Scrapping Becta a mistake, say committee witnesses

A report published on 7 January by the PAC includes statements from witnesses giving evidence to the enquiry on the "quango cull". One official says that the abolition of the ICT education agency seems to have been based on "no evidence whatsoever". Charles Cochrane, secretary of the council of civil service unions, also explains that while his organisation initiated some discussions with the Cabinet Office about the reviews and abolition of public bodies, "we certainly weren't subject to any formal consultation". His view matches the PAC's overall findings, which conclude that the coalition's review of quangos was poorly managed. "There was no meaningful consultation, the tests the review used were not clearly defined and the Cabinet Office failed to establish a proper procedure for departments to follow. It is important that the government learn lessons from these mistakes as it has indicated that future reviews are likely to be run in broadly the same way. To ensure their effectiveness future reviews should not be conducted in a similar way," says the committee's report, titled Smaller government: shrinking the quango state . Geoff Lewtas, senior national officer-director of bargaining, equality and policy support also gave evidence as part of the review. In the document he argues that the termination of Becta contradicted Sir Philip Green's report on Whitehall waste, which was commissioned by the government. "Just by way of a comment, we looked with interest at the report that had been commissioned from Sir Philip Green, and a lot of what he said in his report was about the need for central procurement for the whole range of government services. Here we have a decision with regard to Becta where you are just taking away that central support function, in terms of procuring IT for schools," he says. "Heaven knows, there are going to be 1,000 different contracts now, each school determining what it wants, what software, what equipment, et cetera. How much resource will that take up, in terms of educational costings? It is not something that departments can or should walk away from; they have a responsibility to be active participants in the process." The committee's document also outlines written evidence given by the Public and Commercial Services Union, which stresses that there is a strong case for maintaining a central source of ICT expertise on cost grounds. "A Becta agreement with Microsoft that greatly reduced the number of licenses schools are required to buy will not be renewed in December 2010, and there is no guarantee any other organisation(s) will be able to replicate this agreement, resulting in significantly higher potential costs of operating system and software licences for schools," it says. The government announced the closure of Becta last May, stating that it would save £80m from this financial year's budget.