Accountants, Audit And Conflict Of Interest

EDM number 972 in 2007-08, proposed by Diane Abbott on 19/02/2008.
Categorised under the topics of Financial services and Service industries.

That this House notes that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) was Northern Rock's auditor and also provided it with a range of consultancy services; further notes that PWC earned £1.3 million for non-audit work but only £500,000 for the audit; further notes that at no point did PWC indicate any problem with Northern Rock's business model; believes that if an accountancy firm is making more money from consulting for a particular firm than from auditing it then there is a clear conflict of interest; further notes that this is not the first time that the audit of a financial institution has given no hint of systemic financial problems; and therefore calls on the Government to take steps to end this long-standing conflict of interest issue in order that the public may have confidence in the audit process.

This motion has been signed by a total of 31 MPs.