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Companies Bill [Lords]

I would counter that the Minister’s argument is far more spurious than mine. The offence of murder does not change everybody else’s behaviour towards one another, but the proposed auditor offence will change the behaviour—[Laughter.] Hon. Members are laughing, as if knowing that there is an offence of murder is what stops law-abiding people from killing one another. I fail to see how that furthers the Minister’s argument in relation to the auditor offence. I am sure that she will try to come on to that. [Interruption.] The Minister is saying that it is a poor argument. I presume that she is talking about her own comments. My final point about how the offence will affect the audit process is that audits will be more costly. Audit work will need to be broader to prove that all anomalies discovered—not just potential anomalies—have been followed up. Everything will get followed up. Those costs will almost certainly be passed on to companies—large, medium and small—placing additional unnecessary costs on them. I have a large number of small and medium-sized companies in my constituency and I know that they will not welcome the prospect of increased audit costs, which might put some of them at risk of going out of business. In the other place, Baroness Noakes, who has a vast amount of experience in this area, said of the Bill:"““I believe the biggest impact will be risk-averse auditing and higher audit costs.””" She goes on to say, of auditors:"““Put simply, they will do more auditing, more documentation, more double review and more double checking. They would be fools not to do so.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 May 2006; Vol. 681, c. 1028.]" We ignore the views of people such as Baroness Noakes at our own risk. I agree with her comments. Is that really what we want to achieve—an across-the-board raising of audit costs and risk-averse auditing for an offence that may capture only one or two, or perhaps several, rogue auditors?