iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

As someone who sometimes quotes thinktank reports in academic publications- I strongly endorse this! Also please for the sake of previous historians keep the significant ones at least online!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I think you are right and this is especially true where an ageing population plus some govt policies that all parties endorse means that govt spending is going to rise inexorably for a while- that means the space for tax cuts and spending rises elsewhere is heavily reduced/eliminated

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The paper is available here- is open access and very short but I think really important because if defence spending is increasing, it is really important it is democratically accountable www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Debate: Democracy and secrets: the Afghan data breach and the UK's financial constitution

Published in Public Money & Management (Ahead of Print, 2026)

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The Chair of the PAC could be told, the PAC itself could be told. These are all things that have been done in the past. And a super injunction does not trump Parliamentary privilege

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

We (me, Laurence Ferry and Aileen Murphie) argue in our recent paper in Public Money and Management that both these reasons were incorrect- there were established ways for MPs to hold the government to account for information that has to be kept secret- the NAO could be told

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

But what they didn't discuss was the implications for accountability: basically the Ministry of Defence concealed the programme for years because it was secret and there was a superinjunction related to it.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The Afghan Response Route was written up brilliantly and described by the National Audit Office in the UK and they explained the reasons why the route was created www.nao.org.uk/reports/the-...

nao.org.uk

The Afghanistan Response Route - NAO report

The MoD cannot determine exactly how much it has spent on resettling people in the UK through the Afghanistan Response Route scheme.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The Afghan Response route may be slowly passing away from memory but there are important lessons. Last week the PM called for more military spending but what the crisis over the Afghan Response route exposed was that accountability for defence spending isn't working in the UK

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

I worked on that inquiry- and there was lots of evidence not just from the MPs concerned- but also from thinktanks like @instituteforgovernment.org.uk Kings Fund and Taxpayers alliance- that accounts were not being used and there is a lot of academic evidence too that backs that up.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Firstly on the "right" bit. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee did two reports when I worked there called Accounting for Democracy: in both reports the committee showed that currently accounts are not working for Parliament to help scrutinise the government

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Mel Stride made a speech @instituteforgovernment.org.uk on Monday which included a line I don't think has been picked up on. He described "meaningless" figures in the accounts and called for much more granular data about spending to be disclosed. He is right and his speech is significant.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Sadly Alex I think the answer is no! Based on previous experience this metaphor for UK state incapacity will continue and as you say the consequences could be awful (I just hope if there is a fire it happens at night when noone is there because I shudder to think about how you evacuate the palace)

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

But there is something more here which I think is important and I see which is the undervaluing of humanities research- you see it in academic papers, in posts about how to do academia and in a general presumption even in my own discipline that all good academic work is science.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

@hetanshah.bsky.social is completely right about @britishlibrary.bsky.social. The NAO should also do work on this- their remit covers the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of public spending and this fits right in there. We need our national library back at work!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Rwanda here we go again- a political debate which has little link to policy (again). None of the elections back to 2015, were covered as a choice of policies- all of them were covered in precisely this way, with politicians asked who is going to win not what are you going to do!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Absolutely right- its a problem throughout the NHS system too that we don't recognise Coeliacs enough. My partner is coeliac and was recently in hospital. At one point, she ended up with a dinner of mashed potato and carrots, as there was no other coeliac dinner option

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

This will be really good. Ben knows his stuff and I'm really looking forward to it.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Eg, if I was a Conservative/Reform swing voter- the media is doing a good job at the moment of telling me Farage is beating Badenoch- but a really poor one of informing me about what the difference between them is so I can choose which one I prefer. Similar on the left with the LDs/Greens v Labour.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

A lot in this- one of the things I find really depressing is coverage of election campaigns which focusses on who is winning not what is the choice between the 2,3 or 4 parties? Not in the sense of this is the choice you voter should make- but this is the choice you are making...

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

The key details are all here so get your papers in! durham.ac.uk/business/new...

durham.ac.uk

ICOPA Workshop - Durham University Business School

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

For those interested, we have another workshop at Durham in December- this time on accountability and participation. The deadline for abstracts is the 6th October with registration deadline in November. Its a really topical area both for academics and policy makers.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Really thought provoking article- captures both the farness and closeness of the past- lovely writing!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

You might be a better researcher in your own subject (tho I'm not sure) if ybou aren't aware of other fields and other ways of thinking- but I don't think you can be a better thinker in general or understand more about the world yourself.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Its probably as important as a method of education as the formal stuff you do at university- and its good to have tons of different perspectives in the room- I learnt hugely from friends who did physics, medicine, English, engineering and economics and I hope I contributed too.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

I completely agree with this. Also I'd note that students talking to each other about each other's courses and ideas beyond those courses is a key part of university education. The chat about the existence of God or the morality of Friends at 3 am matters

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

I kind of wonder about truss. She suffered the most embarrassing defenestration of any PM really in British history- and I wonder if this is the only way to cope.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

And by doing so cutting state capacity- this is the crazy thing about university cuts- you are actually cutting the ability of your state to respond in the future... and worse you are contracting out the choice of what to cut to a group of uni managers with no incentive to maximise state capacity

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Should have said the references in the book are to pages 64-5 where you will find the evidence behind the Zircon and Falklands cases mentioned above

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

I'd be really interested in the views of people who are more integrated into Parliament and policy than me like @ruthfox.bsky.social and @matthewfright.bsky.social

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Lastly, as context, whilst the National Audit Office would always take rightly account of security advice from government, it doesn't have to as its work is protected by Parliamentary Privilege and its head is an officer of the House of Commons.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

I don't think the FT article covered whether @meghillier.bsky.social before 2024 or Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown since 2024 were informed about this spending but that could have been the route used to maintain Parliament's knowledge of events.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

In the mid 1980s, there was a controversy about the zircon spy satallite system, again Robert Sheldon, then Chair of the PAC was told about the project by the C&AG and indicated his views about how it should be scrutinised.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

If you go back in history- you can find several examples. eg. in the early 80s, the C&AG Sir Gordon Downey's report on the Falklands conflict disclosed that there were matters that were too confidential to include but that he had briefed the committee about them

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Really interesting story but it doesn't cover an important angle. Was the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee told about this expenditure? That might sound odd but in the past often it has been the Chair of the PAC who would have been told about secret spending like this.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Yes and also often cutting the things that maintain their very longterm income whilst maximising shortterm financial health- its actually very like the coalition government

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Well its the way to destroy what remains of the university sector in the name of consultancy contracts!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Utterly- also if I'm going to learn about a period, the fact that I read a historian with a different eye (or several historians with different eyes) as to what is important, introduces it to me through the lens of their mind- rather than just using the lens of my own mind and my own preoccupations.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Just tagging in @mjrobbins.com who wrote the post as well!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

We really have to realise that changing specifications every five minutes, delaying things for political reasons and changing the structure of projects has costs and these costs are large. Restoration and Renewal is an another case of this.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

One sentence really struck me though "Throughout the project, Westminster has acted like the worst kind of helicopter manager, obstructing progress, refusing to delegate ownership, and responding to setbacks with a combination of panic and denial" this isn't just an HS2 problem

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Well worth a catchup on these- my talk was on the NAO's history and in the same session, Kirsty Innes (Labour Together) spoke interestingly on digital ID. The discussion after both talks was very high quality too. All the talks Gavin mentions are worth listening to!

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Public sector audit also is governed by constitutional rhythms and processes that are not easy to revolutionise through technology and are controlled by others outside of the NAO.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

There are lots of reasons for this- some are about the capacity of the state to move as quickly as the public sector auditor, in some ways the NAO can only move at the pace of the departments it audits and the appetite of its own staff to use these new methods.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

We found a more mixed picture. Although under the last 2 C&AGs in particular there has been real attention to making audit more digital including more use of data analytics in financial audit and new techniques in Value for Money audit- the more revolutionary claims have not come true

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

I have just published a new piece with Thomas Ahrens and Laurence Ferry about the NAO and the digitalisation of public sector audit. Lots of claims have been made about how digital technology could rapidly revolutionise public sector audit and reinvent democracy.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

I don't know how culpable Ernst and Young were here- but there are interesting questions about how far the Post Office relied on Horizon for its controls over Postmasters and how far the auditors themselves understood this and what they did and should have done about it.

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Henry Midgley @henrymidgley.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Really interesting piece in the Guardian about the post office- its not surprising that questions are being asked of the auditors in the post office scandal-its inevitable that questions about the audit industry should come from this www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

EY being investigated over Post Office auditing during Horizon scandal

Financial Reporting Council looking into whether firm met its standards in connection with Horizon IT system

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