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Public Accounts

The work of the Public Accounts Committee is immensely helpful and constructive, and we do a good job. I pay tribute to my colleagues on the Committee, who work conscientiously at their endeavours, led by the Chairman, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). I want to make all the usual comments about how wonderful the staff are—blah, blah, blah. Everybody says these things. On occasion, we mean them. This is one of the occasions when, generally, we do. Before going into a couple of particular issues, I want to raise some general points. First, we need to strike the difficult balance between holding the Government to account and making partisan attacks. It is entirely possible for us to ensure that we make criticisms of the Government and how the machinery works without lapsing over into simply using those criticisms to gain party political advantage. We have not always managed that, although it is all too easy for some to see any criticism whatever of the Government as partisan and something that ought to be opposed. I am thinking of a colleague who was on the Committee, who took the view that any criticism of anything that had ever happened under this Government was a calumny, a foul slander and to be bitterly opposed. That Member was dealt with appropriately by the Whips Office when they were promoted, which presumably was the intention of their comments. That perhaps took things to an extreme, but it is possible to be extremist in the other direction. That means identifying every error in the Government procurement machinery as an opportunity to argue that the policy itself is invalid, inappropriate or incorrect. We must try to strike that balance.