Download or read book Equipment Plan 2012 to 2022 written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The MOD's ten-year Equipment Plan sets out its forecast expenditure plans to deliver and support the equipment the Armed Forces require to meet the objectives set out in the National Security Strategy over the ten years from 1 April 2012 to 31 March 2022 and covers a budget of £159 billion. Since the beginning of 2011 the Department has substantially revised the way it compiles and manages the Equipment Plan. It has taken difficult decisions to address what was estimated to be a £74 billion gap between the Department's forecast funding and cost of the defence programme as a whole and to try to bring the Equipment Plan itself into balance. These include cutting unaffordable expenditure and revising the way it compiles and manages the Equipment Plan to include greater contingency to better manage cost variability. The Equipment Plan is based on forecasts of costs and funding. The NAO has therefore constructed an affordability assessment model that breaks the Department's assertions down into assumptions covering costs and funding against which the realism of the Department's approach can be tested. This is the first year the NAO has undertaken this engagement and it was aware from the beginning of issues, which would limit the confidence that could be taken from the Department's Statement to Parliament on the cost and affordability of the Equipment Plan. In future years, as the Department's approach to producing the Equipment Plan matures, the NAO intends to extend the scope of its work

Download or read book Ministry of Defence written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Defence has now reported on the affordability of its ten-year forward plan to purchase and support military equipment (the Equipment Plan) totalling some £159 billion, as well as its progress on delivering its largest projects in 2012. The Department has made a good start but there are concerns about over-optimistic assumptions, the completeness and robustness of support cost estimates, and risks to capability. The affordability of the Plan is based on an agreement between the Department and HM Treasury that it will receive a one per cent annual increase in its equipment budget over the period from 2015-16 to 2020-21. If this is now not achieved in the current fiscal circumstances then the current plan may well be unaffordable. The addition of a contingency provision of £4.8 billion is a positive step, however this may not be sufficient to absorb cost growth. In addition, the Department lacks a robust understanding of the support costs, and the associated risks, including the size of the budget that may be required to recover equipment from Afghanistan. The Department also faces a particular challenge in delivering projects to agreed timescales. Ultimately, the Department bears the risk of these delays in terms of military capability and we need greater transparency on these risks and how they are mitigated. This includes the Department being clear on the impact on capability if the £8 billion that is currently unallocated in the budget cannot be used for purchasing new equipment because it is needed to absorb cost growth

Download or read book National Audit Office Ministry of Defence Equipment Plan 2013 to 2023 HC 816 written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department's work to address the affordability gap around the equipment budget and costs appears to have had a positive effect. However, there remain risks to affordability, most significantly around the half of the budget relating to equipment support costs which were not subjected these to the same level of detailed scrutiny as the procurement costs. The Department also does not understand the implications of its £1.2 billion underspend on the Equipment Plan in 2012-13. With the exception of the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers, there have been no significant cost increases and only minimal in-year delays. In the last year, there was a net increase in costs of £708 million in respect of the 11 projects in the review. The main contribution to this was a £754 million increase in the cost of carriers. Three of the projects the report examined experienced delays during the year, together amounting to 17 months. A third of projects this year reported delays compared to over half of the projects in last year's report. However, the NAO is unable to report on timings for two of the 11 projects - Lightning II and Specialist Vehicles -because the Department has not yet given final approval. This report also includes an examination of the MOD's Complex Weapons Programme, which aims to achieve net financial benefits of £1.2 billion over ten years. Noting that these benefits have already been 'banked', if there are delays or cancellations some of these benefits may be lost

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Carrier Strike The 2012 Reversion Decision HC 113 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Carrier strike u-turn will cost the taxpayer at least £74 million. When this programme got the green light in 2007, we were supposed to get two aircraft carriers, available from 2016 and 2018, at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.65 billion. We are now on course to spend £5.5 billion and have no aircraft carrier capability for nearly a decade. The MOD rushed into a decision in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. Just 18 months later they were forced to admit they had got it wrong and revert to the original choice of aircraft. At the time of the SDSR the Department believed the cost of converting the carriers for the new aircraft would be between £500 million and £800 million. By May 2012 it had realised that the true cost would be as a high as £2 billion. Officials also made basic errors such as forgetting to include the costs of VAT and inflation. There are still concerns now. According to current plans, the early warning radar system essential for protecting the carrier will not be available for operation until 2022, two years after the first carrier and aircraft are delivered and initially operated. And the MOD does not yet have the funding to replace the shipping needed to support the new carrier. To avoid making the same mistakes again the MOD needs to start planning now for the next SDSR in 2015, including making sure that this time it has the right information on which to base decisions

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts The Rural Broadband Programme HC 474 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rural broadband programme is designed to help get superfast broadband to areas, predominately rural, where commercial broadband infrastructure providers currently have no plans to invest. The Department provides grant funding to 44 bodies (local authorities or groups of authorities) to subsidise them to procure superfast broadband for their areas, and a framework contract for local bodies to use. But the procurement approach failed to deliver meaningful competition. The Department appointed only two bidders - BT and Fujitsu - to the framework contract. By June 2013 all of the 26 contracts agreed by local bodies had gone to BT and, following Fujitsu's March 2013 announcement that it would not be bidding for any more local contracts, BT is likely to win the remaining 18. The Department's assumptions in its 2011 business case about the respective capital contributions of the public and private sectors were wildly inaccurate. BT is committing £207 million less in capital funding than anticipated, while local authorities are contributing £236 million more. BT will eventually benefit from owning assets created from £1.2 billion of public funding. The lack of transparency over BT's costs is a serious risk to value for money, particularly as BT is now the single supplier. The Department has allocated a further £250 million to increase coverage of superfast broadband in 2015-19, but does not yet have a clear plan for reaching 100% coverage. Ofcom's review of the broadband market presents an ideal opportunity to reconsider whether the regulatory regime is doing enough to promote competition.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts HMRC Tax Collection Annual Report Accounts 2012 13 HC 666 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In pursuing unpaid tax, HMRC has not clearly demonstrated that it is on the side of the majority of taxpayers who pay their taxes in full. Last year the Department collected less tax in real terms than it managed to collect in 2011-12. This was despite the stated ambition to crack down on tax avoidance. The tax gap as defined by HMRC did not shrink, but in 2011-12 grew to £35 billion. Furthermore, this figure does not include all the tax revenue lost. HMRC pursues tax owed by the smaller businesses but seems to lose its nerve when it comes to mounting prosecutions against multinational corporations. It predicted that it would collect £3.12 billion unpaid tax from UK holders of Swiss bank accounts and this figure was built into budget estimates, but in 2013-14 it has so far secured just £440 million. HMRC aims to make the UK more attractive to business but the incentives to international corporations may also enable them to avoid tax. HMRC needs to strike the right balance between support and enforcement. The implementation of the Real Time Information system has been encouraging overall though some small businesses are continuing to struggle. It is of concern that HMRC is planning from April 2014 to fine companies even though some face continuing challenges. The successful implementation of Universal Credit depends on RTI continuing to work properly but the system does not have full disaster recovery arrangements. System failures could have serious consequences for payments to individuals

Download or read book BBC Digital Media Initiative HC 985 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Public Accounts Committee concludes that the BBC's Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was a complete failure. The DMI was a transformation programme that involved developing new technology for BBC staff to create, share and manage video and audio content and programmes from their desktops. Siemens were contracted to build the DMI system, but the contract was terminated and brought in-house in 2009. But the BBC failed to complete the DMI Programme and in May 2013 cancelled it at a cost to licence fee payers of £98.4 million. The BBC was far too complacent about the DMI's troubled history and the very high risks involved in taking it in-house. The DMI was 18 months behind schedule when the BBC took it in-house from Siemens. The BBC did not obtain independent technical assurance for the system design or ensure that the intended users were sufficiently engaged with the Programme. Poor governance meant that these important weaknesses went unchallenged, even when things started to go badly wrong. Projects like the DMI need to be led by an experienced senior responsible owner who has the skills, authority and determination to see the project through to successful implementation. The BBC needs to report using clear milestones that give the Executive and the Trust an unambiguous and accurate account of progress and any problems. The BBC Executive should apply more rigorous and timely scrutiny to its major projects to limit potential losses and the BBC Trust must be more proactive in chasing and challenging the BBC Executive's performance.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Access to Clinical Trial Information and the Stockpiling of Tamiflu HC 295 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report Access To Clinical Trial Information And The Stockpiling Of Tamiflu (HC 295) examines two separate but connected issues; the routine withholding of clinical trial information from doctors and researchers, and the effectiveness of stockpiling of Tamiflu during an influenza pandemic. The full results of clinical trials are being routinely and legally withheld from doctors and researchers by the manufacturers of medicines. The ability of doctors, researchers and patients to make informed decisions about treatments is being undermined. Regulators and the industry have recently made proposals to open up access, but these do not cover the issue of access to the results of trials in the past which bear on the efficacy and safety of medicines in use today. Research suggests that the probability of completed trials being published is roughly 50%. Trials which give a favorable verdict are about twice as likely to be published as trials giving unfavorable

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Whole of Government Accounts 2011 12 HC 667 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Whole of Government Accounts for 2011-12 presents the combined financial activities of some 3,000 organisations. It provides vital data on which Government needs to act. Key issues have been identified, such as the £19.4 billion liability for clinical negligence claims. But it is frustrating to see other issues seemingly ignored in long-term policy making and spending decisions. In one year, the public sector was defrauded of over £20 billion and the tax gap rose to £35 billion. The financial liabilities for dealing with nuclear waste also keep growing. There is room for improvement in the document itself and how it is used. Users find it hard to understand, for example, why the Government debt and deficit highlighted in the WGA differ from those reported in the ONS's National Accounts. Also, by changing definitions in its commentary published alongside the WGA, the Treasury makes it difficult to track changes over time. The Treasury's introduction in the commentary of a new concept of so-called 'direct' expenditure leaves out key costs such as the interest paid on the National Debt. The publicly owned and controlled bodies - such as Network Rail and the taxpayer owned banks - are still being excluded, in defiance of normal accounting rules. The usefulness of the WGA is also being limited by the length of time it takes to produce the document and by poor quality data from some of the bodies. The accounts have again been qualified over the completeness, timeliness and accuracy of the information supplied for schools and academies

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Emergency Admissions to Hospital HC 885 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly one fifth of consultant posts in emergency departments were either vacant or filled by locums in 2012. Neither the Department nor NHS England have a clear strategy to tackle the shortage of A&E consultants and there is too much reliance on temporary staff to fill gaps. The Committee raised the possibility of paying consultants more to work at struggling hospitals. Greater use in A&E of consultants from other departments could also be made, or mandate that all trainee consultants spend time in A&E, or make A&E positions more attractive through improved terms and conditions. The slow introduction of round-the-clock consultant cover in hospitals - which will not be in place before the end of 2016-17 - is also having a negative impact. More people die as a result of being admitted at the weekend when fewer consultants are in A&E. Changing this relies on the British Medical Association and NHS Employers negotiating a more flexible consultants' contract, and neither the Department nor NHS England has direct control over the timescale or details of these negotiations. Hospitals, GPs and community health services all have a role to play in reducing emergency admissions - but financial incentives to make this happen are not in place. While hospitals get no money if patients are readmitted within 30 days, there are no financial incentives for community and social care services to reduce emergency admissions. Both the Department of Health and NHS England struggled to explain to us who is ultimately accountable for the efficient delivery of local A&E services

Download or read book HC 1115 The Criminal Justice System written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Criminal Justice System is complex and to operate effectively relies on numerous interdependencies between the different bodies involved. There are weaknesses in the System which have persisted for far too long and which cause delay and inefficiency, and serve to undermine public confidence. One example is the failure to ensure the right information is available in case files, where the quality has consistently worsened; another is that a quarter of trials are cancelled or delayed because of late decisions by one or more of the agencies involved. The Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Crown Prosecution Service have made some efforts to improve, but progress in addressing the key problems remains disappointingly slow. Crime has fallen but the Departments gave little evidence linking this improvement to their actions, and while both crime and police officer numbers are down, prison numbers have remained static over the same period. The Departments' efforts to improve efficiency are taking place against a background of reduced resources and staffing, and a prison population twice as high as 20 years ago. The Departments are struggling to: improve the smooth passage of criminal cases through the System; achieve greater collaboration and efficiency between criminal justice organisations at local level; and improve the use of new technology for sharing information.

Download or read book COMPASS Provision of Asylum Accommodation HC 1000 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At any one time the Home Office (the Department) provides accommodation for around 23,000 destitute asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their application to remain in the UK. The cost of providing this accommodation in 2011-12 was £150 million. In March 2012 the Department decided to introduce a new delivery model involving fewer and bigger housing providers than under previous contracts. There are now six regional contracts (known collectively as COMPASS), delivered by three prime contractors (G4S, Serco and Clearel, each of which has two contracts): these replaced 22 separate contracts with 13 different suppliers from across the private and voluntary sectors and local authorities. Savings of £140 million over seven years are forecast. The decision to rely on fewer, larger contractors was risky and has so far led to delays in providing suitable accommodation. The Department expected this to result in economies of scale. However, it is inconsistent with the Government's wider approach of encouraging more small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) to supply services to government. The transition to the new contracts was poorly managed: the three month mobilisation period for the contracts was very challenging. The Department has incurred additional costs and so is less likely to achieve the expected savings. The standard of the accommodation provided has often been unacceptably poor for a very fragile group of individuals and families and the companies failed to improve quality in a timely manner.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Student Loan Repayments HC 886 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is at present around £46 billion of outstanding student loans on the Government's books, and this figure is set to rise dramatically to £200 billion by 2042 (in 2013 prices). By 2042 there will be an estimated 6.5 million borrowers of student loans. At the same time estimates for the amount of loans that will not be repaid are also rising and the Government assumes that 35-40% of outstanding loans will never be repaid. That is some £16 billion to £18 billion on the current debt of £46 billion and £70 billion to £80 billion on the estimated value of student loans by 2042. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (the Department) is not doing enough to secure value for money from its collection arrangements. The Department is unable to accurately forecast student loan repayments, and does not have a sufficient understanding of the likely future cost of non-repayment to the taxpayer. The Student Loans Company is not doing enough to ensure that it identifies and collects all the repayments due, given the substantial size of the financial assets involved, and will need to demonstrate value for money from the proposed sale of the student loans book.

Download or read book Ministry of Justice and National Offender Management Service Managing the Prison Service HC 1001 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-25 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Offender Management Service (the Agency) is responsible for the prison system in England and Wales which holds around 84,000 prisoners. The prison estate consists of some 130 prisons of varying layout, geographical location, age and state of repair. The main factor behind the Agency's estate strategy, of closing small costly prisons and building new accommodation that is cheaper to run, is the need to make recurring savings. Under the strategy, the Agency had by the end of 2013, closed 13 prisons and built two new prisons. The estate strategy's objectives are to reduce resource costs; create durable, good standard accommodation and provide an estate that better meets offenders' needs, allowing more of them to work and be kept closer to their homes. Against these objectives, the Agency has built new, good quality, accommodation to time and within budget; is on track to achieve cost reductions of £70 million a year; and is starting to match better the geographical spread of prisons to the prison population. Key factors behind this good performance are that senior staff in the Agency have experience and knowledge and have remained in post throughout this period of change. However, the performance of the two new prisons, HMP Oakwood and HMP Thameside, has been poor and disappointing since they opened. They do not give sufficient priority to meeting offenders' rehabilitation needs, nor do they provide enough quality purposeful activity for prisoners. The Agency has also closed some prisons that were performing well.

Download or read book HC 941 Establishing Free Schools written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent high-profile failures demonstrate that the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency's oversight arrangements for free schools are not yet working effectively. The Department and Agency have set up an approach to oversight which emphasises schools' autonomy, but standards of financial management and governance in some free schools are clearly not up to scratch. The Agency relies on high levels of compliance by schools, yet fewer than half of free schools submitted their required financial returns for 2011-12 to the Agency on time. Whistleblowers played a major role in uncovering recent scandals when problems should have been identified through the Agency's monitoring processes. There is also concern that applications for new free schools are not emerging from areas of greatest forecast need for more and better school places. The Department needs to set out how, and by when, it will encourage applications from areas with a high or severe forecast need for extra schools places, working with local authorities where appropriate. The Department should also be more open about the reasons for making decisions. Capital costs of the free school programme are escalating. The most recent round of approved free schools had a greater proportion of more expensive types, such as secondaries, special and alternative provision, located in more expensive regions such as London, the South East and South West. If this mix of approved free schools continues, there is a risk of costs exceeding available funding.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts BBC Severance Packages HC 476 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three years to December 2012, the BBC gave 150 senior managers severance payments totalling £25 million. The BBC paid more salary in lieu of notice than it was obliged to in 22 of the 150 severance payments for senior managers in the three years to December 2012, at a cost of £1.4 million. It is unacceptable for the BBC, or any other public body, to give departing senior managers huge severance payments that far exceed their contractual entitlements. Some of the justifications put forward by the BBC were extraordinary. The Committee welcomes the changes that the BBC's Director General, Lord Hall, has made to cap severance pay. Recommendations include: the BBC should remind its staff that they are all individually responsible for protecting public money and challenging wasteful practices; to protect licence fee payers' interests and its own reputation, the BBC should establish internal procedures that provide clear central oversight and effective scrutiny of severance payments; the BBC Executive and the BBC Trust need to overhaul the way they conduct their business, and record and communicate decisions properly; the BBC Trust should be more willing to challenge practices and decisions where there is a risk that the interests of licence fee payers could be compromised; the BBC Trust and the BBC Executive need to ensure that decision-making is transparent and accountability taken seriously, based on a shared understanding of value for money, with tangible evidence of individuals taking public responsibility for their decisions.

Download or read book HC 1110 Promoting Electronic Growth Locally written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the large sums available for promoting economic growth locally, little money has actually reached businesses. Of the £3.9 billion that has been allocated in total to these initiatives, only nearly £400 million had made it to local projects by the end of 2012-13. Under the Regional Growth Fund, the largest of the schemes, the Departments will need to spend £1.4 billion this year, compared to the £1.2 billion spent over the previous three years. Some £1 billion of the remaining £3.5 billion allocated to initiatives is currently parked with intermediary bodies such as local authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships and banks - and the rest with the Departments. The Departments should introduce binding milestones for distributing funds and move quickly to claw back money not being spent - or spent disproportionately on administration - and redistribute it to better performers. Progress in creating jobs is falling well short of the Departments' initial expectations. The Departments' estimate of the cost per job created has also risen from £30,400 in Round One to £52,300 in Round Four - a 72% increase. The Departments also agreed that there is a risk of double-counting, with the same jobs scored more than once to different initiatives. The local growth initiatives have not been managed as a coordinated programme with a common strategy, objectives or plan. The recent creation by the Departments of a single growth directorate and a programme board is welcomed. Concern remains however that the Departments are not yet using the new oversight arrangements effectively.