Poor quality assessments by departmental accounting officers have reduced the value for money of government spending during the Covid-19 pandemic, a Public Accounts Committee report has found.
Whitehall's oversight of local government audit has become “increasingly complacent” and the proposed solution involves treating public audit as “an afterthought”, MPs have said.
Government departments lack urgency in their efforts to measure fraud and error relating to Covid-19 spending, according to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.
The Department of Health and Social Care is ‘complacent’ about the risks of financial failure in local care provision, according to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee.
The government's narrow focus on spending on public sector pensions runs the risk of missing much bigger financial impacts caused by young employees failing to enrol in the schemes, MPs have warned.
The lack of government transparency around councils in financial distress makes scrutiny impossible and leaves authorities and service users vulnerable in the wake of Covid-19, MPs have said.
A government programme hoped to address long-term problems facing the UK economy is too focused on how much it spends, rather than the results it achieves, MPs have said.
Former prime minister David Cameron “quite persistently” lobbied Treasury officials to allow now-defunct Greensill Capital to access government Covid-19 support, according to the department's top...
The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked record collaboration between the NHS, social care providers and local government, a senior civil servant said this week.
The government needs to improve its support to local authorities to ensure that private finance initiative infrastructure returns to the public sector in a useable condition.
Councils’ ability to handle Covid-19 test and trace responsibilities have been hampered by a lack of clarity on funding levels, according to the Public Accounts Committee.
Local authorities lack the expertise to manage the wind-down of private finance initiative deals as contracts begin to come to an end, a civil servant warned this week.
Government plans to procure personal protective equipment before Covid-19 were inadequate, leading to hundreds of millions of pounds being wasted on PPE not fit for purpose, according to a group of...
MPs have warned that the financial sustainability of some local authorities presents a “significant risk” to the government's finances, and urged the swift implementation of the Redmond review into...
The Department for Education's upcoming 10-year reform programme must include a “clear vision on the structure and funding of the college sector”, the National Audit Office has said.
NHS leader’s have called on prime minister Boris Johnson to honour his promise to fix the social care sector and put the service on a sustainable footing.
The government has been criticised for its lack of understanding of the effectiveness of tax reliefs, as after a report from the Public Accounts Committee said it knew "too little" about the schemes.
The Public Accounts Committee has called on the Department for Education to set out a clear roadmap for University Technical Colleges, after a report found that UTCs were only operating at 45% of...
The HS2 high-speed rail project has gone “badly off course” and the government needs regular, accurate and open updates on the problems the project is facing, according to a report from the Public...
The Ministry of Defence has left the taxpayer facing huge costs due to “poor contract design and management”, according to a Public Accounts Committee report.
A small number of councils buying commercial property purely to make money should not result in a complete overhaul of CIPFA’s guidelines on investment, chief executive Rob Whiteman has told MPs.
The Department for Education is damaging the wellbeing and life chances of children with special educational needs and disabilities, according to a report from the Public Accounts Committee.