NAO: UK ‘lacked playbook’ for emergencies like the pandemic

National Audit Office says the UK government acted at unprecedented speed to respond to the virus, but needs to build resilience and management capabilities if it is to cope better with future emergencies.

The National Audit Office (NAO) issued a report on ‘Initial learning from the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic’ on 13 May 2021. This attempts to identify key lessons for the government to take if it is to improve the UK’s ability to respond to future emergencies.

The report sets out six themes where the NAO believes that the government could learn from the experience of the covid-19 pandemic, which has involved measures with estimated lifetime costs of £372bn so far.

Risk management

  • Identifying the wide-ranging consequences of major emergencies and developing playbooks for the most significant impacts.
  • Being clear about risk appetite and risk tolerance as the basis for choosing which trade-offs should be made in emergencies.

Transparency and public trust

  • Being clear and transparent about what the government is trying to achieve, so that it can assess whether it is making a difference.
  • Meeting transparency requirements and providing clear documentation to support decision-making, with transparency being used as a control when other measures, such as competition, are not in place.
  • Producing clear and timely communications.

Data and evidence

  • Improving the accuracy, completeness and interoperability of key datasets and sharing them promptly across delivery chains.
  • Monitoring how programmes are operating, forecasting changes in demand as far as possible, and tackling issues arising from rapid implementation or changes in demand.
  • Gathering information from end-users and front-line staff more systematically to test the effectiveness of programmes and undertake corrective action when required.

Coordination and delivery models

  • Ensuring that there is effective coordination and communication between government departments, central and local government, and private and public sector bodies.
  • Clarifying responsibilities for decision-making, implementation and governance, especially where delivery chains are complex and involve multiple actors.
  • Integrating health and social care and placing social care on an equal footing with the NHS. Balancing the relative merits of central, universal offers of support against targeted local support.

Supporting and protecting people

  • Understanding to what extent the pandemic and government’s response have widened inequalities, and taking action where they have.
  • Providing appropriate support to front-line and other key workers to cope with the physical, mental and emotional demands of responding to the pandemic.

Financial and workforce pressures

  • Placing the NHS and local government on a sustainable footing, to improve their ability to respond to future emergencies.
  • Ensuring that existing systems can respond effectively and flexibly to emergencies, including provision for spare or additional capacity and redeploying staff where needed.
  • Considering which COVID-19-related spending commitments are likely to be retained for the long term, and what these additional spending commitments mean for long-term financial sustainability.

The report does not contain any new substantive recommendations as it in effect brings together insights from 17 individual reports conducted by the NAO into different aspects of the government’s response to the pandemic. However, it is helpful in identifying some of the common strands emerging from the NAO’s work, such as the importance of effective cross-government working.

Perhaps the most significant finding is that the government lacked a playbook for many aspects of its response, with pre-existing pandemic contingency planning not including plans for identifying and supporting a large population advised to shield, employment schemes, financial support to local authorities and managing mass disruption to schooling.

Alison Ring, director for public sector at ICAEW, commented: “The NAO is careful to balance the negatives it saw in the government’s response to coronavirus with positives such as the design and roll-out at speed of large-scale interventions under huge pressure. However, it is clear that the NAO believes that the UK was underprepared for a high-impact low-likelihood event like the pandemic, and the lack of detailed plans in key areas hampered the government’s response.

“While accepting that no plan can cover all the specific circumstances of every potential crisis, the NAO nevertheless believes that more detailed contingency planning can improve the government’s ability to respond to future emergencies.” 

For more information, the full report is available from the NAO website.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

NAO says £190bn Defence Equipment Plan 2020-30 is unaffordable

21 January 2021: The National Audit Office (NAO) says additional funding provided in the November 2020 Spending Review will still not be enough to plug shortfalls in the 10-year Defence Equipment Plan.

The NAO has issued a report on the £190bn Defence Equipment Plan for the 10 years from 2020 to 2030. For the fourth consecutive year, the NAO reports that the plan by the Ministry of Defence (MoD or the Department) to procure and support defence equipment is unaffordable.

The Equipment Plan is a rolling 10-year set of programmes that currently comprises £87bn in planned procurement, £97bn in support costs and £6bn for contingencies, with the total of £190bn representing a £9bn increase over the previous year’s plan. Excluding contingencies, the plan includes £44bn for the Defence Nuclear Organisation, £35bn for Air Command, £33bn for Army Command, £31bn for Navy Command, £29bn for Strategic Command and £12bn for Strategic Programmes.

The MoD’s forecast assessment is that the 2020-30 plan will cost £214bn if delivered as expected, with £17bn in adjustments and planned savings to bring that down to £197bn, some £7bn more than the allocated budget. The NAO also notes that the Equipment Plan is fully allocated to existing and planned programmes, with no headroom for potential new projects that may be identified over the next few years, although there may be £9bn potentially available from other parts of the MoD’s budget between 2025-26 and 2029-30. 

The primary finding of the report is that not only is there an identified budgetary shortfall of £7bn, but there are potential cost pressures of at least £20bn that put delivery of the plan at significant risk. This includes significant uncertainty as to whether planned efficiency savings can be achieved as well as concerns about escalating costs on major procurement programmes and the impact of fluctuating exchange rates on long-term forward purchases.

The NAO states in the report that the Department “has still not established a reliable basis to assess the affordability of equipment projects and its estimate of the funding shortfall in the 2020–30 plan is likely to understate the growing financial pressures that it faces. The plan does not include the full costs of the capabilities that the Department is developing, it continues to make over-optimistic or inconsistent adjustments to reduce cost forecasts and is likely to have underestimated the risks across long-term equipment projects. 

In addition, the Department has not resolved weaknesses in its quality assurance of the plan’s affordability assessment. While the Department has made some improvements to its approach and the presentation of the plan over the years, it has not fully addressed the inconsistencies which undermine the reliability and comparability of its assessment.”

Additional funding of £16.5bn over four years announced in the Spending Review in November 2020 should, in theory, plug the gap. However, the MoD has indicated it intends to use a substantial proportion of this new money to invest in improving military capabilities, with investments in cyber warfare and drones at the top of the list. This likely means the Equipment Plan remains under significant pressure, with several major new procurements expected to be added this year, many of which will involve untested new technologies with their own set of risks.

This will require some tough decisions to be made as part of the Integrated Review expected to be published shortly. There are rumours this may see cuts in the size of the Army to free up resources for other priorities, with MoD officials informing the Defence Select Committee they were actively looking to “disinvest” from a number of existing capabilities they considered would not be needed in the future.

The NAO concludes, “The Department faces the fundamental problem that its ambition has far exceeded available resources. As a result, its short-term approach to financial management has led to increasing cost pressures, which have restricted top-level budget holders from developing military capabilities in a way that will deliver value for money. The growing financial pressures have also created perverse incentives to include unrealistic savings and to not invest in new equipment to address capability risks.

The recent government announcement of additional defence funding, together with the forthcoming Integrated Review, provide opportunities for the Department to set out its priorities and develop a more balanced investment programme. The Department now needs to break the cycle of short-termism that has characterised its management of equipment expenditure and apply sound financial management principles to its assessment and management of the Equipment Plan.”

Martin Wheatcroft, adviser to ICAEW on public finances, commented, “The Ministry of Defence has made significant strides over the last decade to improve how it procures and supports defence equipment, but there remain significant weaknesses in financial management that need to be addressed. It is concerning that issues highlighted in four successive NAO reports are still not resolved.

However, even the strongest financial management at the MoD would struggle to deliver on the UK’s current ambition to be a global military power on a limited budget. Managing complex procurement programmes effectively will continue to be extremely challenging without a major change in strategy – either to scale back the UK’s defence capabilities to a more modest level or to allocate a much larger share of public spending to defence.”

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

Test and trace in England falls short despite £22bn budget

11 December 2020: Despite achieving significant increases in testing activity, the Department of Health and Social Care’s test and trace service failed to meet recommended effectiveness rates, according to the NAO.

The rapid scale-up of COVID-19 test and trace service saw 23 million tests carried out, 630,000 of 850,000 people testing positive reached and 1.4 million of their contacts traced up to 4 November. However, at 66% the close contact trace rate is below the 80% needed to be effective.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has issued an interim report on the NHS Test and Trace Service set up by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC or the Department) to test for COVID-19 and to trace close contacts of those testing positive. 

The NAO reports that between 28 May and 4 November 2020, only 41% of test results were provided within the target time of 24 hours and only 66% of close contacts of those testing positive were reached and asked to self-isolate, compared with the 80% rate recommended by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) for an effective test and trace system.

Test and trace programmes are a core public health response in epidemics that can be used with other measures, such as social distancing, barriers (such as masks) and handwashing, to reduce infections. At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Public Health England carried out comprehensive testing and tracing on the relatively low numbers of initial infections, but this was suspended at the start of the first national lockdown in mid-March. The Department scaled-up testing capacity from April onwards and on 28 May 2020 launched the NHS Test and Trace Service covering England.

The NAO’s key findings include:

  • The Department has achieved significant increases in testing activity, set up a national contact tracing service scratch and has tested millions of people.
  • The delivery model chosen for the national test and trace programme, which excluded local public health teams from the response, was only documented in a retrospective business case written in September 2020.
  • The Department spent £4bn up to October 2020, around £2bn less than forecast, due to underspending on laboratories, machines and mass testing. The total budget for 2020-21 is now £22bn with a significant expansion in mass testing planned in the remaining months of the financial year ending in March 2021.
  • 407 contracts worth £7bn have been signed with 217 public and private organisations, with a further 154 contracts worth £16bn expected to be signed by next March (this includes spend going into the next financial year). An internal government review of test and trace systems in 15 other countries confirmed that the UK approach was atypical, as although some countries had used private sector outsourcing to increase testing capacity, none had done so to increase tracing capacity, which was generally built up from existing public health expertise.
  • Connecting discrete services provided by different organisations into an effective end-to-end process has been challenging, with the initial focus on creating a ‘minimum viable process’ shifting to refining, integrating and stabilising the process so it operates reliably at scale.
  • Accountability is unclear, with the executive chair of the test and trace service reporting directly to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary, bypassing normal reporting lines within the Department.
  • There are now 593 testing sites and 15 laboratories, with plans to add a further 15 lighthouse laboratories and two high-capacity ‘mega-laboratories’ in January 2021. Testing capacity expanded rapidly in line with the public target of 500,000 available tests per day on 31 October, but the average number of tests since May has been only 68% of capacity, below the 85% expected level. The ambition is to increase testing capacity to 800,000 tests a day by the end of January.
  • Turnaround of test results peaked in June with 93% of community (pillar 2) test results provided in 24 hours, but this had deteriorated to 14% around mid-October before improving to 38% by the beginning of November. Turnaround times for hospital and care homes have consistently been about 90%, albeit measured on a different basis.
  • The Department did not plan for a sharp rise in testing demand in early autumn when schools and universities reopened, resulting in the number of tests available being limited, longer turnaround times and extra assistance being commissioned.
  • Initial problems in sharing data with local authorities have now been largely resolved, but there are a number of significant data risks to be managed pending a planned upgrade of contact tracing software scheduled for January 2021.
  • High reported levels of non-compliance with self-isolation rules represent a key risk to the success of test and trace, and national and local government have been trying to increase public engagement.

The NAO concludes by commenting that although a rapid scale-up in activity has been achieved with new infrastructure and capacity built from scratch, issues with implementation and potentially the initial choice of delivery model mean that the government is not yet achieving its objectives.

The NAO also highlights the most significant risks remaining, including in how to increase utilisation of testing capacity, manage spikes in testing demand and expand the use of local authority public health teams. There are challenges to be overcome in delivering mass testing across the country, increasing public engagement to improve compliance with self-isolation and in ensuring contracts awarded contain sufficient flexibility to respond to changing requirements at reasonable cost.

Finally, the NAO stresses the importance of embedding strong and sustainable management structures, controls and lines of accountability, addressing arrangements where accountability does not clearly align with organisational and strategic objectives in other aspects of the government’s COVID-19 response.

Alison Ring, director for public sector at ICAEW, commented: “While the need to move quickly in response to an out-of-control pandemic was always likely to prove extremely challenging, the NAO has highlighted how consequential the initial decisions made under pressure can be. 

The NAO hints (without being explicit) that the choice to exclude local public health teams and local expertise from the initial roll-out of national test and tracing was a major mistake that the government is still struggling to recover from. They also do not sound entirely comfortable with the governance arrangements for the test and trace service and intend to look at value-for-money and contract management in their second report expected in spring 2021.

Despite an eye-watering £22bn price tag, the investment in test and trace will be worthwhile if it saves lives ahead of the roll-out of vaccines and enables restrictions on our freedom and on economic activity to be lifted as quickly as possible in 2021.”

Read the full report here.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Plastic is the future for cash – one way or another

22 September 2020: Physical cash use is declining fast, leaving the fixed cost base for processing cash transactions at risk of stranding. As cards and digital forms of payment become more prevalent, what will happen to those who still need access to cash?

The National Audit Office (NAO) issued a report on 18 September 2020 on the production and distribution of cash. It looks at what the Bank of England, the Royal Mint, HM Treasury and financial regulators are doing in response to a 59% decline in the volume of cash transactions between 2008 and 2019, as well as efforts to improve the efficiency of cash production and reduce counterfeiting.

According to data from UK Finance, cash payment values fell from £267bn in 2008 to £141bn in 2019 and were (prior to the pandemic) forecast to fall to £59bn by 2028.

Coin production has fallen significantly, with 383m coins manufactured for circulation in 2019-20 compared with 1.1bn in 2010-11. Notes in circulation have continued to increase (to 4.4bn notes with a monetary value of £76.5bn in July 2020), but only around 20%-24% of these are used for cash transactions and 5% used for savings, leaving over £50bn whose location is uncertain – a point which the NAO believes deserves further investigation.

A key finding from the report is that there is no single body in government responsible for overseeing how well the cash system is performing, despite the establishment of a Joint Authorities Cash Strategy Group (JCAS) focused on access to cash for those that need it, in particular for the million or so UK adults who do not have a bank or building society account.

The UK’s entire cash infrastructure across the public and private sectors is estimated to cost around £5bn a year, with many of these being fixed costs that with declining usage are putting pressure on the cash system. 

The number of ATMs fell by 12% over the two years to December 2019 to around 60,000, with a fall of 17% in the number that were free-to-use to around 45,000. The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has been working with the industry to maintain free-to-use ATMs in geographic areas where provision is most limited, although the NAO recommends greater attention is given to more deprived areas.

Demand for notes and coins declined by 71% between early-March and mid-April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown but has since recovered. The NAO believes it is still too early to assess the longer-term impact on cash access and usage but moves amongst some retailers to suspend acceptance of cash during the pandemic could further accelerate the switch to non-cash forms of payment.

The NAO is positive about the steps the Royal Mint and the Bank of England have taken against counterfeiting. In 2016, about one in 30 £1 coins was a counterfeit, but surveys since 2018 have found very low counterfeiting rates for the new £1 coin. The introduction of the polymer £20 note, traditionally the denomination favoured by counterfeiters, should also help reduce the cost of fraud to consumers and businesses.

The Royal Mint reported a reduced loss of £3.9m on its coin-making activities in 2019-20, with actions to improve efficiency including a 22% headcount reduction within its currency division and the mothballing of two of its six plating lines. The Bank of England has also worked with De La Rue to improve efficiency, albeit each polymer banknote costs 60% to 80% more than a paper one, even if they are expected to last at least 2.5 times longer. 

The NAO recommends that HM Treasury takes another look at the roles and responsibilities of the bodies involved in the cash system, setting out more clearly the specific outcomes it wants to deliver for consumers and small businesses and how this should be balanced against the cost of doing so. It also believes that a plan is needed to take action if some groups become left behind as the cash system changes.

Martin Wheatcroft FCA, adviser to ICAEW on public finances, commented: “The NAO has provided some extremely useful insights into how the UK’s cash system is coping with declining usage and it makes a number of sensible recommendations for improvements. 

“However,” continued Wheatcroft, “the report does not answer the more fundamental issue of whether cash has a long-term future at all, and in particular whether the multi-billion costs of running cash and other legacy payment systems could be better deployed.

“Ultimately, is it now time to look beyond a managed decline of the cash system and explore more radical options?”

Front cover: NAO report 'The production and distribution of cash'. Click on the image to go to the NAO website.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Pandemic costs add up to a very big number

21 September 2020: The National Audit Office COVID-19 cost tracker provides critically important data about the current £210bn cost of the pandemic but disappoints in the way it presents this financial information.

Page 10 of the NAO covid-19 cost tracker

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published a COVID-19 cost tracker comprising details of over 190 different measures announced by government departments in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This is an extremely valuable exercise in seeking to track the huge amounts being spent in the absence of any centrally collated financial tracking by the Government itself.

As of 7 August 2020, the NAO has identified around £210bn of measures, of which around £70bn has been confirmed as having been incurred. A number of the measures are unquantified and many of the numbers are broad-brush estimates that may individually turn out to be significantly different.

The largest items in the list are the £47bn estimated cost of the coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS), £16bn in bounce back loans, £15bn for the self-employed income support scheme, £15bn on personal protection equipment, £13bn for the devolved administrations under the Barnett formula, £12bn on business grants, £12bn in waived business rates and £10bn on testing and tracing. Together these eight items amount to around two-thirds of the total.

Unfortunately, the NAO has provided this data as a 22-page table with very limited summarisation or categorisation, making it extremely challenging to analyse the information which it provides. For example, costs are not analysed between tax cuts, public spending or lending activities, making it difficult to work out their impact on the public finances.

Admittedly, the NAO has had to put this information together itself, which it shouldn’t have had to do. A well-run central government finance function would have already collated and analysed this information, allowing the auditors to concentrate on providing assurance on the data through their audit work.

Despite those criticisms, the NAO COVID-19 cost tracker will help improve the quality of our understanding of the financial impact of the pandemic and will no doubt inform the next iteration of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) coronavirus analysis.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

PAC slams Ministry for local commercial investment failures

13 July 2020: The Public Accounts Committee has severely criticised central government for complacency as local authorities put £7.6bn into risky commercial property investments.

In a hard-hitting report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has severely criticised the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) for failing to properly oversee the local government prudential framework in England.

The National Audit Office (NAO) reported earlier this year on the huge rise in local authority investment going into commercial property, with £1.8bn invested in 2016-17, £2.6bn in 2017-18, £2.2bn in 2018-19 and £1bn in the first half of 2019-20. This compares with the £200m spent on commercial properties in 2015-16.

ICAEW submitted evidence to the inquiry.

Key findings and recommendations from the PAC report include:

  • More active oversight of the prudential framework is needed, including publicly challenging local authorities where there are concerns.
  • MHCLG’s failure to ensure local authorities adhere to the spirit of the framework has led to some local authorities taking on extreme levels of debt.
  • Requirements to set aside money each year to service debt (the Minimum Revenue Provision) should be strengthened.
  • Actions taken to address risky and non-compliant behaviour have been too little and too late.
  • A ‘soft’ approach of guidance changes has not worked, and ‘hard’ more timely and effective interventions are needed, with rigorous post-implementation reviews.
  • The local government prudential framework has been impaired and now requires a fundamental review.
  • MHCLG does not have access to the data it needs to carry out its oversight responsibilities.
  • External audit has a role to play, but more important is real-time scrutiny of commercial investment strategies and investment decisions.
  • Local governance arrangements are not robust enough, with investments not being properly transparent or subject to adequate scrutiny and challenge.

The PAC is particularly critical of the Ministry for taking four years between identifying that local authorities were starting to ‘borrow for yield’ to making more substantive changes to Public Loan Work Board lending rules. This was despite NAO and PAC reports highlighting the issue in 2016.

The PAC also highlights significant shortcomings in data, with MHCLG ‘flying blind’ as local authorities borrowed billions of pounds. It also doesn’t feel that lessons have been learned about capturing data on emerging and future commercial investment activities and not just about investments that have already been made.

Commenting on the report Alison Ring, Director for Public Sector at ICAEW, said: “This is a hard-hitting report from the Public Accounts Committee that severely criticises the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government for complacency about the huge expansion in debt-financed commercial property investment by English local authorities over the last four years.

The PAC rightly focuses on the importance of data in carrying out central government’s oversight role, enabling better understanding and analysis of risks in local authority balance sheets. Stronger governance at a local level is also needed, with improved transparency and scrutiny needed both before, and after, investments are made.

However, it is important that any changes to the prudential framework do not prevent local authorities in making essential investments in local infrastructure and in encouraging local economic activity as the country emerges from lockdown.

Supporting the economic recovery may involve councils taking on more – rather than less – balance sheet risk, making the PAC’s recommendations about strengthening both local governance and central oversight even more critical.”

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

Universal Credit improves but attracts NAO criticism

14 July 2020: The National Audit Office has stated that vulnerable claimants struggle with Universal Credit and face financial difficulties, while administration costs are still too high.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has issued a new report on the troubled Universal Credit welfare benefit that is in the process of replacing six existing benefits. The report states that the Department for Work Pensions (DWP) should do more to support vulnerable people and others who struggle to make a claim. 

With many more people on Universal Credit, the NAO reports that the number of people paid late increased from 113,000 in 2017 to 312,000 in 2019. As a proportion this was an improvement, going from 55% to 90% paid on time, but for those paid later than the scheduled five weeks the average additional delay was three weeks. Some 6% of households (105,000 new claims) waited around 11 weeks or more for full payment.

The NAO also reports that the cost of implementing Universal Credit had risen from £3.2bn to £4.6bn, not including the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. The average cost of administrating each claim has fallen to £301, but this is still higher than the DWP business case target for 2024-25 of £173 per claim.

Many of the payment delays affect vulnerable claimants and others who struggle to make a claim, especially as many are in financial difficulty before they apply. Nearly half have not been earning in the three months before claiming, while many are already in rent arrears. Claimants with more complex needs and circumstances, such as people with learning difficulties, can struggle to engage with the claims process or to provide the evidence required, leaving them at greater risk of being paid late.

Around 57% of households making a new claim obtain an advance payment, but this can lead to further financial hardship and debt when that advance is deducted from subsequent payments. The proportion is much higher for more vulnerable claimants, including the very poorest, those with disabilities or those with children with disabilities.

The NAO says that the DWP has been doing well in paying proportionately more people on time and has made improvements to its systems to address problems that were blocking large numbers of payments. However, the NAO also found that the DWP needs to better understand and address the needs of people with more complex claims.

Fraud and error are listed as “major issues” in the report, with over one in ten pounds paid through Universal Credit being incorrect. The DWP estimates that £1.7bn (9.4% of claims) was overpaid in 2019-20 and that 1.1% of claims were underpaid, the highest error rate for any benefit outside of tax credits. These errors contributed to the NAO qualifying the DWP’s 2019-20 accounts for the 32nd year running earlier this month.

The NAO’s work relates to the period before the coronavirus pandemic caused a significant jump in the number of claims for Universal Credit (over three million since the beginning of March). Dealing with vulnerable claimants will be even more critical if they are not to slip through the safety net.

Commenting on the report Alison Ring, director for public sector at ICAEW, said:

“The NAO report highlights how challenging implementing Universal Credit has been and how many vulnerable claimants are struggling financially. It complements the DWP on improvements to date but reports that late payments are still a significant issue – as are fraud and error.

Although the DWP appears to be making better progress in rolling out Universal Credit than before, it is still not expected to be fully implemented for several years to come. It remains a complex welfare benefit and more thought should be given to its design and how it could be improved to reduce delays, reduce the need for advance payments and reduce the likelihood of error and fraud.

The NAO also highlights the challenges that DWP is currently experiencing, with over three Universal Credit claims since the beginning of March.”

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

NAO qualifies DWP accounts for 32nd year running

6 July 2020: The National Audit Office reports that overpayments from fraud and error reached their highest ever estimated rate in 2019-20. COVID-19-driven claims since March are likely to increase this even further. 

The Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) published its annual report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2020, containing a qualified audit opinion for the 32nd year running due to the material level of fraud and error in benefit expenditure.

The audit report from the independent National Audit Office (NAO) contains a clean opinion on the truth and fairness of DWP’s financial statements for 2019-20. However, the Comptroller & Auditor General Gareth Davies (the head of the NAO) has qualified the second part of his audit opinion with respect to overpayments attributable to fraud, error where payments have not been made for the purposes intended by Parliament, and for overpayments and underpayments that do not conform to the relevant authorities.

Excluding the state pension, where the level of fraud and error is relatively low, the estimated level of benefit overpayments increased to an estimated £4.5bn (4.8%) in 2019-20 from £3.7bn (4.4%) in the previous financial year. Underpayments were estimated to amount to £1.9bn or 2.0% of the relevant benefit expenditure. 

The NAO reports that overpayments of Universal Credit increased from 8.7% to 9.4%, which is the highest recorded rate for any benefit other than tax credits. It says the most common cause of fraud and error is incorrectly reported income (leading to £1.4bn of overpayments and £0.35bn of underpayments), followed by incorrectly reported savings (at a value of £0.9bn).

NAO head Gareth Davies issued a press release commenting on his concern that the level of error and fraud in benefit payments has risen again – and highlighting the likelihood of even higher levels as a consequence of relaxed controls at the DWP during the coronavirus pandemic.

Commenting on the report Alison Ring, director for public sector at ICAEW, said: “Although the National Audit Office is quite right to stress how important it is that the DWP does more to reduce the incidence of fraud and error, it is likely that the increase seen in 2019-20 is primarily as a consequence of the further rolling out of Universal Credit, a complex welfare benefit which is inherently prone to error and more vulnerable to fraud than many other benefits.

“As well as investing more in tackling individual cases of fraud and error, the DWP may want to give further thought to the design of Universal Credit and how it could be improved to reduce the likelihood of error and fraud in the first place.

“The relaxation of controls over benefit payments during the coronavirus pandemic has helped get financial support to claimants in quite often severe financial difficulty, but that has come with the prospect of much higher levels of fraud and error in the current financial year. Reducing the levels of both over- and under-payments will be a big challenge for the DWP, especially if there is further large surge in claims as the furlough scheme comes to an end in the next few months”.

The Department for Work & Pensions Annual Report & Accounts 2019-20 and the associated NAO press release are publicly available.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

UK aircraft carrier groups won’t be operating to full extent until 2026

26 June 2020: NAO reports on challenges remaining to the Carrier Strike programme, including cost overruns since their last report in 2017.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published the latest in a series of challenging reports on defence procurement with a critique of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) programme to establish two fully operational carrier strike groups.

This is a complex multi-year effort that has seen the building of the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carriers at a cost of £6.4bn, the initial order of 48 fighter aircraft (out of a long-term plan for 138), and the planned integration of carriers, warships, radar systems and support ships with navy personnel into two fully combat capable carrier groups.

This report focuses on the last three years of development since 2017 – a period that has seen the Royal Navy complete and launch two new aircraft carriers, receive and test the initial batch of aircraft, construct essential on-shore infrastructure, and undertake extensive training of sailors and aircrew.

Key highlights from the report include:

  • There was a further cost overrun of £193m on building the two aircraft carriers, equivalent to 3% of their total cost of £6.4bn.
  • The MoD has spent £6.0bn to date on 48 Lightning II fighter jets, of which 18 have been delivered on schedule. Port and military airfield facilities have now been completed.
  • The Crowsnest airborne radar system is 18 months behind schedule, affecting carrier group capabilities in the first two years of operation.
  • The MoD delayed seven of its 48 jets on order to 2025 to accommodate budgetary pressures, with the approved cost now at £10.5bn, a £1.0bn or 15% increase.
  • Funding has not yet been made available for enough Lightning II jets to support the carriers through to the 2060s as planned, with no commitment as yet to order the remaining 90 jets.
  • The MoD has been slow to develop the support ships needed to operate carrier strike group, with only one ship currently in operation – with delays in ordering three new support ships potentially hampering operations until 2028 or later. The MoD has also not provided the necessary funding for logistics projects and munitions.

The NAO reports that the MoD is making progress in delivering key milestones, albeit with some caveats.

  • Initial operating capability for one carrier group and 12 jets is expected to be achieved by December 2020 on schedule, albeit with more basic radar capability than originally planned.
  • There is a tight schedule to deliver ‘full operating capability’ by 2023 (two carrier groups with up to 24 jets) and the planned extended capability by 2026 to deliver a wide range of air operations and support amphibious operations worldwide. 
  • Significant questions need to be answered about the place of the carrier groups within defence strategy, the investment prioritisation necessary to ensure that they can operate for the planned life-span of 50 years, and a clear understanding of the full costs of operating the carrier groups in the context of a Defence Equipment Plan that is currently unaffordable (as reported in several other NAO reports).

The NAO conclude by making a series of recommendations for strengthening programme management, ensuring there is a clear view of future costs, and on monitoring new governance arrangements that have recently been put in place. The NAO also recommends transferring lessons learned from the Carrier Strike programme over to other major defence projects.

Gareth Davies, the Comptroller & Auditor-General for the United Kingdom and the head of the NAO, commented on the good progress made by the MoD to deliver Carrier Strike. But he also stressed the need for greater attention to be paid to the supporting capabilities essential for full operability, and the need for the MoD to get a firmer grip on future costs.

Martin Wheatcroft FCA, advisor to ICAEW on public finances, said:

“In many ways, the MoD receives quite a positive report card from the NAO on the good progress that it has made over the last three years, improving on much less complementary reports in 2017 and before.

However, as the NAO reports, the MoD continues to struggle to deliver major procurement programmes within a defence budget that is unaffordable and there remain significant issues that need to be addressed. The extent to which further funding will be provided in the long-delayed Spending Review later this year is yet to be seen.”

The NAO report Carrier Strike – Preparing for deployment is available on the NAO website.

This article was originally published on the ICAEW website.

Treasury backs PAC in battle over recommendations

17 June 2020: Treasury writes stern ‘Dear Accounting Officer’ letter instructing departments to stop delaying compliance with PAC recommendations.

In a co-ordinated move, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and HM Treasury issued instructions to government departments to stop unilaterally extending the deadlines on addressing PAC recommendations, and to write to the PAC promptly to explain any delays in completing agreed actions.

Meg Hiller MP, Chair of the PAC, recently wrote to HM Treasury complaining about the behaviour of some departments who have been deferring implementation of agreed actions to address PAC recommendations and doing so without providing an explanation for the delay. Sometimes the PAC only finds out about delays many months after deadlines have been missed.

In response, Treasury has issued a ‘Dear Accounting Officer’ letter instructing departments to ensure systems are in place to monitor progress on implementing recommendations and to write to the PAC immediately it becomes clear that a recommendation is no longer on track to be implemented by the agreed target date. Departments need to provide a detailed explanation for a deferral together with a revised date for completion.

Martin Wheatcroft FCA, advisor to ICAEW on public finances, said:

“This is an unusual and very public shot across the bows of departments. It brings out into the open the frustration felt by both the Public Accounts Committee and Treasury when weaknesses in systems and processes identified by the PAC are not dealt with as planned.

Permanent Secretaries are now on notice that any backsliding on implementing agreed actions is not acceptable, and that attempting to slip missed deadlines past the PAC in routine reports many months later is not going to work anymore.”

This article was originally published by ICAEW.