Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 170 pages
File Size : 31,56 MB
Release : 2012-02
Category :
ISBN : 9780215041531
Fifty-second report of Session 2010-12 : Documents considered by the Committee on 18 January 2012, including the following recommendations for debate, Implementation of the common commercial policy; European Development Fund (EDF) expenditure in 2010; Com
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 94 pages
File Size : 28,4 MB
Release : 2012-02-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780215042736
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 124 pages
File Size : 12,57 MB
Release : 2012-03-22
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780215043429
Fifty-ninth report of Session 2010-12 : Documents considered by the Committee on 14 March 2012, including the following recommendations for debate, White Paper on Pensions; EU criminal justice legislation and detention, report, together with formal Minute
Author : Great Britain. Treasury
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 64 pages
File Size : 36,32 MB
Release : 2012-02-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780101830522
The reports published as HC 1398 (ISBN 9780215561848), HC1469 (ISBN 9780215561862), HC 1468 (ISBN 9780215038548), HC 1502 ((9780215038585), HC 1530 (ISBN 9780215038913, HC 1565 (ISBN 9780215039910), HC 1444 (ISBN 9780215038968), HC 1566 (9780215039941), HC 1531 (9780215040077)
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 44 pages
File Size : 20,7 MB
Release : 2011-10-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780215561848
This report examines the Department for International Development's financial management capability, its increasing focus on value for money, and the challenges it faces in managing its increasing programme budget while reducing its overall running costs. DFID is protected from overall expenditure reductions as the Government has committed to increasing the UK's aid spending to 0.7% of gross national income by 2013. The Department faces a substantial challenge to improve its financial management while reducing its administration costs by a third over the next four years. The Committee welcomes the planned introduction, in 2011, of a finance improvement plan. DFID must now keep up the focus on better financial management. There is concern that the Department does not quantify the likely level of leakage through fraud and corruption. And DFID is only considering fraud risk at the level of delivery method rather than at a country level. Management of fraud risk will require a stronger framework for ensuring money is properly spent on the ground, with effective monitoring and pro-active anti-fraud work. The likely increase in funding via multilateral organisations (which then determine how to distribute the aid worldwide) might not ensure value for money as DFID does not have the same visibility over the cost and performance of multilaterals' programmes as it does over its own bilateral programmes. Finally, the Committee is concerned that the Department still has insufficient data to make informed investment decisions based on value for money.
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 27,48 MB
Release : 2012-05-11
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780215044075
The Department for Education is distributing £56.4 billion in 2011-12 to schools, local authorities and other public bodies for the delivery of education and children's services in England. The Department has set out how it intends to provide Parliament with assurance about the regularity, propriety and value for money in an Accountability System Statement (the Statement) of which the Committee has now seen three drafts. Responsibility for value for money is shared by the Department with schools, academy trusts, local authorities, the Young People's Learning Agency and the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, the Statement does not yet clearly describe the specific responsibilities of each body, how these will interact, or how the Department will assess value for money across the entire education system. The Department relies on local authorities and the YPLA to exercise financial oversight over local authority maintained schools and academies respectively. However, oversight by some local authorities is currently weak and could worsen as many authorities reduce the resources they devote to overseeing their schools. There are also concerns about whether the YPLA will have the right skills, systems and capacity to oversee the rapidly increasing numbers of academies expected in coming years. More consistent requirements for data and data returns must be applied to all schools so that academic and financial performance can be benchmarked, and all schools can be held accountable. The Department needs to enforce these requirements more stringently, particularly given previous problems with lack of compliance
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 40,39 MB
Release : 2012-03-16
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780215042934
Approximately two million people in the United Kingdom have a neurological condition, including Parkinson's disease, motor neurone disease or multiple sclerosis. But individual care is often poorly coordinated and the quality of services received depends on where you live. Some areas simply don't have enough expertise, both in hospitals and the community. In 2005, the Department for Health launched a new Framework to provide services for people with a neurological condition. There have been some improvements, such as a reduction in waiting times. But unlike the strategies for Cancer and Stroke, the model used to implement the Framework hasn't worked. For this clinical area, the Department left the implementation to local health commissioners but gave them no leadership at all and set no clear targets. It set no baselines and failed to monitor progress and so could not hold them to account where things went wrong. The present Government needs to understand what went wrong here for the future. Health spending on neurological conditions increased by nearly 40 per cent in three years. Over much the same period, emergency admissions have risen by 32 per cent and readmissions to hospital within 28 days have increased from 11.2 per cent to 14 per cent. The Department is moving towards a decentralised health and social care landscape. In doing so, it must set clear objectives for joint health and social care outcomes and services for people with neurological conditions
Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 44 pages
File Size : 35,91 MB
Release : 2012-01-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780215040183
The Government uses means testing to distribute at least £87 billion of benefits to claimants each year, around 13% of total public spending. The poorest fifth of households rely on means-tested benefits for a third of their net income. The planned introduction of a new means-tested Universal Credit will replace a number of existing means-tested benefits. Currently 30 different means tested benefits are managed by nine departments and 152 local authorities in England. But Departments have a limited understanding of how their design of benefits affects incentives for employment, the burden on claimants, take-up and administrative costs. Departments need to improve their understanding of how all benefits interact and how changes to eligibility rules can affect claimants. Complexity increases the burden on claimants which can harm take-up, and is likely to disadvantage the most vulnerable members of society in particular. The Government expects Universal Credit reforms to simplify the system and improve incentives to find work. The DWP's priority is to focus on the effective delivery of these reforms. However, success will also depend on proper coordination between Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits. In addition, DWP and HMRC are designing a real-time information (RTI) system for Universal Credit to reduce the risk of overpayments, with benefits being recalculated as soon as circumstances change. Both DWP and HMRC need to understand how the introduction of this system will impact on small businesses and the self-employed who may not have the necessary IT to administer it.
Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher : The Stationery Office
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 14,29 MB
Release : 2012-09-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780102977271
This report finds that the multilateral aid review is a significant step towards the Department being able to improve the value for money from its spending through these organisations which totalled £3.6 billion in 2011-12. The Department's 2011 review, which assessed 43 organisations, was a more thorough and comprehensive process than previous assessments. The review was valuable: both for providing accountability to UK taxpayers and for promoting reform in the multilateral organisations themselves. It enabled the Department to show international leadership. The review rated nine organisations as 'very good' value for money for UK aid, 16 as 'good', nine as 'adequate' and nine as 'poor'. Funding to those organisations it rated as 'good' or 'very good' will increase from 74 per cent of the total in 2010-11 to 77 per cent in 2014-15 and fund for four of those it rated as 'poor' value will cease. However, international agreements limit the extent to which the Department can change its funding. It is important, therefore, that it has co-ordinated, up-to-date plans on how it will use the review to drive performance improvements in each organisation. While the assessment framework compared well with recognized models for assessing value for money in organisations, the guidance to assessors did not always ensure consistency and some organisations found it difficult to fulfill all the evidence requirements. Organisations rated as 'very good' did not need to meet a minimum set of standards and their cost-effectiveness was not always compared to alternative delivery methods
Author : Stationery Office
Publisher :
Page : 584 pages
File Size : 39,12 MB
Release : 2012-04-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780115017988
The Stationery Office annual catalogue 2011 provides a comprehensive source of bibliographic information on over 4900 Parliamentary, statutory and official publications - from the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and many government departments and agencies - which were issued in 2011.
