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Mr. Alan Williams: Is that point not emphasised by the fact that, several times during the Committee's sitting, the NHS executive witness said that there had been no conflict of interest, whereas Dr. Read himself said that there had been a conflict of interest?
Maria Eagle: My right hon. Friend has a very good memory. He is right to say that there was a contradiction in the evidence. As the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West pointed out, Whitehall can sometimes produce obstructive responses to our reports. Although the people who took decisions and gave advice are defensive of their actions, and do not want to admit that they were wrong, if the Committee is to be effective and produce improvements, they sometimes have to do so. I hope that, next year, problems will be identified and people will say, "Mea culpa," promise to put things right and then do so. I do not blame Ministers of any party; it is the culture of Whitehall to say, "We are running this. We rather resent you looking too closely at it and, if you criticise us, we shall defend ourselves."
Mr. Richard Page (South-West Hertfordshire): I took the precaution of looking at the Hansard reports of the last few annual debates on public accounts, including my own immortal words. I discovered that, almost every year, I started my speech by saying how disappointing it was that so few people had attended the debate. This year, I have to alter my start line because there are a few more of us. I hope that that trend continues, because it is a significant debate that sends an important message to the mandarins in Whitehall.
I start by welcoming the Minister to her new position. She has moved from small businesses to big businesses. I can tell her that the problems are the same; it is just the amount of money that is different, and it will be more dramatic if she gets things right--or indeed, if she gets them wrong.
Before dealing with the report, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis), the Chairman of the PAC, for guiding our Committee through the previous year. He has a contrasting style to his predecessor, but all roads lead to Rome and I am glad to say that the Committee produced some hard-hitting and effective reports with unanimity. Ever since I have been on the Committee, 100 per cent. of the Committee has endorsed its reports. I was first on the Committee in 1987 and I believe that our unanimity gives us strength. United we stand and divided we fall. We must make sure that, whenever possible, our reports are 100 per cent. endorsed.
I also thank the PAC staff--led by Ken Brown--who have always provided an effective and efficient service, for which we are exceedingly grateful.
My few words will follow in the footsteps of my right hon. Friend the Chairman. Obviously, that is a wise and sensible thing to do. It also involves a degree of crawling in that I hope that I shall be called to speak in the Committee earlier rather than later, so that all my ideas and questions will not have been taken by others. However, I mildly disagree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) in that, although I wish my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden every success, I would be quite happy if his tenure were for only three years, but time will tell.
Of course, the Committee would not be able to function without the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, and his highly professional staff in the National Audit Office. I have every respect for their skills and for the way in which they report their findings to the Committee. Their skill and expertise are recognised by many countries throughout the world, who call on the National Audit Office for help and advice.
The Committee needs to recognise that the reports that come before us are the product of a long process of investigation and the result of negotiations between the Department, public body or agency under scrutiny. Naturally, those bodies are not anxious to be severely criticised and usually argue, as I know from experience, for potentially damaging comments or statements to be reworded by what could be described as a process of plea bargaining. That sometimes makes the task of reading the
NAO reports rather like the old art of Kremlinology: one has to be able to read between the lines to find out where there have been disputes. I am not complaining about that. It is part of what makes being a member of the Public Accounts Committee a little more challenging and makes one work a little harder.
Today, I shall concentrate more on the way in which the PAC operates than on the reports themselves, as I believe that there is room for advancement. I promise the House that there has been no collusion between myself and my right hon. Friend the Chairman, except on one small aspect, which I shall raise at the end of my speech.
I am concerned about the questions and potential conflicts that are posed by the Government's rushed devolution measures. Already, many regard the establishment of a Scottish Parliament as a stepping stone to Scottish separation. It is important that national sentiment is not allowed to block access by the NAO and PAC to how the money has been employed. The hon. Member for Garston said that we should have the power to follow wherever the money goes, and I am greatly concerned that shutters will be brought down to stop us doing that.
I understand that, under the Barnett formula, there is considerable financial support for Scotland--above the average amount per head that applies in England. If those extra sums of money are allowed to continue, the NAO should be allowed to follow the financial trail. I should also emphasise that the skills and ability that have been built up by the NAO over the years should not lightly be put to one side in a misplaced enthusiasm to have everything under Scottish control.
My first main point regarding the operation of the Committee concerns the way in which reports are brought before the Committee. I believe that, when we consider a report, the accounting officer responsible for that report should be there to answer questions. How many times has the Committee found that, within seconds of a report hitting the desk, the accounting officer has either moved or retired to Chichester to tend his roses? I believe that all retired accounting officers go there and the new man sits in front of us and says with much sucking of teeth,"I agree with you. It is a deplorable situation. However, I am new to the job and that is what I will do to put it right." We, being a lot of softies, say, "It is not his fault, is it? We can't be hard on him." Therefore, we tend to be too kind and forgiving.
I believe that it should be the norm and the custom and not an exception to call former accounting officers back to be examined on their records in their Departments or agencies. There should be no hiding place or escape route if commitments given in the past to the Public Accounts Committee in good faith are not honoured. We are entitled to question those responsible for the implementation of those policies.
I wish to refer to my concerns regarding what I call the fire-and-forget principle on which the Committee operates. There are varying degrees of noise, lightning flashes and smoke when a National Audit Office report is published and is followed by the Public Accounts Committee inquiry. It is then usually followed by a period--perhaps years--of deafening silence. We have no idea of what is going on, or of whether the recommendations have been implemented. We have no idea whether they have been successful or not. All too
often the matters are revisited years later by the Committee, and we find that little has been done to alter the way in which the Department has been tackling those problems.
One of the advantages, or disadvantages, of serving on the Committee for some 10 years, as I have--I know that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has served even longer--is that one sees the same problems coming around time and time again. As an example, the House should consider the difficulties faced by the Child Support Agency in collecting maintenance payments from absent parents. The subject will be familiar to all right hon. and hon. Members, as we have all had surgeries full of people complaining about the way in which the CSA has operated.
Successive chief executives and accounting officers of the CSA explained to us how they would deal with the backlog of cases, incorrect assessments and appeals. The message consistently was that the problem was being solved. Unfortunately, as the PAC work in the early months of 1998 revealed, the situation has not significantly improved since the earlier days of the CSA work. Now, the Department of Social Security, the CSA and--more importantly--taxpayers are having to face writing off much of the uncollected arrears accumulated during the previous and present Parliaments. That is the penalty that we are paying for the insufficient attention that has been paid to the Committee's reports. We heard assurances during our last examination, but I have serious doubts that we shall find the situation improved at all in the future.
It is possible to cite several other examples. We looked several months ago at the problems that the same Department was facing over the transfer of data from the old computer system for national insurance contributions to the new one. There had been technical difficulties with that in earlier stages. Like other members of the Committee, I was sceptical about the likelihood of the target date for completion of the operation being met, as it was less than two months away. We were assured by the witness that the target would be met but, within weeks, it was announced that the completion date had had to be put back--at a cost of many millions of pounds.
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