Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I should say my last day in office is 31 December. The committee is keeping me working until the end and I am happy to do so. The issue does not necessarily just lie with one Department. Much of it lies with the interaction between people controlling resources and people developing proposals. The only way the committee can be satisfied that progress is being made is to call people before it on a regular basis and have updates.

One issue I have with it is, if you want to kick something into the long grass then give it to yet another committee to look at. This stuff is not rocket science. People have developed proposals. What actually needs to happen is not that it should go through another round of discussions in endless inter-departmental committees, but that proposals should be brought preferably to this committee to be scrutinised and that we can move forward and implement a scheme. When you hear there will be discussions and that many Departments will be involved what I tend to hear is we do not intend doing anything about this in the near future but we will give an impression of activity in the hope that it will not continue to attract attention. That would be my view. It is necessary to hold people to account for delivery as opposed to holding people to account for having nice talks.