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Companies Bill [Lords]

It is certainly true that the main problems are caused by the big four. Their failures and their practices act as a slur on the entire accountancy profession and audit. However, the Government’s aim, and ours, is to achieve proper, effective audit. Audit is valuable, important and required by law, and it might require some increase in the costs of audit to make it as effective as it should be. That is a price that we should be prepared to pay for good audits, but my worry is that the big four do not provide a good audit because they are involved in a collusive relationship with companies. They are selling services to them and using audit as a foot in the door for the sale of other services. That is the import of our amendments Nos. 684, 686 and 759, to which I shall speak briefly. The sale of other services creates a collusive arrangement. The audit firms derive 75 per cent. of their profits from the sale of other services. I cite the case of the RAC audits. PriceWaterhouseCoopers undercut the incumbent auditor, Stoy Hayward, by 50 per cent. to get the RAC audit. Stoy Hayward’s senior partner accused PriceWaterhouseCoopers of undercutting it to secure an appointment that might enable it to introduce higher price consultancy services to the RAC. That is exactly what happens. Such firms cut the price of audit, which means cutting its effectiveness and must mean increased pressure on the auditors, in order to get their foot in the door and use that as a market stall from which to sell other services. That brings them into a collusive relationship with the managing director, chief executive and senior figures in the company, because they are more lenient about the audit, about possible failures and about arrangements made in the audit that may raise eyebrows and be slightly dodgy, in order to maintain the good relationship and sell other services. Following the failure of the Versailles Group in 2004, Nunn Hayward was fined for failures as auditors. It was making too much money from the sale of other services and the group was too important a client to be as stringent on the audit as it should have been. The big audit houses are prepared to restrict themselves in the sale of other services when they sell audit to local authorities. They agreed not to sell other consultancy services to get that market. If they can do it in the public sector market, why can they not do it in the private sector market? It will eventually bring down the price of other services because firms will get auditors bidding to provide other services, rather than entering into a collusive relationship with one auditor, which is a serious danger. The US Government have been active in restricting the practice. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act placed restrictions on the sale of other services, which I am grateful to see we have followed in this country. Other restrictions are on their way and we should follow them as well. A collusive relationship is dangerous to the effectiveness, independence and accuracy of the audit. If the price of the audit is cut, that must cause pressure. The firm must be using untrained staff, cutting corners and not reporting things that should be reported, just to get the audit through at a certain price. We should ban the practice of selling other services. Amendment No. 686 provides for rotation—a maximum of five years’ tenure as an auditor. The Government and the audit profession say that partners are already rotated, but that is not good enough. We must provide for auditors to be changed. It is necessary for a new pair of eyes to look at the arrangement, scan the papers of the previous auditor and take a view. Longevity of auditors means collusion. Longevity of auditors means a comfy relationship and the kind of situation that developed in the Maxwell pensions case. I quote from the Department of Trade and Industry report on Coopers and Lybrand’s performance. The DTI report stated that the auditing firm"““consistently agreed accounting treatments of transactions that served the interest of RM””" —Robert Maxwell—"““ and not those of the trustees or the beneficiaries of the pension scheme””." Collusion—that is what it is about. We end that with rotation of auditors. Rotation of partners is not the same and is not good. Enhancing the independence of auditors requires a new auditor. How likely is it that partner B, on taking over from partner A, will say, ““Scandalous practices! We can’t to this. We can’t do that. We must change that””? It is not going to happen, is it? If the auditors are partners in the same firm they are unlikely to abuse each other or check each other’s performance closely. Most of the audit is, in fact, done by teams lower down whose turnover is rather rapid, so even a new partner does not produce the continuity of contact and skill that is claimed. We want rotation of auditors on the grounds that longevity leads to collusion, carelessness and the kind of situation that developed in the Maxwell case. The research indicates that that is a failure. Amendment No. 759, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) and me, seemed to scandalise the hon. Member for Putney by calling for the auditor’s report to"““be accompanied by a statement stating the regulatory action, if any, taken against the firm or any member of the audit team during the preceding five years, together with the outcomes.””" Why not? Why should we not know the reputation of such firms and what action has been taken against them? Why should we not be able to judge the quality of their work from what they have done in previous cases where regulators have taken action against them? This should be public information and it should be available so that we can understand the judgment of the auditor in the light of the performance of that firm and the regulatory action taken against the firm.