Recommendation 24

To ensure timely accountability for the spending of public funds, Treasury set an administrative deadline of 30 June after the end of the financial year for Departments to publish their Annual Report and Accounts, and no later than parliamentary summer recess in July. The Department has a statutory deadline of 31 January to publish its annual report and accounts.46 The Department laid its 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts on the statutory deadline of 31 January 2022, and it acknowledged that this was a “incredibly challenging year to produce the Annual Report and Accounts”47. The Department told us in a previous session held on 07 March 2022 that it was working hard to bring the publication of its 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts forward, with an aim to publish these in November 2022.48 The 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts were however laid on 26 January 2023, only five days earlier than the prior year.