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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Henley on 1 February (HL5095), for which periods, from 2004, the word “required” was used in the factsheet accompanying notices requesting payment by the Financial Reporting Council; and when, and for what reason, the wording was changed to “requests”.

Fact sheets for the preparers levy were used from 2009/10 when the preparers levy was extended to cover large private companies and public sector organisations. The fact sheets used the word “required” in explaining the rates applied to different categories of preparers. They also included similar wording to that included in the 2018/19 fact sheet which was attached to the response given to question HL5095. This makes clear that the Financial Reporting Council collects the levy from all preparers on a voluntary basis. The word “required” was replaced with the word “requested” to improve clarity in 2018/19.