With Parliament returning yesterday, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the last few extraordinary weeks and set out what it means for the National Audit Office and its work.
Firstly though, on behalf of the whole NAO, I would like to pay tribute to everyone who is working so hard to see our country through this crisis. That of course includes our courageous health and social care workers and others on the front line of the response, but also all the public servants behind the scenes at the national and local level keeping our country going. As the organisation responsible for scrutinising so many of these public bodies, we have a privileged insight into how vital they are to everyone’s lives every day – and even more so at a time like this.
To all of the public servants rising to this unprecedented challenge, thank you.
Like many other organisations, the NAO has been home-based for a month now. In infrastructure terms, the NAO was well-prepared for homeworking as our systems are designed to support secure remote auditing. We are working hard to support our staff as they grapple with the practical and wellbeing challenges of the current situation. We are of course not the only ones. And as an organisation that supports Parliament, that has been especially brought home to us as we see the House of Commons resume business in a manner we have never seen before.
As Parliament adapts, so too are we in order to ensure that we can help it to hold government to account. The response to the global pandemic will have implications for many years for public spending and public service delivery. It is too early to tell exactly what the impact will be, but it will be profound.
What is already clear is that MPs, and the public that they represent, will expect us to carry out a substantial programme of work on the COVID-19 response so we can learn for the future. This will include looking at government spending on the direct health response as well as the wider emergency response. We will also look at the spending on the measures to protect businesses and individuals from the economic impact.
It will take us time to develop and produce our work, more importantly it will take time for the public sector to be in a place where it can learn from our findings. Our challenge is to try and provide the appropriate level of evidence-based reporting to support accountability and provide insight at the most suitable time. We must not get in the way of public servants working hard to save lives, but we must also ensure that our reporting is sufficiently prompt to support proper accountability for public money.
We have decided to begin with a factual summary of the significant government spending commitments and programmes relating to COVID-19 which we hope to publish next month. We will use this to identify a risk-based series of evaluative studies where we think there is most to learn.
What is also important to Parliament is that we do not lose sight of the wider picture. There are many other challenges facing the UK including EU Exit; progress in meeting government’s net zero carbon emissions target; major infrastructure projects and the financial sustainability of key public services. Our work programme will have to balance this with the demands of COVID-19. That is why we will be continuing to publish reports already in train. We are also working hard to meet our key statutory duty to audit the accounts of over 450 public bodies.
My colleagues and I are committed to providing Parliament and the public with the evidence they need to understand how public money has been used in tackling this crisis. We will also help ensure that the appropriate lessons are learned for the future.
Gareth Davies
Comptroller & Auditor General
Author
Gareth Davies
Gareth Davies was appointed C&AG in June 2019. Before his appointment as C&AG, he was Head of Public Services at Mazars, a global accountancy firm specialising in audit, tax and advisory services. Prior to this, he was Managing Director of the Audit Commission’s Audit Practice. His experience spans financial and value for money audit, organisational leadership and board governance.
Gareth is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He is a non-executive Board member of the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) which supports Supreme Audit Institutions in developing countries to sustainably enhance their performance and capacity.
