Mr. William Beausang:

It is reflecting there are rules and procedures in place but, just as the recommendation says, as the Deputy is pointing out, they are not uniform and harmonised. The issue of standard setting, when one is taking into account the different issues that kick in when one looks at different elements of the public finances, is the issue that we are engaging with here. That is the area we are trying to address.

Sometimes there is an inevitability to diversity because if one tries to harmonise, the one-size-fits-all means that one is losing things in terms of the financial reporting. Not being intimately familiar with the specific issues that arise in relation to those four recommendations, it is presumably the case that there is a sort of diversity there that is hard to corral under one single set of rules. The experience more generally, as we look at it in accounting standards, is that a uniform and standardised approach sometimes can cause real difficulties and there can be very significant unintended consequences from saying, "That is the rule and everybody has to hold to that rule", if that process is not worked through in a way that takes all the individual relevant factors into account.