GOVT LOSES £1.9BN ON BOTCHED PLANS

Fury as Whitehall squanders revenue

WHITEHALL blunders cost British taxpayers some £1.9billion last year.

Ministers and officials blew £4,000 a minute on failed projects, botched contracts and compensation.

That is up 12% on the previous year. The Department of Work and Pensions overpaid £330million to benefit claimants and did not retrieve a penny.

Agility Trains received £134m in compensation because Network Rail did not lay the correct tracks for its trains.

The Government also wrote off £53m in unpaid tolls for motorists who used the Dartford Crossing in

Essex and Kent.

Officials also wasted £39m on medicines past their use-by date and nearly

£2.5m on flights to deport failed asylum seekers whose cases were held up by court decisions.

Student loans of £57m were written off. The Cabinet Office spent £377,000 on architects to modernise its Whitehall HQ, but then said the cost was too high.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: “This is an astonishing amount of money that is going down the drain.

“The Government needs to get to grips with this and think twice before it starts even thinking about increasing taxes.”

Whitehall’s 20 departments were all checked for waste.

If a department has blown £300,000 or more then its officials must provide an explanation of why and how the money was spent.

Jeremy Hutton, a policy analyst at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “This level of waste is beyond the pale.”

A Government spokesman said: “We have taken action to reduce the write-off of difficultto-recover debts. “We continue to deliver savings for taxpayers.”