The Development of Financial Accounting and Reporting Standards in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The Acounting Standards Committee (ASC) has recently been reconstituted, its membership revised and its agenda drastically reduced. Such sweeping changes in the body responsible for the formulation of accounting standards in Britain necessarily invite speculation concerning the future of accounting standards in this country. However, we believe that the current problems of the ASC have to be seen in the context of the historical development of financial accounting and reporting standards in the United Kingdom. The ASC was only formed in 1969 and its work on the regulation of financial accounting, that is of financial measurement, has to be set against the background of a tradition of statutory regulation of financial reporting, that is the presentation and disclosure of financial information, which dates back to the early nineteenth century. The purpose of this paper is therefore to put the issues surrounding the recent upheavals in the ASC in the context of the historical experience.