Derek McDowell (Labour)

The question of what exactly is meant by the word, "standards" has been causing some grief to the accountancy bodies. It is used in section 9(2)(f) which lists one of the functions of the supervisory authority as "to undertake under section 24 investigations into possible breaches of the standards of a prescribed accountancy body". It is later defined as ethics, codes of conduct and so on. This seems to encompass a corpus of possible legislation and codes.

Has the Minister in mind to be more specific about this and to put a general requirement on accountants to behave according to set standards? At the moment the Bill does not do that. It is imposing, potentially, an extremely wide onus of responsibility on accountants.

I have some experience of the disciplinary procedures of the Law Society. There are certain things solicitors are obliged to do. These range from the most basic, such as returning telephone calls from clients, to complying with various accountancy requirements. Nowhere in this Bill are such requirements set out in relation to accountants. Perhaps they should not be set out in this Bill. However, there should be at least one codified set of rules which accountants are obliged to observe and which would be referred to in the Bill, even if not set out in full.