Appointment of the Comptroller and Auditor General

I can absolutely give that assurance—the king is dead, long live the king! The work will carry on. While Tim Burr is CAG, he will have all the powers and prerequisites of that office, and the NAO will carry on exactly as before. I should like to pay a short tribute to Sir John Bourn. In numerous private briefings, I have found him to be immensely patient and kind, despite all my shortcomings. He is a wonderful civil servant in that sense. He may be in his 70s, but he has the spark and energy of a man in his 40s. As has been said, Sir John has been CAG for more than 20 years. He has overseen a revolution in public accountability. He set a very ambitious agenda for the NAO from the outset and he followed some guiding principles that are still adhered to. First, audit must be unfettered. Sir John fought a long, and ultimately very successful campaign, to secure access to all Government Departments and agencies. Secondly, auditors must be professional and expert and he has equipped the NAO well. Next, we must have sound financial audit that requires modern professional accounting from Government. This is the point that the Prime Minister made, and it is an excellent one. Sir John's active support for the introduction of accruals accounting—I pay tribute to the work that the Prime Minister did while Chancellor of the Exchequer in that respect—has helped drag Departments from the dark ages of the penny notebook system into the modern world, vastly improving the quality of information available to Parliament. In addition, audit should always be prepared to tackle the tricky issues of the day and not be deterred by vested interests. Sir John has reported on wars, on every major private finance initiative—PFI—deal, on waiting times in the NHS and, most recently, on major projects such as the Olympic games.