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Sale of Student Loans Bill

I urge the hon. Gentleman to look to his own house before he casts stones and implies that there are black holes in the Government's spending plan. The income receipts in the Treasury Red Book are always based on estimates. As I made clear in Committee, if the environment is not appropriate and we cannot demonstrate value for money, the sale will not go ahead. Amendment No. 11 refers to the overall value-for-money framework. All transactions will be subject to a rigorous value-for-money assessment. I fully agree with the amendment's description of the key features of that assessment; it would be odd and perverse if I did not, as I was at pains to read those very words into the record on Second Reading. As I have clearly set out the principles for the record, the amendment is unnecessary. I note that hon. Members heeded my remarks at earlier stages that we could not sensibly include in the Bill any details of the Government's assessment of what price would constitute good value for money. That would reveal our hand in advance of the competitive sale of the loans. Just as we cannot put those details in the Bill, we should not try to translate the principles of our value-for-money approach into a set of statutory tests, as is proposed in amendment No. 11. Principles are not precise enough to serve that function, and we would not want to establish an exclusive list of such tests at the start of a long-term programme of sales. We will want, rightly, to build on the experience of sales transactions and, for example, any evaluations by the National Audit Office. The value-for-money judgment on each transaction will, however, be open to parliamentary scrutiny in the usual way. I am more than happy to put it on the record that the Government will report to the House after each and every sales transaction. No doubt the National Audit Office will also report to the Public Accounts Committee on the sales programmes. A robust value-for-money framework is in place, along with adequate scrutiny procedures to ensure that it works.