Part of Statistics and Registration Service Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:30 pm on 23rd January 2007.
That is interesting, and the hon. Lady is asking for a uniform set of statistics to measure it. Water in Scotland is in the public sector, while water in England is in the private sector; although water supply is fully funded by the taxpayer through the bills, it is deemed to be public expenditure in England but not in Scotland. There is a massive disparity in public sector accounts of spending per head on that basis alone. How does one collect uniform statistics that give a meaningful comparison given those different systems?