Public Accounts

I rise as a bit-part player in our Treasury team and also as a member of the PAC. In preparing for the debate I thumbed through the whole back catalogue of PAC reports, and was struck by the analogy between the Committee and an ageing pop supergroup. As with many groups that show longevity and staying power, the membership changes although certain key core figures remain—rather like the Drifters. The distinctive sound and character of the group survive despite the departure of some and the arrival of others who are usually destined to play minor, supportive and not so well recognised roles. The PAC even has its own fan base. We invariably fill Committee Room 15 with our groupies, and we feature in Private Eye. Like any other supergroup, we require extensive back-up staff to put the show on the road, in the shape of the National Audit Office, the clerking team, the press officer and the excellent Mark Etherton, who plays the Brian Epstein impresario role. We have our own front man in the shape of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), known for his forthright, punchy delivery and wild, flowing locks; the incisive tones of the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon); the accusatory Welsh lilt of the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig); and the uncompromising sound of working-class Glasgow from the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson)—plus lyrical inventiveness and flights of fancy from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). None of us has yet been destroyed by excess, despite the constant heady infusions of bottled water at every meeting. As a result, a quality product emerges that is genuinely appreciated, although it has to be recognised that our following among senior civil servants and Cabinet Ministers is not what it could be. It would be ludicrous in a brief review to try to do justice to our entire back catalogue, or even to the 33 reports under review, so I will concentrate on some of my favourite and more impactful reports—our greatest hits, I guess. To be fair, not all our reports are of equal quality. It is dangerous and tedious on occasions such as this to engage in an orgy of mutual back-slapping—such behaviour is more appropriate to their lordships in another place. We have to be self-critical at times and acknowledge that we have not got to the bottom of every issue. Largely for procedural reasons, we have not been able to follow up some fairly critical issues. Our programme of work depends on cherry-picking of the NAO, which genuinely tests the polymath abilities of elected Members and cannot be guaranteed, within the time scales, to leave no stone unturned. Important issues escape scrutiny because of a lack of time or timely information. Vehicle excise duty is a good example of that. Other long-standing issues such as BBC expenses and salaries and Saudi arms deals escape our attention because of indefensible legal inhibitions. I will concentrate my remarks on areas that I understand reasonably well, leaving Icelandic trawlermen for other Members to fulminate on. The first of those areas is health. We have reported on clinical governance of primary care trusts, the consultants contract and prescribing costs in primary care—all areas that have been victims of the Government's reform programme. Unsurprisingly, we found that the Maoist permanent revolution in NHS structures fomented by the cultural revolutionaries in the Department of Health left PCTs ill equipped to commission effectively, to manage the private sector—although they are encouraged to take it on—or properly to understand what was expected of them. It is no wonder that we have problems with the delivery of out-of-hours services. We identified the prevalence of a ““commission and go”” philosophy—not an unexpected finding. Nor was it surprising to find that consultants negotiating a new contract had successfully outwitted hospital trusts and got more money without increasing productivity. Vested interests were in play when we examined the prescription drugs market, where useful potential savings were identified and there were clear disparities between one PCT and another as regards how capable they were of getting at those savings, which could be engineered only if the driver was the interests of patients, not those of the pharmacy industry. The report contained remarkable evidence of sheer waste and over-prescription. That was not particularly to do with the behaviour of PCTs but more with the fact that people retained drugs that they no longer needed or got them when they did not need them. The crude moral that one might draw from this is that vested interests must be challenged—in one respect, the Government are endeavouring to do so—but that Maoist permanent revolution might not be the best way of doing so. Interestingly, that conclusion was arrived at in China some time ago. On education, I shall deal with the academies programme. The NAO report slightly sold the pass on that, because it did not examine the effects on surrounding schools of the arrival of a bright, shiny, well financed academy. The evaluation was therefore skewed from the start in favour of the academy programme. None the less, it found that academies indisputably delivered no better results than the previous excellence in cities programme. Given the obvious point that children always work better in shiny, new, well financed schools, the report genuinely calls into question whether the structural upheaval that academies represent is justified by any gains in performance. It is clear that they are not the answer to every educational ill. Expanding our scientific base might be a smarter move, and that brings me to our report on big science. It is genuinely difficult to establish value for money in science. We concluded:"““There is a risk of leaving decisions to a small group of scientists without input from the wider community.””" As a north-west Member of Parliament, I want to underline that vigorously. At Daresbury, the diamond synchrotron eluded our grasp for reasons that appeared to have more to do with the interests of the Wellcome Foundation than those of anyone else, unless it was due to the anxiety of key members of the Oxbridge and London research community about a possible dangerous move to the badlands of the Cheshire tundra. Daresbury was offered the fourth generation light source, which, to be fair, was a reasonable consolation prize because it kept cutting-edge science at Daresbury and has strong relevance to commercial applications in the area. It has the potential to generate the highly skilled jobs that we need in the north-west. However, we now find that that is in doubt, and I should like us to return to the topic in future. We identified no fit between science policy, regional policy and industrial policy. I hope that future PAC work will examine in depth regional disparities and the huge amount of money inexpertly spent on urban regeneration. This happy band of interrogators has recently unearthed so much that it is worth reflecting on several conclusions. Some universities clearly do not know why their students drop out. We overspend on roads as much, if not more, than on rail. The lottery, post-Olympics, is in a fix, and that will have an adverse effect on lottery funding in the regions. We discovered, from an extraordinarily interesting and oddly positive report, that the costs to society of dementia can be allayed by the distribution of good practice and early diagnosis. I agree with hon. Members who have already spoken that that report was one of the most important and useful that we considered. I want to conclude with two big ticket issues. As the hon. Member for Gainsborough said, the jury is out on the Government's efficiency programme because all and sundry are unsure about the distinction between front-line and back-office staff. Everybody wants to get rid of the back-office staff; nobody wants to get rid of the front-line staff, but nobody knows the exact difference between them. There is also confusion about the difference between sustainable and unsustainable savings. There is some debate about what might constitute a sustainable saving. There is also uncertainty about the distinction between an efficiency and a service reduction. We must agree with the Treasury's somewhat philosophical conclusion:"““This can present a complex and difficult measurement challenge””." We also discovered that the Government's preferred capital investment vehicle—the private finance initiative—is in as much trouble as ever. It is the second major subject on which we should dwell at least a little more. We found inadequate benchmarking, sloppy contracts and rising unit costs. To be fair, we found evidence of a learning curve, but little evidence for elevating the PFI above traditional models of procurement and capital finance. All that simply whets our appetite for future sessions. Although our relationship with witnesses can often appear adversarial—and, at times, confrontational, even bordering on the unnecessarily macho—our relationship with Government is not necessarily adversarial. No one in any party or position wants one pound of taxpayers' money to be ill spent. I hope that our Committee has made a small contribution to that. On a personal note, since becoming a Member of Parliament, I have found working on the Committee one of the most useful things that I do. I am proud to be a member of the band.