Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-104)
RT HON
PAUL BOATENG
MP, MR GUS
O'DONNELL CB, MS
MARY KEEGAN
AND MS
SARAH MULLEN
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Q100 Chairman: Perhaps it could have
been, so that people could see how you yourselves are actually
going to measure it?
Mr Boateng: They are published,
of course, but, you are right, someone simply reading this would
not necessarily make the reference over to the Technical Note.
Q101 Chairman: Someone reading this might
think you could meet these phrases by very minimal improvement,
or am I being cynical about it?
Mr Boateng: I think that is a
fair point.
Ms Mullen: That is why we introduced
Technical Notes and published them, to allow that to happen.
Mr Boateng: Looking at this, you
would not know necessarily, if you were an ordinary lay reader,
that Technical Notes had been produced to underpin it, so we should
do something about that.
Q102 Chairman: I think it would be useful
if you could join all this up?
Mr Boateng: Yes.
Mr Cousins: If I could raise just one
other point with you. Mr O'Donnell did make a statement about
another matter here this afternoon and I appreciate very much
the fact that he took this opportunity to do it. Clearly, it would
not have been right for the Committee in any way to have pursued
the point, nor are we in a position to, but I simply ask, as we
have got both yourself and Mr O'Donnell here, that if the Committee
did decide it was a matter that it wanted to explore, whether
Mr O'Donnell would be happy to come back and speak to us about
that again; if we did, and I am not saying that we would?
Q103 Chairman: I think this is for the
main Committee, but you can answer that?
Mr O'Donnell: I am at the Committee's
disposal, as ever, on any matter.
Q104 Chairman: Chief Secretary, you have
offered to publish, I think, without review or reference to the
BBC, the guidelines on ETNs, so perhaps we could have those without
further ado, which will be extremely useful?
Mr Boateng: Yes, Chairman.
Chairman: Can I thank you and your colleagues
for attending this afternoon. Thank you very much.
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