Recommendation 30

Furthermore, the C&AG has qualified his ‘regularity’ opinion on the DHSC Group accounts for the past two years: the Department exceeded its budgetary limit for Resource Non-Budget Expenditure as authorised by Parliament in 2021–22 as a budget of £nil was authorised and the Department incurred an outturn of £2.457 billion; and in 2020–21, the Department spent £1.3 billion on projects they were required to but did not have the appropriate approval from Treasury for, and therefore was irregular, and also in 2020– 21 there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the expenditure incurred by the Department, particularly on COVID-19 was regular, with the assessment of potential fraud losses being inadequate.58