1 How we worked
1. Since 2010 we have held 276 evidence sessions
and published 244 unanimous reports to hold government to account
for its performance. Our reports included 1,338 recommendations,
which drew on our experiences of examining performance across
the public sector. The Government considered all of our recommendations
and responded to us through Treasury Minutes. 88% of our recommendations
were accepted by departments. In many cases we have successfully
secured substantial changes.
2. Our strength, and ability to influence government
to accept our recommendations has been rooted in the cross-party
nature of our work and our willingness to put aside our political
allegiances and differences and to focus on the value for money
of policy implementation. Each Member has come to the issues of
value and effectiveness with very different perspectives and ideals,
but our shared determination to see better and more efficient
public spending has encouraged us to seek consensus on even the
most potentially polarising issues.
3. The Committee has used the National Audit
Office's (NAO) reports to help us understand the performance and
progress of many projects and programmes during our tenure. The
NAO's uniquely independent view of government means it has consistently
provided us with reliable and authoritative evidence that has
acted as a cornerstone for our work.
4. We took evidence from 967 witnesses. We challenged
and broke the assumption that only Accounting Officers should
answer for how public money is spent; and as a result Accounting
Officers were joined at the witness table by Senior Responsible
Owners, or private companies who had played a key role in the
delivery of various programmes and projects. We have recalled
Accounting Officers, even if they have moved to a new job, as
it seemed to us appropriate that they should account for their
performance in their previous post. We also introduced pre-panels
of subject experts to give us additional perspectives on the matter
at hand, including voluntary and advisory groups, such as Citizens
Advice, and local authorities involved or affected by a particular
project or programme. We held evidence sessions outside Parliament
to visit and better understand the issues we were considering.
We went to visit the BBC in Salford and held our evidence session
there. We visited Barking and Dagenham to better understand the
pressure on school places. The breadth and depth of the evidence
we have considered has allowed us to undertake in greater depth
our remit of examining "the accounts showing the appropriation
of the sums granted to Parliament to meet the public expenditure,
and of such other accounts laid before Parliament as the Committee
may think fit".[1]
5. On numerous occasions we recalled witnesses
to update us on progress and answer questions on further developments.
For example, we had follow up sessions on the Rural Broadband
programme with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Tamiflu
with the Department of Health; and the Department for Energy and
Climate Change. This was an invaluable tool, enabling us to keep
the pressure on departments to ensure they deliver what they promised.
6. We have sought answers outside of our committee
room in the House of Commons. We held an international tax conference
in London to discuss solutions to the tax avoidance problem; and
in Paris we discussed what could be done on international tax
avoidance with the OECD. We visited the European Court of Auditors
and the Government Accountability Office in Brussels and Washington
D.C. respectively, as part of our continued efforts to identify
how best to hold government to account. In addition, we saw first-hand
the scale of the challenges and progress made by visiting some
of the projects we have examined, such as Sellafield and Crossrail.
7. There was significant media interest in our
inquiries. Our work on high profile issues such as tax avoidance,
schools and BBC severance payments inevitably attracted media
attention. We successfully used this interest in our work to extend
the media spotlight to other equally important issues, including
the treatment of whistleblowers and the effectiveness of the centre
of government.
1 Standing Order No 148 Back
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