Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Accepted
Treasury plans WGA format improvements, including trend analysis and increased digital content.
Conclusion
In response to our questions on how the Treasury will improve the format of the WGA in future, the Treasury told us that it plans to improve the quality of reporting in the WGA in future publications, after it has restored the timeliness of production of the accounts to a pre–COVID timetable. The Treasury plans to introduce a 15–year trend analysis of UK public sector income and expenditure, key assets and key liabilities to the WGA for 2023–24 .51 The Treasury also noted that other countries have more digital content available on their accounts, and stated their ambition to consider opportunities to do more in that area.52 Discount rates
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and confirms its plan to focus the 2023-24 WGA on including long-term trend information back to the first published WGA, with a target implementation date of July 2025.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2025. The WGA is a valuable source of information on government liabilities, providing a comprehensive picture across the whole public sector. There are other similarly valuable sources of information such as departmental accounts, or the fiscal sustainability and risk updates provided by the OBR. The intent is to provide useful information on the evolution of key balances over a long period. The accounting rules that underpin WGA are generally retrospective, focussing on the current valuation of future liabilities as at the respective balance sheet date. Under these accounting rules it is not possible to forecast future balance sheets, but other publications such as the ONS Public Sector Net Worth statistics provide this information on a statistical rather than accounting basis. WGA seeks to improve by summarising relevant information from these other publications. For the 2023-24 WGA the focus will be to include long term trend information back to the first published WGA.