To ask the Minister for the Civil Service when he last met civil service trade union leaders to discuss conditions of service.

I have not yet met the civil service trade union leaders; I shall of course do so as and when necessary.

If and when the Minister's friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, becomes Prime Minister and introduces his classless society, will he ensure that civil servants get an extra bonus for introducing Bills to carry through that classless society—Bills to abolish the honours list, the public schools, the House of Lords and the royal family, and retrospective legislation to get rid of all those knighthoods of the Tory Members who voted for the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine)?

I shall ask my right hon. Friend to give that most careful consideration.

I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will find time to introduce a Bill to preserve the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

When my right hon. and learned Friend talks to the civil service will he make a point of discussing the opening hours of museums and galleries, especially at weekends, on bank holidays and in the evenings when families, particularly children, could visit them if they were open?

That is a good point. Like my hon. Friend, I represent an inner London constituency where many people like to go to museums and galleries. Family times do not necessarily fit in with opening times. There is a difficult balance to be struck. Perhaps my hon. Friend would write to me in more detail about his opinions. I shall meet the directors of museums and galleries before Christmas and I should be interested in discussing his proposals with them.

I am not as optimistic as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) that if the Minister's favoured candidate becomes Prime Minister he will produce a classless society. Is there any opportunity of the people at GCHQ once again having the right to belong to a trade union if the Chancellor of the Exchequer becomes Prime Minister, or are we going to continue with the autocratic rule of the Thatcher years?

We are going to continue with the common sense settlement that was reached a few years ago. There is absolutely no reason to reopen the matter.

To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what further progress has been made towards the creation of agencies.

Since I last reported to the House, the Government have published the first annual review of "next steps" agencies and the Government's response to the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee's third and very helpful report on "next steps".

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that he will continue the sensible policy of his predecessor in making a top priority in the creation of any new agencies improved services to the general public, particularly as it is the general public who fund them?

Just because it is not well known, people should not overlook the significance of the "next steps" development, which I have reason to hope is a bipartisan policy and not a matter of political controversy. It affects organisational changes, not as ends in themselves, but towards better services to the public and better working conditions for people within the service, for whom the agency framework offers a much better quality of working life. We shall certainly proceed with that. We are determined to achieve our ambition of half the civil service being in "next steps" agencies by the end of 1991.

Whether the establishment of these agencies is a bipartisan policy depends on what the Government do. The Minister is certainly right that many things are not well known. It is important that standards of quality and service to the public are part of any agency programme. They must not fall below levels determined by the Minister. Can the Minister be helpful and make these things better known? Can he put them together and make all these standards of service available to the public in an effort to achieve greater awareness?

That is a most helpful and constructive point. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the key basis for the agency relationship is that accountability to Ministers and Parliament is not lost. There is firm agreement between Ministers and the agencies about what should be achieved and about setting standards. The payment of performance-related pay to the heads of the agencies depends on their ability to deliver on those. That is of the essence and creates an incentive towards good and effective service, which may have been absent previously. I should be only too happy to consider the hon. Gentleman's remarks sympathetically. I am grateful to him for making it clear that this positive framework for change in the civil service is something in which he and his hon. Friends are happy to be involved.

Can my right hon. and learned Friend go one step further and say what financial and manpower savings, if any, are achieved by the agencification process rather than the current system?

The principal aim is efficiency in the service to the public. In some circumstances that may yield savings; in others, it would not. I shall be only too happy to let my hon. Friend know, from the records that we have, what the effect has been so far.

To ask the Minister for the Civil Service if he will make a statement on the latest representations he has received from the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists about the staffing situation at the natural history museum.

I have received a number of representations from the IPMS.

I understand that negotiations have continued between the natural history museum management and IPMS representatives, and I am glad to note that, on 20 November, an agreement was reached between them.

Should not the Minister transfer his affections from Chelsea football club and spend his Saturday afternoons up the road at the natural history museum? Will the IPMS be consulted about the disastrous proposal to reduce spending on library services at the museum by £80,000 to £100,000 in the coming year, given the loss that that will entail in terms of the serious scholarship that is so important to British science?

When I watch a game I occasionally have the feeling that there are some stuffed animals on the pitch, although that was not the case yesterday.

I take seriously the hon. Gentleman's question about the natural history museum because I know that he is very interested in the matter. I have taken quite a lot of trouble to have meetings to discuss it. There will always be controversy about the balance to be struck between the resources applied to making the museum more accessible to the general public and those applied to keeping the collection accessible to scholars. I understand that. I can only say that, having had meetings with Sir Walter Bodmer, the director and others, I believe that the museum has genuinely and sincerely attempted to achieve that balance. Now that agreement has been reached, the right thing to do is to await the outcome.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be reassured to hear that the museum's bids for running costs next year have been met in the settlement that I have been able to make available. I hope that that will help to maintain the balance and to ensure that the museum can continue to do its important work. I appreciate that, exceptionally, that also amounts to a great deal of commitment to research.

To ask the Minister for the Civil Service if he will make a statement on the programme for "Action on Race".

Departments and agencies are making good progress in drawing up and implementing their individual action plans under the programme for action on race which my predecessor introduced in May this year.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is possible for selection and recruitment procedures to be based on what is suitable for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants but that, given our multicultural population, we must adapt the way in which we recruit and select people to ensure genuine fairness as between people of different races?

There is no doubt that we can and should do a great deal more to recruit more representatives of ethnic minorities to the public service and, in particular, to ensure that members of those minorities can occupy the higher offices in that service. The typically well-considered and far-sighted plan announced by my predecessor is designed to achieve that, and I look forward to receiving my hon. Friend's detailed comments on it.