Inspection of accounting records by journalists and citizen journalists

Part of Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill – in the House of Commons at 11:15 am on 24 March 2017.

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Photo of David Nuttall David Nuttall Conservative, Bury North 11:15, 24 March 2017

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He might have missed my intervention, but I made that point earlier in the debate. I entirely agree that there is a difficulty with not defining the term “politician” to make it clear that someone who aspires to elected office should be included, because they are as likely as anyone to want to carry out investigative work, study the accounts to get to the bottom of them, and see whether there is anything in there that they need to bring to the public’s attention.

Amendment 9 is as on the amendment paper. It would extend to section 26 of the 2014 Act the same conditions set out in section 25(3) of that Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has again struck on something that is worthy of the House’s consideration. I am not sure whether he wishes to press the amendment to a vote but, should he so wish, I would certainly consider supporting it.

My hon. Friend’s most controversial amendment is amendment 10, which would deal with the inclusion of health service bodies by removing the words

“other than an audit of accounts of a health service body” from clause 1. It is worth noting that the House of Commons briefing on the Bill refers to the fact that the bodies covered by the 2014 Act include clinical commissioning groups within the NHS. Of course, they are only one small part of the NHS. Like him, I see no reason why the Bill should not be amended to make it clear that the plethora of different health service bodies are covered.