House of Commons Hansard Debates for 15 Nov 1991

Hansard

House of Commons

Friday 15 November 1991 The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[ Mr. Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Citizens Charter

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Lightbown.]

9.36 am

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Maude) : I am glad to have the opportunity to debate in the House today the White Paper which we published in July this year entitled "The Citizen's Charter". The citizens charter is simply the most comprehensive programme ever launched by any Government anywhere to improve public services. It will cover all the public services, including Government Departments and agencies, local authorities, hospitals, schools, courts, railways, buses the Post Office and the utilities, such as gas, electricity, water and telecommunications. No part of the public service will remain untouched and the citizens charter will improve the life of every citizen in the land.

For too long, it has seemed to us, involving the citizen in how public services should be provided has been seen as an optional extra. It is important that we should question that. All public services are paid for by individual citizens, either directly or through their taxes. In return, citizens are entitled to expect high-quality services which are responsive to their needs and provided efficiently at reasonable cost. Certain essential services such as health and education should be available from the public sector irrespective of the citizen's means.

The citizens charter is all about achieving what I have described. It starts by recognising that the best way to improve standards of services is to increase competition. In a free market, where the consumer has choice, competing firms must strive to satisfy their customers or they will not prosper. Where there is limited choice or competition, as in many public services, individual citizens cannot as easily make their voices heard or their views count. Often, they simply cannot make the ultimate consumer's choice, which is to vote with their cash and their feet and go to someone else for the service.

Wherever possible, we need to increase choice and competition. Where that is not possible, we need to develop other ways of ensuring good standards of service--for example, through regulatory bodies which have real powers and responsibilities. As promised in the citizens charter, we shall shortly publish a White Paper which encourages and makes possible a much more open attitude to the buying of services in the public sector.

The citizens charter sets out principles that will govern the way in which every public sector organisation treats those who use their services. It builds on what is best in the public service. The first principle is standards. Each organisation will have to publish explicit standards on what it will offer to its customers. Standards should not be hidden away for internal use only, but should be clearly

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displayed at the point of service delivery. They should include a commitment to prompt and effective action. That will be expressed perhaps in terms of target response, waiting time and accuracy in carrying out the service, and always in terms of courtesy and helpfulness from staff. The standards should improve as the service becomes more efficient. Every year, we expect public service standards to be ratcheted up.

Another important principle of the charter is openness. There should be no secrecy about how the service is delivered, how much it costs, who delivers it and whether it is meeting the standards set for it. The days of faceless, nameless bureaucracy are gone. That is welcomed by those who work in the public service as much as by those who use it. Unless there is a real threat to personal safety, all those who deal directly with the public should wear a name badge and give their name on the telephone and in letters. Even now, visitors crossing the hallowed threshold of the Treasury are met by an individual wearing a name badge.

Information is another vital principle to enable the citizen to influence the provision of services. Again, the citizens charter builds on past achievements. For example, the days of dull, impenetrable forms that seemed designed to obscure rather than to convey information are passing. Much excellent work has been done, and the work of Government Departments and agencies has resulted in 29 awards from the Plain English campaign. This is not just about forms ; it is about telling people about all the available services, explaining properly how to use them and what to do when things go wrong. It is about making services easy for people to use and telling people what to expect.

Not only should targets be published : more importantly, the results achieved against those targets should be published. They, too, should be made more straightforward for people to understand and should be provided in a comparable form. In that way, people can see how effective the organisation is against other providers or against a regional or national average. That creates strong pressure to emulate the best and so will lead to improved quality and efficiency. Quality and efficiency go firmly hand in hand. The Education (Schools) Bill, which was published last week, aims to do precisely that. In future, schools will publish more information in a comparable format, so that parents can see easily whether their child's school is up with the best.

Choice should not be just a private sector option. Wherever possible, the public sector should provide a choice of services. That choice should not be limited to "the way we have always done it" or by the organisation's view of what it should be delivering. Decisions should take account of the views of customers. Their views should be sought regularly and systematically to inform decisions about what services should be provided.

British people are sensible. They know that they cannot have everything and that on occasions they may have to wait. They will consider paying a bit more for a premium service. What they do not like is being let down. If a public sector organisation says that it will do something at a certain time, the customer wants that to happen. We should ask the people what they want and trust them to answer sensibly. I intend to commission a survey soon to find out more about what the public want from the citizens charter and what their expectations and priorities are in taking forward this work.

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Access is another important principle of the citizens charter. Services should be run to suit the convenience of customers, not of staff. Services should be easy to find and to use. That means flexible opening hours to suit local users, telephones that are answered promptly, inquiry points that are helpful, informative and efficient in directing the caller to the person best placed to help him or her, and signposts to help the citizen locate whatever he or she wants.

Inevitably, there will be times when things do not go right. When that happens, it is not a question of simply saying that money should be poured into the organisation as a remedy. One of our primary responsibilities as a Government is to the taxpayer, and we will not neglect that responsibility. When things go wrong, the citizen wants to be told fully, honestly and, preferably, there and then why it has gone wrong.

For example, most people will not mind waiting a few extra minutes in a hospital waiting room if they know that the doctor has been called away to deal with an emergency. They will not put up with simply being left without being told the reason for being apparently let down. When things go wrong, people want an apology properly expressed, and they should be entitled to one. There should be a well-publicised and readily available complaints procedure. Lessons should be learned from complaints, so that mistakes are not repeated.

People want to have the sense, when things go wrong and they complain legitimately, that the system about which they are complaining is taking some notice of what they are saying. No one wants to see money diverted from service improvement to the detriment of the existing service, but where compensation can be made to increase rather than detract from efficiency, compensating procedures should be set out.

I make no apology for setting out in such detail the charter's principles. They are important, and together they form the charter standard. How are the public to know who has adopted those principles and is improving services as a result? Organisations that can prove that they are living up to the charter standard and are providing high-quality services that put the customer first will become eligible for the Charter Mark award. This voluntary scheme will be an acknowledged and easily recognisable sign of quality. It will provide an incentive to staff and management alike to bring about a progressive improvement in the delivery and quality of their services and to provide value for money through progressive improvements in service.

Every public sector organisation that serves the public directly will be able to apply for the Charter Mark. So, too, will privatised utilities, such as the water companies or similar regulator regimes. The award will be within every organisation's reach, but not necessarily within immediate grasp. It will not be a soft or easy option. I look forward to announcing the details of the scheme before long.

The implementation of the charter is an ambitious task. It is a programme which has set a lead. No programme so ambitious or comprehensive has ever been attempted anywhere in the world. Great interest in the charter has been shown in Europe, north America, Australia and elsewhere. We are determined to implement it successfully.

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I pay tribute to Sir James Blythe and his fellow members of the advisory panel for their energetic and imaginative work in driving the programme forward.

The real results are the improvements that take place on the ground locally. It is in the local tax office, the local hospital and the local school that the citizen will look for improvements and judge whether the charter is a reality.

Much has already happened. The next steps programme has played an important part. In the case of the Benefits Agency, for example, more telephone calls than previously have been handled in five languages with specialist help lines, and waiting times have been reduced by half. The Employment Service achieved more than 95 per cent. accuracy in its benefits payments in 1990- 91. It is integrating its local office network with benefit offices, to offer users a one-stop shop. For example, at the Driving Standards Agency, waiting times for driving tests have been reduced.

Another example of what has started to happen and will happen under the citizens charter programme is that, in the national health service, there will be fixed-time appointments for patients from April next. No patient should have to wait more than 30 minutes. We want to say a final goodbye to the old arrangement whereby 50 patients were called for appointments at 9 o'clock in the morning but many of them were not seen until well into the afternoon. That is no way to treat people. The patients charter will put an end to it. There will also be guaranteed waiting times for NHS treatment. Each district health authority will set maximum waiting times for each specialty, and none of the maximum times can be more than two years. Once again, waiting times should come down and people should know they can expect, what standard the local provider of that service has undertaken to deliver.

All parents will receive school reports on their child's progress at least once a year. In the utilities, to take two examples, East Midlands Electricity has introduced fixed-time appointments for customers, and SEEBoard has introduced a new, simple, flat-rate compensation system for its customers.

We have also taken steps to introduce legislation, where needed, to take forward work on the charter. The Competition and Service (Utilities) Bill, published last week, will give customers a better deal by giving tougher powers to the regulators--allowing them, for example, to set guaranteed service standards for individual customers, such as fixed appointment times --no more waiting for the gas man. The regulators will also be able to ensure that compensation is paid where those service standards are not met, that each utility has satisfactory procedures for handling customer complaints and that those procedures are published. As the utilities operate in the private sector, they are already going fast down that track of improving customer services. We want that to continue.

The Local Government Bill, published on 4 November, will require local authorities to publish information showing what standard of service they are providing and at what cost. The Audit Commission and its Scottish equivalent will have powers to report on the performance of local authorities both individually and collectively, to which all local authorities would have to respond publicly.

The Education (Schools) Bill sets up a framework to implement the main proposals of the parents charter, published in September. It will ensure regular and

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independent inspection of schools, and that the inspection report is made available to parents. It will empower the Secretary of State to collect and publish information about schools. That will be published annually by region and will include public examination and national curriculum test results, truancy rates and the first destinations of school leavers. That is all vital information that parents are entitled to have. Under the legislation, in future they will have it.

I shall shortly publish a White Paper entitled, "Competing for Quality" which sets out the Government's commitment to improving public services by expanding choice and competition. That is a key element of the citizens charter programme. It sets out how, in setting targets and freeing managers to buy services in open competition, public services can respond better and more efficiently to the wishes of their users. Buying services in open competition is good news for the taxpayers, who will get better value for money, and for managers and their staff, who can work together to achieve the best deal for customers. Last, but by no means least, it is good news for local businesses, giving private firms new opportunities to market their services in free and open competition.

Other legislation will be needed, too, to take forward the proposals outlined in the charter White Paper. When we are returned to government, we shall introduce legislation to give the citizen a right to challenge unlawful industrial action affecting public services, and legislation to privatise the railways and to deregulate London buses. We also plan to limit the Post Office monopoly, to establish a new regulator for postal services, and to give the Secretary of State powers to set standards and targets for the Post Office. We plan to extend delegation in the civil service and to deal with the problems of technical redundancy.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) : Am I to read into what the Minister says that the Government intend to put more and more services out to arm's- length agencies which are not effectively accountable to Ministers, and certainly not accountable to Members of the House? Does he not think that the citizens of Britain would be better served if Ministers were more prepared to answer the questions asked by the House, rather than avoiding them by putting everything out to agencies?

Mr. Maude : The hon. Gentleman betrays a woeful ignorance of how the process works. I am also interested to hear the devotion of the new-style modern Liberal Democrats to old-fashioned bureaucracy. I commend to the House the programme of putting all the executive operational parts of the public service of central Government out to executive agencies under professional chief executives who are directly accountable to Ministers who are themselves directly accountable to the House. That will provide ever- better services to the public, because they are accountable and because they have the freedom to manage. I make no apology for that programme. I am sorry to hear once again that the Liberal Democrats seem to be devoted to the process of reaction and opposition to any progressive improvement or reform.

Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : Do we not need a Members of Parliament charter, so that, when we send letters to benefit agencies, instead of their taking ages to answer, we will begin to get some response? It is said that the citizens charter allows more information to be

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generally available to individuals, but less and less information is available to Members who ask questions in the House, as areas are hived off to agencies and privatised, so that the service providers are no longer democratically accountable. Democratic socialism adds parliamentary accountability and parliamentary avenues.

Mr. Maude : Once again, I say that there will be no reduction in accountability. There is an improvement in transparency, and we are moving away from the old bureaucratic culture to which the Opposition, whether Labour or Liberal Democrat, seem devoted. We can achieve much greater accountability, efficiency and effectiveness and delivering real and good services to citizens by moving in the direction of open and accountable executive agencies than by saying that the man in Whitehall knows best, and that we shall have a nice pyramid of bureaucracy in which everyone is concerned about what happens inside the organisation, but fewer people are concerned with what happens when the service is delivered to the citizen.

Mr. James Arbuthnot (Wanstead and Woodford) : One of the agencies that serves my constituency is the social security office at Wentworth house. I have to admit that, even before that office became an agency, it was extremely good, and answered my letters within seven days. Its benefit service was exceptional. Since becoming an agency it has got even better. Payments now go out within four days of a request being received. That means that the office deals with the paper work, the calculation, checking and the provision of a cheque within four days. That is staggering. The carping from Labour Members should be put down to sour grapes, because this is something that they did not think of for themselves.

Mr. Maude : My hon. Friend's experience of the improved service provided by the new agencies reflects similar, widespread experience. I make no apology for saying that the Government propose to press ahead full steam with the process of transferring services--the operational parts of central Government--to executive agencies. It is not for me to speculate on the motivation behind the Opposition and Liberal Democrat resistance to this excellent process. Perhaps it is not so much sour grapes as simply the fact that they are stuck in the mud. They are devoted to adhering blindly to the old way of doing things. They suffer from a straightforward reluctance to look to the future to see what can be done to make things better.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) : The comments from the two socialists are insulting to those who work in the new agencies. Those workers are already aware of the progress that has been made and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) has said, they know that a better service is being delivered. However, the Opposition parties want to try to turn the clock back to a system that did not work as well.

Mr. Maude : My hon. Friend is right. Those who have had dealings with the new agencies are aware that the managers and staff find it far more satisfactory to work for an agency whose sole purpose is to deliver high-quality service to the customer with as much efficiency as possible. Those who work in the public services are beginning to rediscover pride in what they do, and the Opposition should support that.

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The programme of reform will last for a decade--it is not an overnight miracle. There are a number of things we need to do to drive it forward. We must ensure that pay throughout the public services becomes increasingly dependent upon performance and the delivery of service to the customer. Pay review bodies will take that into account when considering future pay claims. We want a much clearer link between rewards and performance. The process is already yielding results, and I believe that there are many more to come. We have been pleased with the response that we have received from commentators and from those who work within, or use, the public services. We have had a sour, griping, sneering and mean response to our initiative from two quarters alone--the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.

I can understand why the Labour party is so opposed to the initiative, because the citizens charter puts people first. They are put ahead of politicians, councillors, bureaucrats and the producers, and ahead of Labour's vested interests--ahead of Bickerstaffe's big battalions.

I have some questions for the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), and I hope that he will take the opportunity of this full day's debate to provide the House with the answers that it is eagerly awaiting.

Does the Labour party support our commitment to extend competition and to provide greater choice for the users of services, or does the Labour party want a Soviet system of no choice for the citizen? If the Labour party supports the idea of choice for the citizen, why has it opposed every reform to extend choice that the Government have initiated in the past 12 years?

Why did it oppose, root and branch, the right to buy for council tenants? Why did it oppose our school reforms that have given parents greater power to choose what they want for their children? Why did it oppose our NHS reforms to provide greater power for patients and greater choice? Why did the Labour party oppose our deregulation of the bus services, which has provided greater choice for the customer? Why did it oppose the introduction of competition into

telecommunications?

Mr. Harry Barnes : That is all easy to answer. Give us the hard stuff.

Mr. Maude : The House is interested to know the answers. If the Labour party proposes to justify its opposition to those excellent reforms, let us hear which of them it proposes to reverse.

Mr. Barnes : The Minister appears to suggest that we have had 12 years of preparation for the citizens charter and that all the principles that have been propounded during that time will be capped by the charter. If so, the people will understand what that charter means--it is just the load of rubbish with which the Government have been involved in the past 12 years.

Mr. Maude : It is nice to hear a coherent argument, put with eloquence and elegent rhetoric. The House wants to know the answer. Does the Labour party support choice or not?

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : Real choice.

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Mr. Maude : That sounds like the voice of the old Soviet Union--go to the Gum store and have a choice of something or nothing. That is not what the Government propose to offer the people of this country. We expect to hear the answers from the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury. Does the Labour party support the extension of choice and competition in the public services? Will the Labour party support the Education (Schools) Bill that will provide more of the information that parents want so that they can exercise their choice in a more informed manner?

Will the Labour party support the Local Government Bill that will enable the Audit Commission to identify those authorities that provide good services at good cost and with efficiency? Will the Labour party support such transparency and openness, or will they oppose it out of the dogmatic fear that that will expose Labour councils to justified contempt?l

Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury) rose

Mr. Maude : I shall finish the list of questions ; then the hon. Gentleman can provide a portmanteau of answers to them all. Will the Labour party support the waiting time guarantee scheme that we have introduced in the health service? The Opposition claim that that scheme is too little, too late, but if it is so easy to do, why on earth did the Labour Government not introduce that reform when they were in power? Do the Opposition understand that one cannot introduce a waiting time guarantee scheme without having first introduced the NHS reforms that we have put through? That scheme has provided evidence of how the NHS reforms have benefited patients in the way that patients want.

Will the Labour party support the introduction of a compensation scheme for passengers on British Rail? Do the Opposition join Jimmy Knapp in saying that that proposal is a con trick and a gimmick? Do they believe that British Rail frequently does not provide the service that people expect? Will they support the provision of compensation to those who are cheated by the system? Does the Labour party support the notion of performance-related pay, related, for example, to absenteeism and punctuality among those who work for British Rail and London Underground? Will the Labour party support that proposal or will it go along with what Jimmy Knapp lays down? Will the Opposition support the introduction of an independent, lay element into the inspectorate of schools? Do they remain doggedly wedded to the idea of professionals cosily inspecting other professionals? Do they support our idea to introduce an independent element--a voice for the consumer--into the inspecting process? Will the Labour party support the introduction of league tables in the NHS to compare the performance of one health authority with that of another? Will it support such transparency and openness?

Mr. Chris Smith : Will the Minister give way, at last?

Mr. Maude : I shall do so if the hon. Gentleman will answer the questions.

Mr. Smith : I have risen twice to put an important point. The Financial Secretary keeps on talking about the importance of transparency and openness. How about

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transparency and openness in the workings of government? Why do the Government not support a freedom of information Act?

Mr. Maude : The citizens charter is all about transparency and openness. The thing that provides the greatest openness about the way in which central Government services are provided to the citizen is the next steps initiative, because that transfers the operational part of central Government to agencies.

I strongly support the principle of openness, and we shall pursue it vigorously. Does the hon. Gentleman propose to support our commitment in the patients charter to limit the waiting time for out-patient appointments to 30 minutes?

We expect answers to all those questions, but I suspect that I know what the answer will be. I was interested to see a distinguished periodical describe the Labour party the other day as the "preservative party"-- dedicated to preserving all that is bad, and opposing all progress and improvement. That craven indebtedness to producer interest means that Labour Members must maintain that all public services are in perfect condition, unimprovable save by the additon of more money. That is Labour's answer to all problems--write a cheque, drawn not on our money but on other people's.

Why, if money is the answer to all our problems, are there such startling and marked differences in efficiency between different parts of the public service? Why does it cost three times as much in Southwark as in Wandsworth to empty a dustbin? Is it simply a question of money? Does Southwark need more money so that it can provide a worse service at greater cost?

Why should one hospital's administration cost three times as much per patient as another, or its operating theatre cost twice as much to run? The answer is simply that one operation is far more efficient than the other, and we need not put in more money to make the less efficient as good as the best. It must be made more efficient. If we can do that, we shall improve the public services without spending more money.

That is anathema to Labour, because it means being prepared to take on some vested interests and face some tough fights on behalf of the consumer and taxpayer. Those vested interests must be taken on, and we must win. Labour will never do that. Would the Liberals be prepared to do it?

Mr. Malcolm Bruce : It is all very well for the Minister to talk about inefficiencies in the public services. Nobody is denying that there is room for improvement and that mechanisms for improvement are worth exploring, but the Minister is throwing up a smokescreen to obscure the accountability of Government. It has been estimated that the poll tax debacle has wasted £19 billion of taxpayers' money-- [Interruption.] Ministers have admitted that hundreds of millions of pounds have been wasted on it, and they can easily lose a nought here or there. In those circumstances, what satisfaction can the citizen get in calling the Government to account for their incompetence and waste of public money?

Mr. Maude : It is easy to see why even the Liberal Democrats have not appointed the hon. Gentleman their shadow Treasury spokesman. His grasp of arithmetic is slight, and he seems firmly entrenched in the world of

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fantasy. He has obviously thought of a figure, multiplied it by 10, doubled it and ended up with a figure from the realms of fantasy. The hon. Gentleman dismisses talk of extra efficiency and says that, if there has been any, it has simply been a bit of extra efficiency here and there. If one hospital is two or three times more efficient than another, is that simply a little more efficiency at the margin? It represents a huge amount of extra public resource being converted into service to the customer instead of being used inefficiently. Does the hon. Gentleman support us in trying to root out such inefficiency and ensure that every pound we take from the taxpayer and spend on his behalf on patient care is spent as well as possible? Will he now support our NHS reforms, which are devoted to providing that greater efficiency and the better care that will flow from it? I will willingly give way if he wishes to say whether he now supports that initiative to achieve those efficiency gains for the patient and the NHS.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce : The Minister well knows that any hon. Member would support such steps if that degree of efficiency could be achieved. He also knows that the citizens charter obscures incompetence and inadequacies in government. If the charter is such a good idea, the Government should have introduced it 12 years ago.

Mr. Maude : I have made it clear many times that the citizens charter continues the programme of reform that we have put into place. We could not have introduced the maximum waiting time guarantee scheme without having had in place the NHS reforms that were introduced under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). The two are inextricably linked.

If Opposition Members intend to oppose, as they have consistently, doggedly and dogmatically opposed, our NHS reforms, they must be honest with the British people and admit that they oppose our plans to introduce maximum waiting time guarantees for operations. Or do they accept our plans? I fancy not.

Labour is interested only in what is spent and what is put into public services. It is never concerned with what is bought and what comes out of those services. Labour consistently tries to hide that fact, whereas we know well that it is not what one spends but what one buys that matters. That is why Labour Members fear a real citizens charter. It is why the Government will press on with the charter and our programme of reform on behalf of our citizens, so making sure that the services they get, provided by the taxpayer, improve and get ever better.

10.15 am

Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury) : When the Prime Minister announced that the citizens charter would be the centrepiece of his governmental activity, he said that it would be nothing less than a revolution and the most comprehensive quality initiative ever launched. The Financial Secretary has also been at the hype game this morning. He talked about the largest programme ever launched anywhere to improve public services.

Mr. Maude : If the hon. Gentleman disputes that, will he point to another initiative anywhere which is more comprehensive and rigorous?

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Mr. Smith : I intend to dispute it bit by bit as my speech progresses, because the Government's claims for their citizens charter must be weighed against what their proposals will achieve. Despite the great fanfare with which the charter was introduced, what has emerged is half-baked, minimalist, inadequate and in some cases positively counter-productive. It is as though an elephant has laboured long and brought forth a mouse.

The Financial Secretary asked why Labour Members were opposed to the initiative. We are not opposed to the idea. We are not opposed to the principle of ensuring that the customers and users of the public services achieve an efficient, courteous and proper delivery of service. But we believe that the Government's proposals will not take us in that direction. We are not opposed to the idea : we are opposed to what the Government are offering.

The answer to the Minister's question whether we have relented in our opposition to the so-called reforms of the past 12 years is a resounding no. Most of those reforms have produced overwhelmingly worse public services than existed previously. He asked whether we intended to oppose this year's planned legislation by the Government. We shall, because in the great majority of cases it will not produce any real extension of choice for the British people.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell : The hon. Gentleman appears to be doing himself and his party an injustice. Among the reforms to which the Minister referred was the right-to-buy scheme. Labour Members opposed that root and branch for a long time, until they realised how popular the scheme was with the public and then they decided to support it. So it is not true to say that Labour Members have maintained their opposition to Government proposals for change. In a number of key areas they have abandoned their opposition.

Mr. Smith : Our opposition to the right to buy when it was introduced was that it would reduce the opportunities for those who wanted to remain council tenants and for people in need of council accommodation. We were subsequently proved right on both counts. We say now, correctly, that it is entirely right and proper that tenants should have the right to buy their council accommodation, but local authorities should have a duty to replace accommodation that is disposed of in that way. The Government have totally failed to introduce that crucial element into the system.

Mr. John D. Taylor (Strangford) : That issue is of great importance in Northern Ireland, because there is a contradiction between the actions of the Conservative Government there and in England. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Northern Ireland Office will not allow council tenants in the Province to buy their houses?

Mr. Smith : The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The Government refuse the right to buy not only to council tenants in Northern Ireland but to private sector tenants. There are inconsistencies in the Government's actions.

I suppose that we should be glad about two aspects of the citizens charter. The first is that the Government seem to realise that the public services matter. They have spent the past 12 years running down our public services, closing local government and depriving our citizens of a real voice. It is little wonder that we are somewhat sceptical of the sudden conversion that appears to have occurred with the

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Government's dawning realisation that the people believe that public services are important, want them delivered properly and want a Government who are determined to improve them. The Government realise that public demand, but cannot deliver on it.

Mr. Arbuthnot : In describing the operations of Islington council, which will be familiar to the hon. Gentleman, a recent Queen's Counsel's report said that

"having the cash office staffed by the innumerate, the filing done by the dyslexic and disorganised, and reception by the surly or charmless, seems to us a recipe for administrative chaos." Do not the Government have some justification for their attitude towards local government?

Mr. Smith : The Government cannot justify their treatment of local government over the past 12 years. Of course there are instances in local authorities under all shades of political control of services being discourteously or inadequately delivered. No one contests that. The key question that the House must address is how to achieve the necessary improvement. The Government's actions over the past 12 years and their proposals for a citizens charter will not achieve that.

Our suspicion is that the Government's conversion to the importance of public services is more of a pre-election gimmick than a change of heart.

We should also be glad--I suppose that it is a form of flattery--that the basic idea of a citizens charter was plagiarised from Labour. As long ago as 1921, Herbert Morrison wrote a pamphlet for the Labour party entitled "The Citizens' Charter", which argued rumbustiously for the role that local government could and should play in enhancing the quality of service received by the public.

Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton) : I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is reverting to the days of Herbert Morrison. I expected him to develop and to put more meat on his earlier point about the Government's attitude to public services. One of the most sensitive and controversial public services and one which has featured in recent debates is the national health service. Can the hon. Gentleman deny that the Government's record of investment in the NHS over the past 12 years is infinitely better than that of his Government in the 1970s? Can he deny that before the citizens charter came along, reforms were proposed and, in my own constituency for one, effectively implemented for hospital trusts, which will bring better services for patients? That happened before the citizens charter was conceived.

Finally, can the hon. Gentleman deny that Labour is opposed to competitive tendering in public services and thus threatens worse services to patients and other consumers?

Mr. Smith : If the hon. Gentleman talks to patients, he will find that their perception of hospitals opting out, the internal market and the way in which the Government's so-called reforms have been implemented do not accord with the version that he just gave. I said that Labour has for a long time been arguing for the kind of approach that the charter is supposed to represent.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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Mr. Smith : Perhaps later. I am sure that other things that I have to say will bring the hon. Gentleman to his feet.

In April 1986, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) launched Labour's "At Your Service" charter for better local services, he said :

"We will require every local council to set clear target standards for every service, so that the community knows exactly what they should expect. We'll require the council to publish every year a rating of performance and public satisfaction for every service, so that the community knows exactly how far the council has gone in reaching its aims. And we'll ensure that local councils consult with local people on public transport, social services, and other key issues."

It comes a little rich from the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) when he says that the citizens charter was not something that my party had thought of. We did and put it forward--and at last the Government have woken up to the fact that something must be done.

To build on the document that we published in 1986, in April 1989 we issued our "Quality Street" proposals on the work of local government, in which we set out the kind of quality programme that we wanted to be introduced. We insisted, for example, on a system of quality audits :

"We would introduce local quality audits for council services, whether provided by the council's own staff, by voluntary organisations, the public sector, a housing association, or managed by community groups."

This year, we launched our own citizens charter setting out a series of new proposed rights--rights much more real than those that the Government seek to trumpet and which I will describe later. The idea of having a citizens charter is right. Indeed, it is essential. However, the Government's execution of that aim is failing miserably.

I shall now examine some of the specific proposals in the Government's citizens charter and consider some of our principal criticisms of it. First, it excludes any of the Government's decision-making processes from the system of accountability. The Financial Secretary made much of the importance of transparency and openness ; he stressed that several times. But the citizens charter and the Government's legislative programme contain no commitment to provide for freedom of information legislation to give our citizens the right of access to information on what the Government are up to. Information and access to it are the absolute preconditions of power in a democracy. The Government are restricting people's right of access to that democratic power. The Government have an opportunity to reverse that. The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), who I was delighted to see was placed sixth in the private Member's Bill ballot this year, has said that he will introduce a Bill on freedom of information. If the Government's rhetoric about the citizens charter, openness and transparency is genuine, they have an opportunity to say now that they will support the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and not use the payroll vote on a three -line Whip to vote down an eminently sensible measure, as they did previously when the hon. Member introduced a similar Bill. They could state that they were going to enforce, support and even improve the provisions of his Bill.

I challenge the Financial Secretary to say that the Government will support the Bill on freedom of information which will come before us in a couple of months. If he does, we shall have more reason to believe that the Government's devotion to openness in the

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