Clause 9 - Capital Receipts
Local Government Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I must disappoint the hon. Gentleman by reassuring him that we are discussing perfectly sensible and practical measures rather than what he has described during an extraordinary flight of fancy that produced an apocalyptic vision. He began by saying that Ministers were taking God-like powers, and he described a perfectly sensible provision for making regulations to fine-tune the treatment of capital receipts as a power to make white black. Now we are hearing about shoot-outs. That is all very interesting and dramatic, but it is rather a long way from reality.
I say to the hon. Gentleman in the nicest possible way that he has been going on for much of our proceedings about the importance of ensuring that
proper accounting practice is followed. Proper, modern accounting practice says that capital receipts should be treated as received when they fall due. That is the only reason for introducing the provision—to ensure compatibility with modern accounting procedures. I hope that he does not object to that and agrees that the clause should stand part of the Bill.