Recommendation 22

The Department and the C&AG have discussed whether they might develop a protocol for use in similar circumstances in future. The Department told us that a super-injunction was so unprecedented it was hard to think of circumstances in which it was likely to see one again.56 It also said that, with hindsight, it was not sustainable to have kept the C&AG at arm’s length for a period of two years.57 In correspondence received after our evidence session, the Department said that developing a protocol between the Treasury Officer of Accounts, the C&AG and Accounting Officers should a future super-injunction be used would provide clarity for how this should be managed.58 Meanwhile, there are other matters to do with the Department that are not getting any Parliamentary scrutiny. The Department told us that a proposal for a Parliamentary oversight committee looking at more sensitive aspects of defence work, particularly defence and the nuclear enterprise, was being considered at the highest level within government.59 In the opinion of the PAC, this matter is moving far too slowly. Accounting for the costs of the Afghanistan Response Route