The reports published as HC 470 (ISBN 9780215555106); HC 440 (9780215555144); HC 471 (9780215555205); HC 439 (9780215555243); HC 538 (9780215555434); HC 424 (9780215555496); HC 553 (9780215555502); HC 503 (9780215555571); HC 573 (9780215555595); HC 610 (9780215555656); HC 594 (9780215555717), session 2010-11
The DFiD's transfer programmes deliver cash, food and assets, such as livestock, directly to people living in poverty. Transfers can be used to tackle a range of issues, such as hunger and malnutrition, or access to health and education services, in a variety of contexts. In 2010-11 the Department spent £192 million on social protection programmes, which includes its transfer programmes. The evidence heard suggests transfer programmes are effective in targeting aid, and ensuring the money goes directly to the poorest and most vulnerable people. It is therefore surprising that the use of transfer programmes has not increased. The Department only plans to support transfer programmes in 17 of its 28 priority countries. It does not have an overall strategy for the use of transfers and its decisions on where to support transfer programmes look reactive. The decision as to whether or not to propose a transfer programme is taken by staff working in the country and it is not clear why there are extensive programmes in some countries and none in others. The Department does not collect data on all the costs of the transfer programmes it supports and the Department is therefore unable to say whether it is lifting more people out of poverty for every pound spent on transfers compared to other programmes. The Department's long-term objective is for the governments of recipient countries to take on the responsibility of owning and funding transfers as part of a sustainable social security system. However, the Department has not been clear about how individual programmes will be sustained
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.
Dated January 2013. The reports published as HC 104 (ISBN 9780215047670), HC 288 (ISBN 9780215047632), HC 532 (ISBN 9780215048684), HC 388 (ISBN 9780215048691), HC 103 (ISBN 9780215048653); HC 389 (ISBN 9780215049704)
Dated May 2011. The reports published as HC 651 (ISBN 9780215556232); HC 688 (ISBN 9780215556363); HC 721 (ISBN 9780215556424); HC 687 (ISBN 9780215556530); HC 667 (ISBN 9780215556646); HC 668 (ISBN 9780215556745); HC 741 (ISBN 9780215556851); HC 765 (ISBN 9780215556882)
The £35 billion value for money target set as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review required public bodies to make sustainable cash-releasing savings, whilst maintaining the delivery of departmental priorities. The £35 billion target represented savings of 3 per cent a year for each department's expenditure at the start of the period. By March 2010, two years into the three-year programme, departments and local authorities had reported only £15 billion of savings, less than half of the total needed to reach the £35 billion target. Departments could not even measure adequately what savings they had made, and the Treasury failed to create a framework for reliable reporting. The current financial environment is fundamentally different, with substantial cash reductions required over the next four years by most departments. The results from the CSR07 programme raises concerns as to whether departments are ready to implement effectively a programme of value for money savings. There is a serious risk that departments will rely solely on cutting front-line services to reduce costs, without adequately exploring the potential to reduce costs through other value for money improvements. Whilst day to day responsibility for delivering savings will be for individual departments, the Committee expects to see the Treasury provide leadership, taking full responsibility for delivery across government and intervening where performance does not meet expectations.
The Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) provides the most complete picture available of government's total finances. This is the second WGA and the first to have comparative data from the previous year.The WGA shows that the annual deficit was £94.4 billion in 2010-11, a reduction of £68.3 billion from the £162.7 billion deficit in 2009-10. However, the 2010-11 accounts include a gain of £126 billion from an assumed reduction in the public sector pension liability as a result of the Government's decision to change the measure of inflation used to uprate payments to pensioners from the Retail Price Index to the Consumer Price Index with effect from 1 April 2011. Without this change, the deficit for 2010-11 would have been £220.4 billion.The WGA has potential to help the Treasury to manage the public finances more effectively but that it does not have a clear plan to realise that potential or improve the quality and timeliness of the WGA to improve its usefulness.More needs to be done to make the accounts easier to understand. Also information sufficient for a detailed analysis by region or by category of spend would make the WGA more useful. The 2010-11 WGA includes the Bank of England for the first time, but it still does not include all bodies owned and controlled by government, leading to an accountability gap. The Treasury could not provide a convincing explanation for the on-going exclusion of organisations such as the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Network Rail from the WGA which, under normal accounting rules, should be included.
The Way the Money Goes traces out what happened to the UK's fiscal constitution - the framework for planning and controlling public spending - under three different governments (Conservative, Labour, Conservative/Liberal Democrat) from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s. The book tells the story of what happened under each government and combines narrative with vignettes that range from the funding of a new Treasury building to efforts to 'crowdsource' ideas for spending cuts. It also includes chapters devoted to different domains of spending control, namely capital spending, spending by subnational governments, running cost expenditure, fiscal forecasting, and the development of new accounting metrics. This book is based on over 120 in-depth interviews of civil servants and ministers who were involved in public spending over the period, as well as documents from the same timeframe. It explores how and why, despite much talk of change and reform in everything from parliamentary procedure to bureaucratic processes, many of the underlying features of the UK's fiscal constitution persisted, including arrangements for formula-funding of the different countries within the union designed as a temporary stopgap in the transition to devolution. To put UK developments into perspective, the book includes a discussion of how the UK system was rated in reports from international bodies over the period, which suggests that in such exercises the more 'political' parts of the fiscal constitution were rated differently from the more 'technocratic' parts. Given several volcanic-type political eruptions in the UK over recent years, the book concludes by exploring some different possible scenarios for the future of its fiscal constitution in the light of those and other possible eruptions to come.
This report assesses the Ministry of Defence's performance in managing the supply chain to front line troops. The MoD rightly puts a strong emphasis on ensuring troops get the supplies they need. Equally, providing an efficient supply chain would release resources for the front line. The Committee believes there should be greater emphasis on securing value for money and that there is room for it to find efficiencies in the supply chain without jeopardising operational effectiveness. Previous reports have identified persistent problems with late deliveries, unnecessary costs and missed targets. At present, the MoD does not have the information to identify where savings could be made. It does not know the full costs of its current activities or the cost of alternative supply options. The failure to collect basic data about where supplies are stored has directly contributed to the MoD accounts being qualified for three consecutive years. The MoD is now seeking to resolve these information problems through a major initiative known as the Future Logistics Information Services project, expected to be implemented by 2014. Until then, the Department will continue to store data in systems that are at critical risk of failure. It is vital that the MOD sustains its programme in order to secure value for money. Measures which could improve the efficiency of supply operations include putting more pressure on suppliers to deliver on time, keeping stocks at lower levels to reduce the risk of them deteriorating, and benchmarking performance against relevant comparators such as other armed forces.
