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National Audit Office Resource Accounts 2009 2010
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Book Synopsis Holding Government to Account by : Henry C Midgley
Download or read book Holding Government to Account written by Henry C Midgley and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-12-03 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Audit Office has played an important role in the checks and balances of the UK parliamentary and political system over the last 40 years. This new book, more than just a history of the UK’s supreme audit institution, examines the very definition of accountability through both an historic and an academic lens, critically exploring questions about the role of audit in a democracy and how well it is working. Holding Government to Account draws on several unique sources of evidence, including interviews with senior officials from the National Audit Office and the civil service, as well as senior parliamentarians with experience of the NAO’s relationships with government and legislature. These interviews are supplemented by an analysis of previously unpublished manuscript material in the National Archives, examination of NAO reports and parliamentary and other reports focused on accountability. The book begins with a history of the National Audit Office in the context of the UK’s wider history. It then offers an overview of the constitutional, political and human legacies of the Exchequer and Audit Department, followed by a close examination of the National Audit Office’s leadership and decision-making from inception in 1984 through to the present. The authors conclude with an exploration of the way in which the meaning of public sector audit has evolved over time, in accordance with its wider political, ideological and material context. In doing so, they demonstrate that any question about the National Audit Office’s future and organisation is really a question about what democracy and good government mean in a modern bureaucratic state. Holding Government to Account will be of keen interest to students enrolled in courses on accounting, public administration, law and politics as well as to politicians, civil servants and Supreme Audit Institutions internationally.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215556240 Total Pages :92 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (562 download)
Book Synopsis Department for International Development annual report & resource accounts 2009 - 10 by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee
Download or read book Department for International Development annual report & resource accounts 2009 - 10 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review the Coalition Government announced its decision to achieve the internationally agreed target of providing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income as ODA from 2013. This will involve spending an additional 2.5 billion pounds in 2013-14 to make the total DFID budget 11.3 billion pounds in that year. There will be a large increase in spending on fragile and conflict affected states and it will be difficult to ensure that every pound is well spent in such war-torn environments. When scrutinising DFID's accounts the MPs were also surprised to discover that the Pope's visit was paid for in part by money supposed to be for overseas development aid (ODA). The Committee expects a response from the Government as to what the £1.85 million, transferred to the Foreign Office for the papal visit, was spent on and an explanation as to how this was ODA compliant. The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announced reductions in DFID's running costs to 2% of the total budget. If achieved, this would make DFID the most cost-efficient development organisation in the world.This is to be achieved by a large reduction in back office administration costs (which excludes front-line staff) of £34 million over the CSR period. The International Development Committee supports the proposals to make savings in back office staff, but the MPs are warning that Ministers must ensure that reduced administration budgets do not affect the ability to deliver aid programmes on the ground. While declining as a share of total costs, running costs will increase in real terms over the next four years because the total budget will rise so much.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215041593 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (415 download)
Book Synopsis Whole of government accounts 2009-10 by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Whole of government accounts 2009-10 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 2011, HM Treasury published the first audited Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), covering the year 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010 (HC 1601, ISBN 9780102975192). The Committee welcomes this major step forward in improving transparency and accountability and highlights some of the information it contains: at 31 March 2010 the government's public service pensions liability was around £1,132 billion; the present value of its future commitments under PFI schemes was £131.5 billion; the government wrote off £10.9 billion in unpaid taxes and expected to have to pay £15.7 billion for outstanding clinical negligence claims; cost of future nuclear decommissioning (£56.7 billion); the need for stronger accountability systems to secure effective responsibility for cost and value for money at local levels - academies, Free Schools, Foundation Trusts and GP consortia. But the WGA will only serve its purpose- showing what the government owns, owes, spends and receives - if it is timely and robust. The figures in the first audited WGA are too dated because Treasury took 20 months to prepare and publish the report. Treasury must address the issues that led the Comptroller and Auditor General to qualify his audit opinion on the WGA 2009-10. A key issue is Treasury's decision to deviate from accounting standards, by omitting Network Rail, the publicly owned banks, and various other government-controlled or owned bodies from the WGA. The Committee sets out a set of principles that future accounts should follow.
Book Synopsis Financial management report by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Financial management report written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-04-06 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sound financial management will be essential at the Department for International Development as its spending increases by a third over the next four years. The Department has put important building blocks in place; however its financial management is not yet mature. The Department cannot yet assess important aspects of the value for money of the aid it has delivered, at an aggregated level. The Department's programme budget will grow by £3.3 billion from 2010-11 to 2014-15 (34 per cent in real terms). At the same time, its administration budget is going to reduce by a third. The Department has increased the number of finance professionals it employs, but this expertise needs to be used more effectively across the business. In addition, new financial information systems do not yet provide the data needed to support well-founded decisions and forecasts are still an area of weakness. After a thorough review the Department now has a high level plan. Along with actions to strengthen measurement of aid projects, this has the potential to help strengthen the focus on aid results and value for money. But key risks need to be managed and a single strategy for doing so is needed. With greater spending in higher risk locations and more fragile states more must be done to assure that fraud and corruption risks are minimised. Although the level of reported fraud is low, it is likely to be under-reported. The NAO has found that the investigation of fraud is reactive and the Department does not attempt to quantify its estimated likely fraud losses
Book Synopsis The Stationery Office Annual Catalogue by : Stationery Office (Great Britain)
Download or read book The Stationery Office Annual Catalogue written by Stationery Office (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215560414 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (64 download)
Book Synopsis The performance of the Ministry of Defence 2009-10 by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee
Download or read book The performance of the Ministry of Defence 2009-10 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Defence Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is unaware of the location of radios worth £184 million, and is unable to provide evidence of the existence and condition of assets worth £6.3 billion. This shortfall in accounting is reflected in the decision by the National Audit Office to qualify the MoD accounts for the fourth successive year. The Committee thinks this year's qualification should have been foreseen, given that it was a clear requirement on all Government departments to adopt the relevant reporting standards from 2009-10. It is unsatisfactory that the MoD expects their stock control problems to continue for another two to four years. The report notes the period of intense change that the MoD is going through, and recommends that any cuts to staffing levels must be appropriate for future business need and managed with care. The Committee will study the outcomes of the report of the Defence Reform Unit (ISBN 9780108510663) to ensure that the MoD retains the right skills. This will need to be reflected in decisions on redundancies through voluntary exit and otherwise so that the Department is not left without the right skills and experience required for effective performance. The Committee wishes to be assured that decisions on the scrapping of assets before the end of their useful life have been made on the basis of a sound cost-benefit analysis, taking into account the savings to be achieved and the effect of the loss of capability.
Book Synopsis Reducing losses in the benefits system caused by customers' mistakes by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Reducing losses in the benefits system caused by customers' mistakes written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Work and Pensions does not yet have enough evidence to demonstrate that its activities to reduce the cost of mistakes by customers have been value for money. Mistakes made by claimants in the information they provide to the Department, termed customer error, are difficult to detect, correct and prevent. The scale of overpayments and underpayments demonstrate a clear imperative for improvement. Mistakes made by customers are difficult for the Department to tackle because they often arise from a change in customers' circumstances, which customers may not realise they have to tell the Department about. Overpayments due to customer error, which are estimated at £1.1 billion in 2009-10, represent a substantial loss to the taxpayer. And underpayments, which were approximately £800 million in 2009-10, can cause hardship for the families affected. The establishment by the Department of the Fraud and Error Council shows a commitment to tackling fraud and error, but there is little evidence that sufficient attention has been paid to reducing losses due to customer mistakes. The Department launched a five year strategy for tackling error in January 2007 but there has been no discernible decrease between 2006-07 and 2009-10 in underpayments and overpayments due to customer error as a percentage of total benefits expenditure. The Department and its agencies do not yet have enough information to target initiatives effectively. Nor is there enough consistently measured data on the costs and benefits of interventions.
Book Synopsis A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? by : Christopher Hood
Download or read book A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? written by Christopher Hood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK is said to have been one of the most prolific reformers of its public administration. Successive reforms have been accompanied by claims that the changes would make the world a better place by transforming the way government worked. Despite much discussion and debate over government makeovers and reforms, however, there has been remarkably little systematic evaluation of what happened to cost and performance in UK government during the last thirty years. A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less? aims to address that gap, offering a unique evaluation of UK government modernization programmes from 1980 to the present day. The book provides a distinctive framework for evaluating long-term performance in government, bringing together the 'working better' and 'costing less' dimensions, and presents detailed primary evidence within that framework. This book explores the implications of their findings for widely held ideas about public management, the questions they present, and their policy implications for a period in which pressures to make government 'work better and cost less' are unlikely to go away.
Book Synopsis Progress in improving financial management in Government by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Progress in improving financial management in Government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite good progress in improving the professional capability and capacity of government finance departments since the National Audit Office last reported in 2008, good financial management is still not embedded in the civil service culture, and financial matters do not have sufficient influence over departments' strategic decision making. The NAO concludes that departments have achieved a core level of competence in financial management, but further improvement in financial management capacity and capability throughout their organisations is required to enable them to meet the challenge of delivering the savings set out in the Spending Review 2010. There has been important progress - all departments now have a professionally qualified Finance Director, supported by an increased number of qualified finance staff. The Treasury is also implementing accounting changes to bring greater transparency to government financial reporting. Whitehall's central finance functions competently capture and report the transactions and financial position of the departments. Annual accounts are delivered before the July Parliamentary recess. The number of overall overspends against the amounts approved by Parliament is low. However, departments are generally weak at monitoring their balance sheets and at forecasting cash flow in the medium term. Departments do not fully understand the costs of their activities, and it is rare for them to have good information on the unit costs of outputs, levels of productivity or the value of outcomes. Departments generally focus on monitoring against the agreed one-year budget, with a few looking as far ahead as the current spending review period of four years.
Book Synopsis National Audit Office - Charity Commission: The Regulatory Effectiveness of the Charity Commossion - HC 813 by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book National Audit Office - Charity Commission: The Regulatory Effectiveness of the Charity Commossion - HC 813 written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Charity Commission is not regulating charities effectively and there is a gap between what the public expects of the Commission and what it actually does. The NAO has concluded that the Commission does not do enough to identify and tackle abuse of charitable status. Between 2007-08 and 2013-14, the Commission's annual budget fell 40 per cent in real terms to £22.7 million but the number of main registered charities has remained fairly constant at around 160,000. In response to budget cuts, the Commission has reviewed how it works and successfully reduced demand for its services, but it has not identified what budget it would need to regulate effectively. The Commission makes little use of its enforcement powers, for example suspending only two trustees and removing none in 2012-13. And it can be slow to act when investigating regulatory concerns. The NAO found cases where periods of several months passed during which the Commission took no action. Furthermore, the Charity Commission does not take tough enough action in some of the most serious regulatory cases. It is also reactive rather than proactive, making insufficient use of the information it holds to identify risk. The Charity Commission needs to think radically about alternative ways of meeting its objectives with constrained resources. It also needs to make greater use of its statutory powers in line with its objective of maintaining confidence in the sector; and develop an approach to identify and deal with those few trustees who deliberately abuse charitable status. This report publishes alongside another NAO report, the Cup Trust.
Book Synopsis Financial management by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Financial management written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-10 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has improved the maturity of its financial management in a number of areas but the National Audit Office has not been able to conclude that the Department is achieving value for money. The report concludes that the commitment to financial management shown on the Olympic programme needs to be replicated across the Department's wider responsibilities. The accounts have always received unqualified audit opinions, and internal administration has improved, with budget holders facing direct challenge, and the creation of an Investment Committee. However, the finance team still needs to improve its performance in a number of areas: in particular in strengthening the role it plays in support of key policy decisions. DCMS has a history of over-committing its budget allocations across its arm's-length bodies. In April 2009, initial forecasts for 2009-10 showed capital budgets had been over-committed by £95 million, and in 2010-11 by £110 million. The DCMS opted to apply a standard flat-rate cut to the budgets of the majority of its arm's-length bodies. The ultimate impact of these cuts on frontline delivery cannot yet be assessed. The Department's decision to close and merge a number of its arm's-length bodies was not informed by a financial analysis of the costs and benefits. It based its decisions on estimates which did not take account of the full costs of closure such as lease cancellation, redundancy and pension costs.
Book Synopsis Minimising the cost of administrative errors in the benefits system by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book Minimising the cost of administrative errors in the benefits system written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2009-10 the Department for Work and Pensions overpaid its customers by an estimated £1.1 billion and made underpayments of £500 million. However, the scale of the challenge faced by the Department should not be underestimated. The benefits system is large, encompassing over 27 different benefits and a total caseload of around 20 million people. In addition, the Department has had to respond to the recent recession in which Jobseekers Allowance caseload almost doubled between 2008 and 2009. The recent announcement of the introduction of Universal Credit is an opportunity to simplify many of the regulations, but such changes will take a long time to implement. In the meantime, the onus remains on the Department to keep the costs of mistakes to a minimum. The Department has demonstrated a clear commitment to reducing administrative error, but there is scope for improvement in the quality of information used to assess where the Department should focus its efforts. Although DWP has initiated an exercise to understand fully the causes of error, this will not be complete until the spring of 2011. There is also scope for further work in collecting and analysing the full costs and benefits of the Department's interventions in order to assess cost effectiveness. The Government announced a new strategy in October 2010 with a greater emphasis on preventing errors from arising and this is now an opportunity for lessons to be learned.
Book Synopsis The Stationery Office Annual Catalogue 2011 by : Stationery Office
Download or read book The Stationery Office Annual Catalogue 2011 written by Stationery Office and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stationery Office annual catalogue 2011 provides a comprehensive source of bibliographic information on over 4900 Parliamentary, statutory and official publications - from the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and many government departments and agencies - which were issued in 2011.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215042910 Total Pages :76 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (429 download)
Book Synopsis Department for International Development annual report and resource accounts 2010-11 and business plan 2011-15 by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee
Download or read book Department for International Development annual report and resource accounts 2010-11 and business plan 2011-15 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While DFID's total budget is increasing, the Department will both restrict operating costs to 2% by 2014-15 and reduce its administrative costs by a third in real terms, from £128 million in 2010-11 to £94 million by 2014-15. This report warns that capping operational costs and staff numbers may not reduce overall costs or improve effective delivery of development assistance. The International Development Committee also raises concerns that cost pressures are driving DFID to use consultants to deliver its programmes, rather than in-house expertise. The Department spends £450 million on technical cooperation per year. Much of this is good work, yet it was unclear exactly what this money was spent on, or how effective it was and the extent to which external providers were used. DFID needs to improve its assessment of which projects and services it should use consultants for; and assess more carefully the use of consultants to manage the Department's own delivery programmes. In its efforts to reduce administrative spending DFID might be 'exporting' these costs to other organisations, including NGOs and multilateral aid organisations, with higher real administration costs. The Department should assess the best and most effective way to deliver development assistance as it may be able to do it more cheaply and effectively than external organisations. The report recommends that the Department improves its tracking of and reporting on the total cost of administering its aid programme with the aim of quantifying how much aid actually ends up reaching recipients.
Book Synopsis Understanding Disability Policy by : Roulstone, Alan
Download or read book Understanding Disability Policy written by Roulstone, Alan and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2012-01-18 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of scarce social resources the question of the changing social policy constructions and responses to disabled people has become increasingly important. Paradoxically, some disabled people are realising new freedoms and choices never before envisioned, whilst others are prey to major retractions in public services and aggressive attempts to redefine who counts as 'genuinely disabled'. Understanding disability policy locates disability policy into broader social policy and welfare policy writings and goes beyond narrow statutory evaluations of welfare to embrace a range of indicators of disabled people's welfare. The book critically explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities. It also situates welfare and disability policy in the broader conceptual shifts to the social model of disability and its critics. Finally it explores the possible connection between changing official and academic constructions of disability and their implications for social policy in the 21st century. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215047557 Total Pages :96 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (475 download)
Book Synopsis The Budget and Structure of the Ministry of Justice by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee
Download or read book The Budget and Structure of the Ministry of Justice written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Justice Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-08-18 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the five years since the Ministry of Justice was created, it has made improvements to its structure and performance and is now a more integrated Department. However, the Ministry is still too much in thrall to the prison service: better integrated offender management would enable the Ministry to make the financial savings demanded of it but also provide a more effective service to clients, users and the wider public, and in particular to achieve its key objective to reduce re-offending. The Ministry has been subject to past criticism for poor financial management - missing the Treasury's deadline for the laying of accounts three years running, woeful inefficiency in the administration of legal aid and too much focus on policy at the expense of delivery. Following an in-depth investigation into all aspects of the Department's work, the Committee concluded that the Ministry has got a grip of the situation and is justifying the rationale for its creation. However, the MPs believe the Department could undergo further restructuring to create a single delivery body. Additionally, the current structure of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), which continues to be driven by prison priorities, produces difficulties in reducing re-offending. The Committee also makes a number of further recommendations to improve how the Department functions
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215556042 Total Pages :52 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (56 download)
Book Synopsis Ministry of Justice financial management by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Ministry of Justice financial management written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Justice delivers its services through a wide range of arm's length bodies and agencies, including the courts, prisons and probation services. The Ministry's Spending Review settlement requires a 23% reduction to its resource budget over the next four years. The Ministry has a range of financial management processes in place but lacks a consistent approach across its business, and to date it has not integrated financial management into its policy and operational workings. The Ministry needs to implement its Spending Review settlement on the basis of a full understanding of the cost and value of its services, so that financial cuts are best targeted to minimise the impact on frontline services. The Ministry and its arm's length bodies currently lack the detailed information they would need to do this. A comprehensive understanding of the costs and value of services must be a priority. For its arm's length bodies, having a clear direction, the details of which are formally agreed by both parties, is essential as is strong leadership and a shared sense of purpose. The Ministry now needs to oversee the performance of its arm's length bodies, such as framework documents, operational reviews, and accountability meetings. Fee recovery and fines collection have to be priority areas for improvement and the need to improve recovery rates where it does not currently recover the full cost of services provided. On fines collection, there was little sign of the sustained improvement promised when the Committee last took evidence in 2006.
