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Financial Management

I echo that absolutely; we want to have that 100 per cent. We want to establish the credibility of accounts by having the ability to follow the accounts' income and expenditure to verify that the accounts are proper according to the rules and that the sums are spent in the right area. That is what we try to achieve when we have audit discussions and when we make negative comments—we tend to make negative comments—on reports and question the optimism of those who think this can be done easily. However, we wish it to be done. The following comments from the European Court of Auditors are interesting, so I shall read them into the record. They come from David Bostock, a UK member of the court, and it is important to recognise that he takes this matter very seriously. In his letter to me, which was tabled to the Committee, he not only discusses the positive aspects of the reports—he is positive on their regularity—but he also expresses concern about some issues. In paragraph 8 of the letter, David Bostock writes:"““The Court gives a clean opinion on the accounts. They present fairly, in all material respects, the Communities' financial position as of 31 December 2007, and the results of their operations and cash flows for the year ended 2007. The Commission has been generally successful in implementing accruals accounting””—" which is a new initiative that came in just some years ago. In paragraph 9, he says:"““This is the first year for which the Court has delivered an unqualified opinion on the accounts. The European Commission's tendency to describe our qualified opinions on previous years' accounts as 'clean' may however obscure the novelty of this finding.””" It was always a matter of dispute between both our Committee and the Government and the Commission that it used the word ““clean”” to mean that there were no proven frauds—that there was dubiety but not proof. This new initiative is good, and we should welcome it.