SIR DIGBY JONES, the former director-general of the CBI, attended only one meeting of the audit committee at troubled software company Isoft in his final year as senior non-executive.

Isoft warned last week that it had found evidence of “accounting irregularities” and suspended two members of staff, including Steve Graham, one of the firm’s founders.

The company said in an announcement to the London Stock Exchange: “The conclusion of the initial investigation is that there is evidence of irregularities affecting the financial years ended 30 April 2004 and 2005. The principal effects of this would appear to have been to recognise revenues earlier than they should have been.”

Jones attended a meeting of the audit committee in June 2004, but he missed a meeting in December that year. He resigned from the committee in January before it met again in February 2005, according to Isoft’s annual report. The report also reveals that Jones attended only six of the group’s nine board meetings, missing three consecutive meetings in February, March, and April 2005.

He attended only two of four remuneration committee meetings in the same year.

“In December 2004 I told the company I planned to resign as a non-executive director. They asked me to stay on until the general meeting in July 2005,” said Jones, whose non- executive salary rose 41% — to £60,000 — in his final year with the firm.

Having stood down as director-general of the CBI, Jones has taken on a number of non-executive and advisory roles.

Earlier this month he joined the board of Aggregate Industries as a non-executive director. He is also chairman of Deloitte’s industries group and senior adviser to John Connolly, the firm’s chief executive.

He is an adviser to Ford of Europe and Barclays Capital.

Isoft chairman and acting chief executive John Weston has only two weeks to negotiate a new agreement with the group’s bankers — Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays — and restate its accounts or the company’s shares will be suspended.

Isoft has been hit hard by delays to a £6.2 billion programme to modernise the NHS computer system. The shares have fallen 74% since the start of the year to close last week at 50p. Only two years ago Isoft upgraded its profit forecasts for the NHS deal — boasting that it could make £500m rather than £300m from the contract.

The shares soared and within weeks the founders, including Patrick Cryne and Steve Graham, sold more than £40m of shares at 425p each.

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