Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord has raised some important questions with these amendments. My Amendment 14 overlaps a bit with them, so I might as well get it out of the way now. It concerns the rules that govern these various thresholds—the £6.5 million, the £200,000 and the £25,000. This is a boring accounting point, but there is a question about how you actually compute them. Looking at what the income of a parish council might be, for example, there might be a precept, which presumably gets counted in as gross income. However, if there are things like entrance fees, the sale of publications or the letting of premises, do you have to deal with these on a gross or net basis for working out whether the threshold is breached or met? I first focused on this in relation to the £6.5 million threshold, but there seems to be a lot of headway for authorities there so that is unlikely to be great issue. However, if those same rules operate for the lower thresholds, then they could be important.