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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

It was the same process. I am grateful to the Father of the House for his generous offer to surrender his right to appoint the chairman of the National Audit Office, along with the Prime Minister; that was what was originally proposed. We immediately spotted the problem that he has just alluded to—namely, that that would effectively mean that the Government party would appoint the chairman. The right hon. Gentleman therefore immediately, and very generously, surrendered that right. Just as there was an appointment panel for the Comptroller and Auditor General, there was also one previously for the chairman. Again, the Prime Minister, as a member of the Government, and I, as a member of the Opposition, had a lock on that process. So I think that we have the right structure. The independence of the Comptroller and Auditor General is guaranteed by a jigsaw of measures that hang together as a whole, and we should be very wary of unpicking any one part of it without careful consideration. We do not know what is going to happen in the future. There could be some kind of appalling financial scandal at the heart of the Government, for example, and it is absolutely essential that this man—or lady—is completely independent. Central to this has always been the fact that the Comptroller and Auditor General also has tenure of appointment and, like a judge, cannot be removed from office except on a vote of the entire House of Commons. The Public Accounts Commission, which I also sit on—it is, of course, separate from the Public Accounts Committee—has concluded that the current unlimited appointment was "anachronistic". I do not think that when Sir John Bourn was appointed anyone spotted that the civil service retirement age at the time was 60: it was rigidly enforced; all senior civil servants had to retire at 60.