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Smarter Government

My Lords, I need to be absolutely assured of just what the noble Baroness is asking for. I am indicating that of course the Government recognise that they need to be open about the areas in which they intend to make savings, the figures attached to them and the process by which they will move towards those objectives. The noble Baroness will be the first to appreciate that it is extremely difficult to set out those figures year on year. It is a projection over three years. If the noble Baroness thinks that running a Government means that in 2009 you produce some statistics and everything in the economy then follows exactly that pattern, and at the rate at which the Government predict in every respect, she is not concerned with the real economy. The Government are bound to say that what they are attempting to reach are the figures over three years—the period of the intended savings. They must also identify the areas in which they will do so and be clear about which figures attach to which objectives. That is clear in the Statement. When the noble Baroness has had the chance to look at this in greater detail, I am quite sure she will be reassured that the Government have documented this with all the accuracy that they can produce for their objectives at this stage. What they cannot do for the noble Baroness—and no Government could ever commit themselves to this—is produce detailed statistics, year on year, from 2009 to 2013. How on earth could anyone expect that a Government would be able to do that in those terms? But they do identify what the overall objectives should be over that period of time. The noble Baroness asked specifically about the National Health Service IT position. The IT case illustrates the exact nature of the problem of the approach that the noble Baroness has attached to this Statement today. Parts of the programme are already in place. Choose and Book, which allows patients to choose a hospital appointment that is most convenient for them, is already part of the IT strategy in the National Health Service. Other parts that the IT project was meant to implement are somewhat behind schedule at the present time, but that reflects the enormous challenge of the programme which, after all, is dealing with resources for the largest employer in Europe. It is not surprising that parts of a programme as large as that are piecemeal in their impact. The national programme for IT is about delivering benefits for patients and is bound to take time to get right. The noble Baroness would be the first to support the proposition that it is more important that we get it right than that we should stick to a timetable that might include weaknesses in the strategy. Of course, the Government are careful not to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, raised the issue of the asset portfolio and quoted the Tote. I did not mind his little jibe about the Tote, but he will know that it has been in public ownership since its origins. Therefore, to say that somehow the Government ought to be ashamed of the position in which the Tote finds itself is not so. What has been difficult, as I am sure the noble Lord will accept—as will the noble Baroness, because she has been in discussions about the Tote—is getting the right buyer for the Tote. Getting the right price in circumstances where we can also safeguard the interests of British horseracing has proved a challenge. We attempted that, as the House knows, several years ago and we did not get the right offer and the right buyer. Are the Government to be charged that they were injudicious because they withdrew the offer from the market? That cannot be so. We cannot sell the taxpayer short by selling off assets without getting an appropriate price for them. What we can do is identify the areas in which a market exists for the purchase and we are indicating within that what we expect to get for those assets. I hear the criticism of the Government from the noble Baroness and the noble Lord. I am all too well aware of the fact that in any projections of this kind—and these are significant projections—the Government are always open to the charge that they cannot substantiate every figure involved because they have not yet achieved those figures. Of course they have not, but we have a track record to be proud of with regard to efficiency and we intend to continue that programme.