Finance

“Irregular” voluntary redundancy payments made by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to its former chief executive officer Phillippa Williamson have led the National Audit Office (NAO) to qualify its audit opinion on the SFO’s 2011-12 accounts.

“Irregular” voluntary redundancy payments made by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to its former chief executive officer Phillippa Williamson have led the National Audit Office (NAO) to qualify its audit opinion on the SFO’s 2011-12 accounts.

Efforts by the Treasury to incorporate long-term analyses into its budgetary calculations are being hampered by the political calculations of successive governments, Nick Macpherson, permanent secretary at HM Treasury, said on Monday.

Over the past three decades, no government has been able to achieve reductions in the administrative costs of central government equal to those proposed by the coalition, a report from Oxford University said earlier this month.

The new head of the Welsh Civil Service, Derek Jones, will take up his position on 8 October after a four year hiatus from the civil service. He replaces Dame Gillian Morgan, who retired in August. Jones was the director of business and partnerships at Cardiff University, and prior to this role he spent 30 years as a civil servant, including as a senior director.

Eleven NHS foundation trusts are in financial difficulty, and a further 13 are at risk of getting into difficulty, David Bennett, the chief executive of the NHS regulator Monitor, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday.

Fraud is widespread at government contractors A4e and Working Links, their former head of audit, Eddie Hutchinson, has said.

A solicitor representing David Owen, a civil servant suing the Treasury for unfair dismissal, has said that officials are threatening to ignore the judge’s decision should he rule in Owen’s favour.

All departments must identify five per cent of their budgets that they could cut if they require contingency funding, chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said in a speech to the Institute for Fiscal Studies this week.

Departments must think of the long-term when setting out budgets as part of a Spending Review, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has said in a report published yesterday.

The Treasury must take ownership of the new system of accountability that will develop as a result of public service reforms, the Public Accounts Committee has said.