Government Departments: Efficiency Review (Hansard, 23 March 2004)

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, Sir Peter Gershon is working closely with departments to help them develop efficiency proposals for consideration in the 2004 spending review. Departments' agreed efficiency programmes will be published in parallel with the final spending review settlement.

§ Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, my noble friend will know that the public sector can often provide services more efficiently and more cheaply than the private sector. With that in mind, would he ask Sir Peter Gershon whether he recommends the establishment of a national online teacher recruitment agency, which could be run for as little as £2 million or £3 million a year, to replace the existing, fragmented teacher recruitment arrangements, which currently cost between £60 million and £80 million pounds per year? Is not a substantial saving to the taxpayer available?

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, my noble friend asked that question of my noble friend Lady Ashton in May last year. She replied that the Government do not recruit or employ teachers directly but expressed interest in any measure that increases efficiency in the system. However, surely one of the most effective ways of reducing the cost of recruiting teachers is to reduce the vacancy rate. The vacancy rate for teachers, and therefore in parallel the turnover rate, has been decreasing, but I am not resistant to my noble friend's suggestion, which I am sure that the Department for Education and Skills will consider seriously.

§ Lord Newby
My Lords, does the Minister accept that the Government cynically leaked an early draft of the Gershon report to a single journalist to spike the guns of the Conservative Party, which was launching a report on public expenditure on the same day? Does he accept that that complete disregard for the parliamentary process helps to reduce trust in government, and will he urge his colleagues in the Treasury to place in the Library of the House the draft of the Gershon report that was leaked to the Financial Times, was briefed by officials to a single Financial Times journalist and was covered over several pages in the Financial Times? The rest of us have not had the benefit of seeing the text of that draft.

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, I have no knowledge of what the noble Lord, Lord Newby, calls a cynical leak. That is an assertion that he makes. He is entitled to his own interpretation, but it is certainly the case that the report in the Financial Times was broadly accurate.

§ Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that most of the major themes of the Gershon efficiency report, when it appears, are already in the Red Book and available for everyone to see? In the light of that, does he agree that one of those major themes will be a cross-cutting approach to effect efficiencies? What mechanisms exist in the Palace of Westminster for a cross-cutting approach to be taken to examine our separate establishments for the House of Lords and the House of Commons, to see whether we may seek efficiencies here also?

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, on my noble friend's first point, yes, Chapter 6 of the Red Book indeed contains a very full exposition of the Government's position on efficiency and how to achieve it in departments. Perhaps I should have given that answer to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, when he talked as if we are somehow being deprived of information that ought to be in the public domain. However, among the more difficult public sector activities for the Government to control are the House of Commons Commission and the expenditure of the House of Lords.

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, let us return to the Government. In his Budget last week, the Chancellor said that he intends to make 5 per cent real-terms savings in a number of departments by 2008. How does that square with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury's view on "Newsnight" the other day, who said of the Gershon review: These are very long-term, speculative gains"?

§ Lord McIntosh of Haringey
My Lords, I think that we can state the position very precisely. What Gershon is saying is that there is a target of 2.5 per cent savings per annum in other words, a freeze in money terms—over the spending review period, which is 2005–08. If achieved, that will result in a saving of £20 billion. That target is consistent with both the statements cited by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale.