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Public Accounts

I am sure that my very distinguished predecessor as PAC Chairman achieved just as high a rate. He has moved on to even better things, and I do not want to criticise him in any way, but the Committee has gone from strength to strength over the past four or five years. That has nothing to do with me—I have just happened to be Chairman in that time—but it does have to do with the structure of the Committee, the National Audit Office and many other factors. Things have gone pretty well. I shall offer only three or four examples of our successes, although I could go on and on. However, I regret that the Committee is also the Public Accounts Committee for Northern Ireland while Stormont is suspended. The Committee does not pull its punches, and our recommendations are hard hitting. We are consensual, but that does not mean that we go for the lowest common denominator. On the Jobskills programme in Northern Ireland, we said:"““Our overall impression is that Jobskills is one of the worst-run programmes that this Committee has examined in recent years. We noted a quite astonishing catalogue of failures and control weaknesses, all of which pointed to a disturbing level of complacency within the Department.””" That programme has since been axed. The Committee’s report on light rail projects stressed the need for rigorous financial viability tests prior to approval. As a result, the Department for Transport shelved plans for three new light rail developments because it realised that it could not guarantee against price escalation. Last year, the Committee highlighted the fact that the Inland Revenue had adopted many of the recommendations proposed by the PAC six years previously. As a result, it had become 66 per cent. more efficient in its administration of inheritance tax. The Committee also reported recently on Energywatch and Postwatch, which we described as ““feeble””. We suggested that those bodies could reduce costs by re-examining their regional structures and sharing administrative functions. In response, Postwatch centralised its complaint handling function in Belfast, and Energywatch, with the support of Postwatch, set up a consumer action network to find ways to achieve better joint working. It is a testament to the Committee’s work that our recommendations on the private finance initiative and on public-private partnerships have saved the taxpayer no less than £750 million, according to the NAO. If the Committee’s members were paid on a commission basis, we would not need to remain Members of this House for very long. Complementing the impacts that I have described is the increasing scale of media coverage enjoyed by the Committee, which is greater than that received by other Committees. That degree of attention to our work can only aid us in pressing for value for money.