Should Boris Johnson’s Forensic Audit Panel be auditing itself?

When Boris Johnson set up his Forensic Audit Panel to investigate financial goings on at the London Development Agency, he boasted about how all the people on the panel were working for free and made no mention of any other costs being involved.

Amongst its members is Andrew Gordon of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he is Head of Investigations in their Forensic Services group. Given the allegations over the LDA, such expertise sounds very welcome.

But, but, but … it has now turned out that although the panel are working for free, £50,000 is to be given to PriceWaterhouseCoopers to carry out investigations.

This raises a whole host of questions: why didn’t Boris Johnson say anything about the £50,000 before? How were PriceWaterhouseCoopers selected to get the £50,000? Is there any connection between that and Andrew Gordon’s presence on the panel? Was there any agreement at the time at which he was appointed to the panel? And so on. On past form, don’t expect a speedy and detailed response from Boris Johnson though.