Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I should have made that clear; it is a very important point. In other words, it is virtually impossible to get rid of him. That is absolutely right. I was saying that the previous appointment was anachronistic and that no one spotted at the time Sir John Bourn was appointed that even though the civil service retirement age was 60, he could basically go on. I had a very good relationship with Sir John Bourn, who was outstanding public servant. Frankly, however, let us be honest about it, 20 years is perhaps too long. The equivalent office in the United States has a fixed single term of 15 years, which we also thought was too long. The Public Accounts Commission thus concluded that a fixed term of 10 years was appropriate. There was some argument over whether it should be eight or 10 years. I think that the Government probably favoured eight years and I would have been happy with eight years, but 10 years is a real good length of time to make one's mark—it could span three, certainly two, Governments. It is very important that this appointment be non-renewable. We do not want the CAG to suffer the fate of all US Presidents and most new Prime Ministers where the first term is overshadowed by the need to be re-elected. This chap owes nothing to anybody. Nobody can sack him—short of he or she having a hand in the till—and nobody can get rid of him; he is there for 10 years and then he retires. We need to take great care before tampering with any of the founding legislation, which was carefully drawn to provide broad rights of access and reporting and to safeguard the independence of the CAG as an Officer of the House and the external auditor of the Government. That is not to say that no aspect of the arrangements can be improved upon. I am in favour of the changes proposed in the Bill. I think that the arrangement is being improved, but we need to take great care and to be alert to our old friends—the unintended consequences. The Public Accounts Commission has worked very closely with the Government to ensure that the clauses improve the governance arrangements of the National Audit Office. I pay tribute to the Government for adopting all that the commission proposed; there was complete agreement within it, as well. We should also pay tribute to the fact that the Government, working with the commission, have ensured that we are not going to undermine the audit independence of the CAG. The commission agreed that it was possible to separate the internal governance—this is a very important point—of the NAO from the responsibility for making audit judgments, but we recognised that to do so required arrangements that were unique among the panoply of organisational models used in 21st century Britain. What the Father of the House and myself were absolutely determined to avoid was some kind of new corporate structure in which a board could affect the independence and audit judgments of the CAG. I know that there has been some debate about this, and some worries that we were creating something like the Audit Commission—we are not. The CAG is completely independent. This board will deal only with the organisational structure of the body. The Bill thus proposes no changes that will affect the work—the real and important work—of the CAG in the audit of Government accounts or in the 60 reports on value for money that he makes to the Public Accounts Committee every year. He remains independent. He alone will be responsible for all audit judgments; he alone will maintain complete discretion in the discharge of his office. His access rights are not affected and the results of his work will continue to be reported in full to Parliament through the Public Accounts Committee.