Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 32
32
Accepted
Addressing adult social care and future cost drivers is crucial for long-term fiscal sustainability.
Conclusion
We asked the Treasury to explain the actions needed to address the issues that are putting pressure on public finances and risking the sustainability of spending in the long term. The Treasury noted that work was needed on adult social care, driven by the aging population of the UK and the need for prevention of issues rather than just paying for the consequences. It assured us that fiscal sustainability is the foundation of what the Treasury is looking at, and it needs to look at cost drivers coming up in the future.70
Government Response Summary
The government commits to improving the 2023-24 WGA by including long-term trend information (July 2025) to provide useful data on the evolution of key balances, acknowledging the importance of understanding fiscal sustainability and long-term spending pressures.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2025 6.2 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.