Speaker Juan Watterson will this month seek support from Tynwald to appoint an Auditor General, nine years after the position was first backed.

Tynwald voted in 2011 to pass the Auditor General Act, which should have led to the appointment of a team to examine government spending and find savings.

Tynwald members have previously been told by Ministers to call a vote on the matter and decide if they want to spend taxpayers’ money on the role. And so, when Tynwald sits this month, Mr Watterson has decided to do just that, give Tynwald a say on whether it wants an Auditor General or not.

His motion calls on members to back appointing one by April 1 2021 with a budget ’not to exceed £855,000 per annum’. Mr Watterson’s motion says the role should targeted to identify savings and be run at arm’s length from the Clerk of Tynwald’s Office, with a separate budget excess of its costs after three years of operation.

The role would also be examined after five years to determine whether or not it has made the savings Mr Watterson and others believe it could.

He told the Examiner: ’It would be there to be an independent voice and play an independent scrutiny part over government. It should do value-for-money work and it should save government money in a way that this Treasury has demonstrated it cannot do by itself.

’There are so many reasons for this particular post. It’s part of the International Best Practice Guidance, there are only seven UN countries in the world which don’t have an Auditor General, even the Falkland Islands, which only have a population of 2,800 has a full time public accounts committee clerk and an Auditor General and we have neither of those things.’

Mr Watterson said that the Auditor General should save ’at least three times’ its own budget within three years, saying anything less would be a ’failure’. He noted that in Northern Ireland, the savings are about £9.50 for every £1 spent.

His motion would see the Auditor General and their team deliver an annual report to the public accounts committee and in turn Tynwald.

It is not only this government which has failed to appoint an Auditor General. The last administration led by Allan Bell, of which Mr Watterson was a member, as Home Affairs Minister, also chose not to do so.

He said both this and the previous administration chose not to appoint someone to role as it would ’impact the power the Treasury has over members’. In his opinion, Mr Watterson said the role is seen as a ’threat’ in some quarters.