Public Accounts

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise those important issues. We must continue to work on our definition of productivity in the public sector if we are not to produce perverse results, and we need the tools with which to analyse how well expenditure is being used. We must do more technical work on all those issues, as he suggests. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) announced to the Chamber that he was developing increasingly sycophantic tendencies. I can hardly believe that that is true: having known him for as long as I have, I should be amazed if such a thing were happening. I am not sure that he has made the appropriate assessment of the way in which his character is evolving over time. My hon. Friend said that he had made some interesting discoveries during his membership of the Committee, particularly the discovery that motorbikes escaped automatic number plate recognition technology and could thus evade vehicle excise duty and even, perhaps, speeding fines with impunity unless caught by a handy police officer. I am afraid I have bad news for him if he is thinking of mitigating the costs incurred by his household in the form of speeding fines: automatic number plate recognition cameras can now identify motorbikes, so I fear that his method of evading motoring law and potential extra costs has just slipped through his fingers.