Letter to the Chancellor

This week’s column is fairly heavy going I’m afraid but I hope you will stick with it. With the country’s financial position as precarious as it is I hope that this will illustrate that considerable savings in public expenditure are possible without reducing our vital public services.

In my capacity as Chairman of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee I have written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, pointing out that recommendations from the Committee have led to savings of in excess of £4 billion over the course of the last two parliaments and that wider take up of the recommendations could reap far greater rewards.

The National Audit Office that is responsible to the Committee could and should work with relevant Government departments to identify even more savings attributable to the recommendations in specific reports. At the moment there is little evidence of the Committee recommendations being used as a spur to action across government despite the fact that they could be repeated in a number of areas.

My letter contains an appendix that goes into great detail; the savings can be broken down into five areas:

1. better financial management; 2. better information management; 3. reducing complexity and improving processes; 4. exploiting the scale of spend; and 5. improved outcomes.

In addition to setting out the financial impact that has been realised, I have included some examples of projected savings amounting to over £9 billion that could be realised.

I point out to the Chancellor how slow progress is in realising the savings we set out shows that the biggest challenge is translating aspiration into action. Our work has consistently shown over a number of years how efficiencies can be achieved in practice. The Public Accounts Committee are convinced that much more can be done and hope this summary provides a constructive contribution and inspiration for further action.

After all of our reports we get a formal government response. These do not pick up on the wider implications. I invited Mr Darling and his colleagues to drive the greatest possible savings from the Committee’s work by ensuring future responses explain what is being done to drive wider take-up of relevant recommendations, and to provide firm commitments of action where recommendations are agreed.
If ministers with responsibility for spending departments were encouraged to take forward the specific opportunities set out in the annex to my letter much greater progress could be made.

The full text of my letter can be viewed at the following link. http://edward-leigh.net/LettertoChancellor.aspx