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No; that is not what I said, either. The Parliament has a scrutiny function to perform, which it carries out through its committees. There is a budget for carrying out that work. One of the SPCB’s roles is to ensure that it is managed, effectively and efficiently, and delivers on what the Parliament has asked it to do. The same case could be made right across the landscape for any of the other public sector bodies that are asked to carry out functions. They have a budget—in many cases, a reducing budget—to deliver similar services. That is what efficient government is about.

I am not saying that they do not, or that we are not doing that, or that we are not robustly assessing proposals as they come forward, or that the Parliament should not be looking at and reviewing existing commissioners to see whether they are delivering value for money, or that the Government will not support that work, because we very much look forward to doing so.

I heard the evidence that the SPCB gave. Its position is that the Parliament as a whole decides whether there should be a commissioner, and then the SPCB—“inherits” is probably the wrong word—executes that function and channels the budget through to the commissioner.

Commissioners are held to account through the committee structure, as you well know. When I was on committees, that is exactly what happened; commissioners would come in periodically and be asked to account for the work that they were undertaking.

As I understand it, the relationship between the SPCB and the commissioners involves a framework that enables commissioners to be clear about the expectation of the Parliament and its committees. I suppose that the SPCB is right in that it does not create the commissioners, which are created by the Parliament as a whole.

My expectation is that savings will be delivered in this fiscal year. That is already happening through our work on estates, procurement frameworks, IT systems, shared services and so on. Work is already happening, and my expectation is that more significant savings will be identified through the conversations about next year’s budget, which are happening now, and we will carry on from there.

No—I think that we are all good. Thank you very much.

I think that there is probably more to it than that. That is part of it—and an essential part, obviously. However, although I am not an expert on the legislation that set up the Auditor General and other bodies, it is clear to me that the way in which bodies and their remits are set up is important in terms of their legislative competence to address issues. It is an important aspect.

Do you mean enhancements of commissioners by parliamentary committees?

We do not want to confuse effective service delivery with how good advocacy groups are at doing their job, because that is what advocacy groups do—their job is to raise the profile of the group that they represent. We expect them to do that, and it is right and proper that they do that. That is different from whether there is a service delivery issue. An efficient, effective and streamlined public sector body landscape that is as simple as possible is the most effective and efficient way to deliver public services full stop.

We can read too much into the fact that a specific advocacy group is not named in a ministerial job title. If every minister’s responsibilities were all listed, you would see that we are all responsible for 10, 15 or 20 different things, and we are not going to put all of that in the job titles, because, frankly, it would be unmanageable. The job titles are fairly broad-reaching and cover a range of areas. The Government website provides a much fuller list of all the things that each minister is responsible for, which, in most cases, is just half a page or a page of things. If people are asking which minister is responsible for something, that information is on the Government website.

When correspondence comes to Government on a specific issue, the response unit will take a view on which minister should answer it, based on which responsibility it falls into. The fact that something is not listed in a ministerial job title does not mean that it is not a big part of the way in which the Government approaches and considers different issues.

Broadly, across the public sector landscape, yes, of course it is. An assessment of whether it is better to spend money on creating a new public body or commissioner, or on front-line services, is hugely important. I would take that further and say that the work that we are taking forward at the moment represents recognition of the fact that we already spend too much money on back-office functions, compared with how much goes to the front line. That is very much the direction of travel.

“Worried” is probably not the word that I would use. I have been very clear; indeed, this is my third time of saying that, from my perspective, my responsibility is to assess very robustly the need for any future commissioners and what they add to the landscape. Do they add more clutter, cost and confusion, or do they play an important role that needs to be carried out and which is not done by anybody else? Finally, are they value for money? You can rest assured that I will carry out that process to make sure that we do things as effectively as possible.

As for being worried, I do not lie awake at night, worrying about how many commissioners there are. It brings me back to my point—and your ridiculous example. Even if we had another 50 commissioners, the fact is that, if they all cost the same as the average of the smaller commissioners in place at the moment, that cost would be roughly the same as that of an average-sized public body, of which we have about 130.

You have to consider it in context. If I am looking to save hundreds of millions of pounds, I will look at where the big money—not the small money—is. That does not mean that the issue is not important, but I would not be doing my job properly if I spent all my time worrying about half a million pounds for a new commissioner when I should be worrying about the half a billion being spent on back-office costs somewhere else.