Recommendation 10

We asked witnesses what they were doing to help organisations that regularly have their accounts qualified. The GFF noted that working with the finance community across government to remove qualifications is one of its key priorities and highlighted ongoing efforts around training and facilitating networking and sharing of best practice to support this.24 It also undertakes end-of-year finance assessments with departments that evaluate against good practice in areas such as business case quality and financial forecasting, and aims to ensure suitably qualified staff are recruited into key roles in government.25 HMT highlighted how dedicating significantly more resources towards compliance had helped to reduce fraud and error at HMRC by £850 million since 2021. However, HMT also suggested that fraud and error were almost inherent to the systems of organisations such as DWP and HMRC due to the nature of their activities.26 This should not be the automatic expectation of these departments.