Mel Stride made a speech @instituteforgovernment.org.uk on Monday which included a line I don't think has been picked up on. He described "meaningless" figures in the accounts and called for much more granular data about spending to be disclosed. He is right and his speech is significant.

@hetanshah.bsky.social is completely right about @britishlibrary.bsky.social. The NAO should also do work on this- their remit covers the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of public spending and this fits right in there. We need our national library back at work!

This will be really good. Ben knows his stuff and I'm really looking forward to it.

For those interested, we have another workshop at Durham in December- this time on accountability and participation. The deadline for abstracts is the 6th October with registration deadline in November. Its a really topical area both for academics and policy makers.

I completely agree with this. Also I'd note that students talking to each other about each other's courses and ideas beyond those courses is a key part of university education. The chat about the existence of God or the morality of Friends at 3 am matters

Really interesting story but it doesn't cover an important angle. Was the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee told about this expenditure? That might sound odd but in the past often it has been the Chair of the PAC who would have been told about secret spending like this.

This is interesting and illuminating on HS2 and well worth reading martinrobbins.substack.com/p/hs2-and-th...

Well worth a catchup on these- my talk was on the NAO's history and in the same session, Kirsty Innes (Labour Together) spoke interestingly on digital ID. The discussion after both talks was very high quality too. All the talks Gavin mentions are worth listening to!

I have just published a new piece with Thomas Ahrens and Laurence Ferry about the NAO and the digitalisation of public sector audit. Lots of claims have been made about how digital technology could rapidly revolutionise public sector audit and reinvent democracy.

Really interesting piece in the Guardian about the post office- its not surprising that questions are being asked of the auditors in the post office scandal-its inevitable that questions about the audit industry should come from this www.theguardian.com/business/202...

This is an undeniably stupid policy which will have longterm effects- we may not be able to access ebooks in their current format in fifty years time for example. There is a real risk that the dash to digital leaves us with less knowledge of the 2020s than we have of the 1920s!

Kind comments here about a talk I gave at Transform Government about the NAO- the book the talked is based on is available here www.routledge.com/Holding-Gove...

This is a great blog from Ben and he asks really important questions but the report he is criticising is poor. Its really poor that at no point do the Committee mention the Treasury or Treasury ministers (excluding the PM). The Treasury though is a key constitutional department.

If true, this looks a major scandal. But it also raises a lot of questions. From my world, why did the audit of the accounts for 2022-3 (which were signed off) not pick this up? or the audit of the accounts in 2023-4 which have not yet been published? x.com/HarryYorke1/...

Hey everyone. We'd really appreciate some shares of this to promote our 4th event. 💥💥 26th of March at the MoJ and online. 💥💥 Henry Midgley, Durham University, on Holding Government to Account and ​Kirsty Innes, Labour Together, on Digital ID. Register here! lu.ma/h0ci1zdd

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This is a fantastic piece- we don't think about covid and we don't think about it enough. This is a pity especially when it comes to government. Covid was two things- a medical event and an emergency. I'm not qualified to write about the first but on the latter (1)

This is a really interesting piece which draws on the book that I, @aaileenm21.bsky.social and Laurence Ferry published in December. It looks at the pressure to make government more efficient- something we are seeing all over the world at the moment- but most famously in the US with Musk and DOGE

I just noticed this announcement from my old colleagues at PACAC. ACOBA is a really important organisation in fighting corruption in the UK and we really need it to be effectively led. Appointing an interim chair is disappointing. x.com/CommonsPACAC...

I am delighted to say that I have just been elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society!

This piece by @iandunt.bsky.social on the Government's approach to EU law is very good. Beyond the EU point where I'm less expert, the points about both Parliament and administration are absolutely correct. iandunt.substack.com/p/the-hidden...

This is a fantastic post by @bymyong.bsky.social- well worth reading connecting a very real question at the moment- who is responsible for renewing Westminster to a very abstract and important constitutional principle- who or what is Parliament. Its well worth a read!

I am really interested in the debates about Trump in the US at the moment. So for example, the discussion of the OMB freeze memorandum is fascinating from a UK perspective. The constitutional argument that it is for Congress to appropriate and the President to execute is so unfamiliar to the UK

This is a link to the other place but its really important. As the Public Accounts Committee lays out here, the Ministry of Defence has failed to provide either the equipment plan to Parliament or information to the NAO to allow them to audit the equipment plan. x.com/CommonsPAC/s...

One aspect of the university funding crisis that isn't getting attention is its impact on other areas of policy making- its not just about universities. Take Cardiff's decision to close its nursing department for example- that will effect the supply of nurses to the NHS in Wales and the wider UK.

Glen's right. Furthermore, this move seems part of a trend towards making the definition of a good research someone who fills in forms for funding well, not someone who actually does good research (the two things are almost completely different)

I have a new article out with @aaileenm21.bsky.social and Laurence Ferry. We argue in the article that there needs to be a historical turn in the study of public sector audit- we base this on our own work on the history of the NAO and other scholarship www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Interesting to see the Treasury Committee's criticisms of the new office for value for money, I think they are right that the government has not answered many questions about the new Office. committees.parliament.uk/committee/15...

Very true of the NAO files too- one of the things I love about those is that the titles and acronyms have changed completely over the years and no one in them seeks to explain just what the AAG/B did or what Unit A is!

Really good summary of the last year from the @conunitucl.bsky.social including a kind reference to a blog that we wrote on the NAO in December. Well worth a read constitution-unit.com/2024/12/20/t...

A typically thoughtful engagement with our work from @matthewfright.bsky.social

The new inquiry from the Housing Communities and Local Government Committee is welcome. The issue is important as is the principle that governments should be accountable not just for spending but for whether spending levels meet their aspirations for services committees.parliament.uk/work/8703/th...

Totally correct and another reason why getting local government audit matters because that's one aspect of the bigger problem. If you don't have audited accounts in local government, you don't know for sure what its doing and how big the crisis it faces is. Therefore you don't know how to respond.

ON THE BLOG: Holding democracy to account: government and the NAO @henrymidgley.bsky.social, Laurence Ferry and Aileen Murphie argue that the National Audit Office's mission is ever-changing, essential to maintaining democracy and ensures good government.

This review is splendid- I loved the last paragraph- never knew that I was pushing drugs as well as writing about the NAO!!!! Seriously though Ian really gets what we were trying to do with the book and its a lovely piece of writing

An important and authoritative book by @henrymidgley.bsky.social Laurence Ferry and Aileen Murphie on the National Audit Office and its pivotal role in holding government to account. Highly recommended. www.routledge.com/Holding-Gove...

Very thoughtful piece by Lord Bichard this morning about the potential of AI in the public sector: the point about needing to make sure the public sector has the skills to get the best value out of new technology is supported by decades of nao reports. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Publication day klaxon! My book with Aileen Murphie and Laurence Ferry on the NAO is published today. It covers the NAO's history going back to 1983 (though I couldn't resist a little dalliance in Gladstonian accounting) and it explains how the NAO has changed during the period.

This is absolutely correct. I can't access the article but the fact that this opinion is a disclaimer is really important and it reflects a long term crisis in local government audit- as described in the Redmond Review, by the NAO, numerous select committees and other experts

My latest on the quite remarkable - but almost entirely unremarked upon - decision by the UK's Auditor General to refuse to sign off on the government accounts

Our book on the NAO comes out in a week's time. The NAO is one of the UK's key institutions, it has access to every single piece of paper in government, can report on whatever it likes and its reports have parliamentary privilege.

A really consequential issue for the future- like a number of other things Westminster doesn't often focus on, this will really matter. Gavin is an expert and his stuff below is really interesting.

Three days ago, my, Laurence Ferry and Aileen Murphie's new book became available for pre-order- the link is below. Its a history of the NAO since 1983 (though we do stray backwards a bit) www.routledge.com/Holding-Gove...

I haven't really posted here much yet- but it feels like the time to start given how many people are moving here. So having lurked for a while this is my I'm here post!

Just wanted to highlight the recent report from the Levelling Up committee at the House of Commons about local authority audit and accounts. Its a really good piece of work that builds on work by PACAC in 2017 on central government accounts.

Great interview and her insights are fascinating. The one thing I wonder about too concerns how people thought differently. One reason I find Keith Thomas such a great historian for example is his way of taking me into another world of experience.

I'm on this platform as well as the other place with random musings especially about public sector financial accountability in all its manifold forms!