Labour vows to let National Audit Office scrutinise state spending

Anneliese Dodds will pledge on Wednesday {that a} future Labour authorities would give a cast-iron assure of worth for cash to voters by insisting on exterior scrutiny of the effectiveness of its spending.

The shadow chancellor will use the celebrated Mais lecture to commit a future Keir Starmer-led administration to exterior scrutiny by the National Audit Office (NAO) as a part of an try to rebuild belief with voters who abandoned the occasion on the 2019 election.

Dodds will spotlight the cash wasted by the UK authorities on main initiatives over the previous decade, with a selected concentrate on the spending through the Covid-19 pandemic, such because the £22bn projected value of the take a look at, hint and isolate programme.

The authorities is on target to borrow about £400bn this yr and whereas Labour has backed emergency measures to assist the financial system by way of its deepest recession in three centuries Dodds mentioned a accountable method to the general public funds should embody weighing up the standard and effectiveness of public spending.

“Too often this is left out of the conversation altogether, leading to a situation where poor investment decisions are made and not subject to rigorous evaluation,” she is going to say.

As chancellor, Dodds would invite the Comptroller and Auditor General to submit an annual report to parliament, bringing collectively the NAO’s findings all year long right into a single evaluation of the effectiveness of public spending in these areas the NAO had examined.

“I would commit to government responding to that report – and indeed all NAO recommendations – with clear, tangible commitments to improve the quality of public spend. And I would ensure that at each year’s budget the government would set out its own assessment of the effectiveness of public spending, open to external challenge and scrutiny.

“This approach – hardwiring value for money and financial control into the budgetary process – would focus on real outcomes, not eye-catching announcements designed to raise expectations today, only for them to be dashed tomorrow. It is Labour’s cast-iron commitment to delivering value for money for the British people.”

Dodds will say that the actual fact the UK’s recession has been probably the most extreme of the G7 group of main industrial nations suggests there have been “significant flaws” within the authorities’s dealing with of the Covid disaster.

“The Treasury has appeared continually focused on the need to extricate itself from the pandemic-related economic support packages it initially introduced – despite the fact that this has often been in direct contradiction to the public health evidence of continuing health challenges. This has led to a high degree of instability, which will harm the recovery, leading to greater scarring.”