In spite of the momentous events taking place elsewhere, I am pleased to move this debate on extending the role of the Audit Commission.

The Audit Commission is now nearly eight years old. It is one of the most important and effective innovations that we have introduced into the machinery of government. Its success and usefulness is underlined by the fact that even the Labour party acknowledges its value.

Political debate frequently centres on how much money is spent on our public services, but insufficient attention is paid to value-for-money considerations. In many areas of public expenditure, we must focus greater attention on the effectiveness of public spending. Input is extremely important; output is vital. The Audit Commission addresses exactly that point. It is the enemy of waste and inefficiency and the taxpayers' best friend.

The purpose of this Adjournment debate is to place on record the great value that has been derived already from the Audit Commission's work, particularly in its value-for-money studies. If my hon. Friend the Minister takes the same view as I do about that, my second aim today is to press him to explore other aspects where the skills and efforts of the Audit Commission may usefully be deployed. I should also like the House to recognise the skill that has been shown and the success that has been achieved by the current controller of the Audit Commission, Howard Davies, and his predecessor, John Banham.

The Audit Commission should not be seen in any negative or cost-cutting sense. As the commission said, value for money is not simply a matter of economy, of cutting either the quality or the scale of the services provided. Value-for-money opportunities identified can either improve existing services or channel additional funds to other worthwhile policy objectives. It is important to note that in the past the commission criticised central Government where some national policies made it difficult for local authorities to manage their affairs efficiently. That was why some of my hon. Friends and I fought so hard during the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill last year to allow the commission to comment on the effect that ministerial directives on health could have throughout the health service. It must be said that the Department of Health did not at the time regard this as high a priority as my hon. Friends and I did, and we were pleased when my right hon. and learned Friend the then Secretary of State accepted our argument on Report.

I should like particularly to draw the attention of the House to the commission's report last October on day care surgery. That report demonstrated that waiting lists could be cut by one third through more efficient use of day surgery. How did it reach that excellent and helpful conclusion? It certainly was not armchair guesswork or political fantasy. The Audit Commission focused on a basket of 20 common operations which account for about 30 per cent. of all surgery. If all district health authorities used day care treatment to the same extent as the 25 per cent. that use it most, an additional 186,000 patients could be treated in England and Wales every year at no extra cost. Many other operations are suitable for day care treatment, offering the potential for an estimated 300,000 additional places per year. This is no dry analysis. It means that an increase in activity of this sort could have a significant impact on waiting times for all types of surgery, thus helping many of our constituents who are kept waiting too long for the health care that they need.

It is also worth mentioning the report entitled "Making a Reality of Community Care". That particularly important report made a valuable contribution—indeed, an essential one—to the work that Sir Roy Griffiths carried out on care in the community. He cited that work many times in his report on this subject.

However, it is in the area of local government that the Audit Commission has achieved most. One statistic suffices to demonstrate that point. It is interesting to note that in 1988 the commission reported that £750 million of savings had been identified, of which just under a third had been realised. By March 1990, the saving identified had reached £1,350 million and over £670 million had been achieved.

One of the commission's best reports entitled "Managing Social Services for the Elderly More Effectively" demonstrated clearly that the work undertaken was not about cost cutting but about ensuring that the right people received the right service. It demonstrated that there was a critical need for efficient management systems if clients were to be properly looked after. The report addressed itself to the elected members of a local authority to ensure that they had the right tools and benchmarks against which to judge and assess the performance of their officers. The report did a great deal to promote efficiency and effectiveness in local government. Indeed, I am proud that my local authority, Gedling, regularly receives warm praise from the Audit Commission. This is a credit to the leader of the council, Robert Baird-Parker, and his colleagues and to the chief executive, Bill Brown, and his officers and staff.

More recently, the Audit Commission produced a most helpful report on the cost of absence through sickness to the local authorities. That report deserves far more prominence than it has received so far; what it showed was nothing short of a thorough-going scandal in local government. Absence through sickness in the London boroughs was twice the CBI's national average and these figures, bad as they are, were bolstered by generous terms and conditions of employment.

Before the Audit Commission started its investigation, many authorities had no idea of their sickness levels. Lambeth council was so appalled when it learned from the Audit Commission of its figure that it changed its system and introduced a number of new measures, which promptly caused a strike. It emerged that Brent was losing £8 million a year through sickness.

This is the measure of the value of the survey. If London boroughs controlled their absence through sickness at the level of the national average, the community charge in London would be £25 a head lower. It is now up to local government to benefit those whom it represents by taking action as a result of the Audit Commission's work.

I shall mention several areas in which I want the work of the Audit Commission to be extended or deployed and in which I believe that better value for money, efficiency and effectiveness could be achieved if it were. The first is the police. We have increased funding for the police enormously in recent years and the police have become more efficient. That is true of nowhere more than Nottinghamshire, where we have an excellent force under the leadership of Dan Crompton. However, there are legitimate doubts about how effectively the police use the resources more generally.

A recent Audit Commission report, entitled "Improving the Performance of the Finger Print Service", demonstrated a huge variety in the cost of running different finger printing bureaux, sometimes varying by a factor of six. The report demonstrates the wide variations in effectiveness in terms of convictions secured through finger print evidence. It varies from 75 convictions per officer down to only four per officer per year. That is a staggering difference by any yardstick.

Although the Audit Commission has power to look at provincial forces, it is not allowed to look at the Metropolitan police. Why not? Are we saying that the Audit Commission's disciplines are necessary for the provincial police, but not for the Met? I think not. The Home Secretary should open up the Met to the Audit Commission's scrutiny. I hope that my hon. Friend will not say that the Met is different from provincial police forces because it is not under local control and, therefore, does not come within the powers of scrutiny of the Audit Commission. That point was dispensed with last year when its powers were extended into the national health service. Those powers can and should be extended elsewhere.

Last month, the commission produced another worthwhile report on the police which showed major weaknesses in police monitoring of their own performance. The report, entitled "Effective Policing—Performance Review in Police Forces", concluded that definitions of good policing are not sufficiently backed by an assessment of police performance. It also recommended that police authorities and chief constables should develop a national framework to allow comparisons between forces. The measurement of police performance is no easy matter, but there can be no excuse for failing to make the attempt. The report goes on to recommend a better system of monitoring clear-up rates—an approach which could allow a far closer analysis of the methods used to solve crimes and their progress through the judicial system.

Let us consider magistrates courts. The efficiency unit scrutiny of magistrates courts identified, among other things, an audit gap—no one actually looked at them to see how well or badly they used their funds. Whatever is decided by the Government about magistrates courts and whether they become a "next steps" agency as suggested by the efficiency unit or not, they would benefit from the Audit Commission's attentions. Indeed, I believe that some local authorities have asked that the Audit Commission do just that. But as yet it is not empowered to do so. There is considerable public concern about the speed and efficiency of our courts and the police are concerned about that, too. We need to consider the location of the courts and the costs associated with that. If the Audit Commission deploys its skills on the magistrates courts, we shall, I suspect, save a fortune.

It is the declared intention of the Government that the housing associations should take a greater role in providing public housing. However, it is obvious that some provide this service far more effectively and efficiently than others. I should like the Audit Commisison to deploy its skills to enable the public and Parliament to see clearly what best practice in our housing associations is and how near to providing best value for money the housing associations that, for example, serve my constituents, come to achieving that aim. We need a proper, comparative, intrusive audit of the housing associations to ensure that they are spending the vast sums of public money as effectively as possible, not least because, at the moment, the same body that funds them audits them. That is not in anyone's interest and means that there is no independent scrutiny. There are many other obvious sectors, such as universities, where perennial financial difficulties need closer public scrutiny.

So far, about 50 schools have decided to opt out of local education Authority control. I believe that there will, and should, be many more. Schools are better placed than local education authorities to decide how to spend their budgets in the best interests of the children they are educating. In due course, we should let the Audit Commission take a look at some of the new management and educational ideas implemented by opt-out schools. I suspect that those schools will be well managed and run and there may be valuable lessons for the LEAs to learn from them for schools that have decided not to opt out. The Audit Commission is the right organisation to assess and promote the lessons learnt.

I hope that we shall hear from my hon. Friend the Minister that he is receptive to the sort of ideas that I have outlined. It was not a long list and was far from comprehensive. Will he tell the House that he supports such ideas and encourage the Audit Commission to pursue and extend its excellent work in the directions that I have described? I hope that he will. The Audit Commission has a valuable role to play in securing better value for money in major sectors of public spending. Let the Minister make clear that he intends actively to encourage it in the extension of its existing operations.