Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I can say that the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Basildon (Angela E. Smith) is a friend of mine, as I have known her for many years, but by the time we get to the end of this part of the Committee stage, I might be stretching that friendship an awfully long way. I shall be doing that not out of spite, however, but because I want the Bill to be successful. It is an enormously important Bill, and we have waited an awfully long time for it. That is why I rise to support amendment 10 and new clause 33. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) that, on their own, neither does everything that he and I are looking for, but together they are a damned sight better than what is in the Bill at the moment. I am very suspicious of why the Government have not defined what they mean by the civil service, and perhaps the Minister will explain that to me when she responds to the debate. We have heard that earlier legislation specified all the way through which organisations were part of the civil service. That was excellent for Parliament, as well as for the employees of those agencies and Departments, who knew exactly where they stood. On the day before an important report is due to be published on MPs' expenses, the need for trust in this Chamber and in the Government is paramount. So why on earth have the Government not set out in the Bill what a civil servant is, and what the civil service is? An organisation that comes under my shadow remit is the Food Standards Agency. I do not know whether it is part of the civil service or not. It rightly tells me that it is an arm's length organisation set up by Parliament, with a chair, and that it is an independent advisory body. As far as I understand it, however, its employees are civil servants. We would never know such things from looking at the Bill. I am suspicious about where all the civil servants might have gone. My shadow responsibilities involve the Department of Health, and if I am lucky enough to become a Minister of the Crown in that Department, I shall want to know how many civil servants I am responsible for, where the money is going and what departments within that structure are accountable. The Bill, as it is structured, gives me absolutely no idea. I have asked people who come to visit us from the various agencies whether they are civil servants. Some say yes, and some say no. The public, and the civil service, want these arm's length organisations to be set out in the Bill, right at the start, so that we know where we are. My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) spoke earlier about the size of the civil service. Under Gershon, the civil service should have shrunk; actually, however, we find that it has not. Perhaps the Government are worried that if they build the numbers into the Bill we would all know just how big the Government payroll is within the civil service. We know that there has been a huge increase in consultants in the civil service and Departments. Do they fall under the remit of the Bill? Do they have its protection? Some of them have very senior roles in Departments. Senior consultants are working in the Department of Health, for instance, with civil servants working below them. Such people do not have civil service contracts; they are consultants in a Department. Are they covered by the Bill? If they are not, how do the civil servants working below them know where they stand? I suspect that there has been some smoke and mirrors in the civil service, so that numbers have been lost from the payroll but people have come back in through another door as consultants. There is some evidence of that. We need to know the exact costs involved in the civil service—new clause 33(3)(b) would make the Government come forward each year with those exact costs—but how can we calculate them if we have no idea which Departments, which quangos, which arm's length organisations are part of the civil service? It is important that both amendment 10 and new clause 33 are agreed to in order to take the Bill forward. They are not perfect—I accept what the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) said—but they are a lot better than what we have now and we might be able to build on them as the Bill goes through the House.