring problems, some of which are systemic within a given Department, and some of which may be systemic within the functioning of Government.

It is easy to say that the workings of Government should seek to reflect the efficiency of the way in which the commercial sector works outwith Government. But having entered the House 17 years ago from a business background, including working for some years in a manufacturing company, I have learned that it is wrong to assume that everything that one sees put into practice outside this place can be transposed to the workings of a Government Department. That is not to say that Government Departments and those who work in them cannot learn a great deal from commercial operations in the areas where we have identified repeated problems, not least in the management of the Government's operation.

As a personal observation, when one comes into the House of Commons—especially if one is fortunate enough, as I was in the early part of my political career, to be involved for a period in government as a junior Minister—a big difference is that decision making is so much slower in government than it is outside. Anyone who has worked in a large corporation, as I have, or even in the small and medium-sized enterprises that we often pick as exemplars of how to do things, knows that the route by which key decisions are made is usually so much more transparent. It is so much easier to identify where the decision-maker is, and getting a decision to deal with problems or to initiate a project is so much faster.

It is tempting to say that decision making will inevitably be slower in government, because a legislature is involved; issues might require primary legislation for policy to be drafted, and the procedures of Parliament must be put in place before action can be taken. All those are self-evident reasons as to why things are slowed down. However, such considerations do not always apply, certainly not in respect of the National Audit Office reports that the Public Accounts Committee examines.

I venture to suggest that one of the ways in which the Committee could help the Government is to look more broadly across the whole range of reports that we produce—within a given year, say—and make recommendations in respect of the systemic problems and weaknesses in how various management systems operate. The Government could accept that as a means of resolving such problems across Government, rather than just dealing with how those issues have affected a particular project or report. Management is a broad concept, so in talking about it I should clarify the areas of management where the PAC reports could help. Previous speakers in this debate have already touched on those areas, and they are certainly issues on which we repeatedly touch in our Committee inquiries.

There is the question of IT. So many problems have come from how IT systems have been commissioned, implemented and subsequently managed in practice. A previous speaker mentioned commissioning and whether consultants are needed. Whether we are talking about a procurement project, the commissioning of a service or a change in how an internal Government function works, before consultants are brought in it is important for the Department to be crystal clear about what it is commissioning. It may not have the internal technical expertise to know exactly what is required, and the appropriate consultant would be expected to help on that. However if something—particularly something technical or complex—is being procured, it is important that there should be access to people who can define the issues as accurately as possible.

In the broader sense of project management, and particularly as far as IT is concerned—some IT systems used in government are particularly complex—it is important to get the commissioning and procurement right. Before the green button is pressed and the work starts, it is important that the detail has been considered. Occasionally, I get the impression that the process is speeded up to fulfil a Government pledge or commitment related to policy. We can think of many examples, but I will not go into detail, although the Department for Work and Pensions and other such Departments have certainly produced classic examples. In many cases, it would have been better to have trialled a system for a lot longer before rolling it out more broadly, with all the problems that that involves.

There are many reports on the tangible procurement side—not least, as others have mentioned, involving the Ministry of Defence. It is a sorry experience to have to look repeatedly at defence procurement and see not only the money wasted—that is almost certainly one of the consequences—but the difficulties caused for those in the field serving as military personnel when the projected procurements overrun. If such procurements overrun on time, they almost certainly overrun on budget. That goes for just about all procurement projects, whichever Department they are in. If there is a significant overrun on time, there is inevitably a significant overrun on the initial costings.

Some of the problems could be addressed if there were not only departmental but cross-Government examination of how the Government manage projects. We see in some of the reports before us fundamental problems that, although it is easy to say so with the benefit of hindsight, could have been addressed. The so-called under-management in DEFRA has been mentioned.

There is always somebody who is responsible for a project. I quite deliberately use the word "somebody" because in the case of a Government Department, it is easy to think that a particular person is not responsible. However, in any system of management, there is always somebody in charge—there is a cascade system. I would be nervous of any system or project in which one could not readily identify the person who was in charge, whatever the level at which the project was being addressed. I say to the Minister that that is a fundamental point.

Of course, there are excellent systems in place to help with project management, but what is important is the combination of the people and the system. Even if an IT system of project management is used, one can see how under-management, and not having somebody who is known to be in charge full-time, can cause problems to everyone else in the cascade needed to deliver the project on time, probably including external agencies. I know that it is an old cliché, but I remember from a previous existence that projects overrun and become late one day at a time. If there is an overrun of one or two days somewhere in the process and nobody is alert to that or does anything about it, it is easy for the project to overrun by three or four days further down the track, in which case the overrun becomes weeks then months. As we have occasionally seen in our Committee inquiries, a project can sometimes overrun by years, which can have consequences for all sorts of important things associated with the project. In particular, as far as the Committee is concerned, such overruns affect value for money for the taxpayer.

I suggest to the Minister that at a low level within Departments, when anybody initiates a procurement, commissions a service or makes any change that requires management involvement, there seems to be a lack of anyone asking what the consequences will be for value for money. That should be at heart of projects such as commissioning and procurement, but somehow they are all done before people look at whether there has been value for money, as though that is something accidental that is bolted on right at the end. That is the wrong way to look at it.

It is too simplistic to say that competitive tendering is, of itself, the answer. We have seen a huge lack of competitive tendering in some Departments and some projects. It is, of course, a good thing and should be done, but it does not necessarily guarantee value for money when a project is eventually delivered. All sorts of things can happen between a tender being submitted and accepted and a project's final delivery.

There is much to learn not only for the outcome of the 14 reports, but for the Government. I hope that my colleagues on the Committee will forgive me for repeating points that I have made previously, but I find myself constantly asking permanent secretaries and others the same question. The time that elapses between the NAO producing a report, which the Government see in draft form some months previously so they have a good idea of any criticisms or recommendations for improving Government efficiency, and permanent secretaries appearing before the Committee means that they inevitably say, "We've got that in hand now. We're already doing that." Occasionally, I ask, "Were you doing that before you saw the NAO report or have you done it since?" Sometimes, they say honestly that they have done it only since reading the NAO report and at other times, as happened on Monday, that they were already alert to the problem and were doing something about it. It is not a bad thing if an NAO report acts as a trigger for a Department to take action to improve its performance. I say to the Chairman of our Committee that perhaps we should meet every day and get the NAO to produce more reports. Perhaps Government efficiency would then improve and, in a couple of years, we would not even need NAO reports and the PAC. However, I suspect that that will not happen.

I want to emphasise to those on the Treasury Bench—and especially those in the Treasury, because they have an overview and can identify some of the systemic, recurring problems in Ministries—that it is worrying that it sometimes takes an NAO report to flag up the reason for a problem and the possible remedy. One hopes that it would be picked up internally and that the Treasury, witnessing repeated poor management, poor systems and systemic problems across Government, would initiate some sort of oversight and consider how it could help to alleviate some of the difficulties.