Sir Joe defends motion on audit report as necessary response to criticism 

The Minister for Economic Development, Sir Joe Bossano, insisted on Monday that Parliament was the proper forum for the Government to answer the former Principal Auditor’s criticisms in his 2018/19 report, rejecting Opposition claims that a motion rejecting parts of the report amounted to a political “attack” on an independent officer. 

Speaking during the debate on the Government’s motion on the 2018/19 Principal Auditor’s report, Sir Joe said Opposition MPs had tried to portray the session as a “kangaroo court” in which the former auditor was the victim. 

The GSD had described the audit motion as “an assault on the Constitution” and a “shameless, self-serving trashing of a constitutional officer”. 

But Sir Joe argued instead that it was the Government and individuals named in the report who had been “attacked” and who were entitled to respond in Parliament, the only forum where the audit report formally exists as a public document. 

“And if we don't defend ourselves here, Parliament, where do we do it?” he asked.  

“We do it here because this is a document that is being laid in Parliament.” 

“And if it is being laid in Parliament, then it is in Parliament that we have to point out the inconsistencies and the misleading elements in that document.” 

Sir Joe said the Government’s motion was not about undermining the office of the Principal Auditor but about challenging what he described as a new, politicised approach taken in recent years by the former auditor. 

He said earlier reports, including the former auditor’s first audit for 2015/16, had followed a long-established pattern focused on accounts and value for money, but that later reports had shifted into questioning “the legitimacy of Government policy”. 

It was as if the former auditor, who the GSD had described as having a “watchdog” role, had suffered “an attack of rabies or mutated into a rottweiler”, Sir Joe said. 

He added that if the former auditor had wanted to enter into political territory, he should do so “sitting there” on the Opposition benches “and not being a Principal Auditor.” 

Sir Joe said the auditor’s constitutional protection did not mean he was beyond criticism. 

“The fact is that nobody here is able or wants to tell him how to do his job, [but] it does not follow from that that whatever he decides to do is the right thing to do because he's infallible, because he's not infallible,” he told Parliament. 

“The fact that he is protected from being told how to do his job doesn't mean that he's entitled to tell others how to do their jobs.” 

He said the Government’s response was necessary not only to defend ministers collectively but also to protect individuals whose integrity, he said, had been questioned in a report that would remain on the record for future generations. 

Referring to criticism in the report of Environment Minister Dr John Cortes’s and the management of the Alameda Gardens, he said the insinuations were “outrageous” and should not go unanswered. 

“Anywhere in the world, you can read the accusations that have been made, and we are doing something wrong by counteracting that here?” Sir Joe said.  

“At the very least, it has to be counteracted here…” 

Elsewhere in the session, Sir Joe said the question of whether Gibraltar’s Parliament should have a Public Accounts Committee, something both the former Principal Auditor and the GSD had championed, was a political one for Parliament and political parties to decide, not a matter for the Principal Auditor.  

He acknowledged that such committees existed “everywhere else” and accepted that it was a legitimate policy proposal for the Opposition to advance, even if the Government did not support it. 

GSD MP Roy Clinton was “perfectly entitled” as an Opposition MP to argue that Gibraltar should establish a Public Accounts Committee and try to persuade the Government to change its position, he told Parliament. 

But he objected to the former Principal Auditor aligning himself with that view from within his independent role.  

Sir Joe argued that support for a Public Accounts Committee was not related to checking whether the Government’s figures were correct or whether expenditure offered value for money, which he described as the auditor’s only proper functions. 

By taking a stance on this issue, Sir Joe said, the former Principal Auditor was entering the political arena and behaving in a way that had “never happened before” in Gibraltar’s audit history.  

He presented this as part of a wider pattern in which the auditor was moving beyond technical scrutiny of the public finances and into territory that properly belonged to elected politicians. 

Much of Sir Joe’s speech focused on the Gibraltar Savings Bank and the auditor’s comments on economic development debentures, exit packages and the use of government companies. 

He said the Savings Bank’s accounts had been given “a complete clean bill of health” and accused the GSD of “weaponising” the former auditor’s observations. 

Sir Joe said the former auditor was entitled to personal or political opinions about how public money should be invested, but not to present those views as part of his formal audit role. 

“It can be a view that members opposite might have but it is not part of his role, because that is nothing about value for money and it is nothing with the auditing of the accounts,” he said. 

He accused the former auditor of applying “one rule for them [the GSD] and one rule for us” in areas such as exit packages, saying similar or larger arrangements introduced under a previous GSD government had not been questioned at the time. 

“So it is simply a different approach and a different treatment being put on things that have been happening for a long time, and there is no explanation for that,” he said. 

Sir Joe also rejected suggestions that the Government’s handling of supplementary appropriations had prevented the Opposition from knowing the true level of annual spending until years later. 

He said the final outturn figures in the estimates book were the same as those later audited by the Principal Auditor. 

“So the numbers are 100% correct, there's no deviation,” he said. 

On that basis, he said, it was both legitimate and necessary for ministers to use Parliament to “put that record straight”, even if Opposition MPs continued to characterise the motion as an attack on the Principal Auditor rather than a defence of the Government’s actions.