Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

I wish to comment on this series of amendments as I wrote the report. The original motivation for this was a continuing trend within central government. In regard to the remarks made about local government, I remind the Committee that my report concentrated on central government; it did not deal with local government, although I felt it fit to make a few remarks about that. The continuing trend, as I say, among public interest bodies and public sector bodies, of forming limited liability companies to carry out activities which, given the circumstances before this Bill arises, automatically take them outside the remit of the Auditors General, has resulted in private sector auditors being appointed, and the degree to which parliamentary scrutiny can be imposed is probably not as good. I recommended that the Auditor General should be able to be appointed as a statutory auditor and, as the noble Baroness has remarked, he should be appointed slightly more widely than just public interest bodies. There is a case for saying that this should apply to certain types of body which do not want a competitor—certainly, during my tenure as chairman of KPMG, it might have been an attractive proposition to have as auditors a body that was not one of our principal competitors. The noble Baroness sighs because, as my partner in that august body, I know that she would have opposed this. I can envisage other circumstances rather like that. Nevertheless, I have said that this needs to be reasonably wide. I question whether or not the independence of the Auditors General can be maintained as servants of the parliaments by giving the Treasury a controlling influence over what they are and are not able to do rather than encompass that in statute. Given that, I have some reservations about the amendment.