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 (HL4990), what factors made it reasonable to expect that reclassification of the Financial Reporting Council would occur; and what assessment they have made in this respect of internal correspondence from the Office of National Statistics on 6 February 2007 which stated that  “Since then there have been a few 'false starts' and a lot of wasted time on the classification of the FRC. We have now been approached three times to consider the classification of the FRC under new arrangements. On the first two occasions (August 05 then May 06) we have put the case document together and been almost ready to consult NACC when the request has been 'pulled' because the arrangements 'might be changing. (Usually following requests for further information from us that might have lead them to believe that a public sector classification would result)'; and HMT are not happy with the way DTI / FRC are taking this forward and we cannot consider the classification further until arrangements have been finalised.”

Up to 2014, the assessment of the Financial Reporting Council’s classification was undertaken based on consideration of the categories set out in the European System of Accounts 1995. This was replaced by European System of Accounts 2010, which is what was used when the Office for National Statistics considered FRC’s status in 2014 and confirmed it as a public body within central government.