Protection racket will fall on deaf ears
There's more noise around the issue of protecting the word accountant. ACCA member Alan Shooter has set up an online petition on the Downing Street website and a month on from its creation, he has attracted 50 signatures.
He is demanding - and these are his capitals, not mine - that we 'PREVENT UNQUALIFIED ACCOUNTANTS,TAX AND FINANCIAL ADVISORS PROVIDING SERVICES UNLESS THEY HAVE PROFESSIONALLY RECOGNISED QUALIFICATIONS'.
To put that level of support into some kind of context I took a look at other petitions created on 24 June.
Shooter has secured 13 more signatures than the petitioner seeking to 'utterly condemn and bring all pressure possible to bear to prevent Cadbury from outsourcing production to Poland' but 122 fewer than a campaigner seeking to 'allow exemptions for long established family businesses which will be hit by the scrapping of taper relief and the new blanket 18% capital gains tax'.
Although I have sympathy with the argument that use of the term accountant should be regulated I simply cannot see how it would work.
How do you define it? You would presumably adopt an existing definition of what makes a reputable accountant.
But even if you just pick a UK definition (which would be difficult given the international mobility of professionals) which would you choose?
Would you pick the CCAB definition of six institutes? Would you incorporate the Companies Act which would effectively add in another? Is it all institutes - of which there are many?
To succeed I suspect protection of accountants requires rationalisation of institutes. And given recent unhappy experiences I don't sense any appetite for that.
"PREVENT UNQUALIFIED ACCOUNTANTS...UNLESS THEY HAVE PROFESSIONALLY RECOGNISED QUALIFICATIONS".
So only the unqualified accountants who don't have qualifications should be prevented from practising?
Also from his petition:
"THey need to be regulated.Alan Shooter FCA FCCA ( a Chartered and Certified Accountantin practice"
If that's the standard we can expect from qualifieds, I for one can't see any argument for reserving any special titles or privileges for them...
Posted by jonW | June 26, 2008 8:04 PM