Appointment of the Comptroller and Auditor General

I am always glad to accept a reference to Gladstone. The period to which the hon. Gentleman refers was the great era of public service reform, which we should never forget. Until now, there have been difficulties and inconsistencies in how we make key public appointments. The issue of pre-appointment hearings has rightly arisen. I am glad that the Prime Minister said what he did, because it was slightly odd that when the Government came forward with their welcome list of suggestions for posts that would in future be subject to pre-appointment hearings by Parliament, the Comptroller and Auditor General was not on it, yet there could scarcely be a more pivotal position, as far as the interests of Parliament and the public are concerned. I am glad that we are attending to that. Alongside the issue of the extent to which Parliament is involved in such appointments, there is the question of which appointments should require the approval of the official Opposition. That is another check that we should put into the system. There is also the issue that we are discussing now, namely the final approval by Parliament, on a motion in someone's name. At the moment, there is considerable confusion on all those fronts. The Government today presented a list of suggested posts for which there should be pre-appointment hearings. So far there has not been clarity on what the basis should be for such a list, but perhaps the list will help us with that point. We need clarity, and that certainly applies to the appointment that we are discussing, too. There have been recent instances of the confusion that I mention. For example, Sir Michael Scholar's appointment as chairman of the Statistics Board was approved by both Houses of Parliament, but it did not have to be; it was just thought to be a good, constitutional thing to do, as indeed it was. That shows that there is inconsistency. The new chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life said recently that he would have liked a pre-appointment hearing, because it would have increased his authority, and that he would have liked his appointment to be subject to a resolution of the House, which would have allowed Members of all parties to support his appointment. We need to ensure consistency in the arrangements. After the review of the governance of the National Audit Office, and when we have taken a view on issues such as term limits, I hope that we will have a clear system, in which there are reasonable term limits—a subject that has already been mentioned. I hope that the appointment process will be controlled by the Commissioner for Public Appointments; that is the system that we have put in place over the past 10 or 15 years to ensure the integrity of the public appointments process. The system should be supervised by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, and should be linked to pre-appointment hearings in the House, which would, I presume, be held by the Public Accounts Committee. That would give Parliament a role in the process. A motion should also be brought before the House, as has happened today. I hope that that is the process at which we arrive. In a sense, we are discussing an interim point on the journey to that destination.