Principles and patterns of financial scrutiny: Public Accounts Committees in the Commonwealth

Public Accounts Committees (PACs) are ubiquitous features of the legislative landscape in the Commonwealth. Based on a broad comparative overview and specific examples, this article looks at the role of PACs in financial scrutiny. It unpacks the concept of financial scrutiny, identifies key principles and procedural features that these committees share, and surveys some of the challenges they frequently encounter. The article concludes that PACs have an important and well-established role to play in ensuring sound public spending. However, they need to find innovative responses to several key challenges in order to safeguard and maximise their contribution to financial scrutiny.