BIS Sheffield/Government Departments outside London — House of Commons, 2016-05-09
Topic: Government Operations
David Mowat (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). He made a coherent speech, and I congratulate him on leading the charge on this whole issue Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I do not have a direct constituency interest in the matter. My interest came about because I was involved in the Public Accounts Committee’s questioning of the permanent secretary, and it struck me that the logic and reasons given for the decision were, unlike the speech we just heard, less than coherent and that they raised several potential issues about contradictory Government policy I am not against "BIS 2020" at all, but I do not think that we need this Sheffield closure to bring about its benefits. There are, however, potential contradictions between how "BIS 2020" is being rolled out and talked about, and the devolution, northern powerhouse and Government estate strategies. The latter came out most recently, in 2014, as a piece of analysis further to the Lyons strategy and all the rest of it, with the general intention, apparently, of trying to get civil service jobs out of London. Since 2010, we have, unfortunately, found that the civil service has become more concentrated in London than it was previously I am addressing my remarks not only to you and the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, but to the BIS board, who have yet to make this decision, to Mr Donnelly, who has a chance to row back from some aspects of this, and to Mr Manzoni and Mr Heywood, both of whom have responsibility for consistency of the design principles of some of these initiatives across the civil service. As we have heard, some elements of what is happening in "BIS 2020" do not make sense vis-à-vis what is happening in the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments. If that is not an issue for Mr Manzoni and Mr Heywood, I am not sure what their jobs are On "BIS 2020", I support the need to rationalise; Ministers have been given a target on saving money and if money can be saved, we should do it, if that does not affect efficiency and effectiveness. I have heard that there are 80 BIS sites across the country and that number is to be rationalised to eight, and I have no difficulty with the principle of that. We will come on to understand whether that figure of eight should be nine or seven, and the logic behind how that decision has been made. There are 45 partnership bodies in BIS, and there is clearly a need to change. As we heard in the previous speech, the permanent secretary often says that BIS is quite a distributed Department, and I accept that. I am sure the Minister will have statistics that allow her to discuss how much of BIS is outside London currently, but that is not a logical reason to bring more of it into London in response The permanent secretary used a phrase when he was talking about this, saying that a "hub and spoke" strategy is being implemented in "BIS 2020". The principle of that strategy is that all policy has to be in one place—the hub—with all the other bits being the spokes. Apparently, we have one hub, in London, where the Ministers are—perhaps that is fair enough—and these seven or eight spokes, which is what the focus is going to be on. When I first heard that, I thought, "Okay, we are going to have all the policy in one place. There could be some logic in that. Does that mean 10 people doing policy and they all have to be in London, working together? That might be reasonable. Even 20 or 50 might be reasonable." Apparently, the number of people who need to be in one place to do policy is 1,600, and that is not a rational approach, although the question is raised as to what is meant by "policy" and by "strategy". This is based on the advice that McKinsey has given the Department, apparently based on a relatively small amount of input. I know that you don’t get an awful lot of days out of McKinsey for £200,000, and I accept that this is a BIS strategy and not a McKinsey strategy, and that the accountability for it lies with BIS, although the phrase "hub and spoke" does come from McKinsey. We will come back to that issue and to policy We have talked about the northern powerhouse and the need for devolution. There is a need in our country to bring gross value added per head up to the same level—as best as we can—as it is in London. If we were able to do that, it would be great. The difficulty is that no region in the UK has more Government spending per capita than London, apart from Northern Ireland, where historical reasons are involved. We see that in the sort of decision that has been made here, and it is why we end up with a great concentration of civil servants in London and all that goes with that. At other times and in other places, we face the same issue in respect of the concentration of transport spend in London, which is partially due to London-centric thinking, resulting from the fact that so many of the civil service and top policy makers are here It is also true to say that cuts have been made right across the civil service since 2010. As I say, I do not oppose that, but 9% of those cuts have occurred in London whereas 20% have occurred in the regions, according to the Institute for Government. The consequence is that 18% of the civil service is now in London whereas the figure was 16% six years ago, according to the IFG, and I do not think that is acceptable. I do not think that is the right answer.