Rarely has critical oversight of public spending been more important than now when billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, mostly borrowed on tick, has been shovelled out the door to tackle the coronavirus. Whether the cash has been in the form of financial assistance through furlough, increased Universal Credit and business loans or to buy ventilators and personal protective equipment, it is still needs to be accounted for, especially in the case of the latter where procurement practices have been, shall we say, less robust than usual. So quite rightly mandarins at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Government (MHCLG) take a tough stance on the extra £7.2bn they have been handing to councils to cover pandemic costs. As they told this week's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), they are not handing over money unless it is needed, they expect councils to dip into their reserves, they do not intend to reward failure and they are certainly not plugging the shortfalls caused by longstanding poor financial management or speculative investment in property.
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