Part of Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee am 2:00 pm ar 3 Mawrth 2011.
This is a short clause about the services that the Comptroller and Auditor General may provide in any place within or outside the United Kingdom under agreements or other arrangements that they enter into.
I suspect that this clause relates primarily to audit support for other domains and territories and so forth. Given that the Government have decided to abolish the Audit Commission, which clearly has had a role in auditing local authority activities in England and Wales for a considerable period, and given that there is an opportunity for the National Audit Office potentially to take on some of those residual but necessary audit and scrutiny functions that the Audit Commission formerly pursued, I take it that this clause also then allows the NAO to extend some of its scrutiny role into local public service activities as well as Whitehall and other Departments. Will the Minister confirm that?