Finance Committee, 24 Jun 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Official Report 97KB pdf

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Cross-cutting Review

Item 4 is an inheritance from the previous Finance Committee, which took up a cross-cutting expenditure review into children in poverty. Members have its draft report and explanatory note. As I understand the matter, the previous committee decided, for reasons that are set out in the paper, not to publish the report before dissolution, but asked its successor committee to do so instead. The report was agreed unanimously by the previous committee; we are being asked to fulfil an administrative function that will ensure that a full response to the report is received from the Executive.

While reading the draft report, I found an error in paragraph 76. In line 4, "£1,555m" should read "£11,555m", and "£1,4149m" should read "£14,149m". Those are factual errors in figures, so can we agree to make those amendments for the sake of clarity, and can we agree to publish the report, with the caveat that it was produced by the Finance Committee in the previous session?

Members indicated agreement.

On page 20, table four gives figures on a cash basis and table five give figures on a resource basis. Why not show the figures on a consistent basis? That would allow us to see more clearly what is happening.

We are aiming for simpler figures and more clarity in the budget, but we are not quite there yet. We often have to give figures in two formats to explain the issues.

I am not sure that the tables should be directly compared. We have to understand whether the tables are distinct.

The percentage uplift is confusing.

The report was done by the previous committee and, unless there are specific modifications—such as the one that I suggested to correct a factual error—we should allow the report to be published. We can pick up Jim Mather's general points in future.

I thank members for their attendance.

Meeting closed at 12:32.