Market Testing (Hansard, 10 May 1993)

§ 33. Mrs. Browning
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will report regularly on the progress of the market-testing programme.

§ Mr. Waldegrave
I am happy to be able to tell the House that when the current market-testing programme for the year to September 1993 is completed, I shall publish the outcome in line with our citizens charter principle of providing more information on Government activities.
I have also set in hand the publishing of a contracts bulletin which, from this summer, will announce all Departments' future programmes and then all individual market-testing contracts when they are under competition.

§ Mrs. Browning
Will my right hon. Friend ensure that when the bulletin is published, it will be made fully available to the small business community, which will find it extremely useful when tendering for contracts that were previously not available to it? Will he ensure that it is widely available and written in plain English?

§ Mr. Waldegrave
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The work that we have done makes it clear that the bulletin will be particularly helpful to smaller companies that may be interested in smaller contracts.

§ Ms Mowlam
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, since his appointment last year, his disagreements with Cabinet colleagues and his lack of political will have turned the market-testing programme into a fiasco, produced the chaos that we now see in the civil service and stalled his commitment to open government? We are still awaiting the White Paper on science. What steps will he take to ensure that when the inevitable Cabinet reshuffle takes place, after the fiasco last week, it will not result in the right hon. Gentleman being replaced by one of his more dynamic colleagues?

§ Mr. Waldegrave
One thing that was made perfectly clear by all the commentators over the weekend was that we had reached another stage in the terminal decline of the Labour party. Having listened to the hon. Lady's contribution, one can see why. The hon. Lady hopes that the market-testing programme will go away, but she will find that it will not—we will proceed with it for the benefit of taxpayers and those who use public services.

§ Mr. Ian Bruce
Does my right hon. Friend agree that many of the civil servants who have been involved in market testing have demonstrated that once their sense of enterprise is released, they are able to do their jobs much better? Certainly, the agencies demonstrate good enterprise within the civil service and the Government.

§ Mr. Waldegrave
My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, many in the public service are far more forward looking than the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms Mowlam). As Jo Rogaly said in the Financial Times last week, the Labour party stands for nothing except "the maintenance of bureaucracies".