Baroness Hanham:
My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that it is the Government’s intention to ensure that the Audit Commission’s existing contracts are well managed—that is something we see as essential—and that auditors will continue to have the necessary means to undertake their role. We agree that the key function will be required to manage contracts for the remainder of their term, but they will particularly require powers to set fees, appoint auditors and certify grants. We are working to ensure that the interim management arrangements will allow functions to be exercised by the relevant body or bodies, and the provisions in the Bill already allow for that to happen.
Schedule 1 enables the Secretary of State to make a scheme or schemes to transfer the property rights and liabilities to the Audit Commission to one or more bodies. The scheme also includes provision for the transfer of employees, if appropriate, under TUPE regulations. We intend to set out details of the arrangements in transfer management of the audit contracts in such a transfer scheme in due course. We are working on this with these organisations, including those that the noble Lord has mentioned, and we are giving consideration to the transfer of current Audit
Commission tasks, including the value-for-money profiles. I do not have confirmation of this but I dare say that that also includes the health service relationships as well.
So it would be premature to specify the detailed contents of the transfer scheme at the moment. However, I assure the Committee that this will provide the mechanism for ensuring good management. The noble Lord read out a whole series of things that he thinks we should take into account. If I may, I will say that those are clearly issues that we need to take into account. Once again, I should like to keep the noble Lord in touch with developments as they proceed.
We do not feel that the amendment is necessary; we have pretty good arrangements within the Bill to ensure that we have a proper transfer, and we are working that out at the moment. The amendment is probably not necessary in the light of what has been said, as we can already transfer schemes to include the robust management of existing contracts. I hope that the noble Lord will feel able not to press his amendment.