Speeches by Lowe.

“Well, they are generating their own money. They are not just spending.”

“We can pick that up later. Having had the pre-meeting, if I ran a business where I knew what my income was and I was just spending money—again, I think a lot of this is Government money being given to these various small quangos, as I call them—the question is about the sustainability of the financial reporting. Is it …”

“Because we know, Conrad, that it is easier to spend other people’s money than your own, very often. No more questions from me, Chair—you will get bored of me.”

“That worries me.”

“I am finding it very enlightening to learn about these small Government bodies. Given that we are looking at only bodies that spent up to £30 million with up to 50 employees, I think it is fair to say that we are looking at the tip of the iceberg rather than the base of the iceberg, which is what sank the Titanic. I ha…”

“That does not entirely tally with the pre-meeting we had with the Departments, but we can—”

“From other parts of Government?”

“So captive recovery?”

“Are you collectively comfortable that enough is being done to take full advantage of shared services, or is there more you can do?”

“Yes. On your shared services, you said that you have an audit and presumably you use different auditors. When you talk about turnover, I am assuming that a lot of what is going through your various bodies is spend rather than turnover?”

“So it is funded by the taxpayer who is giving you money that you are then spending. Let us get the term right: it is not turnover; it is spend. On payroll, auditing, office and communications—loads of things that, if you run a business, you try and ensure that you spend as little as possible on—what are you all doing t…”

“Who is driving that? Who is responsible for that? In my experience, unless someone is responsible, nothing ever happens.”

“But what do you think? Do you think it is better as it is, or do you think it could be improved?”

“How would you improve it?”

“So you think that is a question for the Ministers?”

“Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chairman. I have no other questions.”

“Do you think you need to be separate bodies?”

“Farhad, it appears that a lot of the legal bodies we have here stem from Tony Blair’s reforms in 2005, when he basically set up the Supreme Court. Again, do you need so many different legal bodies operating as separate entities? I would be grateful if you could help us in questioning the main people responsible for the…”

“I would not for one minute suggest that we get rid of GAD; it is a question of where they sit.”

“Not for the main session—there’s one a bit later, isn’t there?”