Audit Committee, 12 Nov 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Official Report 115KB pdf

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Parliamentary Audit Committees (Meetings)

Item 5 is on a meeting with the public accounts and audit committees of the United Kingdom Parliament and the devolved institutions. The committee has received a letter from the chairman of the Northern Ireland Assembly's Public Accounts Committee, Mr Billy Bell MLA, on our proposed visit to meet members of the Public Accounts Committee at Stormont on 27 November.

Members will be aware that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive on 14 October and there is no indication of when devolved power will be restored to Northern Ireland. In the light of those developments, it is suggested that we postpone our planned visit. I suggest that if the Assembly and committee at Stormont resume their powers before the dissolution of our Parliament in March next year, we should rearrange our visit for a suitable date, if time permits. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We all hope to renew our acquaintance with our Northern Ireland Assembly colleagues and wish them well in resolving their problems.

I have been away, but I understand that we were given a choice of two dates for the meeting with the UK Public Accounts Committee—2 December and 4 December—and most members opted for 2 December, which is a Monday. The convener has been in that other place. Will anybody be there then?

We are waiting for the PAC's clerks to get back to us on Wednesday to confirm the availability of members. They have said to me previously that any day might be as easy or as difficult as any other. In any event, the date that we chose was 2 December.

I was at Westminster last week. Unless people are involved in business on Mondays, they tend to turn up only for votes. I am concerned about that. We are going to go down at some expense and there will be few members of the PAC to meet us.

Do we know that there will be only a few members? Is the committee expecting us?

We are hoping to confirm how many members will be there this week, before we make a final decision on travelling. The difficulty that we are juggling with is that, if we visit on a Wednesday, many of our members will have parliamentary commitments here. We will wait to see what happens.

So there will be further reports on the matter.

Yes.