House of Commons Hansard Debates for 10 May 1993

Psoriasis and Acne

30. Mr. Dalyell : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what support he gives to research on psoriasis and acne, and other related dermatological topics ; and what representations he has had in relation to such research from the National Eczema Society.

The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson) : The main agency through which the Government support research into skin disease is the Medical Research Council. In the financial year 1991-92, the MRC's expenditure on research directly relevant to psoriasis and other dermatological disorders was more than £2.3 million.

Mr. Dalyell : As one who was a spotty teenager, greatly embarrassed by acne during my national service, may I ask the Government sympathetically to monitor the representations that have been put forward, on supposedly relatively minor disorders, by the National Eczema Society? What is the Government's response on the effort on research of the limited list procedures put forward to them by Rona MacKie, professor of dermatology at the university of Glasgow, and John Hunter, head of the big dermatology department in Edinburgh?

Mr. Jackson : To look at the hon. Gentleman's elegant countenance, one would never have thought that he was a spotty youth. The Government are aware of those concerns. It is necessary to balance the costs and the benefits to patients, to the industry and the taxpayer. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Advisory Committee on NHS Drugs will look this summer at all the dermatological drugs available on the NHS and will take into account the perspective to which he referred.

Mr. Anthony Coombs : Will my hon. Friend confirm that over the past 10 years there has been a significant increase in asthma and eczema cases and other atopic illnesses? Does he agree that that may be linked to environmental factors relating to car pollution? Will he therefore liaise with his colleagues in the Department of the Environment to make sure that any research carried out takes cognisance of that fact?

Mr. Jackson : I will draw those comments to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. The Medical Research Council is at arm's length from the Government--it makes decisions about priorities--but it is important that it should reflect on that important aspect, and I will ensure that it is aware of what has been said.

Charters

32. Mr. Legg : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what steps his Department is taking to ensure that individual charters are systematically reviewed and strengthened.

Mr. Robert Jackson : Charters are a baseline for continued improvement. As standards are met, they are

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reviewed and raised and new standards are developed as appropriate. Delivery is for the service providers in the first place, but my Department keeps a sharp eye on it through, for example, the Prime Minister's seminars and our published reports.

Mr. Legg : I urge my hon. Friend to ensure that the parents charter is regularly revised, and in particular to take account of the additional information that will be available to parents once full testing of the national curriculum is introduced.

Mr. Jackson : My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of testing and the connection between that and information. The recent polls show that parents want more information about the performance of schools and their children. They have not yet seen perhaps as clearly as they should the connection between testing and that information. We have to explain that connection, but it is vital that we continue with the testing programme to ensure that the information that parents want is available to them.

Mr. Kaufman : Will the hon. Gentleman say what remedy the charters provide against the squandering of taxpayers' money by the Benefits Agency? For example, £2.1 million has been spent on health screening programmes in private clinics for staff aged 35 and over, 86,000 individual items of corporate clothing costing £2.1 million have been provided and £6.8 million has been spent on overtime because of the total incompetence with which the disability living allowance system has been administered. That makes a total of £10 million already, which could have been spent on benefits instead of nonsense. Will the hon. Gentleman now sack Mr. Michael Bichard and restore parliamentary accountability for the Department of Social Security?

Mr. Jackson : I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman regards expenditure on health screening as squandering money. I am also surprised that he has attacked good employment practice in the civil service. He asked about the relationship between those factors and the charters, which focus on outputs from public services. There have been problems with the DSS agency's outputs--they have been clearly recognised and are being tackled. The charters do not involve the sort of expenditure to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, as that would not be sensible when trying to manage an organisation that provides good outputs for patients, clients and customers.

Market Testing

33. Mrs. Browning : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will report regularly on the progress of the market-testing programme.

Mr. Waldegrave : I am happy to be able to tell the House that when the current market-testing programme for the year to September 1993 is completed, I shall publish the outcome in line with our citizens charter principle of providing more information on Government activities.

I have also set in hand the publishing of a contracts bulletin which, from this summer, will announce all Departments' future programmes and then all individual market-testing contracts when they are under competition.

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Mrs. Browning : Will my right hon. Friend ensure that when the bulletin is published, it will be made fully available to the small business community, which will find it extremely useful when tendering for contracts that were previously not available to it? Will he ensure that it is widely available and written in plain English?

Mr. Waldegrave : My hon. Friend makes a good point. The work that we have done makes it clear that the bulletin will be particularly helpful to smaller companies that may be interested in smaller contracts.

Ms Mowlam : Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, since his appointment last year, his disagreements with Cabinet colleagues and his lack of political will have turned the market-testing programme into a fiasco, produced the chaos that we now see in the civil service and stalled his commitment to open government? We are still awaiting the White Paper on science. What steps will he take to ensure that when the inevitable Cabinet reshuffle takes place, after the fiasco last week, it will not result in the right hon. Gentleman being replaced by one of his more dynamic colleagues?

Mr. Waldegrave : One thing that was made perfectly clear by all the commentators over the weekend was that we had reached another stage in the terminal decline of the Labour party. Having listened to the hon. Lady's contribution, one can see why. The hon. Lady hopes that the market-testing programme will go away, but she will find that it will not--we will proceed with it for the benefit of taxpayers and those who use public services.

Mr. Ian Bruce : Does my right hon. Friend agree that many of the civil servants who have been involved in market testing have demonstrated that once their sense of enterprise is released, they are able to do their jobs much better? Certainly, the agencies demonstrate good enterprise within the civil service and the Government.

Mr. Waldegrave : My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, many in the public service are far more forward looking than the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms Mowlam). As Jo Rogaly said in the Financial Times last week, the Labour party stands for nothing except "the maintenance of bureaucracies".

Citizens Charters

34. Mr. Gerrard : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what further plans he has to review and amend citizens charters.

Mr. Robert Jackson : I refer the hon. Member to the reply I have just given to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg).

Mr. Gerrard : Is the Minister aware that the citizens charter's list of performance indicators for local government includes hardly any that relate specifically to services to ethnic minority communities and contains no mention of major services such as education? Does he accept that record keeping and monitoring are an essential part of ensuring that equal opportunities policies operate effectively? Will he ensure that charters and performance indicators do not continue simply to ignore them?

Mr. Jackson : The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. It is important to monitor the participation of ethnic

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minorities in a range of activities. I will certainly draw the attention of the Audit Commission, which is responsible for local government performance indicators, to what the hon. Gentleman said about ethnic minorities. We shall certainly bear in mind the interests of ethnic minorities in drawing up all the charters so that, where appropriate, they can be taken into account.

Sir Paul Beresford : Will my hon. Friend, in reviewing and amending the citizens charter, recognise that in local government the achievement of a charter mark was accepted with pleasure by competent local authorities at the top of the scale? However, there is considerable wastage at the bottom end of the scale and it would benefit the public, in terms of the quality of services and potential savings, if heavier pressure were placed on local authorities at the bottom end of the charter list.

Mr. Jackson : My hon. Friend, with his great experience of local government, is absolutely right. I should like to draw the attention of the Opposition Front Bench to a statement made recently in the Municipal Journal by the leader of the Labour party on Berkshire county council, Dr. Lawrence Silverman, who seems to be well in advance of his party in the House. He said :

"if the private sector can provide computing, payroll and other financial services cheaper than the in-house bureaucracy, then we owe it to the people to make these savings and to put the money saved into direct services".

My hon. Friend and Dr. Silverman are absolutely right ; it is Opposition Members who have not quite got the point.

Mr. Matthew Taylor : In reviewing and amending charters, the Minister placed considerable emphasis on responsiveness to public demand. On the education charter and particularly testing, given the thumbs down from teachers, the public at the polls and even education advisers to the Secretary of State for Education, will the Minister at least draw the Secretary of State's attention to the fact that the citizens charter is meant to pay attention to other people's views and, one hopes, will do so before the system descends into chaos?

Mr. Jackson : Of course we have to pay attention to people's views and explain our policies clearly and effectively. But, as I said earlier, we have to explain that there is a vital connection between testing and the information that parents are seeking about the performance of schools.

Lady Olga Maitland : In reviewing charters, is my hon. Friend aware that the passengers charter is working very well? Last weekend, I was on a train from Truro to London which was an hour and a half late. Every courtesy was extended to me, plus an offer of compensation. Does that not show that the Government put people first and that they care?

Mr. Jackson : There is no doubt that an improvement in performance has been effected by the way in which the charters are picking up the performance of public services through monitoring, and a significant contribution is being made.

Taurid Object (Debris)

35. Mr. Mackinlay : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what assessment the Government have made about the Earth's vulnerability from debris

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shed from the Taurid object ; and in what scientific and international initiatives the Government are involved in order to gather intelligence about the threat presented by asteroid strikes generally.

Mr. Waldegrave : The chief scientific adviser last year consulted extensively on the threat posed by asteroids. The conclusion reached was that the United Kingdom should not divert major Government resources to research in this area, although work on asteroid collisions is going on at Sheffield university.

The United States have been looking at the matter carefully, and I understand that its conclusions have led it to fund a limited detection programme. Clearly, it would be pointless to duplicate that research. We shall, however, continue to monitor the research undertaken and keep our approach under review.

Mr. Mackinlay : I am grateful for the Minister's reply. Does he understand that large numbers of distinguished scientists and experts throughout the world are alarmed by their inability to alert Governments to the gravity of the situation? Will he give the matter further consideration? In particular, I commend to him an article in the Sunday Telegraph on 25 April by its science correspondent which explained with great clarity the seriousness of the matter, which really should not be treated with levity by the House.

Mr. Waldegrave : Let no one say that Members representing Essex take only a parochial view of matters. The hon. Gentleman is right. I have read the article to which he refers, and there is a real issue here. At this stage, it is a research issue. We are well in touch with the international network studying it.

Mr. Roger Evans : Will my right hon. Friend consider the theory that the dinosaurs' lives came to an end as a result of an asteroid? [Interruption.]

Madam Speaker : Order. I want to listen to the hon. Gentleman, but there is a great deal of noise going on. Let me hear whether his question is in order.

Mr. Evans : Would my right hon. Friend agree that the concern shown by the Labour party is deeply ironic in this context and that research, at this stage, is as far as it need go?

Mr. Waldegrave : Probably the straightforward answer to that is, yes.

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Research Foresight Concepts

36. Mr. Knapman : To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what recent discussions he has had with industry about research foresight concepts ; and whether these will be covered in his science and technology White Paper.

Mr. Waldegrave : The Office of Science and Technology published a report by the science policy research unit at Sussex university on research foresight in March this year. I and my officials have had many discussions on such foresight with major British companies and the Confederation of British Industry in preparing for the White Paper.

Mr. Knapman : I am grateful for that reply. We greatly look forward to the publication of the White Paper as a result. Is my right hon. Friend aware that a number of our competitors, including the United States and Japan, already participate in such foresight exercises?

Mr. Waldegrave : Indeed they do, and so do the Germans, the Dutch and people from other competitor countries. There may well be lessons to be learnt, which is why I have been in touch with the Sussex university unit, one of the centres of expertise on this subject.

Dr. Bray : Is the Chancellor of the Duchy aware that other Governments in Europe and the European Commission take a considerably greater interest in this matter than do the British Government and that, in the conferences planned on the European Community fast programme, he and his colleagues are participating but little?

Mr. Waldegrave : We shall be coming to the discussion on the fourth framework programme, where a great deal of work is going on in this country, to make sure that our negotiating position is properly organised. The hon. Gentleman will find that we do not hold back when it comes to putting forward Britain's views on this matter.

Several hon. Members : On a point of order, Madam Speaker--

Madam Speaker : Order. I have a Standing Order No. 20 application to hear from the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe).

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