South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon has described the Home Office accounts as a ‘national disgrace’ as a new report says the department's top civil servant failed in his duty to Parliament to present a set of audited accounts.

Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on major flaws in the troubled department's finances.

When Parliament's financial watchdog, the National Audit Office, looked at data produced by the Home Office's new finance system, Adelphi, it found the gross value of debits and credits amounted to some £26,527,108,436,994 (i.e. £26.5 trillion), almost 2,000 times higher than the Home Office's spending for 2004-05 and approximately one and a half times higher than the estimated GDP of the entire planet.

Mr Bacon, a member of the committee, said: “The Home Office could not even reconcile its cash records with its bank statements, nor provide a set of audited accounts for Parliament. Even worse, the Home Office seemed not to understand the vital importance of doing this. As a result, the Home Office cannot say with any certainty how much it spent during the year, what debts it was owed and what it owed to others, or what assets it owns”.

“There is no assurance that all expenditure incurred during the year was in line with what Parliament authorised and financial information provided by the Home Office is unreliable. These are the most basic failures of financial stewardship and control.  It is a national disgrace”.

The report states that the Home Office’s Accounting Officer  - i.e. the Department’s senior civil servant, then permanent secretary Sir John Gieve – failed in his duty to Parliament to account for how taxpayers’ money is spent, leaving his successor (Sir David Normington) in the unenviable position of having to sign unauditable accounts so that they could be presented to Parliament.

Mr Bacon said: “In any parish council or cricket club the person responsible would have been out on his ear.  What actually happened was that he was promoted to become Deputy Governor of the Bank of England in charge of financial stability in the banking system. You might reasonably expect to see this in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, but not in real life”.

21 July 2006

See also:
PAC REPORT: Home Office Resource Accounts 2004-05

PARLIAMENT: MP condemns 'casual disregard' for taxpayers
PARLIAMENT: MP urges Home Office to get accounts in order