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Mr. Fabricant: That would be straying from the strict principle of the clause. I suspect that at the moment the dome has a negative value. Given the number of people who are visiting it, I have no doubt that if it were on the commercial market it would be heavily discounted.
Mr. Swayne: May I disagree with my hon. Friend that the issue departs from the principle of the new clause? It is central to the new clause that, rather than taking a cash accounting view of whether the money can be accounted for and whether the petty cash has been nicked, we should move to considering what the objective was and how wisely the funds have been spent in achieving it. Those are more pressing--and therefore inconvenient and unwelcome--questions for any Department to have to answer.
Mr. Fabricant: As ever, my hon. Friend is precise. The House of Commons Library report on the Bill refers not to a performance statement, but to
- key performance data by objective.
Mr. Letwin: Again in the cause of making sure that Hansard records only accurate statements, I wonder whether my hon. Friend has noticed that on page 340 of "The National Asset Register" it is made clear that the New Millennium Experience Company and all its doings are excluded from the register and that the total value of the Millennium Commission is £291,000.
Mr. Fabricant: That is fascinating, given that the new supremo was earning £30,000 a year as a rollercoaster repair man before he took his new £100,000 job with its £100,000 bonus. However, I shall not continue down that line as I fear that I would be straying just a teeny-weeny bit from the main point of the new clause.
There has to be transparency and open government. The Government say that they want to be transparent and open. More importantly, they want to be the people's Government, but the people have to be able to measure whether the Government--and, in this instance, Government Departments and their agencies--are performing. In order to do that, objectives have to be set and measurements have to be made against them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) raised the subject of the national asset register. I remind the House that a few hours ago we were discussing the problem of determining which items are revenue expenditure and which are capital
expenditure. It is quite extraordinary that in 1866, when William Ewart Gladstone established the first legislation on the subject, everything was measured in the form of cash flow, but of course assets have value. They appreciate, but we also expect a return on them. That is why it is so important to set performance measures. It is not difficult.
As my hon. Friends have said, such provisions are in place in New Zealand and Australia. About 40 out of the 50 United States of America have them, as does the Federal Government of the United States for most Government departments and agencies operating out of or as part of the Washington establishment. If it can be done in Australia and New Zealand and in the United States, why can it not be done here? The simple answer is that it can be done, but the Government do not want it because they do not want people to see how they are performing, or, more to the point, how they are failing to perform.
Let me be parochial for a moment and let us suppose that performance targets were set on policing in Staffordshire. We are witnessing 250 fewer police officers in Staffordshire, which is a cut of around 10 per cent. The Government talk about 5,000 more police officers. Is that a target or an objective? If it is, have they met it? What is the variance analysis? Two hospitals in Lichfield are under threat. How does that compare with the Government's performance targets? They say that they want people to be able to get to hospital more quickly than ever before, but waiting lists are longer than ever before. Are there targets for local justice? The magistrates court which has been in Lichfield for more than 600 years is closing. We were told that things could only get better, but, over two and a half years, according to some performance targets, things have got worse very quickly.
How does one set performance targets for the BBC? That is an interesting subject that we have discussed before. How should the BBC be measured? It is funded by the licence payer, independent of Government. The funds come out of the public purse and indirectly from the taxpayer; nevertheless, they are collected on behalf of the BBC by a Government agency, the Licence Agency. Should the BBC be measured in terms of the quality of its programmes? How does one put a figure on that? Should it be measured in terms of the number of people who view BBC television programmes or listen to BBC radio? Should it be a quantitative amount--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman has talked about performance statements and targets, but he cannot roam around talking about those matters and exclude the CAG. He must tie his remarks in with the CAG or his comments mean nothing in relation to new clause 4.
Mr. Fabricant:
I am very grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that I have given plenty of examples and I appreciate your making that very clear point to me.
The Comptroller and Auditor General--I say that because of the suggestion that I did not know what CAG stood for--
Mr. Swayne:
The new clause, quite properly, excludes the Comptroller and Auditor General from any decision in respect of performance targets because that is a matter of policy. Does my hon. Friend share the view that there
Mr. Fabricant:
My hon. Friend raises a fascinating point. I tried to give the example of the difficulty of measuring the qualitative output of the BBC. Does one go for popular programming, which might not be of a high standard, or for work of a higher standard that reaches a smaller audience? However, I do not think that it is a question of how performance might be measured. There is no difficulty in measuring it. My point is that performance targets are used all the time in industry and commerce, and resource accounting attempts to emulate that. It is in use in the government of the United States and Canada as well as in New Zealand and Australia.
Mr. Letwin:
Does my hon. Friend agree that the new clause admits the possibility of the Government deciding that the proper measure of the performance of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is how many long-haired rabbits there are in East Anglia? We simply want to know that if the Government claim that there are 10, there are 10, rather than one or 1 million.
Mr. Fabricant:
It goes further than that, because there must also be an aim. Every Department, agency and business has an aim. I was dining earlier with a director of the John Lewis Partnership. He has just moved from being the managing director of John Lewis Bluewater which has monthly targets which have just been exceeded by about 30 per cent.--if I am not giving away internal information.
Mr. Swayne:
Are those targets monitored on a resource-accounting basis or on a mere cash-accounting basis? That is the key question.
Mr. Fabricant:
My hon. Friend asks a very interesting question. [Hon. Members: "Answer."] They press me to answer, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The hon. Gentleman knows that the organisation that he talks about has nothing to do with public assets.
Mr. Fabricant:
I shall not, then, give the answer. It is on a cash basis, although I cannot possibly say that.
Resource accounting attempts to emulate the auditing process and the results of an audit from a commercial organisation. Of course the two are not identical. One cannot compare the operations of the Treasury or the Home Office with the John Lewis Partnership. Nevertheless, for the first time, we are moving away from simply considering cash flows, saying instead that there are assets which need a return and have to be measured.
That is why I disagree slightly with my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin). It is a question not just of measuring, but of measuring the variance between that which is and that which was projected.
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