John Griffith-Jones, Co-Chairman of KPMG Europe LLP, delivering the second ICAS Aileen Beattie Memorial Lecture in London last night, called for a re-think of the role of public company audits and said that society and the audit profession should work towards a new 'kitemark' standard for audit reports.

Mr Griffith-Jones Lecture 'Towards An Even Better Profession' suggested that the current expectation gap about the role of auditing could be closed in the foreseeable future with a new approach and a new contract.

He called for society and the audit profession to work towards a kitemark standard of an audit report as being about right.

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Mr Griffith-Jones said: "I am making the case for the acknowledgment of reality. I believe the kitemark that the profession and society should agree to work towards could be summarised in the vernacular as these accounts are about right unless the management have deliberately conspired to falsify them.

"I am not about to argue for any reduction in the rigour with which an audit is carried out I am not arguing for the commoditisation of an audit and I am not proposing to take on liabilities I cannot meet."

He argued that the kitemark would require individual auditors and firms to sign up to an increased level of responsibility.

Mr Griffith-Jones added: "Corporate scandals of recent years have taught us that we miss the point in spending a lot of time debating what "about right" means. Because, in almost all the cases of major audit failure "about right" does not come into it. The accounts turn out, with hindsight, to be "spectacularly wrong". No amount of words in the auditor's opinion will change that fact.

(GK/JM)