---

Ministers and Civil Servants

It is a great pleasure to introduce the Public Administration Committee's report, ““Politics and Administration: Ministers and Civil Servants””. It may not immediately seem the most exciting topic for a Thursday afternoon, but perhaps we can make it slightly more exciting. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister. It is the school half-term holiday, and his young children are in town today. Assiduous followers of his blog and other things will know what a great family man he is, and we want to reunite him with his family as soon as we can. We are grateful to him for being here. I say a real thank you—not because it is customary, but because it is true—to the members of my Committee. Select Committee vacancies are advertised every week, but we on our side of the House have noticed that there is never a vacancy for the Public Administration Committee. That is extremely revealing. It shows that a number of us have set about a body of work over a number of years and are able to contribute to that work collectively. The fact that we have worked together for so long helps us in what we do, and I hope that that is reflected in our products, including the report. I apologise to the House for the huge delay in debating our report. I shall now be less generous to my hon. Friend the Minister and say that the delay is entirely of the Government's making. The convention is that Select Committee reports are replied to within two months. Extraordinarily, the report was published in March 2007 and the reply in September 2008—a full 18 months later. I have to tell my hon. Friend that the delay was not caused by the intellectual effort that went into producing the reply. It could have been done a good deal more quickly. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree, and say that the Government will do better.