The Treasury explained that the decision was made to prepare the WGA using unaudited data from these bodies as a trade-off between timeliness and completeness. The Treasury told us that it waited for the audits of all the largest bodies that feed into the WGA to be complete but decided that it was of higher priority to reach publication than to 31 WGA 2019–20, para 11, p 211 32 Q 8 33 Q 9 34 Q 6 35 Q 10 36 WGA 2019–20, para 17c, p 217 37 Public Sector Audit Appointments, News release: 2020/21 audited accounts – PSAA, 12 October 2021 38 Q 25 39 WGA 2019–20, para 8, p 210–11 40 HM Treasury, Annex 2: Entities that are not consolidated in the WGA, 6 June 2022 Whole of Government Accounts 2019–20 13 wait for all smaller bodies to submit audited data. The Treasury also stated that it felt it was preferable to include the unverified data rather than exclude those Local Authorities whose audits were incomplete so as to produce a set of accounts which contained comparable information year on year, rather than a fluctuating set depending on the completion of audits.41 As a result, however, this data, used to reflect the Local Government sector and to prepare the WGA, has become increasingly unreliable. This consequently lowers the quality of data and reduces the certainty of any consequent insights, conclusions or decisions taken from the accounts.42