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Company Law Reform Bill [HL]

I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, and in particular her comments on freedom of information, especially those on the performance of auditors. The Minister may not be aware of all the ramifications of chairing an audit committee, but like the noble Baroness, I am. One of the issues we are bound to deal with as audit committees is the effectiveness of the audit process. That is required both by the PCAOB and the Combined Code. How we are going to be able to deal with that process without having access to information in this country about the performance of auditors is, frankly, beyond me. We can do it for auditors registered under the PCAOB because we can look at the individual performances of firms and comment on them. In this country it is a just miasma and we need to do something about it.