My Lords, in Committee, my noble friend said that the Government would commit to amend the legislation to create a framework to support a voluntary national procurement exercise. When she replies, I would appreciate it if she could put some meat on that earlier commitment.
Dealing with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, if one was always looking in terms of
cost savings, which seemed to be the main thrust of his speech, we would have almost the demise of all local authorities. It would be a case of, “Let us have it all done nationally and then we would save some money”. We as a Government are committed to localisation. The idea that local authorities should be to a degree able to choose their auditor is part of that localisation. There was a feeling of despair in the noble Lord’s comment about how local authorities would be less hard negotiators than the Audit Commission. I doubt whether that will be the case. Many local authorities would be very hard negotiators on their own behalf in fixing the audit fees, the level of audit taking place and how it will dovetail with the internal audit systems of the local authority. A local authority that has a good local internal audit system can probably negotiate much harder with the external auditors, because of its knowledge of its internal audit system, than the Audit Commission has in the past.
I believe that the amendments are unnecessary, and I would welcome and wait for my noble friend’s comments on how the Government will keep the commitment that she made at an earlier stage of the Bill.