Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 31
31
Accepted
HM Treasury is open to providing seminars to improve public understanding of Whole of Government Accounts.
Recommendation
Given the potential for the WGA to be an important and really useful document about public spending, we asked the Treasury how it could help Parliamentarians and members of the public to understand the WGA and its implications. The ICAEW suggested that that it would be beneficial to hold events additional to our annual evidence session, to 49 WGA0002 Written evidence from ICAEW: The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, 10 November 2023 50 Committee of Public Accounts, Whole of Government Accounts 2019–20, Twentieth Report of Session 2022–23, HC 31, 14 December 2022. Para 18 51 WGA0003 Written evidence submitted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, 10 November 2023 52 Q 50 53 Qq 1–2, 50–51, 53 54 WGA0002 Written evidence from ICAEW: The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, 10 November 2023 Whole of Government Accounts 2020–21 19 enable Parliament to hold government to account for its stewardship of public money. It suggested that annual financial presentations, using the numbers in the WGA, could be beneficial to Parliament – similar to how listed companies present their annual financial resutls to shareholders and other stakehodlers. We therefore also asked it whether it would consider giving seminars introducing and explaining the document to be made available to Parliamentarians and the wider public. The Treasury told us that it had worked hard to make the WGA more understandable and use much more plain English, and that it would continue to do so. It recognised that importance of people being able to understand where taxpayers’ money is spent and said that it was open to doing seminars and teachings wherever there is demand.55
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to help Parliamentarians and the public understand the WGA by committing to improve accessibility, welcoming opportunities to hold seminars with NAO and Parliament, and having written to the Parliamentary Scrutiny Unit to explore providing training sessions for MPs.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Spring 2024 6.2 HM Treasury is committed to improving accessibility of the information within the WGA. The department would welcome an opportunity to work with the NAO and Parliament by holding seminars and other training sessions. 6.3 HM Treasury chairs the User and Preparer Advisory Group (UPAG) which brings together users and preparers of government accounts provide independent recommendations and advice to the Treasury in furtherance of improving financial reporting in the public sector. HM Treasury has written to the Parliamentary Scrutiny Unit to explore the possibility of providing training and seminars to MPs and will continue to investigate other ways in which the accessibility of the information within WGA can be improved. 6.4 Beyond the WGA, OSCAR II is used to produce the Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA), which is the yearly publication on government spending. It brings together recent outturn data, estimates for the latest year, and spending plans for the rest of the current spending review period. It also shows spending by region. OSCAR II is also used to produce the Country and Regional Analysis (CRA) which presents statistical estimates for the allocation of identifiable expenditure between the UK countries and 9 English regions. 6.5 The OSCAR II dataset is also used to provide quarterly updates to monthly outturn data. The outturn information is taken from OSCAR data submitted by departments. The public are able to see monthly patterns in spend by organisations reporting data on OSCAR II. At the same time, users are also able to drill down beneath previously released high-level aggregates.