We are back to our old friends “grants” and “interest-free loans”—in other words, the level playing field. Perhaps the Minister could take as read what I said during debates on previous amendments trying to get at this issue. I hope that he will not take it personally if I say that I have found him a rather slippery customer when it comes to this issue. He has kept up a ferocious rearguard action, refusing to give any kind of commitment. Clearly he is the right man in the right job in the right Government at the right Department. Ferocious is perhaps not the right word for the hon. Gentleman, but he has given us not a jot of comfort about the possibility of a bung being given to PADA in the shape of a non-repayable grant or some dodgy loan, which would have to be repaid or which would not attract any interest, let alone at commercial rates.

Let us try again. I will go back a stage or two. In the regulatory impact assessment on the previous Pensions Bill, the Government set up a figure of £21 million for what they called the funding requirement of the delivery authority between 2006-07 and 2008-09. At the time, we tabled amendments trying to tackle what  we then called cross-subsidisation and I asked for a breakdown of how that £21 million was going to be spent. In retrospect, I suspect that a lot of it has been spent or spoken for, so it would be nice to have a breakdown of where it has gone or is going. Perhaps the Minister will write to me about that.

In the debate of 1 February 2007, I asked what the limit was of the taxpayer’s commitment to the delivery authority. We are not Johnny-come-latelies on this issue, not that that has done us a lot of good. The then Pensions Reform Minister, now the Secretary of State, explained that in the longer term, personal accounts would be self-financing. That has been a mantra from the Department for some time up to the present day. Paragraph 18 of schedule 6 of the 2007 Act provided for the Secretary of State, subject to Treasury consent, to make grants to the authority out of the money provided by Parliament. The clause will replace that paragraph to extend the ways in which the Secretary of State may give financial assistance to the authority. The important word in that sentence is “extend”. Really, the Government are giving themselves more opportunities to shove money in the direction of the authority.

I always make a point at Committee stage of referring to the explanatory notes at least once because there is bound to be some poor devil who has spent half a lifetime drafting them. As the explanatory notes helpfully say in paragraph 189:

“It allows the Secretary of State to provide finance to the Authority in connection with its functions, for example, through grant or loan. Any of the finance may be subject to conditions.”

Perhaps “Don’t spend it all at the same shop” might be one of those conditions because there certainly seem to be no conditions about interest, repayment or anything of that sort.

The impact assessment makes the point that during its advisory phase, the authority is being funded through grant in aid. In paragraph 3.80 it says that

“in the long run, the personal accounts scheme is intended to be self-financing”.

We still have not got anywhere near finding out what the Minister thinks long term means. Also, rather interestingly, in the same document, the Government say in paragraph 3.81:

“At this stage in the development of the personal accounts scheme the Government cannot publish its estimated cost due to commercial confidentiality and the potential risk that doing so could influence the commercial process.”

I do not begin to understand that. Surely it would be more relevant if there was an issue about who they were going to spend the money on in terms of who they were going to buy expertise, services, equipment or whatever from. For them simply not to be able to produce any estimate of their overall costs due to commercial confidentiality seems to me to be simply trying to hide behind the words rather than being open and transparent.

Perhaps as well as pursuing my traditional arguments about grants and loans I could ask the Minister to be a bit more open and frank about the ongoing costs of the PADA than his impact assessment appears to want to be. Will he particularly deal with the issue of where the £21 million has gone or is going? While we are about it, I referred this morning to the £6 million plus that has already been spent on consultants in the development of personal accounts, according to a written answer  provided by his colleague, the Minister for Pensions Reform, the other day. Perhaps I could also have a breakdown of that figure, allowing for any commercial sensitivities that might be involved.