The UK government may have placed audit reform on hold while it goes through the torture of a general election, but others continue to debate and call for improvements to audit committees. Not least among them is a recent academic paper claiming that if reform is to have any lasting effect, audit committees equally need a makeover. In an article aimed at resolving the long-standing issue of auditor independence, academics Martin Gelter and Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez honed in on the key problems underlying the functioning of audit. They said audit committees require attention because of the risk they “hire less strict auditors”. And stakeholders need exacting standards in their audits. “Unfortunately, audit committees often d