My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has raised a very important and useful issue. We will discuss in relation to a later amendment the actual composition of a committee or panel and the number of independent members on it. I would guess that most principal authorities have an audit committee. I do not know, but it had not occurred to me that they would not until now. In many cases, as in my own authority and as in the case of my noble friend Lord Palmer of Child’s Hill, that committee is chaired by a member of the opposition. That is very much not the same as an independent chairman. Nevertheless, it is a good practice that is followed by many authorities. In my case, it is a Liberal Democrat authority, while in my noble friend Lord Palmer’s case it is a Conservative-controlled authority. It is therefore a useful extension to have a panel or committee chaired by an independent member.
There is room now for further discussion and consideration about whether we really need to have completely separate and independent auditor panels, as proposed in the Bill, or whether there is some way of meeting that through the existing audit committees and amending that practice. Rather than reinventing something that in most cases is working quite well in practice, I would rather see us adapting it. It can certainly be adapted without too much difficulty to meet the Government’s requirements through the Bill, which I think we all broadly support. We are all trying to achieve the same ends, so having poked a little fun at the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for the previous amendment, I thank him sincerely for raising a very important issue with this series of amendments.