Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 511A: "Page 506, line 4, after ““organisation),”” insert ““have provided or””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 511A proposes a small amendment to paragraph 9 in Schedule 11. In Grand Committee we debated the issue covered by this amendment; namely, the practical issues that arise in order that overseas audit experience may qualify as part of the requisite practical training for an auditor under Schedule 11. Paragraph 9 applies to all practical training, but I would like to tease out the significance of the paragraph by reference to overseas audit training. Put simply, paragraph 9 allows one of the UK recognised supervisory bodies to count overseas training by members of an overseas body if the UK body has approved them to carry out the training. In approving them, the UK body has to be satisfied, in the light of undertakings and the local supervision arrangements, that they will provide adequate training—that is, the paragraph is predicated on approval before the provision of the training. With my amendment the UK body has to be satisfied that the overseas persons, "““have provided or will provide””," adequate training, so approval may be granted in arrear. The practical issue that this amendment addresses is that it is not always possible to recognise the training on an ex ante basis. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has said that it receives a small number of applications each year for the approval for individuals who find that they need to rely on the overseas component of their qualification period to satisfy the rules. At present, the institute cannot do so because it cannot approve such training ex post. The amendment would not diminish the quality of training that an individual received before he was entitled to practise as an auditor, but it would make it easier for all relevant training to be validated. The alternative to this is a costly network of approved overseas training organisations set up by each RSB. I beg to move.