Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-246)
Mr Robin Lynch and Mr Simon Humphries
16 JANUARY 2007
Q240 Lord Steinberg: Thank you very
much. In relation to this case that is coming forward about one
of the apparent carousel traders suing Customs & Excise for
20 million, do you think that the implications of that will help
considerably or a little or not at all in relation to the problems
that you are experiencing at the moment?
Mr Lynch: From my understanding, not at all.
Lord Cobbold: Can you tell us a bit about how
you work out the carousel fraud and how you work with other parties
in Europe; and have you had any approach from Eurocanet? You have
been doing a study of this type of fraud?
Q241 Chairman: Eurocanet is based
in the Belgian Finance Ministry.
Mr Lynch: This is covered by other members of
the office in the Balance of Payments Section, and we will certainly
tell you anything you wish to know if you write to us and ask
us for something; I cannot tell you off the top of my head whether
or not we have been approached or not in that area. I am quite
happy to give you a note in lovely detail exactly how we estimate
it.
Q242 Chairman: And you have not come
across Eurocanet? They have not approached you, and you have not
approached them?
Mr Humphries: They are more likely to deal with
our Customs & Excise colleagues rather than us because those
estimates largely come from that department rather than our own.
Q243 Lord Inglewood: In the event
of you picking up some serious discrepancy, how do you think you
would go about making sure that something is done about it, in
somebody's else's accounts? If you really had systemic statistical
worries?
Mr Lynch: If there was a reservation place on
the accounts and if there was no resolution of that reservation,
according to a time table that was accepted by the GNI Committee
in Eurostat, the European Commission have the power to take money
away and to . . .
Mr Humphries: Charge interest, if you like,
on the difference between what they thought the GNI contribution
should be and what it was.
Q244 Lord Inglewood: Do you think
it would work like that?
Mr Humphries: It is a sanction; it is ultimate.
Q245 Lord Steinberg: Has it ever
happened?
Mr Humphries: Not in the UK but I am not aware
of other countries.
Mr Lynch: I am not aware of it, but it is there,
it exists. Everybody does play the system, everybody responds
to the reservation, puts the plan in place, is examined by the
Eurostat and by other Member States and they will put it right;
that is the experience so far.
Q246 Lord Inglewood: I may be approaching
it with a degree of scepticism but I do not think it is because
I am an English borderer dealing with Scots, and we have been
careful as to what they tell us for many hundreds of years. You
are approaching it, and quite properly, from a relatively narrow
statistician's perspective and you are going through the right
procedures, you are doing your bit and all the rest of it, but
if you stand outside and you were to believe that something was
not going right, particularly through political pressure say,
you need to have an idea about how that might then be dealt with,
and it goes beyond, I think, simply saying, "We have gone
through the procedures." I am not saying, I hasten to add,
that things are going badly wrong, it is a hypothetical point
I am putting.
Mr Lynch: I think the European Statistical Code
of Practice is the statisticians' response to that kind of concern;
that we will say, "Who do you report to, when do you report?"
There are many detailed questions in the questionnaire and I am
certainly looking forward myself to the results of that self-certification
from all Member States, and perhaps we will see something in that
which might, to some extent, answer your concerns.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming
to see us.
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