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Public Accounts

My hon. Friend is right. I am not an expert in civil service human resources practices, but the problem to which he alludes is that people on a fast track, who are expected to go far, are moved between delivery and policy-making functions, and often do not stay with a project long enough and do not acquire a critical mass of experience and understanding in any specific matter. However, the point has been made and Committee members have demonstrated an awareness of and alertness to the issue. I hope that it will inform their overview of the position in Departments when things go wrong and, indeed, when they go right. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough specifically referred to the Olympics project—a large budget item, which rightly attracted the attention of the Committee because of the dramatic increase in its budget from what was originally envisaged. I encourage him to retain his Committee's close involvement with and interest in the project because there is a danger that the collective desire in the House and beyond for the London Olympics to be a great success may blind us to some of the risks in the delivery and may even discourage us from challenging and probing deeply some of the things that we are told. As I understand it, notwithstanding the huge £2.7 billion contingency allowance that is now built into the budget, it has not been allocated—at least not publicly—to different stages of the project. There is therefore no ability to determine whether the contingency fund is being used at a pace that is commensurate with delivery of the overall budget or whether it simply conceals an early stage overrun, even beyond what has been planned in the fund. I also understand that no monthly cash flow forecasts are available yet for public scrutiny to enable us to follow closely what is happening and how the budget is evolving. The whole House should be glad that my hon. Friend has fired a warning shot and that the PAC intends to keep a close eye on the project as it goes forward. We look forward to further reports from his Committee on the issue. The theme of getting the best out of contractors has also been mentioned by a number of hon. Members who have spoken. The concept of the intelligent client—a client who has the capability to define what he wants and the capacity to monitor the ability of a contractor to deliver it—is a critical part of the delivery of complex projects and will become ever more important as the model for the delivery of public services evolves and draws in ever more outside private sector suppliers. The CSA project was again cited as an example of how not to do it. Indeed, the PAC report pointed out that the Government did not rescind the contract with EDS in 2004 when they had the chance to do so. The Committee has noted that fully £8 billion of the savings that the Government expect to make in their efficiency programme comes from savings in the procurement of goods and services. Clearly a major initiative is required in that area, including a scheme to make the management of the private finance initiative more effective, through developing commercial skills and managing the pre-tender and tendering processes more effectively. That must be one of the major keys to delivering value for money in government in the future. A clear message is coming from this review of the Public Accounts Committee's reports that we are discussing, and it is one of multiple failings and lessons unlearned. As my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks, the Government must up their game. The Committee has identified some major projects in the pipeline where there is potential for further mishap. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to my hon. Friend's helpful analysis and encourage his Committee to continue to analyse what has gone wrong with projects in the past, what is going on with them now and where there is potential for problems to be averted by applying lessons in the future. On an optimistic note, we were all pleased to hear about the good examples, but we will be even more pleased to hear that there is evidence that those good examples have been rolled out. We were reminded in a timely way by my hon. Friend that value for money has two components—he did not quite put it like that, but that is what he was telling us. When his Committee was established all those years ago, I suspect that the focus was almost exclusively on protecting the taxpayer and ensuring that money was not misspent or wasted. However, in a modern, enabling government environment, there is also the interest of the consumer to be protected. We need to ensure that the consumers of public services receive the best possible quality services with the resource available to deliver them and that the taxpayer is protected against the unnecessary use of resource. The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) also reminded us that it is so often the most vulnerable consumers who suffer the most when things go wrong. I want to put one further thought to my hon. Friend, which is that we still focus far too much in our political debate on the inputs to public services and on the use of resources. We all do it; we all fall into that trap. Indeed, the Prime Minister did it last Wednesday at Prime Minister's Question Time, when instead of telling the House about the better outputs that he claimed had been achieved in the national health service, he chose to tell the House how many extra doctors and nurses had been taken on, and how many extra billions of pounds were being spent. I suggest to my hon. Friend that there is a need continually to remind politicians on all sides of the debate that outputs and outcomes matter to the public. We will never win the battle for better value for money and more efficiency in government if we fall into the trap of conducting the debate in terms of inputs. Indeed, if we conduct it in terms of inputs, improving efficiency could even appear to have a negative outcome. I hope that he and his Committee will bear that thought in mind in future reports. We all wish my hon. Friend and his Committee success in the vital task that they perform and will continue to perform. He finished his speech by giving the House a commitment that his Committee would continue with its eyes open, its collective head not averted and its tongue sharp when necessary. I would encourage him, and the Committee through him, to do just that, and to continue to develop its skill set and its focus, as the process of delivering public services continues to evolve and the role of the Committee necessarily evolves with it. I know that the Committee, under my hon. Friend's guidance and leadership, will continue to be a driver for a cultural change within government that is so necessary if we are to see the improvements in the efficiency, value for money and delivery of public services that are vital to making them sustainable, so that our children and our grandchildren can enjoy the same high quality public services that we expect to receive today.