In his annual speech in Parliament, Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said smarter government can provide people with better public services despite the challenging fiscal backdrop.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, outlines lessons from NAO reports into the government’s handling of COVID-19 in a keynote speech at the Houses of Parliament.
2021 was a big year for government’s commitments to the environment. The statutory target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was backed up with a strategy and the Environment Bill gives legal force to nature recovery targets. The challenge now lies in turning targets and strategies into actions that will combat rising […]
Like governments around the world, ours has committed unprecedented amounts of public money to the fight against coronavirus. By the end of 2020, this reached £271 billion in the UK and will continue to increase. As the UK’s independent public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office has been tracking the Government’s pandemic spending commitments, reporting […]
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the NAO’s role has been to provide Parliament and the public with evidence-based reports on how public money has been used to tackle the crisis. So far we have published 12 reports on different elements of the pandemic response, including for example the test and trace programme; the procurement of […]
I last posted to this blog in late April as the country was in the teeth of the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining how we were maintaining our operations and adjusting our work programme in the light of the government response to the virus. Now, in late July, most of the UK is gradually emerging from lockdown […]
With Parliament returning yesterday, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the last few extraordinary weeks and set out what it means for the National Audit Office and its work. Firstly though, on behalf of the whole NAO, I would like to pay tribute to everyone who is working so hard to see […]