Speeches by Carling.

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who makes his point well. I will touch on EU regulations later. Our Labour Government have a stellar record on this issue so far. In negotiations with India, we refused to lower protections on goods such as pork, chicken and eggs. In talks with Korea, we have secured new commitments…”

“If it was 250, that would be fewer than the number of ALBs, right? You would have less than one person sponsoring each one.”

“That is helpful, and I agree. How effective would you say departmental oversight is at the moment of the public bodies they cover? What are the key issues with that? Do you want to add anything more?”

“That is a useful couple of ideas to think through. In some of the evidence we have seen, you commented on a shortage of resource in the Cabinet Office and the teams that examine ALBs. I put a similar query to a senior civil servant at the Committee’s last session, and the response was essentially that they feel the Cab…”

“Sure. The guidance is vague, but the Cabinet Office and the Treasury can both veto the establishment of new ALBs, so why is there still so much inconsistency? Could any other safeguards be put in place that are more effective than what we have right now?”

“You flagged inconsistency in the ways that ALBs are established, with those that perform similar functions often having different status or classification, and often different governance arrangements. Is that mostly a legacy problem? Or is it still happening with new public bodies?”

“Thank you; that is really helpful. Some of the issues you have touched on around accountability are very much things we have found in some of our inquiries, particularly on the ONS and otherwise. As you also touched on, there are around 300 arms’ length bodies, but there are broader classification issues, as your writt…”

“Do we know enough, then, about the public bodies we have? If we do not, how do we improve that? For example, should the Cabinet Office collect and publish information around all public bodies—despite some of the issues you just touched on—rather than just ALBs?”

“Thank you very much, Chair—it is a great honour. Joe, can you start by summarising the current public bodies landscape as you see it?”

“Okay. What is the key issue with the sponsorship teams? Is it the level of seniority and expertise? Is it a question of resourcing? How could we improve the sponsorship teams?”

“That is a problem. Do you think there is enough clarity around the respective roles of Departments and ALBs? Do Departments really know what sponsorship should look like and all the functions that they should be carrying out?”

“Is there essentially a need for clearer definitions of things like “operationally independent”, and some of the other terms that we are seeing?”

“You talked quite a lot in your evidence about the duplication—“man marking” is the term you used—of ALB functions by Departments. What do you think the solution is to that? Is the correct answer always to close the ALB, or is it to find some other way?”

“Q12. In September, a National Secular Society report highlighted alarming numbers of extremist religious organisations in the UK from various faith traditions expressing hideous views about women, including promoting female genital mutilation and denying the existence of marital rape. Many of these are registered as ch…”

“That is helpful. That comes on to what I was about to say, but I will ask the question that I had planned anyway, just in case you want to add anything. What measures are in place across Government to make sure that we are not seeing lots of senior officials, who have developed lots of expertise over time and will be i…”

“Thank you. That is really helpful. It is useful to recognise, as it does not always happen, that a lot of those savings do not necessarily come from headcount reductions. It is useful to have that point on the record. You have anticipated my next set of questions about the strategic workforce plan. We were originally t…”

“That is really helpful.”

“I have some questions mostly around civil service workforce. The spending review included cuts of 16% to administrative budgets across Government by 2030. What reduction in civil service headcount is that likely to entail? How many civil servants are we looking at having by the end of that period?”

“That is useful, and I am glad that you made that comment at the end there. In our work with ALBs, we have had a lot of discussion around the balance between accountability versus independence. It is good to hear that the way that the Government are thinking of it is very much on those systems levels. Finally, it is sti…”

“That is helpful. Minister, in April, your predecessor, Pat McFadden, announced a review and rationalisation of arm’s length bodies. This Committee is doing quite a lot of work on various arm’s length bodies at the moment. At Liaison Committee yesterday, I noticed that the Prime Minister used some quite interesting phra…”