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 20 February 2018 (HL5467), whether the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) will make a statement to its levy payers that the charges it has levied were not required to be paid; and whether they will make an assessment of the impact of improper charging including (1) whether the practice of speculative invoicing has created grounds for full refunds in a similar way to which Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis-selling has, (2) whether such practices have affected tax deductibility of payments made given that voluntary payments may not be tax deductible, (3) additional legal issues that the FRC is considering, (4) whether the FRC’s own auditors have raised the matter as a concern, and (5) whether the amount received from Carillion plc by the FRC will be refunded to Carillion's liquidator.

As stated in the reply given to the noble Baroness on 22^nd January 2018 to question HL4627, requests from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) for voluntary payments explain that the payments are non-statutory and voluntary. The FRC 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.