Thirty-seventh report of session 2010-12


Book Description

Thirty-seventh report of Session 2010-12 : Documents considered by the Committee on 13 July 2011, report, together with formal Minutes




Model Rules of Professional Conduct


Book Description

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.







Departmental business planning


Book Description

The Spending Review 2010 set out the Government's policy and financial priorities, and a spending framework requiring significant cuts to most departmental budgets. Subsequently, the Government published 17 Departmental Business Plans which focus on the priorities set out in the Coalition Agreement and are designed to provide a basis for accountability for delivery of those actions. The plans set out a policy intention to shift power from central government to local communities and locally based public, private and voluntary bodies. The Government wants to empower local people and embed local accountability by making more data more freely available so that people can assess value for money and services providers can be accountable. However, the planning to support the implementation of the reforms and new models of service delivery is at different stages in different departments with much of the detail under development or not yet in the public domain. The Business Plans also contain key indicators of input and impact which the Government intends should provide high level accountability to Parliament and others for overall departmental performance. The Plans also underpin the allocation of resources within departments and the subsequent accountability for the use of those resources. The Committee examined the business planning process as a basis for managing reform, for reducing costs, and for departmental strategic management and accountability. This report identifies a number of important areas that departments should consider that will aid them to: clarify accountability; support cost-effective implementation of Government policies; and secure effective performance management.




The future of the European Union


Book Description

Proposals for reforms for the EU as a whole are likely to find a more favourable reception than possible requests for further 'special treatment' for the UK. The Committee is sceptical that other Member States would be willing to renegotiate existing EU law so as to allow the UK on its own to reduce its degree of integration, especially where this could be seen as undermining the integrity of the Single Market. Other Member States appear to want the UK to remain an EU Member. Closer Eurozone integration is a potential risk to the position of the UK and other non-Eurozone states in the EU. However, the December 2012 agreement on the Single Supervisory Mechanism for banking regulation shows what the UK can achieve to protect its position. The Eurozone is in any case far from a homogenous bloc and the expansion and closer integration of the Eurozone does not therefore necessarily render the UK's position in the EU impossible or worthless. This report does not examine whether the UK should remain in the EU or withdraw. However, it agrees with the Government that, if the UK were to leave the EU, the current arrangements for relations with the EU which are maintained by Norway or Switzerland would not be appropriate for the UK. If it is in the UK's interest to remain in the Single Market, the UK should either remain in the EU, or launch an effort for radical institutional change in Europe to give decision-making rights in the Single Market to all its participating states




Congressional Record


Book Description




Reorganising central government bodies


Book Description

Under the Public Bodies Reform Programme the Government is reducing the number of its arm's length bodies from 904 to between 632 and 642 by the end of the current Spending Review period and will have a substantial and lasting impact. The Programme is intended to improve accountability for functions currently carried out at arm's length from Ministers. The Cabinet Office says it is on track to make £2.6 billion of administrative savings by 2015. However there are substantial reservations about the robustness of this claim. Key concerns are that: there is a risk departments are claiming savings which are actually cuts to services, when they should be including only genuine savings arising from administrative reorganisations; estimates of transition costs such as redundancy and pension costs are incomplete; the savings estimate does not fully take account of the ongoing costs to other parts of government of taking on functions being transferred from abolished bodies and some departments have wrongly included wider savings from bodies being retained, rather than just administrative savings from bodies being abolished or substantially reformed. The Cabinet Office has accepted that its savings estimate needs to be reassessed and has undertaken to 'rebase' it. Focus now needs to be on managing the Programme effectively. Departments have decided on the form of individual reorganisations themselves without clear direction from the centre, leading in some cases to inconsistent treatment of bodies with similar functions. Furthermore, departments may not be getting the best value for money from the sale or transfer of assets of bodies being abolished




HM Revenue & Customs


Book Description

HMRC estimates that the tax gap - the difference between taxes due and the amount actually collected - stood at £35 billion (7.9% of tax due) in 2009-10, although other estimates suggest the figure is much greater. The Compliance and Enforcement Programme brought in £4.32 billion of tax revenue over the five years to 2010-11and is expected to generate a further £8.87 billion by 2014-15. However, in shedding more than 3,300 staff, the Department lost £1.1 billion in potential tax revenue: about £10 in tax lost for every £1 in running costs saved. The Committee is also not confident that the Department is sufficiently clear about the marginal rate of return it could achieve from different levels of spending. In order to live within funding limits, the Department had to defer the introduction of new systems or reduce their scope. In particular, by delaying implementation of its new Caseflow and Spectrum systems, the Department reduced the expected additional tax revenue of £743 million by 2010-11 to £547 million by 2014-15. In this Spending Review period £917 million has been allocated to further activities to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, and to collect more debt. This investment is more than double the money spent on the Programme over the last five years, and is expected to generate an additional £7 billion a year by 2014-15. It is therefore essential that the Department learns and applies lessons learnt. There was also alarm at reports that the Department had advised that the use of managed service companies to avoid tax could ever be appropriate for full-time employees of public bodies




Whole of government accounts 2009-10


Book Description

In November 2011, HM Treasury published the first audited Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), covering the year 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010 (HC 1601, ISBN 9780102975192). The Committee welcomes this major step forward in improving transparency and accountability and highlights some of the information it contains: at 31 March 2010 the government's public service pensions liability was around £1,132 billion; the present value of its future commitments under PFI schemes was £131.5 billion; the government wrote off £10.9 billion in unpaid taxes and expected to have to pay £15.7 billion for outstanding clinical negligence claims; cost of future nuclear decommissioning (£56.7 billion); the need for stronger accountability systems to secure effective responsibility for cost and value for money at local levels - academies, Free Schools, Foundation Trusts and GP consortia. But the WGA will only serve its purpose- showing what the government owns, owes, spends and receives - if it is timely and robust. The figures in the first audited WGA are too dated because Treasury took 20 months to prepare and publish the report. Treasury must address the issues that led the Comptroller and Auditor General to qualify his audit opinion on the WGA 2009-10. A key issue is Treasury's decision to deviate from accounting standards, by omitting Network Rail, the publicly owned banks, and various other government-controlled or owned bodies from the WGA. The Committee sets out a set of principles that future accounts should follow.




Excess votes in 2010-11


Book Description

The Committee of Public Accounts scrutinises the reasons behind individual Departments exceeding their allocated resources, and reports to the House of Commons on whether it has any objection to the amounts needed to rectify the reported excesses. The Committee may also make recommendations to Departments concerning the causes of these excesses. In 2010-11, two bodies breached their expenditure limits: The Department for Transport breached its Net Cash Requirement by £335.2 million, primarily because of weaknesses in monitoring its budget for the operation of its rail franchises; The Teachers' Pension Scheme (England & Wales) breached its Net Cash Requirement by £11.9 million because the Department for Education underestimated the number of members that would retire in 2010-11 and overestimated the contributions that would be collected from employers. On the basis of an examination of the reasons why these two bodies exceeded their voted provisions, the Committee has no objection to Parliament providing the necessary amounts by means of an Excess Vote. Nevertheless, it expects both bodies to set out what actions they have taken to improve their financial management and avoid exceeding their allocated resources in the future.