MPs ‘are not scrutinising public spending properly’
Business@inews.co.uk
MPs lack the tools to properly scrutinise the “eye-watering sums of the public’s money” being spent by the Government, according to the chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Dame Meg Hillier warned that a scrutiny gap had opened up which meant the Government was not always being held to account over how it spent £1trn of taxpayers’ cash annually.
MPs needed to “work with the Government and within Parliament to identify a practical solution to enable effective scrutiny across sensitive areas of spending”, she said.
Major challenges facing the UK required long-term investment and planning and should “never become merely matters of political controversy” but dealt with in the national interest, she warned.
The UK was not a corrupt country and officials are “overwhelmingly dedicated to public service” but nor was it transparent and efficient.
“All too often, we have seen money misdirected or squandered, not because of corruption, but because of groupthink, intransigence, inertia and cultures which discourage whistle-blowing,” Dame Meg added.
The scale of failure has been “seismic” she said, such as HS2, the Post
Office Horizon system, or PPE procurement during Covid.
The PAC report outlines major spending problems that the Government will have to grapple with, ranging from care for the elderly, coping with climate change to managing infrastructure projects and rooting out fraud and waste, and defence spending, she said.
The report warns: “Government does not do enough to plan for the long term. Lack of forward thinking means leaving problems that are more costly and more urgent until they get to a point where they can no longer be ignored.”
Government needs to improve at forward planning, MPs found. “Failure to embed resilience into policies has caused major problems, which will cost time and money to resolve.
“The five-year electoral cycle
leads to a belief or hope that a catastrophic incident will not take place on our watch.”
NHS targets for waiting times have not been met for four years, and targets for cancer services unmet for six years, which, combined with an ageing population, means more will need to be invested in treatment and prevention.
The report flags the physical state of NHS buildings as a major issue.