Download or read book Thirty fourth Report of Session 2012 13 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-03-13 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book 34th Report of Session 2012 13 written by Great Britain: Parliament: Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also includes information paragraphs on 8 instruments
Download or read book HC 219 xxxiii Thirty fourth Report of Session 2014 15 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Forty fourth Report of Session 2013 14 HC 83 xxix written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thirty fourth report of session 2010 12 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-fourth report of Session 2010-12 : Documents considered by the Committee on 22 June 2011, including the following recommendations for debate, financial assistance to Member States: Portugal; preparation of the 2012 EU Budget; economic governance: t
Download or read book Tax Avoidance written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-04-26 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among those ranged against HMRC are the big four accountancy firms, Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG, and PwC, which earn £2 billion each year from their tax work in the UK. They employ nearly 9,000 people just to provide tax advice aimed at minimizing the tax paid. Between them they boast 250 transfer pricing specialists whereas HMRC has only 65 people working in this area. The firms declare that their focus is now on acceptable tax planning and not aggressive tax avoidance however they continue to sell complex tax avoidance schemes with as little as 50 per cent chance of succeeding if challenged in court. The large accountancy firms are in a powerful position in the tax world and have an unhealthily cosy relationship with government. They second staff to the Treasury to advise on formulating tax legislation. When those staff return to their firms, they have the very inside knowledge and insight to be able to identify loopholes in the new legislation and advise their clients on how to take advantage of them. This is a clear conflict of interest which should be banned in a code of conduct for tax advisers. The UK must also take the lead in demanding urgent reform of international tax law, so that companies have to pay a fair share of tax where they actually do business and make profits. Furthermore, the job of simplifying our tax code needs to be taken seriously; yet the Office of Tax Simplification has just 6 people working in it
Download or read book HC 219 xxvii Twenty eighth Report of Session 2014 15 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Integration Across Government And Whole Place Community Budgets HC 472 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-09-20 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years Governments have sought to breakdown silo working in departments and ensure better integration across departments to ensure more effective services and better value for money. The Cabinet Office and the Treasury are best placed to support and promote integration across the Government, as they are responsible for coordinating policy and allocating monies. However, they are failing to provide the necessary strategic leadership and are not doing enough to tackle the barriers to integration. These include the lack of good information to identify where the Government could do better by joining services, funding arrangements which make it difficult for bodies to invest in joint working, and the risk that Accounting Officers are reluctant to pool budgets in case they lose control and authority. In contrast, the Whole-Place Community Budgets programme has involved local public bodies and central government working together to develop evidence-based plans for new integrated services. Four local areas have analysed in detail the expected costs and benefits of integration and their findings show clear potential for improving outcomes and reducing costs. The Department for Communities and Local Government, which manages the Whole-Place Community Budgets programme, has provided effective support to date. However, if other central government departments are not committed to Whole-Place Community Budgets it may, like similar initiatives in the past, fail to deliver any significant and lasting change. The programme must be evaluated properly to see whether the early promise translates to real change on the ground and improves value for money.
Download or read book Managing Budgeting in Government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-03-08 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government needs strong budgetary systems to be able to control and manage public spending and to provide high quality public services that offer value for money to the taxpayer. The 2010 Spending Review set a four-year spending total for each department and focused on reducing public spending and delivering the coalition Government's programme. The Treasury managed the Spending Review by collating bids from departments and challenging submissions. The process built on the experience of previous CSRs and was better managed, however concerns remain. Departments and the Treasury failed to take a longer term view on spending, making cuts in those budgets that were easiest to cut. For instance, whilst Treasury improved assessment processes to be able to rank capital projects, the overall level of capital investment was cut. Resource expenditure as a whole will increase in nominal terms, albeit at a much slower rate. There were gaps in data which made it difficult to compare options or benchmark spending proposals. There were no incentives for departments to collaborate on cross-government issues. There was no evidence of clear thinking on how one decision to save money in one budget area might lead to an increase in expenditure elsewhere. Decisions on where to spend or cut rest with Ministers and cannot be divorced from the political process. But these decisions need to be informed by rational analysis. Officials must do more to provide Ministers with reliable and comparable information to help them weigh up the effect of different spending options
Download or read book HC 1114 Probation Landscape Review 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 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Justice is implementing wholesale changes to how rehabilitation services for offenders are delivered in England and Wales on a highly ambitious timescale. It intends to introduce new private and voluntary providers, bring in a payment by results system, create a new National Probation Service and extend the service to short-term prisoners in a very short time period. This is very challenging and this report sets out a number of risks that need to be managed. The probation service in England and Wales supervised 225,000 offenders in our communities during 2012-13, at a cost of £853 million. The service is currently delivered by 35 Probation Trusts which are independent Non-Departmental Public Bodies, reporting directly to the National Offender Management Service. As part of the Ministry's Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the Trusts will cease to operate from 31 May 2014 and will be abolished shortly afterwards, to be replaced by a National Probation Service and 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. The scale, complexity and pace of the reforms give rise to risks around value for money which need to be carefully managed. The Committee welcomes the Accounting Officer's assurances that the Ministry will not proceed with the arrangements unless it is safe to do so. The Ministry expects the new National Probation Service and the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies to begin operating from 1 June 2014 with only a limited opportunity for parallel running of the new arrangements during April and May 2014. The movement of staff, records and implementation of the arrangements required to make the new structures operate are ongoing. Initially the Community Rehabilitation Companies will be in public ownership pending a share sale, expected in time to launch a payment by results mechanism in 2015.
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.
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 Criminal Justice and Taxation written by Peter Alldridge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A topical and lively discussion of how the criminal justice system attempts to ensure compliance with tax responsibility, discussing the development of tax evasion offences and the relationship between evasion and evidential rules, prosecution structures, and alternatives to prosecution.
Download or read book The future of the European Union written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Foreign Affairs Committee and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposals for reforms for the EU as a whole are likely to find a more favourable reception than possible requests for further 'special treatment' for the UK. The Committee is sceptical that other Member States would be willing to renegotiate existing EU law so as to allow the UK on its own to reduce its degree of integration, especially where this could be seen as undermining the integrity of the Single Market. Other Member States appear to want the UK to remain an EU Member. Closer Eurozone integration is a potential risk to the position of the UK and other non-Eurozone states in the EU. However, the December 2012 agreement on the Single Supervisory Mechanism for banking regulation shows what the UK can achieve to protect its position. The Eurozone is in any case far from a homogenous bloc and the expansion and closer integration of the Eurozone does not therefore necessarily render the UK's position in the EU impossible or worthless. This report does not examine whether the UK should remain in the EU or withdraw. However, it agrees with the Government that, if the UK were to leave the EU, the current arrangements for relations with the EU which are maintained by Norway or Switzerland would not be appropriate for the UK. If it is in the UK's interest to remain in the Single Market, the UK should either remain in the EU, or launch an effort for radical institutional change in Europe to give decision-making rights in the Single Market to all its participating states
Download or read book Corporate Power and Responsible Capitalism written by Bryn JoneS and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-29 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important book, Bryn Jones uses insights from political economy, historical analysis and sociological concepts of the corporation, as a socially disembedded but political actor, to address concerns over the over-reach of Anglo-Saxon corporation
Download or read book HM Treasury written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infrastructure UK, an advisory unit within the Treasury, was established in 2010 with a remit to specify what economic infrastructure is needed in the UK, to identify the key barriers to achieving that investment and to mobilise systems and resources, both public and private to make it happen. The first National Infrastructure Plan was published in 2010. The latest update of the plan, published in December 2012, comprised over 500 prospective programmes and projects for new economic infrastructure expected to cost £310 billion. Some 64% of this amount is expected to be spent on infrastructure that will be wholly owned and financed by the private sector with households bearing the costs through higher bills or fares. Many of the investment proposals impact on energy supply and are therefore particularly time critical. The Committee believes that this will lead to higher costs which will be borne by consumers and are particularly concerned at the impact of higher energy bills on those with low incomes. Many of the programmes are broad categories and in total they include more than 200 individual projects. This does not suggest a properly targeted and prioritised infrastructure plan. Furthermore, the statutory framework provided by the Energy Bill is coming rather late in the day when the energy crunch is fast approaching. It is likely that the UK will buy ever more energy from overseas and at a higher price due to the failure to secure investment. In these circumstances greater transparency is needed over investors' costs, risks and rewards
Download or read book Department for Education written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academies are funded directly by central government, directly accountable to the Department for Education, and outside local authority control. They have greater financial freedoms than maintained schools. By September 2012 the number of open academies had increased tenfold, from 203 to 2,309. Academies are the Department's chosen vehicle for school reform, but increasing schools' autonomy and removing them from local authority control gives the Department responsibility for ensuring value for money. The Department has incurred significant costs from the complex and inefficient system it has used for funding the Academies Programme and its oversight of academies has had to play catch-up with the rapid growth in academy numbers. In the two years from April 2010 to March 2012, the Department spent £8.3 billion on Academies; £1 billion of this was an additional cost to the Department not originally budgeted for this purpose, some of which was not recovered from local authorities. The Department must improve the efficiency of its funding mechanisms and stop the growth in other costs. Furthermore, the Department has yet to establish effective school-level financial accountability for academies operating within chains. What will determine whether the Department ultimately achieves value for money is academies' impact on educational performance relative to the investment from the taxpayer. If the Department is to be held properly to account for its spending on academies, it must insist that every Academy Trust provides it with data showing school-level expenditure, including per-pupil costs, and with a level of detail comparable to that available for maintained schools.