Public Expenditure: Value for Money

Lord Barnett Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the first thing to re-emphasise is that we have maintained overseas aid expenditure to meet our commitment of 0.7 per cent of GNI from 2013, but in that context we must make sure that the money is well spent. A new independent commission on aid impact will assess all ODA spending, and DfID in particular will protect all UK aid from corruption by assessing risks and using safeguards to prevent the misuse of funds.

[Lord Barnett]

My Lords, in the spending review, the Chancellor agreed to maintain the spending on the Barnett formula, thus rejecting the serious recommendations of a powerful Select Committee of your Lordships' House, chaired by my noble friend Lord Richard, a former Leader of the House, and including a former Chancellor in the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, and two former Secretaries of State for Scotland in the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Lang. He rejected all that, and surely it could not have been on the grounds of value for money. Would the noble Lord care to tell us what the grounds were?

[Lord Sassoon]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, for reminding us of the importance of continued consideration of the pros and cons of his formula. We are talking about value for money and he asks whether it was not on the basis of value for money that we rejected these recommendations, but I think that we had better stick to value for money for this afternoon.