Oral Answers to Questions — Cabinet Office – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 25 June 2014.
Nick Smith
Labour, Blaenau Gwent
11:30,
25 June 2014
What recent progress he has made on the Government’s efficiency agenda.
Henry Smith
Conservative, Crawley
What progress he has made on his programme of savings through efficiency and reform of central Government.
Charlie Elphicke
Conservative, Dover
What estimate he has made of the savings arising from measures to increase departmental efficiency; and if he will make a statement.
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
On
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
Earlier this week, the MOJ announced its plans to take forward the agreed plans on shared services, which were first put forward under the Labour Government in 2004 but did not begin to be implemented until 2012. There are major efficiency savings to be made. I am sure that SSCL—Shared Services Connected Ltd—the shared service company the MOJ proposes to use, will look carefully at all the facilities and will want to concentrate activity at the most effective and efficient ones, and I see absolutely no reason why Newport’s should not be among those.
Henry Smith
Conservative, Crawley
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his answer and for the significant amounts of taxpayer money that the Cabinet Office is saving. What role can greater digitisation play in obtaining further efficiencies?
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
Moving public services online has a major part to play, both in making services more convenient and designed around the needs of the user rather than the convenience of the Government, and in making major savings. Typically, the cost of an online transaction is about one fiftieth of the cost of the transaction being done face to face, but for those people who are not online there will always be an assisted digital option.
Charlie Elphicke
Conservative, Dover
Does the size of the savings being made not highlight the truly galactic waste of money by the previous Labour Government? Will my right hon. Friend set out his vision for further savings in the future?
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
No good organisation gives up on pursuing efficiency savings year after year. The Office for National Statistics has shown that in the public sector productivity remained static during the Labour years while it rose by nearly 30% in the private services sector. If productivity had risen by the same amount in the public sector, the budget deficit that the coalition Government inherited could have been many, many tens of billions of pounds lower.
Jessica Morden
Labour, Newport East
I want the Minister to understand just how fearful and uncertain staff at the MOJ shared services centre in Newport feel after this week’s announcement of privatisation. How can he justify the hypocrisy of the Prime Minister talking about the UK becoming an onshoring nation when under this contract jobs could be offshored? What guarantees are the Government offering that these jobs could stay in Newport?
John Bercow
Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, Speaker of the House of Commons, Speaker of the House of Commons, Chair, Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, Chair, Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission
Order. Before the Minister answers, the hon. Lady must withdraw the use of the word “hypocrisy”, as it relates to an individual Minister.
Jessica Morden
Labour, Newport East
I withdraw it.
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The hon. Lady is making assumptions about what will happen to those jobs which I have no reason to believe are justified. If the quality of the work and the efficiency at Newport is as good as she believes, I am sure that the management of SSCL will want to look carefully at retaining jobs there.
Philip Hollobone
Conservative, Kettering
Which part of which Department has provided the most fertile ground for efficiency savings?
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
That is a very good question, but if I were to go through that in elaborate detail, you would cut me short, Mr Speaker. There are opportunities for efficiency savings right across Government and the public sector. We have made significant progress, but, as my hon. Friend would expect, there is considerably more that can and should be done.
Keith Vaz
Chair, Home Affairs Committee, Chair, Home Affairs Committee
Serco had to repay £68 million and G4S £104 million because they overcharged the Ministry of Justice. Why are they still receiving contracts when they have obviously been very good at efficiently taking money off the taxpayer?
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The practices to which the right hon. Gentleman refers date from contracts let by the previous Government, and those malpractices had been going on for many years. It is because the quality of contract management in Government is at last beginning to improve that those malpractices came to light at all. Therefore, the taxpayer was able to be recompensed for the money that had been wrongly pumped out of the door during that time. We are making progress on this, but again there is more to be done.
Chi Onwurah
Shadow Minister (Cabinet Office)
The Minister boasts that his efficiency agenda is cutting hundreds of millions of pounds from Government IT spend, but figures that we have seen show that IT spend is flat overall, and has in his Department and others, including the universal credit maxed out Department for Work and Pensions, risen massively between 30% and 70%. Will the Minister confirm that IT spend is not falling, and accept that it is his lack of leadership in allowing continuing turf wars between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Cabinet Office and DWP that is preventing the IT transformation that we need?
Francis Maude
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The hon. Lady is completely right that we need an ICT transformation. What we inherited—the legacy—was a series of extremely expensive, opaque IT contracts. The Government did not even know what they were getting for what they were spending. We need to reform that. We must wait for some of these contracts, which were excessively long, to come to an end. That process is beginning. The British Government were spending more on IT per capita than any other Government in the world, yet our rankings, until recently, were falling. There is much to be done, but she is in no position from where she sits to be lecturing this Government, who are grappling with the issue.
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