Financial Times – Better governance and IT would save £20bn a year, says spending watchdog 

The Financial Times says the government could save at least £20bn per year if it modernised IT systems, tackled fraud and reined in large projects such as HS2, the head of the National Audit Office. 

Gareth Davies was speaking to the paper ahead of an annual speech to Parliament set to be delivered on Tuesday. It says he painted a picture of a state buffeted by Brexit, Covid, and the war in Ukraine as well as “out of date IT”, “crumbling infrastructure”, and growing maintenance backlogs.

He also says that projects like HS2 or large hospital builds should be taken out of the hands of individual government departments. “Where these projects reach tens of billions of pounds over several parliaments the overspend risk… is so big, they can’t be handled within a departmental budget,” he says.