About us

Role

The National Audit Office (NAO) scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament.

Our audit of central government has two main aims. By reporting the results of our audits to Parliament, we hold government departments and bodies to account for the way they use public money, thereby safeguarding the interests of taxpayers. In addition, our work aims to help public service managers improve performance and service delivery.

The Audit and inspection rights are vested in the head of the National Audit Office, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG). The staff of the NAO carry out these tasks on his behalf.

Independence

• The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse, is an Officer of the House of Commons. Both he and his staff at the NAO (some 880) are totally independent of government. We are not civil servants and do not report to any Minister.
• We can be effective only if we retain our ability to comment objectively and independently on what government does, and we cannot therefore act as adviser on the specific decisions the government takes.
• Oversight of the NAO is carried out by a Parliamentary committee, the Public Accounts Commission, which appoints our external auditors and scrutinises our performance.

Strategic Priorities

Our work reveals recurring issues across different government departments and bodies, including three general areas where we have found that improvement is frequently needed. We are therefore focusing our output on:

• informed government, to encourage government to do more to base its decision-making on reliable, comprehensive and comparable information;
• financial management and reporting, to improve management of activities and to encourage the finance function in departments to make its full contribution; and
• cost-effective delivery, to encourage departments to understand better the key elements in the delivery cycle and what they cost.

Other bodies

The NAO does not audit local government spending, publish statistical information or audit the spending of the devolved governments in the rest of the UK.

For UK Statistics - see the: Office for National Statistics

For Local Government spending - see the: Audit Commission

(NB: In August 2010, the government announced its intention to abolish the Audit Commission. Future arrangements to local government spending will be subject to Parliamentary legislation.)

For Government spending in the rest of the UK - see: Audit Scotland, Wales Audit Office, Northern Ireland Audit Office