A minister has not disputed that the Treasury does not have confidence in her department’s ability to spend public money well, according to a senior MP.
The government has shown “no real signs” of improvements that would prevent it from making the same mistakes that led to £2.2bn of Covid-19 business loans and grants being lost to incorrect or...
Lower-than-expected spending on energy support and the government’s near-total abandonment of last year’s ‘mini-budget’ have led ratings agency S&P Global to revise up its outlook for the UK.
Funding given to care homes in the first year of the pandemic led to a sharp rise in dividend payments in some large companies while staff in the sector struggled with low pay and high workloads,...
New gloomy predictions of long-term economic growth suggest pensions promised to public sector workers will be more costly than anticipated, economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies have warned.
The economy would benefit by billions of pounds per year if healthcare waiting lists are reduced in line with government plans, but doing so will be impossible without investment in the social care...
Labour leader Keir Starmer has pledged to use a “proper” windfall tax to fund council tax freezes for households in England next year if the party is elected.
Reported fraud nearly quadrupling in the wake of Covid-19, and the fact that the government looks unlikely to recover most of the money, could lead to fraud and corruption becoming more accepted, the...
Just 1% of fraudulent or incorrect Covid-19 business grant payments have been recovered by councils, because there are no incentives for them to do so, the National Audit Office has said.
Despite higher tax income and lower spending on energy support, the government has less fiscal headroom than any in recent years, the Office for Budget Responsibility has said.
The Budget contained billions of pounds of tax cuts for businesses and measures aimed at getting people back to work, but elephants in the room such as public sector pay and struggling services...