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Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions

The Public Accounts Committee will, I hope, be very involved in the process, and I want to involve the expertise not only of its current membership, but of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who chaired the Committee with such distinction during the previous Parliament. I served on the Public Accounts Committee when I first entered the House, and it is perhaps our most effective parliamentary tool for dealing with some of the big issues of public expenditure and value for money. One has only to read its reports on, for example, the big Ministry of Defence procurement contracts over recent years to realise that it has identified a very serious problem and, with the National Audit Office, brings a considerable expertise to solving those problems.