By IRNA,
London : The parliamentary Public Accounts Select Committee Tuesday criticized the government over its management of the country’s massive Pnds 550 billion (Dlrs 1,000 bn) budget.
Committee chair Edward Leigh accused ministers of not attaching a great deal of importance to the sum the government spends on public services.
“Government departments are still not giving enough priority to driving towards better standards in financial resource management,” Leigh said.
In a new report, the all-party group of MPs said that strong and competent financial resources management is central to departments meeting their objectives cost effectively and delivering public services which represent value for money.
“You would think that no department would contemplate implementing a policy without first estimating what it is going to cost. But only 20 per cent of departments based policy decisions on a thorough assessment of their financial implications,” Leigh said.
The committee said that although the number of qualified finance directors on department boards had increased since when it last reported on the issue in 2004, there was still the “general lack of financial skills among non-finance staff.”
Departments, it said, “need to improve their forecasting capabilities to strengthen budgetary control and to avoid underspends not being identified early enough to reallocate resources to other priorities.”
“Few departmental boards are presented with accurate, timely and integrated financial and operational performance information to enable them to take sufficiently informed decisions on the use of resources and to review how well they are utilized,” the report said.
The warnings come as the government plans to further increase its budget by nearly 20 per cent to Pnds 678 billion by 2010-11. Currently 58 per cent is spent on social security, pensions, health and education.