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Sale of Student Loans Bill

The hon. Gentleman's intervention anticipated my next point. As I said on Report back in January, we assume that the transaction is of such magnitude that the National Audit Office will want to consider it retrospectively to make sure that the Government have obtained value for money for the taxpayer. In the ordinary course of events, that will lead to a hearing in front of the Public Accounts Committee, of which I used to be a member, and to another report. Will there be an additional external audit, independent of the National Audit Office, of the report that will come to Parliament? There is often a significant gap between a transaction resulting from a Government action, the National Audit Office's consideration of that transaction, the Public Accounts Committee's consideration of it and the publication of the PAC report; often there will 12-plus months in between. It is important that the report that comes to Parliament within three months should be independently verified.