Public Accounts Committee

The Public Accounts Committee chair challenged the Education Secretary's attempt to prevent queries to the CBSE. The Secretary later retracted his remarks after objections, including from BJP MPs.

The UK Home Office awarded Deloitte and PA Consulting contracts worth up to £350 million for data analytics services, contradicting the government's pledge to reduce consultancy spending. New controls were introduced to save £1.2 billion by 2026, but oversight gaps and non-compliance by departments have been highlighted by watchdogs and committees.

The UK Home Office's new asylum case management system, Atlas, is failing to provide data on appeal outcomes to decision-makers, hindering learning from asylum appeals. The system, which replaced the legacy CID system in 2025 after an eight-year development period, faced delays and required ongoing fixes even after its handover.

The Auditor General of Pakistan's report revealed significant financial irregularities across federal departments, including Rs117.8bn in under-collected super tax by the Federal Board of Revenue, issues in the Petroleum Division, and operational flaws in electricity distribution companies. The report also highlighted encroachments by Pakistan Railways, unauthorized services by the National Telecommunication Corporation, and defense services nearly exhausting their Rs2.2tr allocation.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) requested a report from the Home Ministry on the Great Nicobar Project and is deliberating the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Institute of Medical Sciences.

Usage of HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool for IR35 compliance dropped 71% between 2023-24 and 2024-25, with firms shifting to alternative solutions due to CEST's lack of certainty and outdated logic. The tool, unchanged since 2019, produced indeterminate results in a recent court case where HMRC lost, and flawed assessments cost the government £263 million in 2020-21.

The UK Home Office has decommissioned the 25-year-old Case Information Database (CID) for asylum cases but continues to rely on spreadsheets and disconnected systems, according to a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report. The transition to the Atlas system has not resolved data fragmentation, with officials struggling to track cases, identify backlogs, or share information between the Home Office and HM Courts & Tribunals Service.

A watchdog criticizes the UK's lack of transparency in nuclear weapons spending. The Public Accounts Committee also highlights a lengthy delay in the government’s defence investment plan.

Margaret Hodge expressed shock that the public spending watchdog had not determined income from property subletting by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. She raised concerns about the use of taxpayers' money following revelations about the former prince's property activities.

Irish Rail has written off €50 million on a failed train traffic management system that was originally budgeted at less than €20 million. The troubled project, developed by contractor Indra, represents another costly public-sector IT failure and has prompted parliamentary scrutiny over governance and financial oversight.

Parliament's spending watchdog has found that cancelled government projects wasted £6.6bn in taxpayer money last year. Notable examples include the Rwanda deportation scheme and a proposed road tunnel under Stonehenge. The Ministry of Defence was identified as the most wasteful department.

The Bank of England's tech project received praise from Parliament's spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), for its success in public sector transformation. The PAC highlighted it as a rare example of effective large-scale tech implementation, contrasting with typical public sector failures and overspending.