Court Funds Office—Funds in Court:
Unclaimed Balances: Public Trust Office Accounts 1998-99
PARAGRAPH 31
The write-off of unrecovered VAT in 1998-99
Where VAT is recoverable it is recovered for
the Public Trust Office (PTO) by the Lord Chancellor's Department.
The National Audit Office (NAO) identified that the amount of
recoverable VAT that the PTO identified in 1998-99 was more than
the Department recovered on the PTO's behalf. NAO recommended
that £124,000 be written off as irrecoverable and this sum
was charged to the PTO's clients because it was not recovered
by the Department. The cost to patients was 0.49 per cent of expenditure.
Systems have since been reviewed and the problem of VAT under-recovery
has now been resolved.
The £72,000 of irrecoverable debt was also
written off and the cost of doing so was borne by the PTO's clients.
PARAGRAPH 112
Cost of setting up the Unclaimed Balances Database
The cost of setting up the Unclaimed Balances
database, in terms of staff time and computer hardware costs,
was £3,400.
PARAGRAPH 121
Provide a copy of the mutual confidentiality clause
in correspondence between Sir Hayden Phillips and Julia Lomas.
In Julia Lomas' letter to Sir Hayden Phillips
of 17 November setting out her "terms" for early termination
of her contract, she said:
"I would also be seeking mutual
confidentiality clauses on both sides"
Sir Hayden Phillips responded to that letter
on 20 December. He said:
"The other elements of your proposal are
a mutual confidentiality clause and an appropriate reference from
the Department. I am content to accept both of these elements,
with a caveat, which I am sure you will have foreseen, that the
Department cannot bind a third party by a confidentiality clause,
and in particular could not use it to withhold information from
the PAC."
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