Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Defence – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 12 February 2001.
Iain Duncan Smith
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
12:00,
12 February 2001
My goodness, the Secretary of State goes on for an awfully long time to say absolutely nothing; he will
not answer the question. Let us take him back to the accounts. As he knows, he wrote to me on 6 February about the News of the World article, and claimed:
There is no question that the total £241 million underspend on the Defence Programme is somehow going to be taken away by the Treasury.
The Secretary of State does not even read his accounts; the figure is about £317 million. The accounts state:
Actual surplus to be surrendered.
So, according to the accounts, that money will be surrendered to the Treasury. The Treasury will decide whether it goes back to the right hon. Gentleman. The Minister for the Armed Forces—sitting next to the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench—does not even know anyway, but that is to be expected. In the article, the Minister insisted that
unused money would not be given back to the Treasury.
We have got used to the Government being unable to tell us the truth about European defence, but for them to be unable even to tell us the truth about the accounts shows a level of incompetence that is breathtaking.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
