Professor David Heald - Research Activities

Most of my research time is committed to: public audit; fiscal transparency (my original UK focus has internationalised); devolved public finance (devolved government came to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1999 and Scotland voted No in an Independence referendum on 18 September 2014); and government accounting reform (particularly UK Whole of Government Accounts, government guarantees, and local audit).

Although the main focus of my work is on the United Kingdom, I am greatly interested in comparative developments across the world, both with regard to government accounting and fiscal decentralisation. The explicit links stressed by HM Treasury between public expenditure planning and fiscal policy stimulated me to examine the substance and rhetoric of fiscal transparency. On the more general relevance of transparency to public policy, I published in 2006 an edited book Transparency: The Key to Better Governance? with Christopher Hood (Gladstone Emeritus Professor of Government, All Souls College Oxford).

With Christopher Hood and Rozana Himaz (now University College London), I edited When the Party's Over: The Politics of Fiscal Squeeze in Perspective, published in October 2014 by Oxford University Press as Proceedings of the British Academy 197. This book has three analytical chapters and nine country case studies of historical episodes of fiscal squeeze.
With Tom Mullen (Glasgow) and Gordon Marnoch (Ulster), I directed an ESRC-funded project on 'Communicating Brexit's Impact on the Law, Governance and Public Finances of the UK Devolved Nations and the Republic of Ireland'. The project website can be found here.

My recent published journal articles are on Chair-CEO relationships in public bodies, the governance of public bodies in times of austerity, proposals for European Public Sector Accounting Standards, the relevance of transparency and trust to public audit, the UK's divorce bill from the EU, the accounting and budgeting implications of the massive UK fiscal response to the COVID-19 crisis, the local audit crisis in England, and the unrealised potential of the UK Whole of Government Accounts.

I have written a comprehensive account of the politics of Scotland’s public finances for The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Politics, published in 2020, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the devolution settlement.