Chair of the committee, Liam Byrne MP was curious to know about the risks of not implementing the reform in the timeframe it was originally supposed to be.

Scott Knight, head of audit and assurance at BDO responded, saying: ‘You’ll see the pace of change slow down. The market gets stuck, if I look at it from an optimistic viewpoint we have seen more change in the last five years in building an FTSE 250 base than decades beforehand.

‘The pace of change has been positive, but there is a risk that slows down.’

When it came to the definition of the audit reform, Bruce Cartwright, CEO of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland disagreed with the rest of the panel.