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Support to Parliament

The National Audit Office (NAO) works on behalf of Parliament and the taxpayer to hold government to account for the use of public money and to help public services improve performance.

The relationship with Parliament is central to the roles of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) and NAO.

The C&AG is a statutory Officer of the House of Commons and the results of our work are presented to Parliament by Order of the House of Commons.

We look to place our skills at the service of Parliament as a whole, supporting the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), other select committees from both Houses and individual Members in their scrutiny of public expenditure and service delivery.

We published 60 major reports to Parliament and audited over 460 accounts in 2007/8. And we also provided 17 Select Committees with a wide range of support in addition to our core work for PAC.

We have recently begun producing performance briefings to assist Select Committees' annual oversight of departments’ performance and we plan to expand this work in future.

Since 2000 we have also examined on a cyclical basis the key assumptions underpinning the Government’s Budget and Pre-Budget Report projections of public finances to check their reasonableness, reporting the findings alongside the Government’s reports.

We also deal with a complex and wide range of enquiries from Members of Parliament which on occasion may lead to a full value for money report.