Finance

Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne is due to give his Autumn Statement today (Wednesday 3 December) at 12:30pm. So what can be expected?

The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act is on track to make savings but it is not clear whether the reforms have delivered better value for money, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported today.

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) launched the Global Fraud Risk Register, its new global initiative for tackling fraud across the public sector.

The government should introduce five-year spending plans and independent assessments of its infrastructure plans, former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell told an audience at the Royal Statistical Society last month. 

Finance professionals across government should “get on the front foot” and make sure they’re involved in the policymaking process, the government’s new director-general of public spending, Julian Kelly, has said.

HM Revenue and Customs will gain greater ability to clamp down on tax evaders following the signing of an international agreement on tax evasion at the Global Forum in Berlin today. 

Chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander yesterday confirmed government proposals to regulate redundancy payouts for highly paid administrators in the public sector. 

A six week government consultation published this week aims to strengthen the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) capacity to better deal with companies breaking the law over nuisance calls and texts. 

DWP are now facing an “escalating problem” with housing benefit error from both claimants and officials, according to National Audit Office (NAO).

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced plans to start recruiting for the roles of pensions ombudsman and deputy pensions ombudsman for 2015.

An official responsible for an IT contracting error which cost the Ministry of Defence (MoD) £70m is no longer working for the department, its permanent secretary Jon Thompson told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on 16 June​.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) needs to get “to grips with effective oversight to improve public confidence in the system,” the Public Accounts Committee warned in a report.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has committed to spending up to £10bn on the government’s Help to Buy scheme without establishing whether it represents the most effective way of using taxpayers’ money, the Public Accounts Committee have said in a report published on 18 July.

The National Audit Office helped government to achieve £1.1bn of savings in 2014-14, according to its annual report published this week, but missed its own targets to complete 40% of its studies in six months and 85% within nine months – completing just 35% and 74% of reports in the respective time limits.

The High Speed 2 company needs to be given greater freedoms from Treasury restrictions so that it can attract the best project managers and construction workers, Alison Munro, chief executive of the project, has told Civil Service World.

Audit and governance arrangements for free schools are “not yet effective,” according to a Public Accounts Committee report published last week.

Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury permanent secretary, has told MPs that he decided to publish his advice warning the chancellor against a currency union with an independent Scotland because it was “vital to the national interest”.

Two departments will pilot new pay rules which give them greater flexibility in spending their pay budget, the Budget announced today.

The National Audit Office may need additional resources to carry out investigations into “distributed services” in the health and education sectors, according to its comptroller and auditor general Amyas Morse. With the creation of academies and clinical commissioning groups, for example, the number of service providers accountable to Parliament is growing fast.

Departments must stop using commercial confidentiality as a reason for withholding information about contracts, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said in a report published today.

Poor financial forecasting is an “entrenched” problem in the civil service, and leads to money being wasted across departments, the National Audit Office has said.

The Serious Fraud Office has asked for emergency funding of £19m to pay for higher than expected expenditure on a series of big investigations.

At least 2% of the government’s benefits expenditure has been taken up by fraud and error since 2005, according to new figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

A total of £12bn should be cut from the welfare bill in the first two years of next Parliament, in order to spare government departments from “even faster cuts”, chancellor George Osborne has announced today.