Memorandum submitted by the Committee
Office Scrutiny Unit
1. The Scrutiny Unit has considered the
response provided to the Committee by the Home Office in late
February to written questions on the Autumn Performance Report
2006, Resource Accounts 2005-06 and the Winter Supplementary Estimate
2006-07. The comments below provide some additional explanations
and observations.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
2. The responses to questions 14 and 28
expose disjointed budgeting and financial planning processes at
the Home Office. They show that internal budgets are not being
prepared in conjunction with the Estimates process, neither in
respect of their timing nor the staff involved. There are, however,
some welcome indications that procedures may have been put in
place to start addressing this weakness in the financial planning
system.
3. The responses given to questions 34 and
36 do not provide sufficient assurance that enough is being done
to link Home Office strategy and resource allocation at the planning
stage. For example, there is reference to the Board considering
monthly financial reports and stopping projects that cannot be
afforded, but these are essentially retrospective actions. There
is mention of a "systematic plan for considering our options
for the next spending review period", but the outcome of
such a plan must be fairly limited when the Home Office's budget
settlement until 2010-11 has already been announced in the Budget
2006.
4. The responses to questions 22 and 29
allow for some quantification of the direct costs of the Home
Office's poor financial management in earlier years. The National
Audit Office has spent an additional £400,000 on the audit
for 2005-06 as a result of the extra work required and the Home
Office has requested an extra £400,000 in the Winter Supplementary
Estimates 2006-07 to "bolster the financial accounts team
in preparing the Resource Accounts and improving the department's
financial capability". The indirect costs of sub-optimal
resourcing decisions and inefficiencies as a result of the Home
Office's poor financial management are likely to be substantially
higher. The Home Office has requested further resources in the
Spring Supplementary Estimate 2006-07 to "strengthen the
accounting function within the Home Office".
FINANCIAL REPORTING
5. The response to question 23 indicates
that the large variance identified in expenditure by the Home
Office's Non-Departmental Public Bodies between 2004-05 and 2005-06
was not a true variance. Rather, the apparent variance arose from
a large error which existed in the 2004-05 figures when the Home
Office Resource Accounts were qualified.
6. The response to question 20 confirms
that the deadline for the completion of the 2006-07 Home Office
Resource Accounts is set for 30 September 2007, 10 weeks earlier
than the accounts were signed and completed last year (8 December
2006). This is a welcome sign that the Home Office is aiming to
do better than last year. The Committee should continue to monitor
progress against this deadline.
STAFFING
7. The Home Office has not presented a comparison
of its own staff dismissals against the total dismissals across
government as requested by the Committee in question 19. It may
be the case that the Home Office does not have such information
available to it.
8. When considering the response to question
35 the Committee should bear in mind that the headcount reductions
reported in the Home Office's Departmental Reports and Autumn
Performance Reports refer only to head office reductions. Elsewhere
in the Home Office group front-line staff numbers have been increasing.
The Home Office's response only notes where 599 of the 3,952 extra
front-line staff have been deployed (in the expected areas of
immigration and prisons).
DRUG TREATMENT
9. The response given by the Home Office
to question 6 does not fully address the Committee's requirements.
The response does not focus on drug-using offenders and only refers
to the total number of drug users, both offenders and non-offenders.
The Committee may wish to seek a comparison between the success
of drug treatment in the two groups, especially given the Home
Office's target to increase the number of drug-misusing offenders
entering treatment through the criminal justice system and the
links between drug use and other offences.
Scrutiny Unit
March 2007
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