Fiscal Responsibility Bill

I beg to differ. I think that the Minister, whom I know to be an intelligent and thoughtful individual, will have gone to the Corporate Project Solutions website at www.cps.co.uk and seen three excellent pamphlets written by yours truly—one called "Simply Red", one "The Price of Irresponsibility" and the other "The Hidden Debt Bombshell". Through these, we have called for greater transparency. The Minister mentioned the word "transparency", but he knows as well as I do that generally accepted accounting principles today say that if one acquires any other company or bank with a more than 50 per cent. stake, one has to consolidate the balance sheet. That means that the Government must be much more honest about the debt they acquire when they acquire those banks. In addition, there is the rule that the pension liabilities of companies have to be shown on balance sheet; the Government should do likewise.