Citizens Charter

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. David Hunt)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to open the debate. It is only right for the House regularly to debate the performance of our public services and, of course, the reforms that the Government have introduced and the scope for further improvements.

The aim of the charter is clearly to raise the standard of public services and make them more responsive to users. The principles of the charter, which have transformed the quality of service throughout the country, are: the publication of standards, openness and information, the critical elements of choice and consultation, and the vital ingredients of courtesy and helpfulness and redress when things go wrong. Essentially—

Mr. Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne, North)

Value for money?

Mr. Hunt

Value for money for the taxpayer, and better quality of services for everyone.

Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton)

The right hon. Gentleman talks about openness and information. Will he tell me why he has not replied to a question of mine which he was due to answer yesterday—it was down for answer yesterday—on perquisites and other expenditure by next steps agencies? The Prime Minister did not want to answer the question, and transferred it to the right hon. Gentleman. As the question was down for answer yesterday, and as I should have received an answer by 3.30 pm yesterday, will he explain why, in the interests of openness and information, I heard nothing from him?

Mr. Hunt

I greatly regret that the question has not been answered. I shall immediately look into what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

I strongly agree with the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service that the creation of next steps agencies has been a vital step forward. I equally agree that it is important to have openness and information across the Government machine.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has done more than any previous Prime Minister to extend openness and information. The verification and publication of the details of Cabinet Committees and the membership of them were never done when the right hon. Gentleman was 356 a Minister, when I first became a Member. There is a series of other areas where my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has opened up the processes of government much more than ever before.

The citizens charter is clearly the cutting edge of the Government's reforms. When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister launched the charter in July 1991, he had a clear and practical vision—a 10-year programme to ensure that public services do four things: first, as I have already said, to set and maintain demanding standards; secondly, to provide public information about performance to allow assessment and comparison; thirdly, to ensure that public services are responsive to the needs of users and offer prompt and effective redress when something goes wrong; and, fourthly, to achieve all that at a cost that the taxpayer can afford.

That is a clear vision, and one that I believe has struck a strong chord throughout the nation—so much so, that it is now clear that the charter is here to stay; so much so, that Opposition parties have rushed to claim credit for what was clearly the idea of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. It is a vision that delivers practical benefits to ordinary people—so much so that Britain has become a world leader in public sector reform.

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I am sure that we are all very much thinking of him at this sad time in his life.

There is a problem with a Labour council in my constituency. It frequently either does not respond to letters from my constituents, or it takes a very long time to do so. My constituents have asked me what redress they have against the council when it does not answer their letters, which is its worst and most serious offence. I estimate that about 80 per cent. of constituents' letters are never answered. What can be done when it does not answer them, or is slow to do so?

Mr. Hunt

I very much appreciate my hon. Friend's words of sympathy to me.

The most effective remedy against the sort of local council to which my hon. Friend referred is to have a Member of Parliament as assiduous as he is, who is prepared to raise the issue on the Floor of the House. It is outrageous that that local authority does not reply to letters. Often, some of the issues raised in them are extremely important, not just for the individual concerned but for a wider application. I very much hope that, when the leaders of that local authority hear of my hon. Friend's important and substantive criticism, they will immediately take steps to respond.

As I have said on previous occasions, one would think that it was not my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister but the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party that had thought up the idea of the citizens charter. Of course, that is not true. However, it is good that it is now clear that all the political parties support the principles behind the charter—

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

Not me.

Mr. Hunt

There is still a small minority of hon. Members who do not agree. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is joined by his hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), who has said that the 357 various charters are full of silly ideas, and the whole thing is nonsense. Of course, those on the Opposition Front Bench do not agree with either of the hon. Gentlemen.

That happens a great deal these days; indeed, it has become a characteristic. The Labour party has tried to paper over the cracks, but it has not been successful. No one can sell party policies or political parties like soap powders—it will not wash with the electorate. The new biologically improved Labour party is just the same as the Labour party we have always known. We were told in its new year message that it was to be a new, revitalised Labour party, but it is no different. However, the differences within the party are becoming more and more evident as each day passes.

The previous Labour spokesperson on the citizens charter, the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms Mowlam), said on BBC Newcastle: I think the idea is a good one … Consumers and citizens rights are crucial and I am pleased that everyone agrees. The present spokesperson, the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), recently pledged to keep the citizens charter, and I very much welcome that.

However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) pointed out, it is not much use using words to praise the citizens charter if they are not accompanied by a clear commitment to its principles. As he said, one of the most important things is the principle of response—and to respond quickly and with a quality service.

Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam)

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the public very much appreciate the citizens charter? Indeed, a survey has shown that 70 per cent. of the public now understand the strength of the charter and know how to make best use of it.

Mr. Hunt

I could not agree more. I hope that other hon. Members will follow the clear objectives set out by my two hon. Friends in their interventions. I warmly welcome the fact that this is to be a full day's debate. I and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will listen carefully to all the points raised, as we are determined to strengthen the citizens charter even further.

I can now tell the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) that I have just been advised that his question was not a named day question, and therefore did not need to be answered yesterday. I shall answer it early next week.

Mr. Kaufman

When my question is answered, will the right hon. Gentleman provide the information requested in it and not use one of the two get-outs—either that the cost to public funds would be too great, or that the information is not centrally available? As he has said that openness, information and quick response are the hallmarks of his Government, will he undertake to provide me with the information—which is Government information—that I have requested?

Mr. Hunt

I always thought that it was usual, especially with a right hon. Gentleman, that when an accusation is made that is then revealed not to be true, an apology is forthcoming.

Mr. Kaufman

I did not make an accusation: I made a request. However, in so far as what I said was not in 358 accordance with the state of affairs, of course I withdraw it. I hope that, equally, now that I have done so, the right hon. Gentleman will respond to my intervention and tell me that he will provide me with the information that I seek.

Mr. Hunt

Now that the right hon. Gentleman has followed normal parliamentary conventions, I shall do the same in answering his question. Obviously, I cannot trail what my answer will be. He will receive it in the early part of next week.

As I said, Britain has become a world leader in public sector reform, with countries across the world accepting, adopting and adapting the charter principles. Last month, I opened the Service for the Citizen conference in London. It attracted more than 260 delegates from more than 30 countries—from Malta and Malawi, Norway and New Zealand and many others. As well as giving us the opportunity to share our experience with them, they were accepting this country's leadership role in public sector reform.

We are less than four years into the charter programme, but we now have a framework for reconciling the ever-growing demand for high-quality public services with the taxpayers' clear and justified reluctance to present a blank cheque to pay more and more for them. Previous Governments have always aspired to the ability to deliver better quality services with better value for money. We should take pride in the fact that we have made great progress in setting standards, providing information about performance, increasing responsiveness to users and improving value for money.

Standards of service are clearly set out for virtually every major public service. There are 40 published charters. The standards are demanding. There is no point in having simple targets that are easily achievable. When existing charters are revised, we constantly look for ways to set higher standards. Wherever possible, we do that after consulting users of the service. We shall have fresh proof of that continual drive for improvement over the coming weeks, when we shall publish a new and expanded patients charter and a new and expanded contributors charter for national insurance payers.

We are at the beginning of a new year. As Minister with responsibility for the citizens charter, the first of my new year resolutions is to see a real improvement in public services by the end of this year. The charter is not some monument carved in stone. It is an evolving programme, which is constantly setting new and challenging targets. Of course services will not meet each and every target on all occasions, but we are signalling clearly what the user has a right to expect and what each service should deliver. The result is clear, too—the user benefits, and standards improve.

There have been improvements in our hospitals. Waiting time guarantees have been met in all but a handful of cases. Waits of longer than 18 months are now virtually unheard of. It is not surprising, therefore, that, just a few days ago, even The Guardian noted that our national health service reforms have enabled a number of long-standing weaknesses to be tackled, and there is increasing evidence of improvements in services to patients".

Mr. Henderson

The right hon. Gentleman has made the point that waiting times have decreased for patients who might previously have waited one or two years, but 359 does he accept that, at the other end of the scale, there have been compensatory factors, and that many patients who are in a semi-chronic state and who previously might have waited three or four weeks for an operation now have to wait seven or eight weeks for that operation?

That largely explains the change in the statistics to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. Is not further evidence of that the fact that, overall, more patients are on the waiting list nationally in 1994 than there were in 1993? That is the case in my own health authority of Newcastle and North Tyneside.

Mr. Hunt

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The patients charter has seen a profound change in almost every aspect of the national health service, but the matter involves much more than that. He has failed to acknowledge that 1 million more patients are being treated, which is a significant achievement, and one to which he should pay tribute. He should also pay tribute to all the people who work in the NHS. They have revolutionised and transformed the quality of service for people who seek treatment.

Mr. John Sykes (Scarborough)

To help my right hon. Friend, did not the waiting list previously comprise people who wanted warts and tattoos removed? Is it not right that they should be pushed further back in the queue when priorities exist that might need more urgent attention?

Mr. Hunt

I agree with my hon. Friend. Every new treatment has a new waiting list. That includes minor treatments. Every time there is a new way of approaching an illness or a problem, there is a new waiting list. It is important for priorities to be set.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) should sometimes join me in listening to the "Today" programme, which he may have heard of. A few days ago, I heard the BBC correspondent pay tribute to the changes for the better in the NHS which have occurred as a result of the patients charter.

The Labour party, however, seems to have a propensity for always trying to find the bad news. Instead of praising the fact that there are 1 million more patients, it always looks for the one operation or one treatment that has a question mark over it, and for something that has gone wrong. I warn the hon. Gentleman that he will find it increasingly difficult. When I first came to the House in the 1970s, my postbag was full of complaints about the NHS, but that is no longer the case. My postbag is often filled with praise by patients and their families for the sympathetic and effective treatment they receive from the NHS.

Mr. Harry Greenway

I am sorry to intervene again, and I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that, as a result of the patients charter, where a doctor marks a patient's need for treatment as urgent, that treatment is delivered speedily? That was not the case formerly.

Mr. Hunt

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and agree with him. It is just another example of the way in which improvements are continually being secured for NHS patients.

Improvements have not been made just in money terms. It used to be all about just money. When we came to power in 1979, we were told that there would be an increasing shortage of money for the NHS and that it 360 would not be safe in our hands. That has clearly been proved to be wrong. We have substantially increased the amount of money that goes into the NHS—it has gone up by more than 50 per cent. in real terms.

It is not just about money. The patients charter has introduced a new set of standards, and everyone in the service has done everything possible to meet them. My hon. Friends are therefore able to refer time and again to continual improvements.

Mr. Henderson

rose—

Mr. Hunt

Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, I shall say that we also listen and so do the NHS, the NHS trusts and everyone working in this great service. We listen to the ways in which further improvements can be achieved. I pay tribute to campaigns such as that run in the Daily Mail on single-sex wards. We listen all the time and try to find ways to improve and to introduce new standards that everyone can work towards. That is why the patients charter is such a considerable success.

Mr. Henderson

I do not wish to labour the point, but it would be remiss of me not to press the right hon. Gentleman further on the issue raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway).

Of course there is support across the House for the concept of the health service being more sensitive to the needs of people. There is no argument about that. The argument that does exist across the House, however, is that much of the patients charter has been hype, and that there has been a statistical movement to achieve the results in the reduction in the number of people waiting up to two years, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

People on the ground in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ealing, North know that the charter does not improve the national health service. Unless new resources are put into the NHS, and unless it is administered more efficiently, people will not obtain the service they demand.

Patients who are identified as needing urgent treatment and who receive it a bit more quickly than before are not, with respect, the main problem in the NHS. By and large, people who are in a serious condition and who need urgent treatment are treated, but people who suffer chronic conditions, have arthritic problems and need hip replacements are not. Those people are suffering because of the inefficiencies in our health service, regardless of what the Government claim.

Mr. Hunt

The hon. Gentleman is treading a dangerous path. I do not accept what he has said, and nor would any independent observer who compares the NHS today with the NHS in 1979.

The hon. Gentleman is pursuing an even more dangerous path in that he has just promised additional and extra resources for the NHS. I warn him that the leadership of his party has laid down clearly that no such pledge can be made. He is opening himself up to a Brown thunderbolt and he will be struck down, according to the latest way in which the Labour party is run. He said that we need to increase the real resources for that—

Mr. Henderson

rose—

Mr. Hunt

The hon. Gentleman is worried. I do not blame him, because the Chamber is beginning to be 361 littered with bodies of Labour Front-Bench spokesmen who have been as dangerously irresponsible as he has just been.

Mr. Henderson

In the absence of my Labour colleagues this morning, apart from my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), I feel bound to clarify the position. I said that there needs to be greater efficiency in the national health service so that more resources can be spent on priorities.

Mr. Hunt

Let the record stand; I just hope that it will not be read by his Front-Bench colleagues.

Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is dangerous to confuse the debate about resources with that about standards? Should we not stick to debating standards? The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) referred to patients with chronic conditions, but would he not do better to welcome the evidence of a fall in average waiting times and the fact that the new patients charter contains an explicit commitment on the length of time between a patient seeing a general practitioner and receiving an out-patient appointment to see a consultant? The Opposition have complained about that, but a standard is now being set in the patients charter.

Mr. Hunt

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend has highlighted our argument, which is that the debate is not only about money—money is, of course, crucial, but we have more than lived up to our commitments on the funding of the national health service—but about standards, about making the nation comfortable in the knowledge that it has the best health service in the world and that the service will be readily available whenever the nation needs it. We constantly upgrade standards when we examine the patients charter and seek ways to improve targets.

Lady Olga Maitland

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) was scaremongering about the difficulty of getting treatment for chronic conditions such as those involving hip replacements? The hon. Gentleman should be aware that, in Sutton, the St. Helier's hospital trust can perform a hip replacement within nine weeks of a patient being referred by his general practitioner.

Mr. Hunt

My hon. Friend has highlighted an achievement in her area, but there are centres of excellence providing treatments across the United Kingdom. We should be proud of them, but our target must be to bring all areas up to the level of the best. All hospitals and health service trusts should take as their benchmark the highest standards in the service. That is what the patients charter is all about.

Mr. Sykes

Does not my right hon. Friend find it galling to be given lectures by the Opposition on standards of health care as it was only in 1979 that the National Union of Public Employees and Confederation of Health Service Employees were picketing Scarborough hospital to decide which patients received treatment? What does that say about the Opposition's standards?

Mr. Hunt

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North is beginning to regret intervening on me in 362 respect of the national health service. I recall vividly that my local hospital on Merseyside was also picketed when the Opposition were last in power. Pickets on the gate stopped ambulances entering the hospital. Ambulance doors were opened to allow the shop steward, who had no medical qualifications, to decide whether, in his opinion, the treatment required was urgent or non-urgent. The public were appalled, not only in Merseyside but elsewhere. That is the legacy with which the Labour party has to live. That was its record when it was last in power.

There have also been improvements in jobcentres. The good news is not only the rising number of vacancies but the falling number of unemployed. About 98 per cent. of those who become unemployed and become clients of the jobcentres are now seen within 10 minutes, even without an appointment.

That is very different from the Britain of the 1960s and 1970s and the old-fashioned employment exchanges which had bars on the windows. Jobcentres are now open-plan, and people are seen quickly. Two thirds of those who become unemployed come off the unemployment register and find a job within six months. That is a tremendous record for the Employment Service, and I pay tribute to it for that.

In all these ways, the citizens charter is now an established part of the fabric of British life. We expect tables detailing the performance of our schools and hospitals; we expect compensation if the trains let us down; we expect to be answered promptly and courteously; and we expect timed appointments in hospitals. We also expect effective complaint systems, and there is a fundamental change in people's awareness of how they should complain.

As I said clearly in my opening remarks, it is a charter principle that, when things go wrong, they should quickly be put right. There must be a well publicised and easy-to-use complaints procedure, with an independent element wherever possible. I think immediately of the revenue adjudicator, whose services from April will be available to those who have complaints about Customs and Excise.

The Government have taken seriously the question of complaints. We set up the independent complaints task force in 1993. It has now carried out more than 50 reviews of public service organisations and published a series of discussion papers, the last of which—on redress—was published on 6 January. I welcome the task force's contribution and look forward to receiving its final report later this year.

I also welcome the contribution made by the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, whose first report into maladministration and redress was published on Wednesday. The Committee's report is an important input, and I and my colleagues will consider it carefully.

The charter also means proper information. My ministerial colleagues and I want the public to have more information on how public services are run, how much they cost, and how well they perform. That is my second new year resolution—more information to help users to understand and compare, to assert their rights and to exercise choice.

Mr. David Shaw (Dover)

Will my right hon. Friend consider whether it would be appropriate to have a separate charter, which could perhaps be called the 363 information provision charter? It could contain recommendations to Departments, local authorities and others on how to set up world wide web pages on the Government's Internet WWW server, thereby providing even more information to people about the standards of service they can expect, on how local authorities and Departments should act and, in response to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), on standards of reply to correspondence. Each Department and council could issue a statement on the WWW detailing the time in which they expect to reply to letters. Once that statement had been made, the public would know what standards to expect.

Mr. Hunt

I welcome this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend's work in this respect. We have made a start, but this year there will be a rapid explosion in the amount of information available as all Government Departments are planning to put information on the Internet. I hope that we shall reach the position described by my hon. Friend, and look forward to consulting him on the best way to do so.

Performance in one area after another is being opened up for public inspection. Services from the railways to the courts to the Benefits Agency now publicise performance information locally, but achievements nationally are even more striking. We started three years ago with schools. Parents can now read about secondary school examination results, truancy rates and taught time. The publication of the third annual performance tables last November showed that almost 60 per cent. of secondary schools had increased the percentage of pupils getting at least five GCSEs at grades A to C.

The tables also stimulated public debate about value-added indicators to measure the performance of schools over time. National health service performance indicators were published for the first time last summer, enabling people to compare the achievements of hospitals against patients charter commitments for waiting times, cancelled operations and ambulance emergency responses.

The information revolution, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) has paid tribute, is being extended. I agree with him that we need to extend it to a wide range of local authority services. Already, every council has published statistics on the provision of home helps, residential care, leisure facilities, refuse collection, consumer protection and other services, including the police. This spring, the Audit Commission will publish the data in comparative form. Council tax payers will then know what they are getting for their money, and a new, powerful line of accountability will be established.

Another of our aims is to open up the internal processes of Government to the people we serve. Our code of practice on access to Government information, introduced last April, commits Departments to a number of specific obligations, including the publication of explanatory material on their dealings with members of the public. The Inland Revenue, for example, is now publishing the internal guidance used in local tax offices; it is available for public inspection. Such developments empower the user of public services. We have brought about real changes in the Departments and agencies that are in daily contact with the public.

364 In response to customer demand, we have put Government services on the streets. If a person wants a face-to-face meeting with a tax officer, a network of mobile tax inquiry centres set up in shopping precincts, town halls and libraries can bring advice directly. Some local benefit offices now run benefit road shows as well.

If customers choose still to go to the benefits office, the progressive introduction of one-stop shops means that they will be able to have their concerns over a wide range of benefits and social security allowances dealt with by one person, in one place, at one time. That is a tremendous advance, and a great improvement. I pay tribute to the Benefits Agency and to my ministerial colleagues in the Department of Social Security for their work in bringing that about.

Those improvements would not have been possible without reorganising the service providers themselves. The creation of executive agencies under the next steps initiative has enabled Government organisations to focus on the quality of the service they provide. The latest annual report of the next steps agencies gives many examples of high-quality service and commitments to further improvements. It is not surprising that the recent report by the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service on the future of the civil service welcomed both the citizens charter and the next steps programme, which it called the most successful reform of recent decades.

Responsive service is not limited to central Government; there are many examples elsewhere. One example is the Waltham Forest housing action trust, which gives residents a voice in choosing the type of housing in which they want to live. As a result, the trust is now replacing high-rise blocks with two-storey housing and garden flats. The introduction of two-storey housing follows a precedent set by many other authorities, and is extremely popular. Another example is Wandsworth's environmental services department, which introduced a noise control help line and a 24-hour investigation service after carrying out a MORI survey of residents' priorities.

Those organisations, together with many others right across the public sector, were among the 98 winners of the latest charter mark awards. In 1994, this scheme, the quality award of the citizens charter, attracted more than 500 applications and 20,000 expressions of interest. Among the winners were services from local authorities under the control of each of the main political parties.

I now want to move forward another stage. I believe that we must make the charter mark award much more the property of the public and that we must involve many more members of the public in the system. With the introduction of public nominations for honours, the Prime Minister has set up a system which has been a remarkable success. I want to extend that principle. I am pleased to announce that in 1995, for the first time, we will ask the public—the users of public services—to nominate organisations for a charter mark award.

My third resolution for 1995 is that I want more suggestions from the public, not only in terms of nominating what they believe to be examples in their area of excellence in delivery of the principles of the citizens charter, but in terms of how they believe services can be improved. The charter is not Government property; it is a charter that belongs to the people. Our plans for the charter mark will make that clear.

365 The ownership of the citizens charter belongs to our people, and we are handing it over to them. We will also make new charter mark awards for the best customer suggestion and the best staff suggestion to be implemented. We will do everything we can to ensure that our best organisations get the recognition they deserve, and that their successful innovations are networked widely.

For that reason, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science, and I will visit a range of charter mark winners during the next few months. We will talk to managers, staff and customers and find out how their tremendous enthusiasm can be used to make the charter mark an even more successful catalyst for improvements. I very much welcome the ready participation of my right hon. and hon. Friends in highlighting organisations in their constituencies which they are not only proud of, but believe deserve recognition. I hope that, helped by their constituents, they will be able to nominate many more organisations for consideration.

Value for money is another key principle of the citizens charter. We have taken a number of initiatives on contracting out and on competitive tendering. Those initiatives have been vital in enabling us to maintain and improve quality while containing costs. In local government, about £6 billion-worth of services a year are now subject to compulsory competitive tendering, which is being extended to cover services such as information technology, finance, engineering and property.

In central Government, the 1991 White Paper "Competing for Quality" introduced a full programme of privatisation, market testing and contracting out. I feel strongly that competition stimulates increased efficiency and improves quality. It is good for the users of services, good for taxpayers, who get better value for money, good for managers and staff, who can concentrate on core tasks, and good for business, with billions of pounds' worth of new opportunities.

I announced on Monday that, from April 1992 to September 1994, the competing for quality programme covered more than £2 billion-worth of Government activities, as well as 54,000 posts—one tenth of the entire civil service. Annual savings of more than £400 million—that is 20 per cent.—have been achieved, and that is a remarkable programme. That £400 million is now available for other services, other programmes and other improvements in services. Another ambitious programme worth £860 million is already under way.

Financial results have been impressive. But, as many of my hon. Friends have already pointed out in this debate, improvements in quality are the critical ingredient. Departments have been able to negotiate better quality in about a third of market tests, while fully maintaining the existing level of service in other cases.

In the past three and a half years, we have established a framework for delivering high-quality services at a cost that the taxpayer can afford. The great target now is to build on what we have already achieved. That is a challenge which the Government and service providers throughout the public sector will relish. The citizens charter has transformed the culture of our public service.

366 There may be some people who still feel that they do not have a voice. My final new year's resolution is to change that. I want everyone, including the most vulnerable in our society, to know that they really have a say in improving public services. That is, of course, what the citizens charter is all about.

Mr. Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne, North)

May I first extend my sympathies and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and his family for the loss which they have suffered this week?

I am pleased that we are debating this subject today, although I must confess that I feel a little like the batsman who, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), has the dilemma of deciding, in the absence of colleagues, whether to go for the runs or to protect one's wicket. I think that I will go for the runs, or at least make an attempt to do so.

Public services and their delivery are an important issue to the British people. There can be no doubt about that. It is right that Parliament should debate whether we have good public services, whether they are delivered efficiently, whether the citizens charter has played a part in any change in either of those factors and whether other matters have affected the level or the delivery of our public services. It would be wrong in a debate of this nature to avoid comments on the general role of public services and the way in which public expenditure has been prioritised on public services. It must be said that too much public expenditure in recent years has been directed towards dealing with the effects of unemployment and the related issues of community decay and rising crime, and that too little has been directed at investment in community needs, such as improved transport, education and training, and the environment.

We have heard the right hon. Gentleman's new year resolutions. I remind the House of some of the commitments that his predecessors made in dealing with the citizens charter. In a statement to the House in November 1992, the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), claimed that the 1991 White Paper launched a radical and far-reaching programme of reform and improvement of public services. He went on to say: The citizens charter programme of public service reform and improvement is at the heart of the Government's agenda for the 1990s."—[Official Report, 25 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 869–70.] The problem that the right hon. Gentleman had then, and his successor has this morning, is that, although the Government may agree with that approach, it is not necessarily helpful for them to say that something is at the heart of their agenda, because that does not convey any clarity to the public.

One thing about which the House can be in no doubt is that the public do not now know what the Government's agenda is. The public have been told many things, yet many other realities have resulted. The public were told that tax cuts were at the heart of the Government's 367 agenda, and they now know how hollow that was. The public were also told that bringing down crime was at the heart of the Government's agenda.

Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva (Brentford and Isleworth)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Henderson

In a second. The public must now be completely aware of the Government's failure to bring down crime levels. The public were told that post office privatisation was at the heart of the Government's agenda, and they now know how transitory that commitment was. The public were also told that the Tory Government would be at the heart of Europe, and they now know how quickly that has vanished from the agenda.

Mr. Deva

I shall ask my question in the kindest way possible on a Friday morning. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to point out honestly that the Labour Benches were empty of hon. Members, other than the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). I wonder if that is because the Labour party is not interested in the citizens charter and the services that it provides?

Mr. Henderson

I had anticipated that a Conservative Member would raise that point. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Labour party is very committed to improving public services, and if the citizens charter plays a part in that, the Labour party is committed to making the citizens charter effective and sensitive to the needs of the people. The reason why my colleagues are not with me this morning is that they are so excited by Labour's lead in the opinion polls that they are out campaigning to improve that lead even further. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) never likes to go over the top in such matters and has decided to give priority to discussing public services for the rest of the morning—I hope.

Mr. Sykes

While we are on the subject of absent Members, does not the hon. Gentleman regard it as very unfortunate that, on the day that the Liberal Democrats unveiled their Members of Parliament charter, there is not one Liberal Democrat in the House to be questioned?

Mr. Henderson

I am not going to defend the Liberal Democrats if they are not here to defend themselves. I shall leave the leader of the Liberal Democrats to respond to the hon. Gentleman when he returns from whatever he is doing this morning.

The issue is, are the public convinced of the citizens charter and do they understand this so-called far-reaching programme? I was tempted to intervene in the speech of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster when he was referring to the derivation of the citizens charter, but I thought better of it and thought that I would wait until I had the opportunity, if I caught your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, to mention it myself.

The citizens charter is a useful concept, which dates back, my history books tell me, to Herbert Morrison of the London county council in 1921. He promised the citizens of London a charter on local government services. Increasingly, the Government are stealing ideas from the Labour party's manifesto—[interruption.] Yes, yes. Many of the ideas which the Government now propose, where there is revisionism from the days of Thatcher, are often taken from common-sense ideas in Labour party manifestos, and the citizens charter is one of them. Indeed, 368 the citizens charter concept was adopted by at least two Labour-controlled councils in the 1980s—Lewisham and York, which provide excellent services, according to the Government's own audited figures, to the people of those communities—long before the Prime Minister came forward with his proposals a year or two ago.

Mr. Harry Greenway

When the hon. Gentleman mentions Herbert Morrison, he is obviously, in going for the runs, in severe danger of being run out—if he has not been run out already. Herbert Morrison's promise to London was that he would build the Conservatives out. That was his only promise of any effect. He did that for a period, during which people could not buy their council homes, and so on. That was how he did it. In the end., it was a disaster for London, as recent history has shown.

Mr. Henderson

If that were true, it was because the Conservatives were not building any houses at all. Any houses built in London at that time were for ordinary people who saw the merit in having a Labour-controlled London county council. But that is a matter of history.

Mr. Sykes

I am sorry that we are all ganging up on the hon. Gentleman; it really is not fair. However, it is pretty rich of him to say that we are adopting Labour's clothes when the Labour party refuses to say that it will renationalise the railways, repeal the Jobseekers Bill or end any of our trade union reforms which were so successful in the 1980s or our education reforms. Labour has worn nearly all our clothes over the past 20 years.

Mr. Henderson

If I can get going, I shall refer later to the real differences between Labour's approach and the Government's approach to improving public services. The citizens charter is, by and large, a test of whether public services have improved. I hope that Conservative Members will recognise that the improvement must come from real changes in the way in which the services are delivered.

Are the public convinced of the effectiveness of the citizens charter? There has been a proliferation of charter-related activities: charter marks, charter networks, charter newsletters and a charter task force. The notorious cones hotline was apparently a commitment made on the hoof by the then Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor), during an interview on the BBC's "Today" programme.

What has been the effect of the cones hotline which we see advertised on motorways as we drive around the country? In the last 12 months of its operation, 11,500 calls resulted in just five sets of cones being removed to some other location. Is not that a symbol of so much that is wrong with the Government's approach? It is back-of-the-envelope policy launched amid high hopes and wild claims which proves to be nothing more than an embarrassing damp squib and a waste of taxpayers' money.

What of charterline? Like the cones hotline, it was launched in a blaze of publicity. At the launch of the pilot scheme in February 1993, the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) said: Research has shown that there is a great public demand for a national charterline information service. The Government forecast 30,000 calls a month to charterline. In the first weeks, there were a number of callers. Some rang about the Department of Social 369 Security and the health service. However, other calls could only be classified as miscellaneous. One caller to charterline asked how he could get rid of foxes in his garden. Others wanted to know how to get rid of starlings from their roofs. Another man asked how to become a monk.

I would not want to veto calls to charterline. However, was that what was intended? One caller demonstrated what many taxpayers think. He rang to complain that the charterline was a waste of taxpayers' money. How correct he was. After 10 months of the project and £500,000 worth of expenditure, it was found that the charterline was receiving just 25 calls a day and that each call was costing £68. After all the trumpeting, as I understand it, the line had to be scrapped. I believe that the Government are currently considering whether it should be reintroduced.

High claims were made by the Child Support Agency when it introduced its charter in August 1993. The then chief executive, Ros Hepplewhite, wrote at the beginning of the charter: I am wholly committed to providing for our clients a service which is fast, efficient, confidential and accurate. She went on to explain the agency's other ambitions. Under that charter, the agency stated that it expected that at least 65 per cent. of its customers would be satisfied and that maintenance would be calculated accurately. All hon. Members must be aware that the reality of the CSA's operation is very different. Not one of us can say that we have not received many calls and letters from constituents complaining about the appalling service that they have received from the CSA.

Those calls and letters do not come in one week or one month; if my constituents are typical, those complaints have been made from the inception of the CSA to the present day. I have been inundated by complaints from people who have been affected in one way or the other. Is that not evidence that a charter, in itself, does not necessarily improve public services? With regard to the CSA, the terms of the charter have not been met.

The CSA has acknowledged that 350,000 cases, out of a total of 1.1 million cases, have been outstanding for more than six months. The chief child support officer found that at least four in 10 maintenance payments ordered by the agency were wrong and that only one in six of the regional centres had been achieving its work targets.

Hon. Members are aware that those statistics have not been cobbled up by a bureaucrat sitting in an office. They are not statistics which bear no relationship to what is actually happening. Hon. Members know what is happening to their constituents. They are aware of their problems with the agency. The position has not improved since the resignation of the chief executive. The House will recall that, just before Christmas, the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt), had to sneak out an announcement to the effect that the CSA was deferring indefinitely 350,000 cases involving benefit payments. We all look forward to the publication next week of a report on the CSA by the parliamentary ombudsman.

370 Is that not clear evidence that hype, advertising and the false promises of Planet Portillo do not improve public services and that real changes are needed? If that does not happen, charters like the CSA charter are not worth the paper they are printed on.

The same position applies in British Rail. Rail users have been issued with a long document which identifies their rights. Notwithstanding commitments that might be contained in the charter, because of other factors in the rail industry, one of the charter's main points—that people can obtain a ticket at a railway station anywhere in Britain to any other point in Britain—has not been met.

Although the Government say that they generally support the principle that tickets should be available at any station, because of BR's structure and the problems in that public service, the terms of that charter cannot be met. Is that not ridiculous? What a way to run a railway. Twentieth century dogma with 19th century structures is trying to run a service for the 21st century. Is it not little wonder that there is public scepticism about the effectiveness of the charter?

If the evidence that I have before me is accurate—I have no reason to believe that it is not—contrary to the point raised by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), two thirds of people interviewed in surveys do not believe that charters have been successful. In a National Opinion Polls survey, people were asked: Have you ever seen a copy of the Citizen's Charter or other Charters for public bodies, such as the British Rail Passenger's Charter or Parents' Charter? Only 34 per cent. said that they had seen a copy.

The NOP's second question is more telling: The Government claims that the Citizen's Charter will lead to real improvements in the quality of service people get from public bodies like the NHS, while opponents claim it is just a public relations exercise and will make no real difference. Which of these views is closer to your own? Sixty-six per cent. of those polled believed that charters were just a public relations exercise.

Similar evidence was revealed by a poll conducted by the Scottish Consumer Council which has been referred to widely in the literature and of which I am sure the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is aware. People were asked what they thought about the citizens charter. While 23 per cent. of people felt that there may have been some improvement in public services as a result of the charter, 37 per cent. felt that the citizens charter was not improving public services.

Lady Olga Maitland

It strikes me that the hon. Gentleman is being somewhat selective in respect of the polls and surveys to which he refers. Would he kindly tell us who published the surveys and exactly what questions were posed?

Mr. Henderson

The hon. Lady has not been listening. I said that one poll was carried out by NOP, one client of which is the Trades Union Congress—[Interruption.] Well, it is fair to say that the TUC represents a large spectrum of opinion. We are told that many Conservative voters are members of trade unions. However, that is not the point. National Opinion Polls is a reputable organisation. Its reputation is staked on the objectivity of its polling. I am certainly happy to take its evidence. If Conservative Members' cynicism is such that they cannot 371 even now accept what opinion polls tell them of people's attitudes, we really have sunk deep. I will take no lectures from the hon. Lady on that matter.

Mr. Kaufman

Is my hon. Friend aware that National Opinion Polls has been used in the past by the Conservative party for its private polling?

Mr. Henderson

I was aware of that, but it momentarily escaped my mind. I am extremely grateful for my right hon. Friend's assistance on that matter.

The public can see charters coming out of the ears of local and national government. There is scepticism. The only place where we do not have a charter is in Parliament. Perhaps we should have a parliamentary charter or, perhaps, a Conservative rebels charter, stating, "A Government Whip will reply to your question within two hours, letters will be replied to on the same day, and compensation will be paid, subject to Treasury approval." Perhaps we should have league tables for Conservative rebels. Perhaps that would convince the public of the Government's genuine commitment to the citizens charter.

Where does the scepticism come from? It comes from the public's own experience. It comes from what the public know about public services as they affect them and their families. For example, I refer to education, transport and health services, on which we have already had an exchange of views this morning.

One factor which must be brought into hospital waiting list statistics—it is not a constant factor that can be ignored—is when a potential patient enters the waiting list. I understand that it is when the first consultation takes place. The evidence in my constituency is that people have to wait longer for their first consultation; therefore, they do not appear on the waiting list statistics. However, I accept that, once they are in the statistics, there have been some improvements, although at the expense of people who would previously have been seen in three or four weeks but who now must wait seven or eight weeks.

Mr. Clappison

I raised that point with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about it, surely he will join me in welcoming the fact that the new patients charter will include a standard for the length of time between seeing a general practitioner and having an out-patient appointment with a consultant. Surely that is an example of the charter working. It highlights an important issue.

Mr. Henderson

I accept the hon. Gentleman's point. If the charter clarifies for the public what is happening in the health service, of course that is welcome, but the problem is that the charter makes problems and commitments which cannot be honoured unless other things take place to improve the service. For example, there is a combination of human and capital resources in the health service.

Several things have been flushed out by the citizens charter: the Government's attitude to public services generally, the extent to which the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 apply when there are changes in the delivery of services and whether there should be protection for working people. We know that the Government have had to be dragged along at the end of the European queue on that matter.

372 No matter what the Government might claim about their commitment to public service, when it affects poorer people specifically, resources are not put in place. I am shocked that citizens advice bureaux budgets—the CAB must be central to the concept of assistance for the ordinary citizen—have been frozen for the next three years, according to the relevant schedules. That is regrettable, and it should be changed if the Government are genuinely committed to such matters.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster referred to access of information. The Government, in response to many pressures from the public and from the House, said, "We believe in open government." People asked, "If you believe in open government, why cannot an ordinary citizen ask questions on information which would be publicly available if a Member of Parliament asked a parliamentary question?" That seemed to be a reasonable point. The Government responded by introducing what they called the code of practice. If the right hon. Gentleman is sincere in his desire to extend freedom of information, there must be greater advertising so that the public know how they can find out information and what the procedures are.

The Government's record is appalling. Departments have spent only £43,000 on advertising the new code of practice. The Department for Education has spent only £581, and the Department of the Environment has spent £170. I obtained those figures from a parliamentary answer. They compare with the £5.7 million which was spent on advertising the virtues of the poll tax, and the £17.1 million which was spent on advertising the second British Telecom share offer. That puts into context the way in which the Government have allocated resources in this important matter. If they genuinely favour freedom of information and if they think that it is an important concomitant of the concept of a citizens charter, there must be greater commitment on their part.

I do not doubt that there are improvements in citizens' procedural rights. Some additional information is available. However, the main test of whether the citizens charter has been effective is surely whether public services are better. Are people receiving better, quicker and more effective treatment in the national health service? Is our education system improving, with higher standards of education for all our children, young people and adults? Is our transport system providing a better service? Is it tackling congestion problems in our cities? Is it tackling the problems of obtaining the necessary investment to provide transport in future? Are the public receiving the public services that they want?

The public's verdict, of course, is already clear for hon. Members to see, regardless of the opinion polls to which I have referred and which are disputed by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. There have been two major sets of local government elections since the main claims were made about the citizens charter at the previous general election. On both occasions, the public completely rejected Conservative local government. They have not seen Conservative local government as being committed to public services or delivering public services efficiently, and they have seen no major improvement arising from the citizens charter, or they would have given the Government the result that they looked for during those elections. Patently, that did not happen. In addition, the public are concerned about their loss of control over public services because of the rapid growth in quangos.

373 In his speech to the Conservative conference in October, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said: I joined the Conservative Party because it is the party which gives powers and responsibility to people, because we know that the state does not know best. He continued: Through the Citizen's charter we are transferring power from bureaucrats and politicians in Whitehall and the Town Hall to ordinary people in the school hall and village hall. That might be very laudable, but it is the ultimate in "I regret what I said at the party conference." The right hon. Gentleman knows that, regardless of the terms that he set out in that speech, that is not the Government's record.

The Government have centralised power in a sustained way over many years as a deliberate policy; indeed, they have made a virtue of having done so. Training and enterprise councils have taken over training and regeneration policies. Funding councils have been established for further and higher education. Urban development corporations are taking over urban regeneration in designated areas. I have in mind also housing action trusts, the Housing Corporation, health service trusts and the new police arrangements. They all take power from local people so that local representatives cannot have a say. All those arrangements are changing the way in which services are controlled by taking power away from ordinary people and elected representatives and by giving authority to people who are appointed by Secretaries of State.

Independent research has shown that, by 1996, unelected bodies will spend £54 billion of public money. A survey by the Financial Times in April 1993 found that quangos were responsible for a fifth of all public spending—a 20 per cent. increase on 1979. A report by the institute of local government studies in November 1993 found that there are now 17,000 members of unelected public bodies, compared to 25,000 councillors.

The Government have tried to dismiss the figures by arguing that there is now increased accountability through the citizens charter, but that has not been accepted even by many of the Government's own intellectuals—if that is not a contradiction in terms. I do not know whether Graham Mather, the Conservative Member of the European Parliament for Hampshire, North and Oxford, would like to be classified as a Conservative intellectual, but I have shared a platform with him on one or two occasions and he seems to bat above the average on these matters.

Mr. Mather says that there has been some centralisation of public services and adds: Where school boards and hospitals trusts are failing is when they're trapped in a system controlled by Whitehall and Whitehall civil servants setting standards, controlling cash and really taking decisions back on the Minister's desk instead of the local level. That is what a Conservative representative says, so it is not only Opposition Members who feel that power has been taken away from local people and elected bodies. Prominent members of the Conservative party acknowledge that that has taken place. Some are reluctant and wary of the consequences of that, as Mr. Mather is, while others make a virtue out of the fact that power has been taken away from local representatives because they think that the Government know best.

374 An accompanying point must be acknowledged by the House. I do not think that a case could be made for the extension of quangos even if they had as members people who were, broadly speaking, representative of different currents of thought and who reflected different political attitudes. But that is not the case. The reality is that Conservative place-people—including relatives of some Conservative Members—have been given jobs in hospital trusts and other public bodies. That is not acceptable in a modern democracy, and it is not consistent with the principle of the citizens charter.

Lady Olga Maitland

The hon. Gentleman talks about increased centralisation. He might like to speak to parents in my constituency whose children are in grant-maintained schools. They are delighted that they are now able to take part in schools that are independent of the tyranny of local town halls, and they vote for that.

Mr. Henderson

With all due respect to the hon. Lady, I must tell her that if the Conservative Government say that they can no longer afford to fund those schools as they are cutting budgets, there will be no point in the parents bleating to the local authority that the services provided by that school are important for the local community, because the decision will be taken in Whitehall.

Mr. Sykes

I do not want to upset the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps he ought to phone Tony Blair to find out the answer to the question which I am about to ask him. If all that he has said is true, why is the Labour party committed to increasing the number of quangos by 2,536?

Mr. Henderson

rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes)

Order. May I remind hon. Members that it is not our custom to refer to another hon. Member by name? That is the prerogative of the Speaker and her deputies only.

Mr. Sykes

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for that oversight.

Mr. Henderson

There was another oversight on the hon. Gentleman's part. He has not understood his central office brief, because even Conservative central office could not cook up statistics which show that figure. If the hon. Gentleman wants to send me details, I shall be happy to peruse them and give my response later to any point that he raises.

Mr. David Hunt

It might be helpful if a few facts were introduced into the hon. Gentleman's speech. There was a quango state in this country which existed at the time I came into the House in the 1970s. When the Conservative Government took over, the number of quangos was 2,167. We have reduced that number to 1,389. The figures which the hon. Gentleman is using include 2,668 housing associations which everyone knows are non-profit-making bodies run by unpaid committees of volunteers.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) pointed out, the hon. Gentleman is also including grant-maintained schools in the figures. The quango state is a Labour state, and my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) is quite right in saying that the Labour party has already made many 375 commitments which show that the number of quangos would go back up again if we ever had a Labour Government.

Mr. Henderson

The undemocratic state is a Conservative state, and people can see that with their own eyes and through their own experiences. They know that, regardless of what the right hon. Gentleman said, the amount of money which is now allocated directly by central Government to quangos is far greater than it has ever been—even under a Conservative Government. I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman's point in any way.

People know that many of the services upon which they rely are now controlled by Whitehall. The money is dished out there and the people who administer the services are appointed there. If a person wants to complain, he has to go to Whitehall because going to his local office will have no impact whatsoever. That lack of democracy adds to the scepticism which the public clearly have about the benefits of the citizens charter.

In many instances, the public services are run on principles which have been rejected by companies that have adopted best practices in the private sector. The Government are always keen to tell the House that they want the public sector to act more like the private sector. Such is the reasoning behind the introduction of a number of changes such as compulsory competitive tendering, to which I shall come in a moment. Where there has been an introduction of private sector practices into the public sector, it has often been the worst practices and not the best.

Many claims have been made about the impact of compulsory competitive tendering. The Government have claimed that savings of about 6 per cent. have been made in the provision of services through compulsory tendering. Where those statistics have been shown to be—in a mathematical sense—accurate, it has often been because the quality of service has suffered. But other studies, which have examined the impact of CCT over a longer term, do not even accept that point.

A study by Professor Szymanski of the London Business School—an organisation not exactly sympathetic to some of the views of the Labour party—looked at CCT in the long term. He took examples of councils which put out contracts to tender in the early 1980s before there was a compulsory element. In the long term, the study shows that prices will begin to rise. In effect, a lot of private sector contractors introduce loss-leading in the early stages of a contract. Once a contractor has a contract, and the local authority has few real alternatives, up shoot the prices. That is interesting evidence which has been raised in relation to this matter.

Mr. Sykes

Can the hon. Gentleman name one single council where that has occurred in the past 10 years—in relation to cleansing services, for example?

Mr. Henderson

Wandsworth council had to change its tender because the contractor was not meeting standards and prices were rising. The council was not getting value for money and changed the contract. The evidence from Professor Szymanski was that, in the long term, Wandsworth—like other councils—will have to pay a higher price for getting private sector contracts because a monopoly will have developed and there will not be alternatives in particular areas. [Interruption.] I do believe that.

376 In any case, that is not my main quarrel with the changes which the Government have introduced. My main quarrel with CCT is that it has not really changed what is happening at a local level in the provision of public services. Low-paid workers have had their conditions reduced, and quality has suffered. Management still try to control workers with the stick, rather than any concept of the carrot. Budgets are spent whether or not there are any needs to be met at a particular time. There is little innovation by management or workers in an environment with little security, and often poor motivation.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert G. Hughes)

The hon. Gentleman has told the House that he believes that competitive tendering for local government services makes them more expensive. Can he produce one single example in which putting out to contract rubbish collection services has increased the price? Is it not a fact that substantial amounts of money have been saved by authority after authority following the example originally set by Wandsworth? They have done a tremendous favour to the nation. The service quality has improved and the price has fallen.

Mr. Henderson

I am grateful to the Minister for intervening, because I can give him the evidence from the study to which I referred by Professor Szymanski. Referring to refuse services, he says: On average there were initial 20 per cent. savings in the tendered out services in the first two years but at the end of the five-year period costs were up 11 per cent. even though average staff numbers were down by 20 per cent. I do not believe that compulsory competitive tendering has achieved the ends which the Government claim. They have not resulted in the adoption of the best practices of the private sector. Conservative Members who know anything about industry will recognise that. They will not recognise worker motivation and involvement, quality targets, workplace flexibility and teamwork or security of employment in the many privatised services now in place in different parts of the country.

Mr. Sykes

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that no one is entitled to security of employment in the 1990s? It is a nice thought. When the hon. Gentleman talks about security of employment, he is really talking about the closed shop.

Mr. Henderson

The hon. Gentleman has completely misunderstood the position. His thinking is old-fashioned. I am not talking about employers' fear of being forced to concede security of employment to their workers. I am talking about employers saying that those workers are so valuable to them, their business and operation that they want to build loyalty by giving workers the security that they would want for themselves and their families. That is the concept of security which I have watched advanced-thinking companies such as Nissan up in Sunderland develop over 10 years. That is what is important. I am not talking about contractual security imposed from outside. I am talking about internal organisations building their own loyalty. That concept has not been achieved through compulsory competitive tendering.

The same goes for market testing. Again, there is no real change. There are no initiatives and no new services. There is no extra motivation and no change in workplace 377 attitudes. There is more stick and more insecurity. We need a genuinely new approach. Do we not first need a commitment to the concept of an efficient, good public service? Is it not crucial that the Government recognise that there is a need for democratic choice, that that choice should be devolved to the most local level possible and that citizens should exercise that democratic choice either directly or through their elected representatives?

Do we not need an approach which is dogma free and recognises the need for a mix of public and private in finding the funds for investment and bringing about the most effective form of delivery? In ridding ourselves of dogma, should we not move away from the presumption that privatisation is best and establish on merit whether a service is best delivered in private or public ownership?

Do we not need a regular review of services to examine whether new services can be provided? Should public sector departments not be encouraged to take community initiatives to achieve that aim and be given new appropriate statutory powers to do so? Should we not review the way in which we insist on rigid, annual budgets in most parts of public service? Private organisations carry funds forward from one year to another. Should not public sector organisations also be given that form of accounting without any detriment to the budget that they would have received? If we did that, we would stop the nonsense of parsimony in budgets from April to February and then profligacy in March before the end of the financial year. I notice from the faces of Conservative Members that they have experienced that in their areas, as I have in mine.

It is often said in the world of work that management get the workers they deserve. If management are stuffy, rule-book based, old-fashioned, inflexible and uncommunicative, it is little surprise that the work force mirror those attitudes? Is it not most important of all that a new sense of public service is instilled—a public service motivated at management, worker and democratic level; a public service based on secure, well-paid employment with high standards of training; a public service that uses the most modern technology and operational systems; a public service that has clear targets and is subject to rigorous audit; a public service which is initiative orientated; a public service of which we are proud, which we value and on which all of us can depend? If that is our purpose, we must support the changes necessary to achieve that.

If the citizens charter contributes to those changes, the Opposition will give it procedural support. However, I do not believe that the public scepticism about the way in which our public services are run and about the claims made for the citizens charter can be overcome unless real change takes place. We need new commitments on the need for public services and a new attitude to their delivery.

Mr. Robert Jackson (Wantage)

The citizens charter is the often-derided tip of a very large iceberg. Those who mock it are guilty of failing to realise the scale and significance of what lies under the surface. We are debating one of the most important developments in British politics in the 1990s. The fact that we are conducting the debate in such a thinly attended House, 378 particularly on the Opposition Benches, speaks volumes about the way in which we as Members of Parliament understand our functions and responsibilities.

As it is clear that the importance of the citizens charter and what it stands for has not been widely understood, I shall say a few words about why it is so important, after which I shall draw attention to some of the problems that need to be acknowledged.

One of the biggest problems facing Governments in the late 20th century democracies is how to operate successful, good-quality public services when we have more or less reached the limits of taxpayers' willingness to pay for such services. The creation of the welfare state during the 70 years from Lloyd George in the Edwardian period to Keith Joseph mark I in the early 1970s was a heroic achievement, but it did not involve any fundamental innovations in how Britain was governed. It was accomplished simply by increasing taxation and enlarging the political and bureaucratic machinery that had been established in the middle of the 19th century.

The inexorable growth in the proportion of the national income taken in tax and redistributed by the state, which began in the first decade of this century, was bound to reach a limit some time. It did so in the 1970s—a decade marked throughout the advanced industrial world by taxpayers' revolts. In Britain, they took the form of waves of industrial unrest at the concept of a social wage and a social contract—the idea that the lower personal incomes brought about by higher taxes and wage restraint would be compensated for by higher spending on public services. The Heath and Callaghan Governments failed in that regard, and their failure marked the end of that sort of thinking.

In the past two decades in Britain, as elsewhere in the advanced democracies, all parties have backed off from policies that would involve large tax increases. That was beautifully illustrated in exchanges today between my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), who was twitted so successfully on Labour's spending commitments. The Labour party's manifesto for the 1992 election was probably, although we will undoubtedly try to present it differently, the last gasp of the tax-and-spend philosophy. It remains to be seen whether my party will escape the damage that the Government inflicted on it by deciding to increase taxes rather than cut public services in the teeth of the recent recession.

Governments throughout the advanced industrial world face fundamental problems in relation to the welfare state. There are two contradictory pressures. As per capita incomes rise, there is a continuing rise in the expectations of users of public services. At the same time, the growth in the resources available for funding public services is limited, essentially, to the rate of growth in the economy. The fundamental significance of the citizens charter is that it is a serious and sustained effort to tackle that critical problem.

I said that the welfare state was built by expanding 19th century political and bureaucratic machinery. A Member of a late-Victorian Parliament, returning to this House in 1980, would certainly have no difficulty in recognising 379 the arrangements by which the welfare state was run, however enlarged and distended he might have thought them.

Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central)

Would not the great difference that that gentleman would notice on returning to the House probably be waste? Is not the key question in the debate how we inject private enterprise efficiency into publicly owned services?

Mr. Jackson

I shall come to the argument about the use of private sector methods to improve efficiency. The Victorian Member would certainly have observed a large increase in waste and would have been very attentive to it because one of the central tenets of Victorian public finance was to reduce waste—I can cite the phenomenon of candle ends, Mr. Gladstone and all that.

At this stage in my argument, I am trying to show that the arrangements by which we expanded the welfare state were essentially 19th century arrangements that: would have been familiar to a Victorian Member returning in the 1980s. He would have seen a monolithic civil service, employed on uniform terms and conditions—basically, the service created by the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of the 1860s—which was simply expanded within the traditional structure of accountability to Parliament through Ministers. He would have observed that in operation here at Question Time and so on.

The citizens charter addresses the fundamental problems that I described by breaking through to a new concept of government. It recognises that there is no need for the delivery of public services to be organised through a monolithic civil service, which was part of the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord). Indeed, the traditional civil service uniformity of conditions may be an obstacle to efficiency and performance. Through the next steps agencies, the Government are recognising the way in which so many public service activities are discrete businesses that need to be run on lines that are specifically adapted to the immediate task in hand.

At the same time, we have begun to understand that 19th century ideas about political control and accountability were neither efficient nor effective, and I shall return to that subject. The tasks and objectives of agencies are now much more clearly spelt out by being embodied in contracts between them and central government.

The fundamental new principle that has been introduced in the past 10 years is that of a division of functions between purchasers and providers and the embodiment of their relations in contracts with specified standards of performance and clearly defined arrangements for monitoring performance against those standards. I have no doubt that all that is leading to a steady sharpening up of the performance of public service deliverers, while making much more transparent the relationship between those—including hon. Members—who are politically responsible for ensuring that a service is provided and those who are operationally responsible for ensuring that it is delivered efficiently and to a high standard.

Governments throughout the world are facing up to those problems—some more and some less successfully. It is a noteworthy fact, in which we can take some pride, that our thinking on such matters is more advanced than that almost anywhere else in the world. We are pioneering 380 the new approach to public service provision in the 1990s, just as we pioneered the concept of privatisation in the 1980s.

Changes of the type under discussion cannot be accomplished in complex and continually evolving modern societies simply by devising a comprehensive blueprint and implementing it. We are bound to proceed by a process of trial and error and we have to admit error from time to time. We pursue a general strategy, with sensitivity to problems as they arise. We have to have the will to provide innovative solutions to those problems when we see them. We must also be prepared from time to time to recognise when the problems are such that they require some adjustment to the overall strategy. The Government have been working sensibly in that fashion, as they have put in hand the massive programme of changes that they have undertaken. There are a number of problems, however, for which we have not yet found adequate solutions. We must recognise that some may require modifications to the general strategy.

First, and probably most important, is the problem of ensuring that the Government operate as an intelligent purchaser on their side of the purchaser-provider divide. We have put an enormous amount of energy into the organisation of providers, so that in many sectors we have an extensive array of lean, mean and competitive providers of public services. I am not convinced, however, that the Government's capacity, both centrally and locally, to make sensible long-term purchasing decisions has also been commensurately developed. In particular, the problem of short-termism seems to be institutionalised in our public finance system and the way in which the Treasury operates. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North put some sound arguments on that.

Some stability is required for any large-scale organisation to flourish, especially if it is operating in the intangible area of services whose quality depends largely on the morale and motivation of huge numbers of professional and semi-professional employees. We will do ourselves a disservice and will risk discrediting the new approach to public service provision if the new relationship between the Government as purchaser and the agencies as providers simply maximises the impact of stop-go policies.

The second problem has a more philosophical character. We must recognise that there is a difference between co-operative and contractual models of organisation and that both have their value and their part to play. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central pointed that out in his intervention. The citizens charter is based on the extension of essentially private sector contractualist ideas into a public service world that has traditionally been based on an ethos of co-operation. That is not a bad thing—there is always a danger that the co-operative ethos among producers can become introverted and self-serving, rather than oriented towards service users. That was recognised as long ago as Adam Smith, but we must recognise that there is a great diversity in human psychology and in organisations and that what may be appropriate structures of incentive and disincentive in one type of organisation may not always be appropriate in others. There are also problems of 381 hybridisation. It may not be possible successfully to combine those two different philosophies in a single organisation.

Mr. Lord

I am following my hon. Friend's argument carefully. Is not one of the changes that has taken place in the past 30 years a change in the relationship between elected councillors, responsible for spending a large amount of public money, and their officers? The same is probably true of the relationship in Whitehall between civil servants and Ministers. There has been a notable shift in power away from the elected member, just as the amounts of money involved have hugely increased. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on that?

Mr. Jackson

I want to say something about the problems of accountability, especially as they relate to the House. My hon. Friend is right. There is a sense in which the reforms are designed to restore a greater measure of political control over the operation of those great programmes, by enabling the political leadership to define much more clearly what it expects to get out of them, by setting the objectives and standards and by devising performance standards, so that there is a way of getting some sort of political handle on the operation of those great sums of money.

I was trying to argue that we have to be careful about the way in which we combine a contractualist approach to organisations with a co-operative approach. One striking aspect of how contractualism may be at odds with co-operative organisational models relat