Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“Pitman so graphically illustrates? Finally, I would like an account of what will be done to get a grip on the Foreign Office wastefulness that was identified recently by the media and to which my constituent bears witness.”
“It holds some prospect of an improvement in infrastructure, facilities management, security and training—the unglamorous nuts and bolts of the FCO that are apparently spurned by the organisation’s mainstream to the detriment of people such as Mr. Pitman. I seek three things from the Minister. The first is a comprehensive re-examination of the way in which my constituent has been handled and the Minister’s guarantee that he will be considered fairly for the overseas security work that we know exists, without being given the runaround as he has been or any more spurious pretexts being deployed to keep him out. Secondly, what is the Minister’s plan to resolve the ongoing management inadequacies within his Department highlighted by the Collinson Grant report, which has apparently been left to gather dust, as the case of Mr.”
“Furthermore, the short tenure in key positions, such as those within the finance and human resources departments, combined with a lack of professional experience in those specialist disciplines, was found to limit effectiveness. Collinson Grant concluded that although the entire organisation needed to be challenged and reformed, its leadership lacked the skills and the will to challenge the status quo. The report makes for deeply depressing reading. Four years on, I and my constituent are left with no sense that matters have improved significantly. I am sure that the Minister will pray in aid the formation of FCO Services, an Executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that was created following the Lyons and Gershon reviews.”
“However, that report rowed back considerably on the savings identified by the initial findings, which is disappointing. It concluded that, managerially, the FCO is too deep and too narrow. According to Collinson Grant, that fosters organisational torpor; insufficient delegation; poor accountability; middle managers obsessed with the monitoring, review and repetition of the work of juniors to justify their existence; senior officials conducting themselves as desk officers; and an overall lack of understanding of how to manage a team. Of direct relevance to my constituent’s case, Collinson Grant found that the finance and human resources departments saw themselves as providing advice, rather than mandating adherence to good practice.”
“We in this place have suffered because of such issues in recent weeks and it behoves those in the rest of the public sector to look at their practices to see how things could be improved. It would be naive to suppose that problems of wastefulness are confined to the Palace of Westminster. From recent press reports, it appears that the FCO is a prime candidate for a little light to be shone on darkness. The Government’s propensity for hiring expensive consultants to tell them what they should be capable of determining for themselves led them to commission Collinson Grant Ltd to produce a report in two phases in 2004 and 2005. The second is by far the most interesting. Its somewhat provocative title, “Efficiency, effectiveness and the control of costs in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”, holds much promise.”
“Another insider said: “There is complete apathy about this reckless spending, while a silent minority within the FCO rage and fume about this gross extravagance.” I strongly suspect that that is just the tip of the iceberg. That is certainly the belief of my constituent, who can be counted among the instinctively silent minority, but who has been provoked by the extraordinarily poor way in which he has been handled. We are indebted to people, such as the insider quoted in the press recently and my constituent, who from time to time raise examples of apparent excess in organisations of which they have experience. It is often such grass-roots experiences being brought to MPs as Mr. Pitman’s case has been brought to me that shine light on areas where previously there had been darkness.”
“However, I hope that the Minister is able to comment on reports that officials are able to book business or first-class transport but to travel economy and use the balance for their private travel and that of their families. An insider said: “This is a multi-million pound rip-off and the loophole should be closed immediately… Management at the Foreign Office are very weak and terrified of upsetting the diplomats so they give them whatever they want, which is huge amounts of public money.” All hon. Members are now unhappy experts in loopholes, highly permissive rule books and management who are not sufficiently empowered. I hope that the Minister is taking a look at all those matters in his Department in the light of the Commons’ fall from grace and the dawning of the new age of austerity.”
“Pitman was told that the post offered £400 a day, tax-free. That equates to £146,000 a year, a significant multiple of the cost of my constituent’s direct employment even before the contractor takes his slice. One does not have to be a cost-management accountant to appreciate that that is unlikely to offer good value for money for hard-pressed taxpayers. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a public service agreement to improve its value for money. The comprehensive spending review commits the Department to achieving 2.5 per cent. efficiency savings year on year over the review period. Yet we find the FCO in the dock for squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, with lurid headlines last month that highlighted diplomatic excess. We in this place must show a little humility when discussing excess, given our recent history.”
“A loyal and hard-working public servant has been badly let down by shoddy, shameful and frankly chaotic middle management in the FCO. My constituent’s case touches on issues of wider public interest, on a number of which I have kept up a correspondence with Ministers. Mr. Pitman remains concerned that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is completely incapable of controlling its costs, citing by way of example its failure to undertake full comparative costings for the employment of security firm contractors. When Mr. Pitman completed his contract as an overseas security manager in Kabul in July 2005, he was replaced by an individual from one such security company. In July 2006, my constituent applied to work for the individual who had replaced him in Kabul, who was now working on his own account as a contractor to the FCO. Mr.”
“However, he believes, and I find it entirely credible, that he has been blacklisted as a troublemaker, which has meant that further work has dried up. He is now told that he cannot have work because his security clearance needs updating. When he asks for his security clearance to be updated, he is refused because he has no offer of work and getting security clearance costs money. It is a complete runaround that encourages my constituent in the belief that he is being deliberately excluded from available work for which he is eminently qualified. A sum was paid to Mr. Pitman to cover some of the earnings lost to the wrongful withdrawal of his security clearance, but it has not compensated him for the loss of his residual career, his earnings, his pension and, crucially, his sense of well-being and worth.”
“He was unable to secure employment without clearance and now finds that he cannot get clearance without an offer of employment. His strong suspicion is that Foreign Office management are using that to deny him work. Furthermore, his reputation has been traduced and his chances of employment in the tightly knit public and private security world are greatly diminished. It has all taken a heavy toll, as the Minister can imagine. My constituent received a vague apology for management shortcomings from one of the Minister’s predecessors, and the head of personnel security at the Foreign Office gave an unreserved apology after my intervention in 2004. Mr. Pitman’s security clearance was reinstated to allow him two short-term contracts, which rather vindicates him.”
“It seems that, as his contract came to an end, Mr. Pitman was simply not made aware of the security clearance issue. Instead, his clearance was withdrawn without his knowledge. He was told subsequently that the clearance had expired along with his contract, which was simply not true. Only after becoming aware, via a freedom of information request, that his security clearance had been removed was he able to discover, among the heavily weeded and redacted documents made available, the underpinning allegations made against him. The consequences for my constituent have been profound. He has suffered a substantial loss of earnings in the nearly three years between the loss of his security clearance and its reinstatement.”
“Still, nobody told him that his security clearance had been revoked. Eventually, Mr. Pitman, his lawyer and I fetched up in the office of Mrs. Tessa Redmayne, a senior person in the FCO’s human resources department. We asked why my constituent was being passed over for work that he knew was plentiful. In the course of that extraordinary meeting, it became apparent that the problem was that Mr. Pitman’s security clearance had not been renewed, and that there was no intention to renew it. I expressed surprise, knowing full well from my own service career what a big deal failure to renew security clearance represents and the proper steps that must be taken in connection with it. It is not something to be done on the say-so of a junior official, on the back of hearsay from a foreign national, without any form of investigation.”
“The upshot of those unsubstantiated allegations from a foreign, unvetted civilian contractor and a junior FCO manager apparently in close contact with the former was the summary removal of my constituent’s security clearance, with no form of investigation and no audit trail worth the name. Mr. Pitman was neither given the opportunity to comment nor informed of the removal of what was effectively his licence to practise, both directly for the FCO and for a range of private operators in the security field. In blissful ignorance, he continued applying for employment within the FCO. Unsurprisingly, given his unwitting lack of security clearance, no work was forthcoming. However, Mr. Pitman was aware that there were plenty of appropriate security opportunities in the FCO, as officers were being brought out of retirement to fill vacancies.”
“My constituent became uneasy at the gentleman’s line of questioning and the information that he apparently held and duly reported the encounter officially, as he was bound to do. In July 2000, after he had left his posting, Mr. Pitman was told by his line manager that he had contravened the terms of his employment, citing the testimony of an unnamed witness who my constituent believes was the gentleman he had met from the security firm. My constituent tells me that his line manager and the security firm official both questioned his integrity, and cites a written report from the latter to the former stating that Mr. Pitman was a security risk and that they should not trust him. My constituent’s line manager reported that opinion to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.”
“The Minister will be aware that I have had an extensive correspondence on behalf of my constituent since 2001, but residual issues and concerns remain that warrant attention and suggest that HR management within the Foreign Office is not done well. Mr. Pitman, who has spent his life in Her Majesty’s service in the Royal Marines and the FCO, was made redundant from his work as a Foreign Office security officer in 1996. He was re-engaged on a temporary contract between 1998 and 2000 to fill the position in Moscow from which he had been made redundant. At a function in 2000, Mr. Pitman met a senior figure, a non-UK national, in a security company that provided services to the FCO. Potential employment opportunities for my constituent were discussed in the course of the encounter, and a subsequent meeting was held.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Chope. I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate the effectiveness of management systems at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. My interest in the matter was provoked by the unfortunate case of my constituent, Mr. John Pitman of Trowbridge. I will use his appalling experience to illustrate what I believe to be a wider malaise within the FCO, an organisation that has a formidable reputation for diplomacy but clearly regards management, particularly of its human resources, as being somewhat below the salt. Mr. Pitman, a former employee of the Foreign Office, has had a long battle to rectify a number of management failings that affected him during his service.”
“Is the Minister aware that people with lapsed security clearance are being brought out of retirement, and that security clearance is then given to them following the necessary checks? It is not the case that jobs are not offered to individuals in the absence of security clearance. That rather confounds what he has just said.”
“The Minister is incorrect to suggest that either Mr. Pitman or I wrote to the FCO to say that the settlement that was offered by the FCO was considered by us to be full and final. I hope that my second letter clarified that point beyond any fear of peradventure.”
“The Minister has made a big virtue of spending an increasing proportion of our aid through international bodies, but does he consider it wise to spend ever-increasing amounts of money through the European Union? It is widely regarded as being pretty poor when it comes to spending money efficiently, and it has been widely criticised for spending money on populations that cannot be described as among the world’s poorest.”
“It is good to hear that a vaccine for H1N1 will be available in the autumn, but of course that is about the time when elderly and vulnerable people would ordinarily expect to be vaccinated for seasonal flu. I assume that the Department of Health’s position is that that vaccination should go ahead. It would be useful to have the Minister’s confirmation that he will attempt to deconflict advice on H1N1 and seasonal flu, because obviously there is considerable scope for confusion on the subject.”
“The National Cancer Intelligence Network has today published alarming figures that show that the gap between the cancer outcomes of the over-75s in this country and those in comparable countries has widened even further. May we have a debate in Government time on why it is that the Government’s national cancer plan is failing our elderly constituents?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on the Bill; it represents a positive step forward. I, too, am concerned about coverage. Those who work in further education make a big contribution in this regard, and I suspect that, in the old days, such provision would have been covered by the Bill, because FE came under the remit of local government. That is no longer the case now that its funding comes from the Learning and Skills Council, whose many problems we have heard about in recent months. Does she feel that FE should be covered by her Bill? Perhaps it is, and I have missed it. It would certainly be a serious omission if it were not.”
“The provision was extended to all widows under the terms of the armed forces pension scheme 2005, although not to those whose spouses died prior to transfer to the new pension scheme—an apparent anomaly that was brought to my attention by a service widow who came to see me recently, and about which I have written to the Minister. Given that, evidently, change is possible, I look forward to hearing what plans the Minister has for further improvements to the armed forces pension scheme.”
“Apparently, it was a popular option, but it was not extended to people who had already left the services, and my right hon. Friend’s Bill is chiefly aimed at that group. If the retrospective changes that he seeks were made, the large number of voluntary buy-ins and their extra contributions would, presumably, have to be taken into account. How many people might that involve, and what is the value of their voluntary contributions? I acknowledge that change can sometimes be achieved without risking meltdown in the public finances. In doing so, I note the amendments in 2000 for widows and widowers whose spouses died as a result of their service, and they may now retain their pensions on remarriage.”
“It is only fair to say that it has been the policy of successive Governments to resist retrospective changes to existing pension schemes on the ground that to do otherwise would invite consequential and unaffordable public sector demands. I have no doubt that the Minister will cover some of those points in his remarks. When the Bill was last before the House, the then Minister estimated that the wider cost implications might total £3 billion. Is that still the Ministry of Defence’s estimate, and how was that calculation arrived at? Members will no doubt be aware of the provision in the amendments of 31 March 1973, which enabled members of the armed forces still serving on that date to buy in their prior service to the half-rate scheme.”
“The difference between one third and half in respect of widows constitutes one of the armed forces pension scheme’s legacy issues to which we can add others, such as pension troughs, post-retirement marriage widows’ pensions, the pre-2005 non-attributable widows’ pension, Gurkha pensions and a number of others on which the Forces Pension Society briefs so admirably. This issue has, quite rightly, generated considerable interest among the public, and I notice that the Bill has cross-party support. In February last year, the Minister’s predecessor estimated the cost of upgrading all pre-1973 widows’ pensions to the half rate to be £30 million pounds. Will the Minister today tell us the updated figure and how many widows would benefit from the changes that my right hon. Friend seeks?”
“The men and women of our armed forces have every right to expect Government to keep their side of the bargain in relation to the military covenant. The deal includes the proper recognition of the crucial role and sacrifice of dependants—a fact that, I think, is acknowledged by all parts of the House. The Bill was last debated on 1 February 2008 and my right hon. Friend has given the background to it. We have heard that, prior to 1973, the widow of a retired serviceman was entitled to a pension equal to one third that of their spouse. In 1973, the armed forces pension scheme was improved. Service widows’ pensions were upgraded to half the spousal rate on that part of the pension earned by service after 31 March 1973.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) on bringing his Bill to the House and on the manner in which he presented it. It is a cause for which he has campaigned tirelessly, and I pay tribute to him for his perseverance. I declare an interest as a service pensioner, a distinction that I share with my right hon. Friend. Although our service did not overlap, I believe we served for about the same length of time and retired at the same rank. It is more than a year since the Bill was debated in the House, a period in which our armed forces have continued to make us proud, whatever position we have taken on the Government’s foreign policy. Much has been spoken of the military covenant since 2003.”
“There has only been one year since 1939 in which our armed forces have not been engaged in some sort of conflict. Does the war award refer simply to awards that can be attributed to second world war service, or to subsequent conflicts? If so, which ones? Does the Minister mean “attributable” widows, or simply widows of servicemen who have been killed in conflict?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that another practical measure that the Government could take is to ensure that food is properly labelled, so that consumers can determine what is British and what is not, and, in particular, what is produced to our extremely high standards of animal welfare and what is not? That is a simple measure that the Government could take immediately to help the rural economy.”
“The Minister is trying to conflate the experience of the recession in urban and rural areas. Does he agree with me, however, that the thing that defines rural areas is the fact that people are poor and have appalling access to services? What precisely have his Government been doing since 1997 to improve transport in rural areas?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. He mentioned, in addition to health service funding, funding to local authorities. My constituents in Wiltshire will be slightly baffled by that, however, because the county is at the very bottom of the league table for revenue support grant to local authorities. Will he therefore say a little more about how the extra funding has been distributed among local authorities, and the formula that has been used?”
“As the Minister seeks to increase the available housing stock, may I commend to him the National Audit Office report of 18 March on service family accommodation? It highlights the fact that 18 per cent. of accommodation controlled by the Ministry of Defence is void, up from 15 per cent. in 2005, and against the Department’s target of 10 per cent. Does he agree that that represents a huge waste, and will he speak to his colleagues at the MOD to see how much of that housing can be released to the general housing pool?”
“I commend the Minister for her efforts, but will she accept that a major part of the energy expended by a building during its life cycle is expended during its construction, and that the vilification of older property—particularly antique property—that is not capable of being double-glazed or cavity wall-insulated as part of the home information pack process is rather unfortunate?”
“May we have a debate about Gibraltar following worrying news that Brussels has begun to recognise Spanish claims to the Rock in assigning to Spain territorial waters around Gibraltar as an environmental protection zone that Spain is apparently to police? This has already caused a stand-off—between the British patrol vessel HMS Sabre and the Spanish corvette Tarifa earlier this month. Some urgency is involved in the matter, yet we have heard nothing from the Government.”
“The Minister is right to say that this is an important public health issue, and reducing health inequalities is extremely important. What account has she taken of the rural poor, who are particularly disadvantaged in relation to stroke, given that they are often unable to access stroke services expeditiously?”
“Rather than relying on the third sector, might it not be better to follow the suggestion of the Minister’s own emergency group, which is looking into re-allocating resources in the ambulance service, that calls relating to strokes should be upgraded from category B to category A?”
“I may be a pedant, but I think that the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) was a little hasty in suggesting that the national stroke strategy had had demonstrable effects. It may well have had, and I suspect that it will be effective, but we must be careful about making premature assertions that are not firmly rooted in the evidence.”
“It was all particularly to the disadvantage of older people; classically, elderly stroke victims have tended to be put to one side. I am pleased to note that that tends not to be the case these days, but there is perhaps some complacency, and a danger of forgetting that the elderly are still not given the priority that they deserve. Stroke, given that it is classically a condition that is more likely with advancing years, is a case in point. Having marked the improvement in standards that has prevailed over the past few years, we must also recognise that it took rather a long time for the Government to come up with their national stroke strategy—some 10 years—and it required a bit of prompting by way of the 2005 National Audit Office report, “Reducing Brain Damage: Faster access to better stroke care”.”
“I start by recognising the improvements that have been made to stroke services in recent years. There has, of course, been a gradual improvement since the war, but the focus on strokes has increased in the past few years. A great deal of the credit for that must go to our clinical networks, health care professionals and the research community. I say that particularly because 25 years ago I trained in a national health service that did not regard strokes as a particular priority. The hon. Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), who is no longer in her place, reflected on the standard of care and the expectations of stroke patients that prevailed at that time, and that put me in mind of the sorts of cases that I came across.”
“That appears to be especially required at weekends, as, crucially, the chance of getting a scan, and therefore definitive treatment, is very much less out of hours.”
“Lansley), I wonder whether the Minister has had any note from the Box about upgrading stroke from category B to category A, which is being considered by the Department’s emergency call prioritisation group; if not, perhaps it would be possible to communicate separately on that subject. Such a step might be a way of improving access for people with stroke who live in rural areas. There is evidence that someone’s chances of optimal management for stroke are best if they arrive at hospital by ambulance. However, according to the sentinel audit, only 17 per cent. of patients reach a stroke unit within four hours of arrival at hospital. I suspect that further work needs to be done in accident and emergency to improve triage and expedite the definitive management of stroke patients.”
“If we are serious about public health and dealing with health inequalities, we have to address stroke, which is far more prevalent in less advantaged groups in our society, as well as in certain ethnic groups. We need to try to work out why that is and put in place measures to reduce that inequality. In my intervention on the Minister, I mentioned the effects of stroke on the rural poor. It is bad being poor, but it is particularly bad in a rural location where access to services is extremely difficult. Following my intervention, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr.”
“Member for Crawley, who has some experience in these matters, suggest that in a few years’ time, when the funding runs out, we might simply move on to the next hot topic. Our approach needs to be a bit more long-term than that. As we have seen with road traffic campaigns, there is a danger that when we go on to the next topic we forget the public health messages that have been put across effectively, at least in the short term. That would be a great pity in the context of stroke. There have been a few measures of the campaign’s effectiveness—for example, the Stroke Association has said that it has had more inquiries since the campaign kicked off in February. However, I should like the Minister to clarify what assessment the Government intend to make of its enduring effectiveness, which would, I hope, inform any future campaigns.”
“It has become a medical emergency; of course, it always was, but it was not recognised as such. Unfortunately, as the Stroke Association observes, it is still not necessarily seen as a condition that requires immediate treatment and management—neither by potential patients nor, sometimes alarmingly, by health care professionals on the front line. That has been clearly shown by NOP and MORI polling over the past few years. Since the figures came out in October 2008, we have had the Department of Health campaign. We have all seen the television adverts that are part of that, which have been extremely good. The images are disturbing, but it is sometimes necessary to be fairly hard-hitting in order to change attitudes and behaviour. We will have to see whether the effects of that campaign are enduring. I was concerned to hear the hon.”
“The Minister spoke about health checks and vascular risk assessments and invited the Opposition to support those initiatives. I have campaigned for many years for screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm, yet despite recommendations by the National Screening Committee we still do not have a credible roll-out of national screening for that particular condition. The Government need to be careful; interventions in the public health sphere, particularly in terms of prevention, need to be based on the evidence, which points towards instituting a screening programme expeditiously. I very much regret that that has not been done. What has changed over the past few years with stroke? It has gone from being a condition with chronicity to one that is seen as existing within the acute sector.”
“Standardised death rates from stroke among men under the age of 64 are nine per 100,000 in the UK compared with seven per 100,000 in France. The equivalent figures for women are seven deaths per 100,000 in the UK compared with four per 100,000 in France and in Spain. The UK has some of the worst outcomes for patients in western Europe. In one study, the differences between the UK and eight other European countries in terms of the proportion of patients left dead or dependent were between 150 and 300 events per 1,000 patients. That statistical material is rather technical stuff, but it points towards patients in Britain not doing as well as they have a right to expect, and it certainly suggests that there is no room for complacency.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but he needs to understand that there is a danger in extrapolating evidence from the sentinel study—I think that that is the one that he was citing—which came out just a few months after the implementation of the national strategy. Given that it is a 10-year strategy, and given previous trends, it would be extremely rash to suppose that it had had any effect at the time of the sentinel audit. I very much hope that the strategy will prove to be successful—I suspect that it will—but we need to be a bit careful about the language that we use in anticipation of that. It is important to compare this country’s outcomes and incidence of disease with those nations with which we can reasonably be compared. In this context, I think particularly of western Europe.”
“We need to look again at our protocols to ensure that a medical emergency is investigated as such, 24/7.”