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Financial Management

The hon. Gentleman is Chair of that Committee, which I serve on. He is putting the best possible gloss on this, but does he not agree with the following:"““The budget headings subject to material error comprise 92.3 per cent. of total expenditure in 2007””?" That amounts to €105.2 billion out of a total budget of €114 billion. There is, therefore, an extraordinary degree of weakness, and no public company could survive such an audit—certainly not for 14 years. Although the situation may be very slightly better than in the past, it is still a catastrophic situation involving a great deal of public money. Why cannot the public sector submit itself to the same degree of discipline and accountability that it imposes on the private sector through company law?