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Mr. David Davis: The Chief Secretary should give that promise.
Mr. Davey: The right hon. Gentleman suggests that the Chief Secretary should give that promise. That is wishful thinking. However, if he were prepared to do so, we would welcome that.
It is great that we are going to have a new system of accounts that will be used for making key decisions, particularly when the comprehensive spending review is announced later this year. Ministers must not let the process finish there but should share its development and future with Parliament. The Government ought to consider training sessions for hon. Members so that we will understand the new estimates. Members of various committees have been deluged with long papers from different Departments and agencies, but hands-on training would be helpful.
The Minister should be looking also at providing extra resources for departments and Select Committees, so that they can analyse accounts and estimates to allow us to ask the right questions.
Mr. Swayne:
I will not detain the House long because I had my say earlier in the proceedings.
The Bill's weakness was summed up admirably by the Financial Secretary when she rejected our proposals for performance accounting in new clause 4. She made a revealing comment--that it might be misleading to release performance accounting figures that were tied to an annual reporting cycle and that it could be more appropriate for the Government to give the House more up-to-date information. Surely that is for the scrutineers to decide. It is for the House to interpret the most appropriate information, not for the Executive to choose and release information to the scrutineers.
Mr. Rendel:
I welcome the Bill for the most part. It will undoubtedly improve the way in which government looks after its accounts. It has been fascinating to participate in the Second and Third Reading debates and in Committee. I have learned a lot about the Public Accounts Committee, even though I am a member, and about the powers and rights of the CAG and National Audit Office.
Sadly, I have also learned how easy it is for any government to fall prey to its mandarins. I suspect that has happened during the passage of the Bill. The measure is much better than when it first came before us, but I feel sad that we have not made further progress in obvious ways towards making better use of Parliament's auditor--the Comptroller and Auditor General.
I am sad that a basically good Bill has been spoiled in that way and that we failed to seize the opportunities that were open to us. I am sad that the Government failed to accept amendments, particularly those tabled by the Public Accounts Committee, despite being comprehensively beaten in argument--particularly in Committee--and despite every effort being made to allow them to save face. Neither of the two Opposition parties made any effort to make party political capital from the Bill and at every stage we were careful to give the Government every possibility of meeting our requirements for strengthening the hand of the CAG and every opportunity to table their own amendments, which could have done the things that to our mind were obviously ripe for doing. I am very sorry that Ministers did not see fit to seize that opportunity, which they so easily could have done.
All praise is due to Labour members of the PAC who, almost to a man and woman, have been stalwart defenders of Parliament and the Committee. They rightly chose unanimously to sign the two reports on the Bill that we published, and I give them all credit for that. Doing something that one's party does not want one to do is never easy, but they correctly upheld the rights of Parliament in this matter. I am only sorry that more Members from the governing party did not take the same view in the votes as those members of the PAC.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
I echo the comments of others as the debate has, on the whole, been non-partisan and non-political during the few hours in which I have been in the Chamber tonight. Although most of those present agree that this is a good Bill, opportunities have been wasted and I hope that the Government will at least consider some of those when it reaches the other place. There is no doubt that a move from cash accounting to resource and appropriations accounting represents a step change in the way that public money is accounted for and scrutinised by Parliament. The statement of liabilities--including contingent liabilities--and, in particular, the statement and register of assets will make it much easier to see where public funds are being applied.
I welcome the register of assets, which took a huge amount of work to compile, although I suspect that it is a long way from perfect. As my hon. Friend the Member
for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) made clear, a large number of assets have no proper value placed on them at all and it is essential that we consider every single asset that the Government utilise to make sure that we cannot utilise it better to achieve a return. That is an example of how resource accounting will help Parliament to uncover the workings--or rather the non-workings--of government.
We could have improved the system still further. It is a pity that we did not give the Comptroller and Auditor General greater access to any body in which public money is involved and glaring gaps remain even though he has access to about three quarters of all Government non-departmental public bodies and other service sector companies. Paragraph 42 of the fourth report of the Public Accounts Committee makes it clear that there is no reason at all why the CAG should not have at least as much access as the Departments themselves and that a great many resources are wasted in negotiating access. I accept that access is often freely granted, but the time taken in negotiating it is completely wasted.
I remind the House that it was the Camelot affair that caused the Government to change the law--I praise them for that--to give access to Camelot so that the CAG and the Public Accounts Committee could scrutinise the better workings of the lottery. That is an example of the Government listening to the Public Accounts Commission, the Public Accounts Committee and the CAG, and being prepared to change the law. I cannot understand why they were prepared to change the law in that case, but not in other significant areas of Government spending.
Those areas include 200 departmental private companies, covering an annual spend of £2 billion. Some £4 billion of public pay processing by the Government is not scrutinised, and £5.2 billion of training opportunities in the new deal initiative are not covered. There is no good logical reason why those areas should not be properly scrutinised by the CAG, the NAO and the Public Accounts Committee. As I have already stated, a big opportunity has been missed.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order. May I say to the hon. Gentleman that on Third Reading we should be discussing what is in the Bill, and not what has failed to go into it.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The Bill alludes to performance targets, and we could have enlarged on those. Perhaps another place will need to consider that issue because, although it is not in the Bill, it may well have been put into the Bill by the time it becomes law, which is why I make a plea to the Government at this late stage.
As I made clear in my earlier speech, the CAG has already built up great expertise in the value-for-money investigations that he already performs. He produces 160 valuable reports each year, and the Government and everybody else benefit from them hugely because they expose shortcomings. The CAG has already built up a great database of international comparators that could be used by each Department to produce performance indicators, such as output and validation measures.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset made it clear that a Conservative Government would introduce those performance indicators. I believe that once the Government have had proper discussions with the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee--my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis)--and others, they will want to include those indicators in the Bill.
There is worldwide recognition of the expertise of the CAG and the National Audit Office, and it is folly not to use it. In avenues of Government and in Whitehall there seems to be a suspicion of the NAO, which is totally misplaced and unfounded. If we have a body of expertise within the parliamentary sphere, we should make best use of it.
If the Government were to introduce those performance indicators, they could draw on the NAO's expertise. After all, one of the most valuable parts of being audited by the CAG is often the discussions that take place during that process. We could learn from that expertise and produce performance indicators. I have no doubt that those indicators would be refined over time so that they became more effective.
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