Recommendation 29

Timely production of accounts is essential to understanding public finances and supporting accountability.47 All Departments should aim to lay their accounts and those of their agencies no later than prior to the Parliamentary summer recess. Departments have a statutory deadline of 30 November to provide their accounts to the C&AG, and of 31 January to publish their annual report and accounts.48 The Department published its accounts covering 2019–20 to 2022–23 in January each year, six months after this deadline. When the previous Committee examined the Department’s 2022–23 Annual Report and Accounts, it found that the Department had not published its Group Accounts until 25 January 2024, 10 months after the financial year end. It concluded that its continued failure to deliver its accounts to an earlier timetable hampered effectively and timely accountability of taxpayers’ money. It warned that the Department’s plans to return to a pre–summer recess timetable were becoming less and less ambitious and would result in it taking until 2029 to achieve a pre–summer recess publication rather than the 2025–26 financial year it previously committed to.49 Given the scale of work that will be required to integrate NHS England into the departmental accounts following NHS England’s abolition, the accounts production and audit process will need to be carefully planned otherwise timelines could slip further back.