Yes, committee
COMMITTEE Room 15 in the Palace of Westminster is high and hot and airless.
There the Commons' Treasury and Civil Service Committee is trying to learn how we plan our public spending. This week it called up six Treasury officials who pre- sented the straightest of straight bats, and, what with one thing and another, I fell into a light doze — waking to hear Andrew Turnbull, under-secretary in charge of the General Expenditure Policy Group, being asked where the committee could find the information it needed. Mr Turnbull played that one off the back foot: 'That activity within the Central Statistical Office was pruned under the Rayner review.' In the interests of controlling public expenditure, we can no longer tell you? Mr Turnbull has the Appleby touch.
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