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12.45 am
My point is nothing to do with party, but has to do with the relationship between Parliament and Government. It is simply not acceptable for the Government to say, "Trust us, you can be assured that we will always act with appropriateness and integrity." The structures that we create must allow for the fact that Governments occasionally do not act either appropriately or with integrity. As I said, that is no reflection on the Financial Secretary, or even on the Economic Secretary--although
I do not know much about her. Perhaps she went to Cheltenham Ladies college, which would prejudice her to those of us who have made our own way in the world. However, I do not wish to be unkind or discourteous. Nevertheless, I might say something similar about the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel)--but perhaps I might not.
The issue of trust is fundamental. It has been already been highlighted by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West and lies at the very heart of our consideration of this part of the Bill. I simply do not trust any Government sufficiently to allow them to extend their discretion at the expense both of Parliament and of the independent scrutiny that I have described.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
On the issue of trust, has my hon. Friend studied the recent speech of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that our understanding of politics and of public life should be rooted in our grasp of the weakness of the human condition, implying that one really should not trust too much anyone in public life? Does not that go to the heart of the point that my hon. Friend is making?
Mr. Hayes:
I shall make only two comments in reply to that. First, I do not intend to stretch your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker, beyond its extremely generous limits by responding to a theological point. Secondly, I remind my hon. Friend that Chesterton also said:
We may be more critical of the 1975 Act and of more recent legislation. At that stage, we could have anticipated that the problem of bodies that were not Government Departments, but which absorbed a great deal of Government money and did important things on behalf of the Government, Parliament and people, should have been drawn into the orbit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. We should therefore be more critical of modern legislators than we can reasonably be of politicians in 1866 or 1921.
Surely we must be most critical of the Government of the day. The Bill was a golden opportunity to extend the scope of the Comptroller and Auditor General's scrutiny. Three arguments have been advanced against doing so. The first is that many of the bodies are too small to be worthy of the Comptroller and Auditor General's attention. That suggestion was made by the Economic Secretary when she was speaking on the subject in Standing Committee.
The second argument is that the Comptroller and Auditor General would require some specialist understanding or knowledge, because some of the
activities dealt with by the bodies that we are discussing are commercial or specialist in nature. That is a specious argument, given that the Comptroller and Auditor General has particular powers to take on any additional commercial skills and resources that he might need to deal with such bodies. The third argument, which is self-fulfilling, is that some bodies are statutorily excluded from the Comptroller and Auditor General's competence by the terms under which they were established or by subsequent legislation.
None of those arguments is persuasive or forceful. The Bill was a golden opportunity to strengthen rather than weaken the power of independent scrutiny by changing the balance of discretion and to extend its scope. Both the depth and the breadth of the Comptroller and Auditor General's remit could have been addressed, but the Government have chosen to address neither.
That takes me back to the first point that I made. There is an issue of image. If the Government wish to be regarded as fair, reasonable and honourable, they must be seen to be all those things. If they wish to publish information that is not just useful to the House and to the wider public but scrupulously fair, they must go the extra mile by putting in place arrangements that prove them to be of the greatest integrity and the utmost honesty. In contrast, the image that will be broadcast from the House as a result of the Government's failure to take advantage of this opportunity will worsen the tarnished reputation that they have developed in a very short time for fiddling figures.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
I shall intervene briefly. I spoke on Second Reading and, if this debate were taking place at a reasonable hour, I would have delivered the speech that I spent some time working out, which I have now had to discard. [Hon. Members: "Why?"] The answer is simple: I have no desire at 12.52 am to keep 300 Members of Parliament here. I think that what is going on this evening is an abuse.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
I have no intention of giving way.
National Audit Office officials, who have spent a lot of time working on the issue, should know what has happened this evening. A series of amendments--amendments that we are not discussing now--were debated at great length. They were debated at such length because the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) was having a dinner--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to go over a previous group of amendments. The reason why earlier amendments were debated has nothing to do with us at the moment. We must deal with the group before us.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
I shall not refer to those amendments, Mr. Deputy Speaker--simply to the reason why we are debating the new clause at this late hour. An
Mr. Hayes:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
It is an abuse--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. There is a point of order before us.
Mr. Hayes:
I seek your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is talking about arrangements that were made for Members to debate matters until 11 pm. No arrangements were made with me. I am sure that I speak for my hon. Friends. What is the hon. Gentleman referring to?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I called the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) to speak to the new clause before us. He must not refer to any arrangements that were made, because that has nothing to do with the Chair or with the business before us.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
On the new clause that we are now considering, Mr. Deputy Speaker, National Audit Office officials should know that many of my hon. Friends who wished to speak have been prevented from doing so by Conservative Members' conduct tonight. That is all I have to say.
Mr. David Heath:
I share the hon. Gentleman's disappointment that we should be debating an extremely serious issue at this hour in the morning. Having said that, I feel that the new clause deals with a matter of principle that is worthy of a substantial debate irrespective of the hour, because there are issues that need to be addressed. Having listened to the speeches of the three members of the Public Accounts Committee who have spoken, I think that the arguments that they have adduced are almost unanswerable.
I hasten to add that I am not an accountant; indeed, I suspect that I am almost the antithesis of an accountant. However, I have some experience of public audit, having been an audit commissioner before being elected to the House. I take an old-fashioned and perhaps simple view of the proper control of public funds. Where Parliament has granted moneys from the public purse for public purposes, that should be subject to checks for probity and regularity to ensure that there is accountability to the House and not simply to the Executive. There should be no gap between the province of the National Audit Office and that of the Audit Commission or the territorial bodies that carry out identical functions in respect of various parts of the United Kingdom. If there are gaps in the present arrangements--and my strong suspicion is that there are--they should be filled. The new clause goes a long way towards that.
I have been pursuing this matter ever since I was elected to the House. As hon. Members can see in the Official Report, I have put a series of questions to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). I am sorry that he cannot be here this evening because of his recent
illness and I very much hope that he will soon be restored to health. I am advised by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis) that he has received a letter from him saying that he wishes to be back even sooner than the doctors, the Whips or Madam Speaker wish him to be.
I put a series of questions to the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne about the resources that might be necessary to enable the National Audit Office to plug some of the gaps in the arrangements for non-departmental public bodies and about the extent to which he has been able to promote a dialogue with the Chancellor of the Exchequer or other Treasury Ministers on the subject. In a way, there has been a conspiracy between us, as I know perfectly well that the view that the right hon. Gentleman has expressed in private and in public is very much along the same lines as mine, which is that we should find a mechanism to bring some of those bodies within the province of the National Audit Office.
he who has the impatience to interrupt the words of another seldom has the patience rationally to select his own.
The third issue on which I should like to alight is that of missed opportunity, which was referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Newbury. He said that, for all the good things that are embodied in the 1866 Act, the 1921 Act and the Finance Act 1975, those Acts could not reasonably have anticipated the growth in the extent of Government. The 1866 Act, which was passed long before the advent of quangos, of course makes no reference to the type of bodies that are now well outside the competence of the Comptroller and Auditor General, but that, none the less, are very substantial bodies in relation to the amount of public money that they spend.
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