Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government why companies, pension funds and taxpayer-funded public bodies are served notices by the Financial Reporting Council requesting payment for a charge described as a levy without any accompanying statement that the charge does not have the status of levy or tax, and is not actually required to be paid.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is funded through a combination of statutory and voluntary funding arrangements. The FRC consults stakeholders annually on the amounts requested under these arrangements. Requests from the Financial Reporting Council for voluntary payments explain that the payments are non-statutory and voluntary. The Financial Reporting Council also explains to funders that, should the system of voluntary payments prove unsustainable, they would request that the Secretary of State make regulations to put the funding requirements on a statutory basis. The Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004 includes provisions to enable this.