Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

I think the Minister misunderstands. This means that every auditor in the land will do additional work—and therefore incur costs—against the hypothesis that there might be one or two auditors who, for one reason or another, choose not to carry out the right level of testing or are careless as to whether or not they do so. This has to be seen in the context of spreading across the whole of auditing—both in public companies and private companies—because the offence will change the nature of the way in which audits are carried out. We have been clearly advised on that.