Everybody skims over a document at some point: when you’re asked to agree to terms and conditions before accessing wifi, you don’t always look too carefully at the details. But you might hope that the officers of the National Audit Office would be more scrupulous. The NAO – which scrutinises £1 trillion of public spending and revenue – has massive and unique powers. At Wednesday’s PMQs, for instance, Jeremy Corbyn based his claims on a new NAO report into NHS funding.
With this level of influence, it has to be whiter than white. For that reason – and in the wake of the NAO’s then-head running into some trouble over his substantial travel expenses in 2007 – the NAO issued in 2012 a strict Code of Conduct, which states:
staff in the grade of Audit Manager/Band 1 and above may not engage in national political activities of any nature.
The Code is severe enough that it has to spell out that staff can, under the right circumstances, be school governors.
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