12 July 2007
Speech by the Exchequer Secretary, Angela Eagle MP, at the Government Procurement Service Conference
Well thanks very much Peter and can I say how delighted I am to be able to attend this as my first conference in my new role in Government, and I think that is very fitting that given that my new title is Exchequer Secretary and that we spend £125 billion pounds of public money procuring everything from paperclips to energy to buildings to lighting, light bulbs and everything in between, that this is my first conference.
I have been looking at the live interactive questionnaire that you did this morning when you were considering where we are now and where we want to be, because it is useful for Ministers to know what the people at the coal face think, they are actually really rather important. The first thing I would like to say is that you have got candour. You think GPS is "invisible remote, uncoordinated, not intelligent," obviously not about you, but about some of the outputs I think we have all had experiences of .
But I am very encouraged by what you want the Government Procurement Service to become because that is the extent of the ambition of this transformation process. We are talking about procurement both within departments, between departments, and I hope in the end collaborative working between National and Local Government and other public areas. There were many words there that I would certainly welcome, in how you describe GPS should look in future, in particularly things like "collaborative respected, pro-active." I think it is very important to be strategic, working out of silos and collaboration with cross departmental work is really important and I also liked your emphasis on developing your own professional skills and your presence as a cross government service which is what this transformation process is all about. I think that with that kind of approach we can look forward to making some good gains in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency in Government, because we are talking, as I said earlier, about an awful lot of money, £125 billion pounds of tax payers money, and one of my jobs I think as Exchequer Secretary is to ensure that we get the best possible value for money out of what we spend.
I spent 5 years in three different departments prior to what I would call a rest, on the back benches, before coming back into the Treasury a couple of weeks ago, and I actually think that what you do and what you are all engaged in doing can make a fantastic difference to the way in which we actually manage to deliver services effectively to all of the people that we are really here to serve and that is members of the public, so it makes huge difference in deliveries of health, education, social services, a real difference to people's quality of life on the front-line and that is what has always driven me personally in my approach to being in public life and I am sure for many of you it is exactly the same. So, one of the things I think that we need to get away from is the defensive nature of some of the procurement approaches that we have taken in the past, and I say this partially as an ex-member of the public accounts committee, and I have just been told I am now going to be the Treasury representative on the public accounts committee again, so I don't seem to be able to get away from that committee, but I have served on it in different sort of roles for 15 years on and off now. There is a certain sort of lowest common denominator about procurement not making a huge mess of it, not losing loads of money, not being exposed in the press for all of the things that we all dread being exposed for that the PAC loves to grill Permanent Secretaries about when it gets them in front of it. But I think that is too defensive, I don't think that actually gets us to the situation where we can get the most out of what procurement processes can really mean, in a more creative way, because there's positive value for money and there's positive creative cross departmental thinking that can really help to deliver extra value.
Now this year's comprehensive spending review actually does maintain the record levels of spending and investment in Public Services and Public Infrastructure that we have been able to bring to bear in particularly the last 8 years, but obviously there is a tighter fiscal environment. I hope that will be one of the positive aspects that might help us bring out how we can get better value for money within the resources that we bring to bear already, perhaps how we can escape some of the departmental silos, how we can work in a way to get better value for the money that we spend to the delivery of services.
Another area that is more up the agenda I think now than it was when I first came into Parliament and Government is the impact of what we do on the environment and our own environmental goals as a Government in order to deal with the complex issues identified in the Stern report, climate change and how we can save the footprints, carbon or otherwise, that we manage to leave. Now, we have a commitment to make the Government estate carbon neutral by 2012 which is a significant and a very stretching target, alongside a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and we want to reduce the water that we use by 25% by 2020 as well as increasing our energy efficiency, so this introduces issues of whole life benefit of products which obviously are a slightly new, well newish anyway, approach and aspect that you all need to be aware of, and I think again that gives us more scope for strategic and creative thinking and innovation in the procurement that we get ourselves involved in.
So I think procurement is one of those things that is everywhere, and often no-where, because it is so obvious that no-body sees it, it's like the wood for the trees, but I think that really you are the people that can help us drive some of this vision. The Office of Government Commerce sitting as it does within the Treasury, is a kind of catalyst for the Government Procurement Service, and can drive improvements, working together, is not a sort of Stalinist dictatorship, it is a catalyst and what I hope it will enable and empower all of you to go back and do your jobs in the way that you want to do them for the common goals that we have got of getting extra value added, and it has new powers in three main areas:
Firstly, on demanding departmental collaboration when buying common goods and services, which I hope will begin to put some of those newer networks that have perhaps been ignored in the Government brain into a more active existence, because we can save money that way through economies of scale and we can also leverage better value out of some of the contracts that we sign.
Secondly, a scrutiny role for the Office of Government Commerce and we have seen great success from the Gateway reviews that have been going on which will feed into a more professional scrutiny of the Governments largest projects by the Major Projects Review Group. We certainly need to keep a sensible and reasonable handle on that, and we have also now given the Office of Government Commerce powers to set procurement standards for departments to meet and to monitor their performance against them. I hope that this will actually not be seen as a negative thing by all of you, but be seen as a positive benchmarking exercise which you can use to be more effective within your departments, breaking down perhaps some of the bad old ways of doing things, some of the old assumptions that are perhaps now out of date, or not efficient enough.
Now, the third area, that Transforming Government Procurement focussed on was professionalism and skills, and I think this is a really key part of empowering all of you to go out and do the job that I want you to do. I have spoken already about how important procurement is and about some of the challenges that we need to face and in order for you to meet them, which isn't an easy task, we need to recognise the importance of procurement and some of the difficulties that you all face out there in delivering within your own particular environments. I would first of all like to say that when we are looking at what best practice is, there is an awful lot of best practice that is a shining example to the whole of Government both local and national. Again, we only tend to get to hear about the things that go disastrously wrong and the public consciousness only ever impinges on great disasters. There are also various political with sometimes a very large P, reasons why Parliament only ever talks about disasters as well. The publicity only goes to the failures, but while all of that is going on, a great deal is being delivered in an extremely professional and good way which never gets any notice at all, but I hope that we can get to the stage where we can give credit where it is due.
So that is why one of the key proposals in the document Transforming Government Procurement which was published in January, was for a new reformed Government Procurement Service and I know that my predecessor John Healey MP has been instrumental in creating this approach and he approved 19 recommendations that were put to him on the Government Procurement Service last Spring, and we are already seeing tangible progress. The new GPS website, the launch of a graduate scheme, which, apparently received nearly 200 applications from candidates, so there is obviously interest out there which I welcome, and which will be notifying the successful applicants next month, and we hope they will start soon after in a range of Government departments.
Because there will be challenges, there will be increasing pressure on procurers to meet these demands for both efficiency and progress. I want to see all of you being more creative, more confident and less risk averse. It is therefore important that we give you the support that you need to develop your professional skills and also the networking contacts and time to talk to each other about best practice, that I hope today represents. I hope that this will be repeated, so the reformed Government Procurement Service will provide training, development and learning and I hope this will be a real opportunity to professionalise, to develop your own skills, even more than they are developed already, and to support others.
It struck as a Government Minister in four different departments now, how we constantly re-invent the wheel all over Whitehall. I have also often been struck by how lonely it must be procuring a big contract on your own in a Government Department when probably someone somewhere else, not very far away, has been through exactly the same process as you, has a killer way to do it, which actually guarantees good results, but you never know who they are, you never find out who they are, and you can never get any tips from them and I think if we can change that by bringing this network together and doing the skills training and professional approach that is outlined in the Transforming Government Procurement document, then I for one will be pleased and I look forward to continuing to watch the progress and being as supportive as I possibly can in the time ahead.
Thanks for listening to me.
END