HC Deb 09 April 1962 vol 657 cc972-3

Another matter I mentioned last year was the form and presentation of the Government accounts. I said that they were confusing and in need of modernisation. A great deal of work has been done on this. The first fruits have already been made available to hon. Members in the shape of the Civil Estimates, in their new and simpler form, in one volume. No doubt, Professor Parkinson will be the first to acknowledge the feat in compressing into 540 pages what used to fill over 1,200 pages. The material placed before Parliament in this volume is much smaller in sheer bulk than hitherto. But it will be found that nothing important has been dropped.

I hope that it will be agreed that in their new form both the Estimates and the Financial Secretary's accompanying Memorandum are more intelligible than before. This is no reflection on my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary. We hope next year to produce the defence Estimates in a similar form and the detail is now being discussed with the Estimates Committee.

This is part of the process of increasing and improving the financial and statistical information made available to Parliament and the public. As another step in the same direction the first issue will appear next month of a new monthly publication. This will bring together financial statistics now published in a number of different ways and include certain new information. This follows the recommendation of the Radcliffe Committee—the appropriate Radcliffe Committee—that financial stastistics should be improved. I also commend to the Committee the new bulletin on Incomes, Prices and Production, issued by the Ministry of Labour.

With regard to the Exchequer Accounts themselves, I hope to publish later in the year proposals of how they might be radically improved. It is not exactly an easy problem. There are certain statutory difficulties, but I believe that we are making progress here, too.