Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment his Department has made of the estimated costs saved to businesses following the cancellation of the Audit Reform and Corporate Governance bill.

The Department for Business and Trade has not made a full assessment of the costs to business of the policies previously intended to form part of the Audit Reform and Corporate Governance Bill. Most of those costs would have come from the expansion of the Public Interest Entity audit regime to private companies with 1000 or more employees and £1 billion or more in turnover.