Amyas Morse, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) of the National Audit Office, has reported on the 2017-18 accounts of HM Revenue & Customs. His report focuses on tax revenue; Personal Tax Credits and Child Benefit error and fraud; and HMRC’s digital transformation programme.
This investigation covers a single, major cause of underpayment error in ESA. This error relates to people whose existing benefit claim was converted to ESA and who were entitled to income-related ESA but were only awarded contribution-based ESA.
This report examines projects leaving the Government Major Projects Portfolio, which comprises the biggest and riskiest projects across government
The government now accepts the urgent need for a skilled cross-departmental leadership group – but this requires changing the long-standing culture of the Senior Civil Service.
The Department for Transport started its preparations for the 2010 spending review early and took steps to improve and challenge the evidence on which it based its decisions with a view to securing value for money.
Departments have acted quickly to reduce staff numbers and this should bring significant savings. To sustain these savings, and deliver long-term value for money improvements, staff numbers must stay at these reduced levels and departments must develop new ways of working.
HMRC’s renewed strategy for dealing with alcohol duty fraud is a significant improvement on the previous strategy. However, the Department needs a reliable estimate of the tax gaps for beer and wine; and to tackle successfully the illicit diversion of duty-unpaid alcohol back into the UK market.
By creating complex shared services over-tailored to individual departments, government has increased costs rather than made savings.
The St Helena airport’s planned opening date in May 2016 has been postponed as outstanding safety concerns are addressed, potentially adding to the project’s cost and delaying its benefits.
In this report, we assess the value for money of the Department for Work and Pensions’ introduction of Universal Credit.
This report examines Department for International Trade (DIT) and UK Export Finance (UKEF) progress and performance in supporting UK exports.
This report examines Defra’s approach to developing the Future Farming and Countryside Programme.
DFID is successfully reaching particularly poor people with transfers, but needs to focus more on how cost-effectively they are delivered.
There are major risks the Department of Energy and Climate Change must address to achieve value for money from its £11.3 billion national programme to install ‘smart’ electricity and gas meters in all homes and smaller non-domestic premises in Great Britain from 2014 to 2019.
This report examines whether the Department for Education is supporting disadvantaged families effectively through free early education and childcare entitlements.
The Department for Education has made progress against many of its objectives in delivering the free entitlement to early education, but it must address variations in take-up, quality of provision and the impact on attainment in later years if it is to achieve value for money.
This investigation sets out the decision-making process, leading to the July 2017 announcement of the cancellation of three rail electrification projects: the Midland Main Line north of Kettering (to Nottingham and Sheffield); the Great Western Main Line between Cardiff and Swansea; and the Lakes Line between Oxenholme and Windermere.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has undertaken an efficiency review of the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) delivery of meat hygiene official controls.
The BBC’s approach to the early stages of its Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was disappointing and did not achieve value for money. However, since taking the Programme back in house, delivery of the system has progressed well, with users responding positively.
The implementation of a project to create a centre to streamline back-office functions for the seven research councils has so far not been good value for money and there is a risk that the councils may not recover their investment.