Mr. Robert Watt:

The reason I mentioned the minutes in my note is because you and I had spoken about it. You had expressed concern about the delay and how it was impacting on your work. That is the reason I mentioned it, and colleagues are making an effort to ensure that it comes back promptly.

In terms of the recommendations, obviously it is up to the Accounting Officer to decide whether they accept them. We could never have any part of the system where somebody writes a report with ten recommendations and we are all supposed to say that we agree with everything and cannot question, debate or have a disagreement on it. I can disagree with the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is perfectly legitimate for me or any of my colleagues to do that. Nobody is infallible. We need to do that and have those debates.

I would be very disturbed if we ticked every box and said we agreed with all the recommendations. If we started to do that, one should question whether we are taking this seriously at all.

I remember the discussions on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Every Department has a finance officer and a finance unit and should have, in effect, a financial controller, a person who is responsible for it. My view, for what it is worth, is that we need to professionalise this function and that, ideally, a finance officer is a qualified accountant and has a background in accountancy. Over the years, in a number of parts of the system, we went too far down the generalist route and did not have enough specialists, whether auditors, tax people, economists, accountants or procurers, in the system. It objected to the expression because it already has a finance person.