Recommendation 25

The NAO collated and published information on the government’s response to the pandemic in its COVID-19 cost tracker, the first iteration of which was published in September 2020.40 The cost tracker is now maintained by HM Treasury, and this expenditure was included in the 2020–21 WGA. The Treasury told us that it thought that it would want to carry on including the cost tracker in the 2021–22, but it did not commit to producing the cost tracker or incorporating it into the WGA beyond the 2021–22 WGA.41 The Treasury explained that in future it would need to consider how much to keep revising the cost tracker when changes would start to become quite small, “but not for the next 36 Committee of Public Accounts, Initial lessons from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Thirteenth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 175, 25 July 2021 37 Committee of Public Accounts, Bounce Back Loans Scheme: Follow-up, Fiftieth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 951, 27 April 2022 38 Q 30–31; Committee of Public Accounts, COVID-19: Culture Recovery Fund, Eighth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 340, 23 June 2021 39 Qq 40–42 40 Committee of Public Accounts, Covid-19: Cost tracker update, Thirty-Eighth Report of Session 2021–22, HC 640, 23 February 2022 41 Q 31, 41 Whole of Government Accounts 2020–21 17 year or two”.42 It told us that, if it reached the point at which it thought that maintaining or updating the cost tracker was not necessary, it would think about what approach will be needed to ensure the long-term traceability of costs for future generations of officials and elected representatives. Such an approach must survive even changes in the machinery of government and the departure of staff with the required current and historical knowledge of the relevant balances.43