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Smarter Government

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for doing his duty, repeating the Statement from another place. The Statement sounds as if it is coming from a new Government taking over a brave new world, not from the same tired old team who have been running the shop so inefficiently during the past 12 years. If so much of what is proposed is so obvious and so easy, why have they not done it already? What have they been doing? The National Audit Office, in its second review of progress on Gershon targets, pointed out that 23 per cent of the claimed savings could not be proved. So they were funny money. The Statement refers to halving consultancy fees. How on earth has the Treasury alone managed to run up a consultants’ bill of more than £120 million just for dealing with the banks during the past couple of years? Is there not anyone left in the Treasury who knows how markets work and can do that job themselves? What are they paid for? I should declare my interest as a pension fund manager investing in property. I have had a quick look through the asset portfolio programme and must say that there are some wonderful statements in it. I particularly enjoyed that relating to the long delayed sale of the Tote. The Government announce that it is, ""a public corporation which does not have pure public policy objectives"." Well, as it is the country’s fifth biggest bookie, you could say that again. We have the ultimate in unjoined-up government when they say that they want to sell off Ordnance Survey while making a considerable part of its product free. That seems unlikely to work. I have some more detailed questions. The new social investment wholesale bank is meant to be funded from dormant banks and building societies, but so are community youth clubs and financial capacity training. How much money do the Government think will be generated? How confident are they of being able to fund all those different projects? We then turn to reducing Civil Service costs. What will be the breakdown of this? How much of it will be done by reducing pay or stopping bonuses, and how much by cutting posts? Indeed, why should any senior civil servant get a bonus at all this year, while Britain is in deep recession and private sector pay is frozen or falling? We also welcome the increasing interest of the Conservatives in public sector pension costs. It is a great shame that they did not support our amendment to set up a public sector pensions commission to have a rigorous look at public sector pension costs when it was moved during the Pensions Bill, but we welcome their support. When will the Government get a grip on public sector pension costs, which typically add between a quarter and a third to the pay bill for providing front-line public services? There is now a policy that all salaries in the public sector—or is it the public sector?—of over £150,000, set by government, will be reviewed in detail. The Statement says "set by government", but what exactly does that mean? I wonder whether we could not go considerably further than that and say, "Why should any civil servant or local authority chief—people who are not, frankly, in the commercially sensitive or competitive front line—earn more than £200,000, which is more than the Prime Minister?". How in principle can we justify that? There is also this totally arbitrary figure of £500 million to be saved by cutting arm’s length bodies. Where has that figure come from? Where on earth does 123 come from? The target for reducing advisory bodies is a quarter. Why is it a quarter? Why not a fifth, a third or even a half? As the noble Baroness has said, the asset sales are just a re-announcement. We called them a car boot sale last time. Two months on, the goods look even more shop soiled—like the Government, who review, re-announce and rebrand ad nauseam, but cannot take decisions to save their lives.