Henry Midgley

Henry Midgley is Associate Professor of Accounting at Durham University. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University in the history of political thinking. He joined the NAO in 2008 working on both financial and value for money (performance) audit. In 2015, he was seconded to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee at the House of Commons where he wrote the Committee’s “landmark” report, Accounting for Democracy. In 2021, he left the NAO to join Durham University. He has written several articles on the importance of democratic accountability, its connection to audit and accounting and in 2024 co-authored the first history of the National Audit Office, Holding Government to Account: Democracy and the National Audit Office with Aileen Murphie and Laurence Ferry. The book places the development of public sector audit, including financial and performance audit, in the context of the dominant ideologies of the last one hundred and fifty years, the long-term development of the UK from a warfare to a welfare state and vicious battles fought in public in Parliament and behind the scenes in Whitehall about the meaning of audit and democracy itself.