My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Alistair Darling) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The Prime Minister has today announced a series of constitutional reforms set out in the Green Paper, The Governance of Britain.

These include reforms to modernise the role of the Executive and increase their accountability to Parliament. Further to the Prime Minister's Statement, I am announcing the reforms relating to the Treasury.

In 1997, the establishment of an independent Bank of England and Financial Services Authority (FSA) reflected the Government's commitment to transparency, credibility and accountability in economic policy-making. Last month, reforms were announced to increase the transparency of appointments to the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

To further increase parliamentary accountability and scrutiny of appointments, I am today announcing that, following their appointment, I will invite the Treasury Select Committee to convene pre-commencement hearings with all appointees to the MPC of the Bank of England and the chairman of the FSA.

These hearings will give the committee a full opportunity to discuss with the appointee their priorities and experience, and for external MPC appointments, coupled with the reforms announced last month, will allow the committee to evaluate their skills and qualities against the published criteria.

Furthermore, as part of the proposals for increasing the independence of government statistics currently before Parliament, to further increase public confidence, I propose a vote in the House of Commons to confirm the Government's nominee for chair of the Statistics Board. I can also confirm today that, following the debate in Parliament, I propose that pre-release access to national statistics will be reduced from up to five days for non-market-sensitive and 40.5 hours for market-sensitive statistics to 24 hours for all statistics.

In addition, in order to enable Parliament to better scrutinise public spending, I am proposing to simplify the planning, parliamentary approval and reporting of public spending by aligning estimates and accounts with budgets and the fiscal rules.