HC 705 - Managing and Replacing the Aspire Project PDF Download

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081137
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description
Most of HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC's) major tax collection systems are provided under one contract, the Aspire contract. While this has provided stability over the last ten years HMRC has not managed the costs of the contract well. It has cost some £7.9 billion over this period and generated profits for the suppliers of some £1.2 billion. When the current contract ends in 2017 HMRC intends, in accordance with government IT procurement policy, to move from the current single contract to a new model with many short-duration contracts with multiple suppliers. However, HMRC has made little progress in defining its needs and has still not presented a business case to government. Once funding is agreed, it will have only two years to recruit the skills and procure the services it will need. Moreover, HMRC's record in managing the Aspire contract and other IT contractors gives the Committee little confidence that HMRC can successfully achieve this transition or that it can manage the proposed model effectively to maximise value for money. HMRC also demonstrates little appreciation of the scale of the challenge it faces or the substantial risks to tax collection if the transition fails. Failure to collect taxes efficiently would create havoc with the public finances.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215085582
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Tax and tax reliefs are plainly different and require different accountability arrangements. Put simply tax is where you get money in through taxation and a tax relief is where you make a conscious decision to forgo that income. Some reliefs are structural parts of the system to ensure a more progressive system or avoid double taxation. But other reliefs, costing some £100 billion a year, are designed to deliver a policy objective that could be met instead through spending programmes. HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) do not keep track of those tax reliefs intended to influence behaviour. They do not adequately report to Parliament or the public on whether reliefs are working as intended and what they cost and whether they represent good value for money. While HMRC is accountable for implementing and monitoring all tax reliefs, its statements about the extent of its responsibilities are inconsistent with its actual practices. HMRC accepts it has a role to assess, evaluate and monitor reliefs, but is unable or unwilling to define or to categorise reliefs by their purpose. While HMRC accepts the need for reporting the costs of tax reliefs, it does not see the merit in assessing the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of reliefs, or considering their cost effectiveness alongside that of alternative policy instruments such as spending programmes. HMRC does not generally assess the effectiveness of reliefs with specific objectives although in a few instances it does consider their impact on taxpayer behaviour. HMRC's failure to articulate a set of principles to guide its management and reporting of tax reliefs is a serious omission which it now needs to rectify.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215085647
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
The Winterbourne View scandal in 2011 exposed the horrific abuse of people with learning difficulties and challenging behaviour in a private mental health hospital. Concerns were also raised about a number of other institutions. As a result, the Government committed to discharging those individuals for whom it was appropriate back into their homes and communities. However, since then, too many children and adults have continued to go into mental health hospitals, and to stay there unnecessarily, because of the lack of community alternatives. The number of people with learning disabilities remaining in hospital has not fallen, and has remained broadly the same at around 3,200. It was refreshing that NHS England took responsibility for this lack of progress and has now committed to develop a closure programme for large NHS mental health hospitals, along with a transition plan for the people with learning disabilities within these hospitals, from 2016-17. Discharges from hospital are being delayed because funding does not follow the individual when they are discharged into the community. This acts as a financial disincentive for local commissioners who have to bear the costs and responsibility for planning and commissioning community services. Delaying discharge has the effect of institutionalising people, making their reintegration into the community more difficult. Some local authorities' reluctance to accept and fund individuals in the community will be exacerbated by current financial constraints. The Department should set out its proposals for 'dowry-type' payments from NHS England to meet the costs of supporting people discharged from hospital.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215084489
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Given financial constraints, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency have done a good job in improving the cost effectiveness of their approach to flood risk management. They have adopted rational methods to prioritise spending on both new capital flood defences and maintaining existing ones. However, risks remain to the sustainability of current levels of flood protection. The Agency will need to make difficult decisions about how it prioritises its maintenance budget, including some defences where it will need to reduce or stop maintenance. In these cases, there is a risk that lack of maintenance will mean that capital costs are incurred sooner, when defences require replacement earlier. Since our evidence session, the Agency has published a long term investment strategy, which presents a number of flooding scenarios and outlines how much funding would be needed to protect against these.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081250
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
The financial health of NHS bodies has worsened in the last two financial years. The overall net surplus achieved by NHS bodies in 2012-13 of £2.1 billion fell to £722 million in 2013-14. The percentage of NHS trusts and foundation trusts in deficit increased from 10% in 2012-13 to 26% in 2013-14. Monitor found that 80% of foundation trusts that provide acute hospital services were reporting a deficit by the second quarter of 2014-15. NHS England, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority recognise that radical change is needed to the way services are provided and that extra resources are required if the NHS is to become financially sustainable. The necessary changes will require further upfront investment. Present incentives to reduce A&E attendance and increase community based care services have not had the impact expected. New incentives and strong relationships are needed to promote the more effective collaboration necessary for delivering new models of care.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081218
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
The Department for International Development is the main funder of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, a multilateral agency which invests in infrastructure projects in developing countries. The Department has not used its position as by far the dominant funder of PIDG to influence the direction of its operations and improve its performance. The Department's oversight of PIDG has not been sufficiently 'hands on'. The Committee is concerned that the Department has insufficient assurance over the integrity of PIDG's investments and the companies with which it works and the Department has not done enough to put a stop to PIDG's wasteful travel policies and poor financial management.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081323
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description
The tax arrangements PwC promoted in Luxembourg bear all the characteristics of a mass-marketed tax avoidance scheme according to the Public Accounts Committee. Large accountancy firms advise multinational companies on complex strategies and contrived structures which do not reflect the substance of their businesses and are instead designed to avoid tax. In light of the publication of leaked documents detailing some of the tax advice it has given to its multinational clients, the Committee took evidence from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC did not convince the Committee that its widespread promotion of schemes to numerous clients, based on artificially diverting profits to Luxembourg through intra-company loans, constituted anything other than the promotion of tax avoidance on an industrial scale. The fact that PwC's promotion of these schemes is permitted by its own code of conduct is clear evidence that Government needs to take a more active role in regulating the tax industry, as it evidently cannot be trusted to regulate itself. HMRC should set out how it plans to take a more active role in challenging the advice being given by accountancy firms to their multinational clients. In contributing to the OECD's discussions aimed at reforming international tax law, HMRC should push for a more rigorous and meaningful definition of what "substance" means in respect of business, particularly if multinational companies conduct any business in the countries where they shift profits to in order to avoid tax. The Committee believes strongly that the Government must act by introducing a code of conduct for all tax advisers.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081234
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
The Ministry of Justice is on track to make a significant and rapid reduction to the amount that it spends on civil legal aid. However, it introduced major changes on the basis of no evidence in many areas, and without making good use of the evidence that it did have in other areas. It has been slow to fill the considerable gaps in its understanding, and has not properly assessed the full impact of the reforms. Almost two years after the reforms, the Ministry is still playing catch up: it does not know if those still eligible are able to access legal aid; and it does not understand the link between the price it pays for legal aid and the quality of advice being given. Moreover, the Ministry's approach to implementing the reforms has inhibited access to mediation for family law cases which can be a cost-effective alternative to court for resolving disputes. Amazingly, it failed to foresee that removing legal aid funding for solicitors would reduce the number of referrals to family mediation. Perhaps most worryingly of all, it does not understand, and has shown little interest in, the knock-on costs of its reforms across the public sector. It therefore does not know whether the projected £300 million spending reduction in its own budget is outweighed by additional costs elsewhere. The Department therefore does not know whether the savings in the civil legal aid budget represent value for money

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215083814
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 21

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Book Description
Since it was created in 2013, Public Health England (PHE) has made a good start in its efforts to protect and improve public health. Good public health is vital to tackling health inequalities and reducing burdens on the NHS. The Committee were impressed by the passion shown by PHE's Chief Executive, and his determination to challenge Government to consider public health in wider policymaking. However, we are concerned that the Department of Health is not getting local authorities to their target funding allocations for public health quickly enough, with nearly one third of 152 local authorities currently receiving funding that is more than 20% above or below what would be their fair share. The Agency decided not to change the grant distribution for 2015/16. Local authorities are also presently constrained by being tied into contracts to which the Department had previously committed, such as for sexual health interventions. It is not clear whether the public health grant to local authorities will remain ring-fenced, and they need more certainty to better plan their public health programmes. If the ring-fence is removed, there is a risk that spending on public health will decline as councils come under increasing financial pressures. There are still unacceptable health inequalities across the country, for example healthy life expectancy for men ranges from 52.5 years to 70 years depending on where they live. These inequalities make PHE's support at a local level particularly important but the Committee are concerned that PHE does not have strong enough ways of influencing local authorities to ensure progress against all of its top public health priorities. Finally, given how important it is to tackle the many wider causes of poor public health, PHE needs to influence departments more effectively and translate its own passion into action across Whitehall.

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215081196
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
The Department for Communities and Local Government does not have a good enough understanding of the impact of funding cuts, either on local authorities' finances or on services. It is unclear whether the Department is exercising a cross government leadership role with respect to local government. It relies on data on spending and has little information on service levels, service quality, and financial sustainability. HM Treasury should better support the Department by ensuring compliance with its requests for information at future spending reviews. While the Department has identified that local authorities will need to change the way they deliver services to remain financially sustainable, it is unclear if it is providing sufficient leadership to ensure they can implement service transformation programmes successfully. Furthermore, if funding reductions were to continue following the next spending review, we question whether the Department would be in a position to provide assurance that all local authorities could maintain the full range of their statutory services. Overall, as pressure from cuts grows, so do the risks to local authorities' finances and their provision of services. The depth and quality of the Department's insight into these issues needs to keep pace with these changes, something it has struggled to achieve so far.