Recommendation 15

HM Treasury also increased the use of unaudited data—data which has been audited only for presentation in the individual entity’s own accounts, rather than in OSCAR II format—in the 2020–21 WGA. We received written evidence from the ICAEW, which told us that the use of incompletely audited draft account data would almost certainly have led to the C&AG further qualifying his opinion on the 2020–21 WGA for a lack of assurance over the local authorities and other public bodies concerned. The ICAEW 17 WGA 2020–21, para 5, p 262, para 1.7, p 16, para 1.56, p 30 18 Committee of Public Accounts, Report of session: Whole of Government Accounts 2019–20, Twentieth Report of Session 2022–23, HC 31, 14 October 2022 19 WGA0003 Written evidence submitted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 10 November 2023 20 Qq 27–28, 47 21 Q 27 22 Q 27–28, 48 Whole of Government Accounts 2020–21 13 contended that the exclusion of these numbers harmed the WGA to a much greater extent than the inclusion of unaudited balances would do. It noted that excluding the figures would guarantee the materially incorrect nature of the final WGA balances on the basis that a nil value was certainly incorrect, whereas including draft data would mean only a potential inaccuracy.23 We asked the Treasury about the balance between using unaudited yet complete figures but producing the WGA in a more timely manner. The Treasury said that it was trying to get a “balance between timeliness, quality and the level of assurance we get as part of the Whole of Government Accounts”.24