The secretariat said it had “real concerns” about the report’s follow-up to the authors and Lady Scotland’s supporters suggested that Mr Isaac’s letter was “deliberately written so that it could be leaked and damaged”. Two years ago, Britain, Australia and New Zealand suspended all their voluntary payments to the Secretariat due to questions about its financial processes. In particular, Lady Scotland was criticized by auditors for waiving procurement rules 50 times, which included awarding a lucrative contract to a company run by a friend. Earlier this year, the Governing Council, which takes decisions on behalf of the Member States between summits, asked the secretariat to order a review of its funding following a reduction in funding from Member States from 50 50 million to 30 30 million £ the last decade. The accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) carried out the review and its report was submitted to the Secretariat on 1 June, but to date the Secretariat has refused to share the report with the Board of Governors. Mr Isaac believes that the Secretariat has no right to withhold the report. Under the agreement, incumbents will be re-elected without objection if they run for a second term as secretary-general, but in 2020 Boris Johnson informed Member States that there was opposition to the re-election of Lady Scotland by a “significant and diverse number” of Member States. Her term has already been extended by two years from her initial four-year term because the Rwandan summit, originally scheduled for 2020, has been postponed until now due to the coronavirus pandemic. A Commonwealth source with knowledge of the issues said: “This is a draft report commissioned to assess a number of options and mechanisms for the long-term sustainable funding of the Secretariat. It’s not a research on our finances and it is frustrating that some may try to describe it this way. “We received the draft of the final report late and we have strong technical and real concerns about the report we have set up with Ernst & Young. We are working with Ernst & Young on this to make sure that the draft report meets the terms of the contract. “