To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether, under the Companies Act 1989, he will refuse to grant supervisory status to any accountancy body which in the past formulated rules on professional independence but failed to offer any way of monitoring compliance with such rules.
It is a requirement of the Act that before a supervisory body may be recognised it must appear to the Secretary of State to have adequate arrangements and resources for the effective monitoring and enforcement of compliance with its rules. The question of whether a body had such arrangements in the past is not directly relevant to that requirement.
To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) whether he will provide a list of all the cases which he has referred to the joint disciplinary scheme since 1979;(2) whether he will provide a list showing the conclusions of the disciplinary hearings held by the joint disciplinary scheme as a result of his referral of the cases to the joint disciplinary scheme.
It is for individual accountancy bodies to decide whether to refer cases made to them to the joint disciplinary scheme. Completed inquiries under the scheme are reported in the annual reports of the Joint disciplinary scheme, copies of which are in the Library.