First of all, the independent advisory committee you have asked about is a committee of senior accounting and auditing practitioners that I've put together to advise me on difficult questions we have to resolve from time to time.

2. The accounting officer shall carry out, or have carried out by a staff member in his own department or in the authorising department specially empowered for that purpose, checks, which must as a general rule be effected on the spot and without warning, to verify the existence of the funds allocated to the imprest administrators and the bookkeeping and to check that imprest transactions are settled within the time limit set.

Its implementation requires a number of techniques different from those involved in verifying nuclear material accountancy.

First of all to Mr. Robinson, I have spent a considerable amount of my time looking at increasing tax rebates to charities and have had a heck of a problem, as has John Bryden, because of accountability and auditing.

2. Purchasers shall keep available for the competent authority of the Member State, for at least three years from the end of the year in which the documents are drawn up, stock records per 12-month period with details of the name and address of each producer, the information referred to in Article 8(2), entered every month or four-week period in the case of quantities delivered and annually in the case of the other data, together with the commercial documents, correspondence and other information referred to in Council Regulation (EEC) No 4045/89 , permitting such stock records to be verified.

(27) Where a national regulatory authority imposes obligations to implement a cost accounting system in order to support price controls, it may itself undertake an annual audit to ensure compliance with that cost accounting system, provided that it has the necessary qualified staff, or it may require the audit to be carried out by another qualified body, independent of the operator concerned.