Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 117: 117: Clause 25, page 10, line 25, at end insert— ““( ) The report under subsection (1) shall include a report on the work of the committee established under section 32(2A).”” The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 169. Amendment No. 117 amends Clause 25 so that the board's annual report must include the work of the committee established under proposed new Clause 32(2A). Amendment No. 169 introduces new Clause 32(2A), requiring a committee to be set up to review the board’s internal financial controls and whether they secure the proper conduct of the board’s financial affairs. Proposed new subsection (2B) ensures that the committee comprises only non-executive members of the board. In common parlance, the amendments require an audit committee. The drafting is based on that for the Pension Protection Fund set up under the Pensions Act 2004—a fairly recent precedent but there are others, such as the Bank of England Act 1998. It is now commonplace that organisations have an audit committee comprising non-executive members. The idea has been largely developed in the private sector, but is widely used in the public sector. There cannot be a rational argument for the Statistics Board not having an audit committee responsible for overseeing the internal financial control of the board. I hope that the Minister will not say that not all ministerial departments need audit committees or that they should exist on a statutory basis as an adjunct to the role of the accounting officer, because that calls into question why the non-ministerial government department model has been used if the laws of corporate structures, otherwise lauded in describing the structures of the Statistics Board, are to be bypassed. I beg to move.