Public Accounts Committee (United Kingdom)

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) (strictly, the Committee of Public Accounts) is a select committee of the British House of Commons. It is responsible for overseeing government expenditures to ensure they are effective and honest. The PAC is seen as a crucial mechanism for ensuring transparency and accountability in government financial operations, having been described by Professor Peter Hennessy as "the queen of the select committees...[which] by its very existence exert[s] a cleansing effect in all government departments."

Overview 1
Notable failures highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee 2
Membership 3
- Changes 3.1
Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee (1861–present) 4
See also 5
References 6
External links 7

Overview

The recommendation for the creation of a committee to oversee government accounts was first put forward in 1857 by a small group of interested Members of Parliament led by Sir Francis Baring. The structure and function of the PAC date back to reforms initiated by William Ewart Gladstone, when he was British Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1860s. The first Public Accounts Committee was established in 1861 by a resolution of the British House of Commons:

There shall be a standing committee designated "The Committee of Public Accounts"; for the examination of the Accounts showing the appropriation of sums granted by Parliament to meet the Public Expenditure, to consist of nine members, who shall be nominated at the commencement of every Session, and of whom five shall be a quorum. 31 March 1862.

The form has since been replicated in virtually all Commonwealth of Nations and many non-Commonwealth countries. A minister from Her Majesty's Treasury sits on the committee but, by convention, does not attend hearings. The Chair of the committee is always drawn from the main opposition party and is usually a former senior Minister.

The Exchequer and Audit Departments Act 1866 appointed The Committee of Public Accounts to oversee the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) ^[1] The Committee continues to be assisted by the C&AG who is a permanent witness at its hearings, along with his staff of the National Audit Office, who provide briefings on each report and assist in the preparation of the Committee's own reports.

Notable failures highlighted by the Public Accounts Committee

The Public Accounts Committee has criticised the expenditure on numerous government projects over the years, such as:

the NHS National Programme for IT, which was described as one of the worst fiascos ever in the history of public sector contracts.^[2]
the decommissioning of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site, noting the cost of decommissioning had now reached £67.5 billion, and there was "no indication of when that cost will stop rising".^[3]^[4]

Membership

As of 12 November 2012, the members of the committee are as follows:

	Party	Constituency
Rt Hon. Margaret Hodge MP (Chair)	Labour	Barking
Richard Bacon MP (Deputy Chair)	Conservative	South Norfolk
Stephen Barclay MP	Conservative	North East Cambridgeshire
Guto Bebb MP	Conservative	Aberconwy
Jackie Doyle-Price MP	Conservative	Thurrock
Meg Hillier MP	Labour Co-op	Hackney South and Shoreditch
Chris Heaton-Harris MP	Conservative	Daventry
Stewart Jackson MP	Conservative	Peterborough
Fiona Mactaggart MP	Labour	Slough
Austin Mitchell MP	Labour	Great Grimsby
Chloe Smith MP¹	Conservative	Norwich North
Nick Smith MP	Labour	Blaenau Gwent
Ian Swales MP	Liberal Democrat	Redcar
Justin Tomlinson MP	Conservative	North Swindon

¹ Chloe Smith was elected to the committee because she is Economic Secretary to the Treasury, but by convention generally does not attend or vote.
Source: Public Accounts Committee

Changes

Occasionally, the House of Commons orders changes to be made in terms of membership of select committees, as proposed by the Committee of Selection. Such changes are shown below.

Date		Constituency	→		Constituency	Source
2 November 2010	Eric Joyce MP (Labour)	Falkirk	→	Dr Stella Creasy MP (Labour Co-op)	Walthamstow	Hansard
24 October 2011	Dr Stella Creasy MP (Labour Co-op)	Walthamstow	→	Meg Hillier MP (Labour Co-op)	Hackney South and Shoreditch	Hansard
24 October 2011	Rt Hon Anne McGuire MP (Labour)	Stirling	→	Fiona Mactaggart MP (Labour)	Slough	Hansard
31 October 2011	Justine Greening MP (Conservative)	Putney	→	Chloe Smith MP (Conservative)	Norwich North	Hansard
27 February 2012	Jo Johnson MP (Conservative)	Orpington	→	Stewart Jackson MP (Conservative)	Peterborough	Hansard
12 November 2012	Matthew Hancock MP (Conservative	West Suffolk	→	Guto Bebb MP (Conservative	Aberconwy	Hansard
12 November 2012	James Wharton MP (Conservative)	Stockton South	→	Justin Tomlinson MP (Conservative)	North Swindon	Hansard

Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee (1861–present)

It is customary for a member of the opposition party to chair the committee.

Year	Chairman	Party
1861–63	Sir Francis Tornhill Bearing	Liberal
1864–1866	Rt Hon Edward Pleydell Bouverie	Liberal
1866	Mr George Sclater-Booth	Conservative
1867–68	Mr Hugh C E Childers	Liberal
1869	Mr William Pollard Urquhart	Liberal
1870–71	Rt Hon George Ward Hunt	Conservative
1872–73	Mr George Sclater-Both	Conservative
1874–76	Rt Hon John George Dodson	Liberal
1877–1880	Lord Frederick Cavendish	Liberal
1884–85	Sir Henry Holland	Conservative
1886	Sir John Eldon Gorst	Conservative
1887–88	Sir John Lubbock	Liberal Unionist
1889–92	Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth	Liberal
1893	Mr Edmond Wodehouse	Liberal Unionist
1894–95	Sir Richard Temple	Conservative
1896–1900	Mr Arthur O'Connor	Irish National
1901–05	Rt Hon Sir Arthur Hayter	Liberal
1906–08	Rt Hon Victor Christian William Cavendish	Liberal Unionist
1908–18	Col Robert Williams	Unionist
1919–20	Rt Hon Sir Francis Dyke Acland	Liberal
1921–22	Mr Aneurin Williams	Liberal
1923	Mr Frederick William Jowett JP	Labour
1924	Lt Col Rt Hon Walter Edward Guinness	Conservative
1924–29	Rt Hon Willian Graham JP	Labour
1929–31	Mr Arthur Michael Samuel	Conservative
1931–38	Mr Morgan Jones	Labour
1938–41	Rt Hon Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence	Labour
1941–43	Lt Col Rt Hon Walter Elliot	Unionist
1943–45	Lt Col Sir Assheton Pownall OBE TD	Unionist
1946–48	Rt Hon Osbert Peake	Conservative
1948–50	Mr Ralph Assheton	Conservative
1950–51	1, Sir Ronald Cross; 2, Rt Hon Charles Waterhouse	Conservative
1951–52	Mr John Edwards	Labour
1952–59	Sir George Benson	Labour
1959–63	Rt Hon Harold Wilson	Labour
1963–64	Rt Hon A.L.N. Douglas Houghton	Labour
1964–70	Rt Hon John Boyd-Carpenter	Conservative
1970–73	Rt Hon Harold Lever	Labour
1972–73	Rt Hon Edmund Dell (Acting chair during Harold Lever's illness)	Labour
1974–79	Rt Hon Edward DuCann	Conservative
1979–83	Rt Hon Joel Barnett	Labour
1983–97	Rt Hon Robert Sheldon	Labour
1997–2001	Rt Hon David Davis	Conservative
2001–10	Mr Edward Leigh	Conservative
2010–present	Rt Hon Margaret Hodge	Labour

References

^ National Audit Office History of the National Audit Office, Accessed 25 September 2012
^ "NHS IT system one of 'worst fiascos ever', say MPs".
^ "Sellafield clean-up cost reaches 67.5bn, says report". BBC. 4 February 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
^ "UK lawmakers criticise management of Sellafield nuclear site". Reuters. 11 February 2014. Retrieved 12 February 2014.

David McGee, The Overseers – Public Accounts Committees and Public Spending, Pluto Press, London 2002.
Stapenhurst, Rick; Sahgal, Vinod; Woodley, William; Pelizzo, Riccardo; World Bank, 1 May 2005, Policy Research Working Paper WPS3613, Scrutinizing public expenditures: assessing the performance of public accounts committees

Pelizzo, Riccardo, Stapenhurst, Rick, Saghal, Vinod and William Woodley, What Makes Public Accounts Committees Work?, Politics and Policy, vol. 34, n. 4, December 2006. pp. 774–793.

Riccardo Pelizzo and Rick Stapenhurst, Strengthening Public Accounts Committees by Targeting Regional and Country Specific Weaknesses, in Anwar Shah (ed.), Performance Accountability and Combating Corruption, Washington DC, The World Bank, 2007, pp. 379–393.

Jacobs, K. 1997. ‘A reforming accountability’, International Journal of Health Planning and Management 12: 169–85.
Jacobs, K.1998. ‘Value for money auditing in New Zealand: competing for control in the public sector’, British Accounting Review 30: 343–360
Jones, C. 1987. ‘The Origins of the Victorian Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee’, MA, University of Melbourne.

External links

Public Accounts Committee homepage

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Public Accounts Committee (United Kingdom)