Departmental Business Plans

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I welcome the opportunity for Select Committees to scrutinise the business plans? This year in particular there is a lacuna with the annual departmental reports not being published. What will be the relationship of the business plan to such annual departmental reports in future?

[Mr Letwin]

These business plans are a vastly superior document to the annual reports. Of course, there will continue to be the publication of the accounts of each Department, but I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me the indelicacy if I say that on some occasions the previous Government’s annual reports from particular Departments contained a load of guff. One could not tell what the thing was about. I remember in opposition desperately struggling to find out what particular Departments were doing, and all I could get was a load of jargon. In these reports, one will be able to see the information—we are going to this, we will do it by this time, and this is the effect that we expect it will have. That is a jolly useful thing.