Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 1
1
Acknowledged
Based on the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) for the year ended 31 March 2020,...
Conclusion
Based on the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) for the year ended 31 March 2020, we took evidence from HM Treasury (the Treasury) on 8 June 2022.1 The WGA is a unique document which provides the most complete and accurate picture available of the UK public sector finances.2 It is a set of financial statements prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the Government Financial Reporting Manual (FReM).3 It brings together information on the financial performance and position of over 10,000 organisations across the UK public sector, including: central government departments; local authorities; devolved administrations; the NHS; academy schools; and public corporations such as the Bank of England.45 The Treasury published the 2019–20 WGA on 6 June 2022, 26 months after the end of the financial year.6
Government Response Summary
The Treasury is revisiting the timetable for the 2020-21 account and future cycles and will write to the Committee setting out a long term recovery strategy to strengthen discipline within the system and investing in specialist project management support and increasing the size of the WGA team.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented HM Treasury wrote to the Committee in October 2022 indicating that the planned March 2023 publication date for the 2020-21 Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) was unlikely to be achieved. The Treasury is revisiting the timetable for the 2020-21 account and future cycles in light of the causes of the delays both this year and for 2019-20. The Treasury will write to the Committee setting out a long term recovery strategy that is realistic and recognises the uncertainties and risks that are beyond the Treasury’s direct control. The delay to WGA 2020-21 is driven principally by the late submission of data by components, and delays in audit work on component returns. Some lateness in submission was anticipated, but not the extent that materialised. This has delayed the start of work in producing the account. The recovery strategy seeks to address this issue by strengthening discipline within the system, including by making timely WGA returns an explicit measure in the annual Accounting Officer financial assessment. In addition, the Treasury is investing in specialist project management support and increasing the size of the WGA team in order to enable work on multiple years of WGA simultaneously. This will increase the team’s capacity to performance manage the collection of WGA data for the following year, while the current year’s account is still being produced. This early collection of data will reduce the risk that late returns have a direct knock-on impact to the timing of the final account. The Treasury has been working closely with the National Audit Office to time future data collection in a window where they have capacity to audit the returns.