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The Treasury is weakly positioned to challenge energy and climate change budgets due to high staff turnover and limited commercial expertise, according to the Public Accounts Committee.
In a report criticising a lack of joined-up government, the PAC expressed particular concern that of 13 staff on the Department of Energy and Climate Change spending team in 2010, only one remained in post.
Across all departments, just eight out of 52 spending team staff remained from the 2010 spending review.
“This enables some departments to play games with the Treasury, for example, by deliberately holding back information,” said committee chair Margaret Hodge MP. “The Treasury needs to up its game to ensure proper scrutiny of what departments are up to.”
The PAC also accused government of concentrating on what could be cut quickly, rather than taking a long term view. It cut capital spending from £60 billion in 2009-2010 to £38 billion in 2014-2015, for example, which Hodge said “risked undermining the government’s objectives of securing jobs and economic growth”.
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