Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 22
75th Report - Government use of data analytics on error and fraud
Published 27 Mar 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Government use of data analytics on error and fraud All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Legislation also requires that data collected as part of the National Fraud Initiative, enabled by the Local Audit and Accountability Act, can only be retained for the two years – the duration of each biennial exercise. The PSFA told us that this data would be useful to inform counter-fraud work if it was retained for longer. This is common practice in other industries where they use historical data on fraud to identify trends and train models to understand what to look for. We note that it is common practice elsewhere for records to be retained for longer. For instance, HMRC requires companies to retain records for six years.60 56 C&AG’s Report, para 2.25 57 HC Committee of Public Accounts, DWP Customer Service and Accounts 2023–24, Sixth report of session 2024–25, HC 354, 31 January 2025, para 7 58 Q 92 59 Q 92 60 Qq 92 and 96 17
From: Public Accounts Committee, 75th Report - Government use of data analytics on error and fraud (HC 891), 27 March 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 June 2026 (deadline 27 May 2026).