Professor David Heald
Ongoing Research |
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- Both as a generic topic and as a theme in his applied research, transparency will figure prominently in David Heald's future research and publications. He contributed to a 2016 seminar organised under the auspices of the Royal Flemish Academy for the Sciences and Arts. His resulting book chapter on 'The uses and abuses of transparency ' was published in 2022 in Emmanuel Alloa (ed.) This Obscure Thing Called Transparency: Politics and Aesthetics of a Contemporary Metaphor, Leuven University Press.
- Public audit is conceptualised as a potentially valuable instrument for achieving fiscal transparency to stakeholders who do not have hierarchical power over governments. David Heald's article on the tensions in public audit between transparency and trust was published in 2018. His attention has turned to local public audit in the United Kingdom which, in England, was rolled back during the austerity of the 2010s. With Lynn Bradley (Glasgow) and Ron Hodges (Birmingham), he published in 2023 on the causes, consequences and possible remedies for the local audit crisis in England. Work is continuing on this topic, amid evidence that the crisis has broadened and deepened.
- Together with Ron Hodges (Birmingham), David Heald published a 2015 article on the EPSAS project, a proposal from Eurostat on behalf of the European Commission for EU-wide harmonisation of public sector accounting standards. They establish the link to austerity and fiscal squeeze, and will continue to analyse the development of this far-reaching project. This provided the context for their 2018 article on accounting for government guarantees. With Lynn Bradley (Glasgow) and Ron Hodges (Birmingham), he has published on the usefulness of the UK Whole of Government Accounts, and this work is continuing. On the basis of research findings, David Heald submitted written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK House of Commons ahead of its annual meetings with HM Treasury on the 2020-21 and 2021-22 WGAs.
- Engagement with fiscal squeeze and austerity has stimulated work on taxation, which had in the past largely been a teaching rather than research interest. David Heald's chapter on 'The politics of Scotland's public finances' was published in 2020, in The Oxford Handbook of Scottish Politics . This brings together themes which he has been developing in submissions to Parliamentary committees both at Holyrood (Scottish Parliament) and Westminster (UK Parliament).
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