Audit Commission

Clive Betts Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on his intention to abolish the Audit Commission.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

On 13 August, I announced plans to disband the Audit Commission and to refocus audit on helping local people to hold councils and local public bodies to account for local spending decisions. Those changes will pass power down to people, replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability and save the taxpayer £50 million a year.

Earlier that day, I spoke to the commission’s chairman, Michael O’Higgins, informing him of my decision. I also informed him that I intended to invite Lord Adebowale of Thornes and Bharat Shah to serve a second term as members of the commission. As we have announced today, I am pleased to confirm that they have agreed to continue to serve, with Bharat Shah as deputy chairman. As I have also announced today, further commissioners will be recruited to the board through open competition to bring in new private sector expertise, as the commission focuses on the changes that I have announced.

These changes mean that the commission’s responsibilities for overseeing and delivering local audits stop. Its research activities will end. Its in-house audit practice will be moved to the private sector, and we will consider a range of options for doing that. Councils will be free to appoint their own independent external auditors from a more competitive and open market. There will be new audit arrangements for local health bodies. All local audits will be regulated within a statutory framework, overseen by the National Audit Office and the profession.

With the ending of the inspection regime of comprehensive area assessment, many of the Audit Commission’s functions have disappeared. While its corporate centre may have lost its way, the well-respected in-house audit practice has consistently done a good job, and it is to protect the future and to increase competition in auditing that we seek to put it into the private sector. The Government are happy to see a mutual set up by existing staff. My intention is that those arrangements will be in place from 2012-13, which involves introducing legislation this Session.

We will now work closely with local government, the health sector, the commission, the accounting profession and other partners to complete the detailed design of the new arrangements, and to take forward, in the most effective way, the transfer of the commission’s in-house audit practice to the private sector.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Secretary of State for his response, but I am not sure that I am any clearer about the precise reasons for his decision. First, may I ask why it was necessary to announce this decision in the middle of the recess, rather than coming to the House and making a statement? There did not seem to be any particular time imperative. Will he place in the Library of the House all the detailed papers that he must have gone through showing how he came to his decision? Presumably it was not a rushed one, or a knee-jerk reaction.

As for the annual audit function, does the Secretary of State believe that the private sector has the capacity to carry it out at the same cost as the district audit service? If business is transferred to the private sector, will there be a return to the public purse? Value-for-money studies are not, as he tried to make out, some attempt to dictate to local authorities, but an important way of making comparisons between authorities, which are useful to the authorities and to the electorate in holding them to account. Who will undertake those studies in future? Finally, if the Secretary of State really believes in localism, why did he not consult local councils and the Local Government Association before announcing his decision?

[Mr Pickles]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s questions and, indeed, I look forward eagerly to meeting him and his Committee next Monday to go through this in a more discursive way.

Of course I think there is plenty of capacity to deal with this. After all, the Audit Commission is the fifth-largest accounting practice in the country. The hon. Gentleman will readily understand that the Audit Commission was thinking along identical lines, and had already begun to engage in discussions with some of the larger practices regarding a potential sale, long before I talked to the chairman.

Do I think that going to private practice will operate at the same level of audit fees as currently? The answer is no. I expect it to be a lot cheaper. After all, audit fees have doubled in the past 13 years. With regard to the value-for-money practices and services, in the past the Audit Commission performed a very useful function. When it started out, it was virtually alone in doing that, but now there are many organisations providing those services, not least the National Audit Office. We should not be duplicating such reports.