Pickles axes "lost" Audit Commission

The Audit Commission, set up in 1982, was charged with overseeing spending by local councils and health service trusts in England.

 

Eric Pickles, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, said: "The corporate centre of the Audit Commission has lost its way. Rather than being a watchdog that champions taxpayers' interests, it has become the creature of the Whitehall state. We need to redress this balance. Audit should remain to ensure taxpayers' money is  properly spent, but this can be done in a competitive environment, drawing on professional audit expertise across the country."

 

The DCLG said that as a result of the changes, "councils will be free to appoint their own independent external auditors from a more competitive and open market; and there will be a new audit framework for local health bodies. This will save council taxpayers' money and decentralize power."

 

The Audit Commission chairman Michael O'Higgins defended the body's track record. "The Audit Commission was set up by a Conservative secretary of state in 1983, and I believe we have more than fulfilled Michael Heseltine's ambitions when he set it up,” he said. "In 1985-86 the commission led the investigation of the rate-capping rebellion which resulted in 32 Lambeth councillors and 47 Liverpool councillors being surcharged and banned from office. The gerrymandering 'homes for votes' scandal at Westminster Council was uncovered by the Audit Commission.

 

"In 2010 the commission carried out a corporate governance inspection of Doncaster Council in the light of 'serious concerns about the council's performance and the threat to public confidence caused by recent events', being the brutal attack on two boys by two brothers in Edlington. Recently over £200m of fraud has been detected through the National Fraud Initiative."

 

He added:  "It is of course the absolute right of the secretary of state and Parliament to change the arrangements around the architecture of government, including abolishing the commission.”

 

But John Denham, the shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary, said: "Without the function of the Audit Commission there will be no one to step in when a council is failing. This is a determined attempt to ensure that taxpayers have no coherent information about the value for money for local services. This move by the government shows they are only interested in the cost of everything and the value of nothing. It opens the door to huge and unjustified variations in the quality of services from one area to another.”