ACCOUNTS AND RECORDS (Hansard, 14 October 1975)

§ Mr. Oakes
I beg to move Amendment No. 322, in page 40, line 1, leave out from 'shall' to end of line 15 and insert— '(a) keep such accounts and records, and

(b) prepare and submit to the Secretary of State such statements of account, relating to the acquisition, holding and disposal of land as the Secretary of State may with the approval of the Treasury direct.
(2) Directions under subsection (1) above may in particular relate to—

(a)the items which are or are not to be included in the accounts, and the kinds of transactions which are to be recorded, and

(b)the form and manner in which the statements or accounts are to be prepared and the times at which they are to be submitted to the Secretary of State.'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this amendment it is convenient to take Government Amendments Nos. 323 to 330, together with Amendment No. 333.

§ Mr. Oakes
This is a long and seemingly forbidding list of amendments. The House need spend little time on it because most of the amendments deal with the mechanics of the accounting system and those hon. Members who were Members of the Committee will remember that at the time the Committee was told that the Government were discussing this matter with the local authority associations. This is the product of those discussions and agreement has been reached with the associations that the amendments to be made in Clauses 44, 45, 48 and Schedule 9 shall be in this form. I owe it to the House to mention one or two. They fall into two groups.
In the first group the main amendment is No. 322 which deals with the form of accounts. It reflects two major points. First, the way in which the arrangements have been framed means that authorities will need to be able to prepare a number of statements of account dealing with various aspects of their operations. These will be covered by directions by the Secretary of State. Authorities will, therefore, need to keen such accounts and records 1250 as will enable them to prepare these statements. However, the way in which the accounts and records are kept can be left to each authority to determine in the light of its existing accounting practice.
I mention two other amendments to Clause 45, namely, Amendments Nos. 327 and 328. They deal with the way in which the sharing arrangements for land account surpluses will work and cover two points. First, there will need to be a specific statement of account, which will be the determining account for the sharing of surpluses. This will basically, but not entirely, be a cash statement, but it has not proved possible to define it sufficiently for the legislation and Clause 45(1) as now drafted is not accurate. Accordingly, Amendment No. 326 gives the Secretary of State power, with the approval of the Treasury and after consulting the associations concerned, to designate the appropriate statement of account for this purpose.
Secondly, considerable thought has been given to how the 30 per cent. share to be redistributed between authorities will work. It has been agreed that in the early years this will be distributed between authorities pro rata of their deficits as a recirculating pool. Thus the first claim on any authority's surplus will be to repay to the redistribution pool any payments which it has received from it. Amendments Nos. 327 and 328 are designed to cover this arrangement.
The second group of amendments relates to Amendments Nos. 323 and 332. They deal with the provisions which allow authorities to roll up the interest on land account borrowings, instead of having to make annual provision in the rates for repayment. It was originally intended to achieve this by an amendment to paragraph 9(1) of Schedule 13 of the Local Government Act 1972, and the equivalent provision for Scotland. Hence paragraphs 8(2) and 10 of Schedule 9. However, further examination has shown that there are technical difficulties in this approach so Amendment No. 323 deals with the matter by inserting a new substantive provision in Clause 44.
Those matters should be on the record. I apologise to the House that they are rather turgid but I assure the House 1251 that there is no change in policy whatever. These amendments simply relate to the mechanics of the account.