Appendix G
Letter from the Librarian of the House of Commons
to the Clerk of the Committee
Thank you for your letter of 23 January and for the
government's explanatory note about its proposals for ending the
requirement that NHS charitable trusts should provide their accounts
to the Secretary of State for Health for subsequent inclusion
in the NHS Summarised Accounts for England. I have consulted
our health specialist as she is the most likely user of such accounts.
She has in turn consulted other colleagues.
At the moment the Library does not routinely receive
the individual accounts of these charities (or those of individual
NHS Trusts). If there were a scandal or other reason to examine
the individual accounts of a specific charity, summary accounts
are usually available on the Charity Commission website and a
full set of accounts and governing document should be available
on demand from the Charity Commission, possibly subject to fees
for photocopying and postage. The summarised accounts printed
in the NHS (England) Summarised Accounts (e.g. HC 493 of 2002/3)
would not be much help in this situation although they might be
useful if a Member wanted to place a charity within the context
of NHS charities in general.
Where material such as the accounts of a public body
is laid before the House (whether all the accounts or simply a
summary), there is a continuing obligation on the Library to keep
the relevant documents and make them available to the House, its
committees or individual Members should they need them. This
applies to all laid papers, whether or not they contain the order
to print. That means in turn that the documents are readily available
within Parliament indefinitely should they be needed. In practice,
we normally transfer what the Journal Office terms Act papers
to the Record Office after a time. We keep ourselves anything
published in the sessional papers (ie as House of Commons or Command
papers).
We have tended to take a fairly inclusive view of
what financial (or other) information should be reported to Parliament
by public bodies. Where there is a choice, we have to take account
of such considerations as whether the information is readily available
elsewhere; how much use would be made of it within Parliament;
the potential cost to the supplying organisations (which in some
circumstances can be significant); and the cost to us, especially
our own storage requirements.
It is clear that the information about individual
charities will be available through the accounts submitted to
the Charity Commissioners, so that requiring the accounts also
to be submitted to the Secretary of State for Health is a duplication
of effort that seems unnecessary. Our records for the past ten
years or so show that there have been no enquiries placed with
the research service about these particular charities. That does
not necessarily mean that there have been no enquiries at all
but suggests that there has not been a high level of interest.
In theory, the summarised accounts would enable us to answer
some questions relating to the role of such charities within the
NHS that we could not answer from individual accounts. In practice
it is impossible to say how often such questions are likely to
arise, but past evidence suggests that they would not be frequent.
As far as costs are concerned, the accounts have to be prepared
anyway, so the additional cost to the supplying organisations
of submitting those accounts to the Secretary of State for Health
are likely to be minimal. The cost to us of receiving the summarised
accounts as part of the NHS (England) Summarised Accounts would
be negligible, as would the savings if the summarised accounts
were no longer included. We are therefore neutral on that point.
We would not want to receive (and therefore, presumably,
keep) the accounts of the individual charities, especially as
they are easily available elsewhere. Since the summarised accounts
appear to be of only limited interest and infrequently, if ever,
used, we do not think that Parliament would be deprived of significant
information if the raw material for their preparation no longer
had to be supplied to the Secretary of State for Health. On balance
we think there is no obviously useful purpose served for Parliament
by the inclusion of the summary accounts for the charitable
trusts with the NHS (England) accounts and we could manage without
them.
There is, however, an accountability issue on which
the Comptroller and Auditor General is possibly better placed
than we are to give an opinion. We are conscious that there may
be situations or problems that we have not foreseen. In particular,
how much information do the charities have to supply to the Trusts
that administer them? Is it more or less than they have to supply
to the Charity Commissioners? Is it possible to gain an overview
of how well (or badly) the individual trusts administer 'their'
charities? Is there enough information in the public domain about
the charities to answer such questions? It is really a question
of whether their status as charities, with the obligation to report
to the Charity Commissioners, is sufficient to ensure an adequate
level of accountability.
I should add that we are very grateful for being
consulted about this and are glad that you thought of asking our
views. Apart from our obligations to the House in relation to
parliamentary documentation, we are substantial users of the information
those documents contain and often have problems in relation to
ensuring their continuing supply.
2 February 2004
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