My Lords, the amendments in this group make a number of clarifications to Part 5 of the Bill, which sets out the duties of the auditor. Amendment 18 requires the auditors of health service bodies to provide a report on all the matters on which they have a duty to satisfy themselves—other than value for money, where they will have to include their opinion in the report only if they are not satisfied on the matter.
As the Bill stands, the auditor is required to provide a certificate to confirm that the audit has been completed. In practice, auditors of health service bodies already report on all the matters on which they are required to satisfy themselves. The amendment would make this an explicit requirement, in order to provide assurance to the accounting officer and to Parliament that budgets have been used for the purposes intended by Parliament.
Commons Amendments 21 to 23 would clarify the process and timescales for a local elector to make an appeal, following an auditor’s decision not to make an application to the court that an item of account is unlawful. The amendments reflect the current process and provide a local elector with six weeks to require the auditor to provide a statement of reasons for their decision not to apply to the court, and then a further 21 days to appeal the auditor’s decision to the court.
Commons Amendments 24, 25 and 72 would enable local auditors to recover costs for their time in undertaking their main additional statutory audit duties under this
Bill, where that work does not result in any formal action being taken. I will explain what the duties are in a moment.
We expect that contracts between authorities and auditors will set out how auditors’ costs are to be recovered. The Bill currently gives auditors an explicit right to recover reasonable costs from the audited body for their time in exercising some of their statutory duties—for example, when undertaking investigatory work that might lead to a public interest report but where, ultimately, one is not issued.
These further amendments enable auditors to recover reasonable costs for their time in investigating—but ultimately deciding not to take action—in relation to three of their statutory functions: first, whether to make an application to the court that an item of account is unlawful; secondly, whether to issue an advisory notice; and, thirdly, whether to apply for judicial review of an authority’s decision. This would ensure consistency in treatment of cost recovery for these functions, enabling local auditors to recover reasonable costs incurred in investigating issues that could result in them exercising their main statutory functions under the Bill.
Commons Amendments 59 and 61 would ensure that the Greater London Authority continues to be supplied with a copy of any public interest report or written recommendation made by the auditor of any of the authority’s functional bodies, following a recently proposed change in the way functional bodies are treated within the Greater London Authority’s group accounts. This change means that functional bodies may not, in future, be considered “connected entities” of the GLA under the Act.
The Bill requires that a copy of a public interest report or written recommendation on a body that is a “connected entity” of a relevant authority should be sent to that authority. However, the proposed change not to include functional bodies within the GLA’s group accounts would mean that they no longer met the definition of a connected entity and so would not fall under this requirement. These amendments therefore ensure that a similar requirement continues to apply to the GLA and its functional bodies, to ensure adequate transparency and scrutiny where such a report or recommendation is made. This is necessary given the close and unique relationship between the GLA and its functional bodies.
Further to this, Commons Amendments 64, 65 and 67 make minor drafting changes needed as a consequence of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime ceasing to be a connected entity of the GLA. They do not change the policy position, but simply correct the drafting of the existing requirement that reports and recommendations on the Met Commissioner are considered by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
Commons Amendments 70 and 73 are minor amendments, which apply the definition of “relevant authority concerned” to all the provisions relating to advisory notices, rather than just to paragraph 3 of Schedule 8. The “relevant authority concerned” is defined as the relevant authority to which, or to any officer of which, an advisory notice is addressed. After that comprehensive explanation of this group of amendments, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to accept them. I beg to move.