HC Deb 14 December 1992 vol 216 cc15-6
23. Mr. McAllion

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster when he next intends to meet representatives of the civil service unions to discuss the impact of the Government's market-testing programme in the civil service.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave)

My ministerial colleagues and I have meetings with the civil service unions from time to time to discuss the range of Government policies. Meetings on market testing take place as the need for them arises.

Mr. McAllion

When contracting out has been set up by civil service departments and agencies, will the Minister instruct them to apply the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 to those transfers, thereby avoiding the legal mess in which Ealing council now finds itself because it failed to apply TUPE? Will he confirm that in applying TUPE to the contracting out of its photocopying services, the Central Office of Information has set a firm precedent which the rest of the civil service will follow?

Mr. Waldegrave

The TUPE regulations have of course applied since 1981—there is no question about that—and if they have been wrongly applied in any individual case it does not change the overall position, which is that application of the regulations has allowed a great deal of contracting out in the central Government and local government sectors.

Mr. Garnier

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that money saved as a result of market testing can and will be reinvested in our public services?

Mr. Waldegrave

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We are market testing about £1.5 billion of central Government services. If the savings were to run at the rate of about 25 per cent., which we have achieved in the much smaller programme so far, we should achieve about £300 million of savings a year to plough back into services.

Mr. Benn

Is the Minister aware that the Government decided to sell to Robert Maxwell the Professional and Executive Register, which provides services for people with professional qualifications? The company went bust and some of the people who worked for it set up by themselves, but the Department is now setting up in competition with the people whose organisation it privatised. Is that a proper way in which to conduct a public service?

Mr. Waldegrave

I shall inquire into the particular case, but the right hon. Gentleman is perhaps ill advised to press connections between our party and Mr. Robert Maxwell.

Ms. Mowlam

Will the Minister now attempt to give a straight answer to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion)? It might enhance what little credibility he has left as Minister for open government. If the situation is as clear as he suggests in relation to the application of TUPE, can he explain why the Foreign Office has suspended programmes for market testing until further clarification is given, the Welsh Office has told its health authorities to cease contracting out while it seeks legal advice and the Health and Safety Executive has put its programme on hold because it has received contradictory legal advice? Will the Minister give a straight answer which his civil service Departments will understand and stop the prejudice that he exhibits to the effect that private is good and public must, by default, be bad?

Mr. Waldegrave

There is no need for the hon. Lady to be quite so offensive. I have tried to explain the issue to her several times and I am sorry if I failed. It is not very difficult. Each individual case must be judged against the 1981 regulations. Nothing has changed because of the Bill currently before Parliament. Obviously, it could not have done, as the hon. Lady is claiming that cases have got into difficulty under the 1981 legislation.