Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

The Bill is primarily about the governance of the National Audit Office; it is not about audit rights. We in the Public Accounts Commission thought it wise for the Bill to concentrate on the governance, as that is set in concrete and is permanent, whereas audit rights can change over time. Indeed, only last week the Government announced that the NAO was for the first time to be allowed to audit the Financial Services Authority. We have also got a long-running campaign to audit the BBC. If the Bill starts getting into the territory of contracts, suppliers and so forth, that could make things quite messy and difficult in terms of an Act of Parliament that we hope will last for many years.