Treasury committee urges government to include PFIs on the book when reporting "whole of government" accounts
Accountancy Age, 09 Mar 2010
MPs are demanding the Treasury publish Public Sector Net Debt statistics - calculated according to International Financial Reporting Standards taking PFI contracts into account.
The demand is in a report from the Commons Treasury committee which repeated the concern of MPs that although departmental accounts will be prepared under IFRS, the PFI figures "will not appear in the calculation of net debt in the Whole of Government Accounts".
The committee said: "Future pre-budget and budget reports should include a reconciliation between public sector net debt calculated on a national accounts basis and the same figure calculated using the IFRS principles which apply to departmental accounts."
The report said Treasury ministers had told the committee that the revised timetable for preparing public sector accounts for 2009-10 - which previously slipped from 2008-09 - remains "important".
It said ministers had also reassured the committee the government remains on track to publish WGA for the first time in July this year for the 2009-10 financial year.
Accountancy Age revealed last September that around £32bn of debt would be kept off the government's externally reported figures.
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