BEIS inquiry into the future of audit

18 Jan 2019

Professor Christopher Humphrey gives oral evidence at the House of Commons.

Professor Christopher Humphrey, Alliance Manchester Business School, gave oral evidence at the House of Commons to a Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee as part of its ‘future of audit’ inquiry earlier this week.

This was the first evidence session as part of the inquiry, which is focusing on the likely impact of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) market study and the review of the Financial Reporting Council (by Sir John Kingman) in improving quality and competition in the audit market and reducing conflicts of interest.

When speaking to the committee, Professor Humphrey was keen to stress the importance of considering audit from a broad perspective. He told the committee: “You have to consider audit within the context of the broader corporate governance arena. You cannot just look at audit in isolation.”

He also advised committee members to step back from the various proposals and consider why auditing had never changed, pointing out that this was not the first time audit had been under scrutiny. He told MPs: “I do not know whether you are aware, but there have been innumerable studies on the future of the audit. I have had students study the history of ‘future of the audit’ studies.”

The session received coverage in City AM and in the ICAEW’s Economia blog and you can  watch the evidence session on Parliament TV and read the transcript.