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Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD): I thank the Chief Secretary for setting a precedent by making a timely response to the Committee's recommendations and I hope that other Departments that respond to the Procedure Committee will follow it. That the response was in the required time was much appreciated.

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West) (Con): A rather better precedent is the fact that the Chief Secretary has agreed to all the recommendations of the report. Would not that be a precedent to follow?

Sir Robert Smith: Given that the report followed a request from the Chief Secretary, the circle was being completed—it would have been rather unusual if he had changed his mind. The report is a welcome step in the right direction. Much of it has already been dealt with by hon. Members, for example, the reasons for the process being brought forward and for the recommendations.

In their response, the Government took the recommendations on board, although they made some minor caveats about which I want to question them. Recommendation 2 was about publishing annual lists to show the dates on which each resource account is laid before Parliament and published—it is a chance for the Government to demonstrate what they are doing. Their response states:

"The Government accepts the recommendation to publish annual lists showing the dates on which individual resource accounts are laid before Parliament and published. The Government has no plans at present to amend the statutory deadlines but will keep them under review."

It would be helpful if the Government showed a willingness to try to improve the speed at which they publish the annual lists, so that scrutiny is timely and effective. If the naming and shaming through publishing the lists does not achieve that, perhaps statutory deadlines may be required.
 
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The Committee recommended that the 14-day period should take account where possible of recesses and the times when the House is not sitting to do the leg work. The Government have said that they intend to take that into account, although they included the caveat:

"However, despite best efforts the timing of recess periods such as the half-term break, particularly if announced fairly late or subject to a change of date, may not always make it possible to ensure that a full two weeks of sitting days is included".

I hope that that is a minor caveat. With modernisation, we were meant to have a regular timetable, so the Government should not be caught out. They have made the commitment that we should know all these things in advance. There was a time at Easter when they would have been caught out, and people would have had to understand, but I hope that people will not rely on that caveat and get too slack in meeting the deadlines.

The Government say of the 14-day deadline:

"It is envisaged that this might not be met only in circumstances where departments require authority for spending on new services at a late stage in the process."

I wonder whether the Government can give some idea how often they think that will happen and assure me that that is meant to be a minimalist caveat. If the process is to work, 14 days is still not a great length of time.

I welcome the commitment to clear memorandums because that will offer a greater chance that scrutiny will be more effective and more focused. I welcome the Government's approach and hope that they can give some reassurances on the caveats that they have put in their response.

5.34 pm

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West) (Con): May I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, who is unavoidably elsewhere? The motions arise out of the first report of the Procedure Committee, although the proposals have also been considered by other Select Committees.

I am in the fortunate position of rising when everything has already been said, even if not by everyone, so I can be brief. The proposals are directed at improving scrutiny of the Government's expenditure proposals that appear in the estimates. I do not think that we can be expected to nod through 12-figure sums without proper scrutiny, and these are useful changes.

Having two Appropriation Acts per year instead of one, as previously, will enable the resource accounts—the successors of the appropriation accounts—to be produced earlier. The winter and spring supplementary estimates will be laid at least a fortnight before their approval, which gives a much more realistic time scale to the opportunity for scrutiny, especially if the proofs are made available to the Select Committees in advance of that.

Resource accounts and estimates do not naturally lend themselves to the scrutiny of ordinary Members of Parliament without some expertise, and in that regard, the new scrutiny unit will assist by explaining matters to Members, and perhaps even pointing them towards useful avenues of inquiry. Each Department will produce an estimates memorandum to its Select
 
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Committee, which will accompany the estimate. We hope that supplementary estimates will be in a standard format, analysing the changes proposed. The reasons will be set out in the accompanying memorandum.

I understand that the contents of the memorandums will be a matter for negotiation between Departments and their Select Committees, and Committees will clearly differ over what they expect and require in their own estimate and memorandum. However, I hope that the Chief Secretary will be open to representations for the material that will form the core of those memorandums, and that guidance will be issued to the Departments, as he has already given us to believe. I am sure that the Liaison Committee will pursue that with him.

Before we get too excited, I quote from the conclusion of the Procedure Committee's report, which says that the change is a "useful" but

"minor . . . improvement in the House's procedures".

5.38 pm

The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas): This debate has been short, positive, useful and more lively than anticipated. I start by thanking the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who has explained to the House that unfortunately, he cannot be here. I should like to put on record our thanks to him, on behalf of the Government and the whole House, and to the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne), who is a member of the Committee, for explaining that to us.

I reiterate the thanks expressed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the four Committees involved in the debate for their swift and positive response to the Treasury's original proposals for change. We owe particular thanks to the Procedure Committee for its helpful report. We could call it sensible accounting, and on the anniversary of the tragic death of our former leader John Smith, sensible accounting is something that we should all support and bear in mind.

David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): The Minister refers to sensible accounting, and I declare an interest as an accountant.

In relation to the point made by the hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) on Committees nodding through 12-figure sums without the background information needed to know whether that is justifiable, how does the Minister respond to the International Monetary Fund's observation that the private finance initiative commitments that our Government have racked up during the past seven years, which are 12-figure sums in aggregate, should appear on the national balance sheet, rather than being invisible as at present?

Mr. Woolas: The House spent three and a half hours yesterday debating £5 million, and looks set to spend about 40 minutes today debating how we account for the expenditure of hundreds of billions of pounds. It would not be wise for me to go into that issue in detail, but my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has noted the point that was made.
 
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For those Members who have never been fully confident about the differences between a Consolidated Fund Bill and an Appropriation Bill, or between Votes on Account and Excess Votes, the Committee's clear exposition of our Supply procedure is very useful. Reference has been made to the memorandum by the Clerk Assistant, which is printed on page 52 of the report. It is particularly helpful and I commend it to Members.

I shall try to respond briefly to some of the points that were made. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight) welcomed the report and I thank him for that. He implied that the use of plain English would be helpful, but I am not sure that the accountancy profession would always support that idea. Like the legal profession, it tries to keep some semblance of its own language for its own benefit. As he acknowledged, a very helpful explanatory memorandum is available and can be referred to. I was rather worried when he said that his instinct told him that he smelled a rat, only to discover that he could not smell one. It is good advice for Governments always to work on the principle that if the Opposition Treasury spokesman cannot smell a rat, there probably is one and he simply cannot smell it. That said, I think we are all in agreement, and I am grateful for that.

The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) asked three questions, the first of which concerned recommendation 2, speed of publishing and the statutory deadline. We do of course intend to meet the deadline, but in the spirit of sensible accounting my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is keeping the matter under review. The hon. Gentleman also asked about the 14-day period, and I can confirm that the Government and the Committees intend that the period in question be 14 working days. As he pointed out, in the past two years the Government and the Leader of the House have helpfully published a calendar of parliamentary sitting times, but of course, there is the inevitable caveat of flexibility. The intention is that common sense be applied, but half-term might cause problems, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. [Interruption.] I am helpfully informed by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary that the period is indeed 14 days.

The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine also asked whether there would be exceptions. I am informed that there is the usual Treasury contingency, in that one has to plan for all eventualities. That is the sensible approach.

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