Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

As I have explained, Clause 510 enables the audit authorities—the Public Oversight Board for Accountancy or one of the supervisory bodies—to send to the accounting authorities for circulation to shareholders and filing at Companies House copies of the statements of circumstances that auditors deposit with a company that they are leaving. The accounting authorities are the Secretary of State and anyone whom the Secretary of State has authorised to apply to the court in respect of the revision of defective accounts. As has been recognised, the body that has been authorised is the FRRP, part of the Financial Reporting Council. Amendment No. 334B would change a conjunction in subsection (2) of Clause 510 so that the accounting authorities might be either the Secretary of State or the Financial Reporting Review Panel. It is our intention that both should be accounting bodies. Both may have an interest in seeing the statements, and so the audit authorities should be able to send auditors’ statements to both rather than to only one. What happens to those statements will depend on the circumstances in which they are circulated, and we can only generalise about that. But we believe it is right that there should be an opportunity for them to go to both.