Government have wasted billions of taxpayers’ pounds, Labour review finds

Labour’s Zero-Based Review – an analysis of every pound the government spends, led by Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Chris Leslie  – has found that the government have wasted billions of taxpayers’ pounds through error.

In particular, the review revealed that the government has made a number of overpayments. For instance, the Department for Work and Pensions total overpayments amounted to £3.3 billion, up from £100 million in 2010-2011.

The team examining government spending also found that departments have been using taxpayers’ cash to cover their own backs; putting money aside to pay for expected fines and the cost of legal challenges that arise when they fail to implement policy. At the Department Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, £7.5 million has been diverted to pay an expected fine for failure to implement the Wild Birds Directive.

In light of the review, Chris Leslie MP has explained how the government has got it wrong:

“From millions paid in error by the government to millions written-off by maladministration, this Tory-led government has utterly failed to keep control of costs. They haven’t got a grip of the academies budgets, and even hundreds of thousands have been squandered on duplicate Christmas bonus payments. No wonder the government is set to fail in its promise to balance the books by 2015.

Labour’s Zero-Based Review of every pound the government spends is uncovering alarming examples of poor financial control just like these. Through this work we are exploring better ways to improve services, get maximum value for every pound of taxpayers’ money and rise to the challenge of delivering a long-term economic recovery. 

Taxpayers are already hard-pressed and the last thing they want is to see Ministers wasting millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money through negligence, error, and incompetence.”

It just goes to show, when it comes to the economy, the Tories aren’t as trustworthy as they’d have people believe.