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Finance Bill

The senior accounting officer's responsibility is to take reasonable steps. We would not have a big discussion on that, although I, as a lawyer, have some idea what that means. Although I understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns, it has certainly been found in the field of health and safety, which is my specialist background, that if a particular director is nominated as responsible for safety—not for every incident on the shop floor, but to assume overall responsibility for taking reasonable steps to make sure that there are safe systems and so on—safety improves. I expect the Government's approach is similar in respect of tax accounting.