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Inaccurate and delayed Government balance sheet harms transparency for billions in spending

26 January 2024

  • Whole of Government Accounts of unacceptably reduced utility to Parliament and public
  • Treasury not proactive enough in addressing issues as PAC reiterates warnings over local government finance

Delays and data gaps in the UK’s overall balance sheet are having an unacceptable impact. In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), the most comprehensive view available of how Government uses taxpayer’s money, is of decreasing usefulness and reliability to Parliament, local government, and the public due to its tardy publication and the patchy information it contains.

The WGA is an important and potentially invaluable document in explaining the overall spending of taxpayers’ money and Government’s financial liabilities. But an unacceptable increase in missing data makes the WGA a less useful or reliable source of information for decision-making. The report finds that 155 public bodies did not submit data to the 2020-21 WGA, including two pension schemes with liabilities of £86.9bn and £48.2bn. Delays in publication compound the problem, with HM Treasury publishing the 2020-21 WGA 27 months after the end of the financial year to which it relates.

The PAC’s inquiry focused on the WGA 2020-21, which brings together information on the overall state of the public finances in the first year of the pandemic. The report finds the Government has no clear plan for tracking ongoing COVID costs or evaluating COVID schemes in the longer term. It is essential that Government learns from its response to the pandemic, and the PAC recommends HM Treasury provide a compendium of evaluation of COVID schemes from across Government by July 2024.

The report reinforces concerns raised by the PAC’s scrutiny of local government finance, most recently its report into the timeliness of local audit. It warns that the system of local audit, which is close to breaking point, results in poorer quality data for central Government and risks spreading to other sectors. Just five of 467 local government entities met the statutory deadline for publication of their 2022-23 audit opinions, and the report calls for further information from HM Treasury by February 2024 on a credible plan from Government to resolve the local audit crisis.

The PAC is further calling on HM Treasury to be more proactive in collecting the data required to complete the WGA, as it does not currently actively pursue the data it needs for the WGA beyond providing initial guidance on the format data should be provided in.

Chair's comment

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

 “If the Whole of Government Accounts didn’t exist, we would have to invent it. A high-level overview providing an overall snapshot of the nation’s finances, if produced accurately and reliably, could be both an essential resource for decision-makers and for scrutiny from Parliament and the public. The Treasury had made great progress on delivering this in a timely fashion but the delays in this report take us back years.

The Treasury needs to be far more front-footed in curating the WGA and following up with public bodies where data is missing. But this report further underlines our Committee’s continued warnings of the crisis in local government finance, and the risks it poses to central government and other bodies. Performance in this area had continued to deteriorate at the time of our report, and a credible plan must be urgently implemented if we are to prevent the rot continuing to spread.”

Further information

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