Speeches by Davies.

“It needs to restore the status of external audit in local government as a service in which people who do it take pride and it achieves the basic objectives of any external audit, which is robust, high-quality, timely assurance. The year end for local authorities is 31 March. By the autumn at the latest, there should be…”

“No, and that is the point. We do not have the information audited. Clearly, the accounts have been produced in most—not all—cases, and of course councils will have been diligent in preparing those accounts. The principle that you can only really take assurance from these as a user of the accounts if they are properly a…”

“No. They have an audit report from the external auditor on them, but they are the most heavily qualified they could be, in a sense, by saying, “We don’t have the information to give an opinion on these accounts.” Essentially, local taxpayers up and down the country are not getting basic assurance on how their council t…”

“I do not have the details to hand, but we have identified exactly that problem of the amounts just being too small to justify that kind of approach, as well as the fact that they are coming from different Departments with precious little co-ordination in many cases. Of course, Government have had several attempts to tr…”

“We did calculate that in the last Parliament, and it was many tens, but we have not done an up-to-date version of that in this report.”

“It is coming down now because the Government have essentially implemented this backstop solution, which has required all councils and their auditors to publish audited accounts by a certain deadline. That is now steadily clearing this backlog of old years. A pretty high price has been paid, though, because in order to …”

“For Members’ information, I worked at the Audit Commission for a long time and audited local government for many years, up to about 2012. The fact that we have had significant financial failures in local government is in part due to the weakening of the local audit regime in recent years. It certainly was not perfect b…”

“Just because writing off £1 billion is an extremely expensive thing to do immediately, isn’t it? You can see why that is unattractive. A lot of decisions in Government are essentially affordability versus value for money. It might be a poor value-for-money solution, but often the sad truth of some decisions is that it …”

“You will have to ask them; that is a question for Government, not for us.”

“In an earlier phase of my career, I audited local government and attended lots of audit committee meetings. As you say, there is a wide range of experience with that kind of material among the members of those committees. I would say that it is for local authorities to make sure that their members are inducted into the…”

“It is.”

“It really lends itself to solving a one-off problem. For example, for essentially bailing an authority whose underlying annual finances are in reasonable shape out of a failed investment, this is a solution that can make some sense. We are now seeing authorities having to participate in this exceptional financial suppo…”

“We cannot know, of course, so we cannot give you an authoritative NAO view on the answer to that. There are obviously lots of reasons to think that there were advantages in what was being proposed; we just cannot say what would have happened. Abdool, you might want to answer that.”

“We know that the Energy Secretary is against airport expansion unless it is in Doncaster, and we know that many Labour MPs are against airport expansion unless it is in Pakistan. To be fair, at least the Chancellor wants airport expansion actually in this country, but at the same time she is jacking up air passenger du…”

“My right hon. Friend has raised that matter at every single opportunity that he has been afforded, and he is right to stand up not just for St Barnabas, but for all hospices. However, I have to say that St Barnabas holds a particular place in the hearts of people in Lincolnshire. I know, as a Lincolnshire Member of Par…”

“It is rare that questions come with a musical accompaniment, but the right hon. Gentleman’s mobile ringtone made for a great effect. None the less, his point is the right one, which is that, whether it was intended or not, the rationale for the Bill is to “protect”—in the Government’s words—public services. I could say…”

“I rise on behalf of the official Opposition to support Lords amendments 1B, 5B, 8B and 21B. It feels like only last week that we were all here, but it is clear that our colleagues in the other place feel as strongly as the Opposition do about these amendments, as they have returned them to us with a similar aim once ag…”

“Absolutely. To be fair, I do not think the profound impact of this tax is appreciated by Labour Front Benchers. The hon. Lady has pointed out yet another area in which it will have an impact—tax on education. I could talk about the impact on universities as well.”

“The jungle awaits the Minister, clearly. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right; in fact, the OBR has clearly demonstrated in its analysis that 76% of this tax increase will be passed on to working people. That is a manifesto breach if ever I saw one. Not only that—the Institute for Fiscal Studies has made clear that…”

“That is right, and it is an important point, because the decisions made by this Government are having such a profound impact on people in the real economy. I simply say to the British public that if they are unhappy with the decisions being made, they have to change the people making them. [Interruption.] Unbelievably,…”