henrymidgley.bsky.social
Ex NAO now at Durham University interested in public sector financial accountability and other related things! Author Holding Government to Account: Democracy and the National Audit Office
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If you are interested, the piece is available here and I've only briefly summarised some of its points onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
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Public sector audit also is governed by constitutional rhythms and processes that are not easy to revolutionise through technology and are controlled by others outside of the NAO.
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There are lots of reasons for this- some are about the capacity of the state to move as quickly as the public sector auditor, in some ways the NAO can only move at the pace of the departments it audits and the appetite of its own staff to use these new methods.
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We found a more mixed picture. Although under the last 2 C&AGs in particular there has been real attention to making audit more digital including more use of data analytics in financial audit and new techniques in Value for Money audit- the more revolutionary claims have not come true
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I don't know how culpable Ernst and Young were here- but there are interesting questions about how far the Post Office relied on Horizon for its controls over Postmasters and how far the auditors themselves understood this and what they did and should have done about it.
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Yes absolutely- I wonder to what extent the "old" controls like Gladstonian public sector audit are a proxy for the fact lots of debt was held by voters- with external bond markets there might be another set of proxy institutions- central banks?
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As is his foreign policy- reading her book this autumn I was really struck by how far from Trump her politics actually are- very pro-Ukraine, ideologically free market etc- beyond vibes there isn't much that actually binds them in terms of beliefs
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Looks really interesting
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Completely agree with you on both. I was at an event with some ex-civil servants the other day and they portrayed the NAO as a brooding presence in their lives which they were always aware of.
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Interesting and also something where the accounting literature and public law literature should probably speak to each other more- I can think of a lot of scholarship in accounting on audit and some on financial audit which is relevant to seeing it constitutionally.
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In general though it adds to the neglect of Parliament's own role in financial scrutiny- if we don't even identify the body in the executive responsible for aiding Parliament in that role, its no surprise that Parliament can't perform that role well!
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This myopia though in Westminster generally has consequences- a reason accounts are impenetrable is that we see them as administrative and technical, Treasury officials may not understand their role as a constitutional one, Parliament as in this case does not hold the department to account for this.
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Documents like Managing Public Money or various other guidance it publishes restrain government departments. The error by the Lords Committee is not unique: @instituteforgov.bsky.social omitted the Treasury from their work on constitutional guardians www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/defaul...
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It sets out what the government means by transparency through the process of published accounts. It sets out what propriety and regularity for government spending are. It responds to PAC reports and one of its ministers is the only ex officio minister on a select committee.
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That investigation did not cover specific allegations of fraud- but you would expect the financial auditors to be aware of any material irregularity (and fraud would be one) in the accounts (material meaning matters to the users of the accounts (MPs)) so why didn't they spot it?
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The NAO did an investigation in 2023-4 which mentioned risks at franchise providers- why didn't the student loan company listen? www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/u...
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I think this is correct- but it requires a major reorientation within the EU- for example serious thinking about the UK, and Turkish relationships. Some signs are good- some are not but it requires real change of thinking in the institutions and member states and also in London and Istanbul
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Turn this around- crises are an opportunity to learn. I've no doubt medical researchers learnt from covid- but what new learning for government emerged from it compared to say GDP from World War Two- what do we think about government now that we didn't know then? Who is working on that? (6)
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In some ways the lesson of covid was actually not to do what we are doing- DH was overfocussed on flu apparently as it was the last crisis- we should focus on general flexibility rather than on what we got wrong with covid specifically. What could have helped us with "a" crisis not "this" one (5)
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So what does covid teach us about how flexible the state is in responding to those kind of crises- when you need to act quickly and suffer from a lack of knowledge- these were crises the UK state was actually quite good at dealing with in the past (see World War Two) (4)
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The next emergency might be an airborn disease but it could be another disease- it could be climate related disasters- it could be a war- it could be a massive terrorist attack on multiple fronts- we don't know and we won't know till it happens (3)
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I think we have focussed too much on specifics- Boris Johnson, Simon Case, Hancock et al and how you would deal with an airborn virus and less on the fact that the UK faced an emergency and what would this tell us about the next emergency we faced. (2)
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By the way as its another excuse to put a link to the book in- here is a link to the book www.routledge.com/Holding-Gove...
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What does efficiency mean? Who are you examining it for- government or Parliament? How the rhetoric of efficiency both changes and remains the same? The piece is well worth a read and I hope it prompts debates both about efficiency and the role of Supreme Audit Institutions.
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But I think rightly @nixonsimon.bsky.social argues that these attempts need to be set in a historical context, as part of a long history of examining efficiency and the questions he asks about the UK's NAO are pertinent to almost anyone looking at efficiency-
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Completely agree!
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There are plenty of other things the UK needs to do to fight corruption- PACAC has written in the past that ACOBA needs to be strengthened and @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social has further suggestions but in the meantime, lets keep the systems we have going and one of those is ACOBA.
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I remember the isolation really well. I lived alone +had a cold +took Johnson's order to stay at home if you had symptoms seriously. So the first 2.5 weeks I didn't leave my flat once: I remember anxiety about the reports about food etc and then the wonderful feeling of my first walk outside.
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Thanks Ben!
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We also give ministers too much power to make law- this was a huge issue during Covid and this just illustrates how big an issue it could be in the future. Ian (assisted by @ruthfox.bsky.social) is completely right- MPs need to be involved for law to be legitimate
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Parliamentary select committees were devised to enable accountability for the administrative state- as was the NAO- but they need to be appropriately burdened. PACAC cannot do this role in addition to its role on the PHSO, on public admin and the constitution- I know I worked there for a while!
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I think it gets to a wider point though- when you have a public sector running health, education etc etc, the boring bits are always going to be the important bits and the more that as citizens we try and get involved in those boring bits, the more democratic our system will be.
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Blanket cuts are always a sign of intellectual laziness- it means that you can't think of what to cut but think cuts should happen. If you want to cut regulation that's fine- but it should as you argue be specific regulations.
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An example of the "constitutional outrage" school of thought in the US is the early part of this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF-I...
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technical controls are pretty easy to evade. So Parliament has very few controls over the executive when it comes to spending. It reveals the huge difference between the UK and US that something ignored as normal in the UK is a constitutional outrage in the US!