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'() Accounts prepared under this section may include information referring wholly or partly to activities which--
(a) are not activities of bodies falling within subsection (1), but
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendment No. 23.
Amendment No. 6, in clause 10, page 5, line 19, leave out subsection (2)(d) and insert--
Amendment No. 7, in page 5, line 26, leave out subsection (3)(c) and insert--
Government amendments Nos. 24 and 34.
Mr. Timms:
In the newly harmonious environment that we are enjoying, I can say that clause 9 governs the scope and content of whole of Government accounts. At the moment, the clause defines the scope of the accounts in terms of the bodies to be included. Accordingly, all items included in each body's own accounts would be included within whole of Government accounts.
There are, however, a number of areas of the Government's finances which are dealt with through separate funds, such as the national insurance fund and the social fund. Although specific Departments have responsibility for administering those funds, they are legally separate and so are accounted for separately. We would want to include such funds within whole of Government accounts. Unfortunately, they would not qualify as "bodies" under clause 9(1), and so at present could not be included within whole of Government accounts. The amendment addresses that issue.
Amendment No. 23 is purely technical. Amendment No. 24 introduces an important performance incentive into the consolidation process, allowing an individual official within each designated body to be given responsibility for preparing that body's consolidation pack, arranging for it to be audited and submitting it as directed.
On amendment No. 34, clause 27(3) is a transitional provision to allow the Treasury to collect consolidation information on a pilot basis from public sector bodies which will ultimately be within the scope of full public sector whole of Government accounts, but are outside the scope of the initial audited accounts for central Government.
The amendment extends the provision to allow the Treasury to require another Department to pilot the necessary consolidation procedures for public corporations or local authorities, to prepare for the extension of the scope of whole of Government accounts from central Government to the entire public sector.
I hope that the House will not accept amendments Nos. 6 and 7, as they would severely impair the efficiency of the consolidation process put in place by clause 10. They would remove the Treasury's right to require electronic data submission and to set deadlines for that, which would be a retrograde step.
Amendment No. 6 would also impose a requirement to publish consolidation pack information for a particular year, which would essentially duplicate information that the body is already required to publish in its annual accounts. That would result in unnecessary duplication
and expense. I hope that the House will reject those amendments if the Opposition choose to press them to a Division.
Mr. Letwin:
I do not agree with much that the Financial Secretary has just said, but I would not want our exchange to be considered disharmonious. Despite the fact that we have had some arguments, our proceedings over a prolonged period have on the whole been harmonious. I do not intend to disrupt that trend.
I have no deep principled objection to amendment No. 22, or at least, I do not think that I have, but I have a difficulty: I do not understand it. Although I listened attentively to the Financial Secretary's remarks, they did not explain it either.
The problem is caused by subsection (b), which refers to activities which
I admit that, throughout the Bill, as we have remarked on various occasions, more or less everything is left to the discretion of the Treasury. The amendment could simply reflect the exuberance of the draftsman. He got so used to describing everything as a matter of discretion that even reality began to be a matter of discretion, and we move from reality to appearance. That is a possible explanation, but, if it is not an exuberance of drafting, we want to know why the distinction is drawn between activities of a public nature and those which appear to the Treasury in that light.
The more important question is the first part. What are activities of a public nature? If the Financial Secretary had not also been present for many hours in these proceedings and in the earlier Standing Committee, he might be tempted to say that it was obvious to the meanest intellect what an activity of a public nature was.
The Government have specifically excluded various matters from the purview of the CAG by not accepting the reversal of the burden of proof, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden proposed in a new clause. If I remember correctly, those matters were excluded because they did not appear to the Treasury to be of a sufficiently public nature. We were told that while some activities might receive public funding, they were somehow outside the public sector and that made them appear to the Treasury as activities that
were not of a public nature. I am in a state of confusion and muddle about what constitutes an activity of a public nature. I suspect that the Financial Secretary is in the same state.
Part of the reason for the confusion is that the phrase "activities of a public nature" is as vague a phrase as the parliamentary draftsmen could have devised under perplexing circumstances. "Public sector activities" is the usual phrase, but the amendment avoids that. We are therefore considering a much wider concept.
Let us consider the student loans company. Does its work constitute "activities of a public nature"? It clearly uses public money, but it is not a public sector entity. Is it intended to be covered by the definition? I do not know, and I wonder whether the Financial Secretary knows. If he does, it would be useful if he could tell us. If he does not, perhaps he could reconsider the phrase. While he does that, he should consider other similar matters that we raised in Committee and try to tidy up the Bill so that we know what the extremely confusing measure covers.
Mr. Keith Bradley (Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household):
Thank you.
Mr. Letwin:
The Deputy Chief Whip says thank you from a sedentary position. However, I fear that he may not thank me because I must progress to amendments Nos. 6 and 7, which we tabled. The Financial Secretary made a reasoned case for not accepting the gist of those amendments, which deal with publishing the information. He said that it would cost too much. That reminds us of Ministers' frequent resort to the doctrine that they cannot answer a parliamentary question because it would cost too much to find the information. It is remarkable that the Financial Secretary should use that argument in this context.
We are considering a case whereby the Treasury has prepared a set of accounts, which constitute whole of Government accounts. They are the crowning achievement of the resource accounting process. Clause 9 covers that and clause 10 refers to it. Clause 10 states:
'(d) publish the information.'.
'(c) publish the information.'.
appear to the Treasury to be activities of a public nature.
That takes us to the heart of the problem that we were discussing in the context of new clause 1. What is an activity of a public nature? What are the criteria against which the Treasury will judge whether the activity is of a public nature? Why are we dealing not with whether it is an activity of a public nature, but with whether it appears to the Treasury to be an activity of a public nature?
Where the Treasury intend the accounts under section 9 . . . to relate . . . to a particular body, the Treasury may . . . designate that body.
When a body is designated, the information is to be delivered to the Treasury. That is a remarkable matter to put in statute. If we are simply considering an administrative internal action of the Treasury vis-a-vis other Departments, why have Ministers troubled the House with a request for a statute basis? The Treasury has discretion to insist on anything being delivered to it at any time of day or night.
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