By David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) -British lawmakers raised doubts on Monday about whether a new Office for Value for Money – announced by finance minister Rachel Reeves as part of her plans to repair the public finances – would deliver any meaningful savings.
The body has 12 full-time staff seconded from elsewhere in Britain’s central government.
The House of Commons’ Treasury Committee, which supervises Reeves’ work, said the new office appeared to duplicate the role of other public bodies including the National Audit Office, which has nearly 1,000 staff.
“The Office for Value for Money is an understaffed, poorly defined organisation which has been set up with a vague remit and no clear plan to measure its effectiveness,” said committee chair Meg Hillier, a Labour Party lawmaker like Reeves.
“All of which leads me to feel this initiative may be something of a red herring,” Hillier added.
In response, the Treasury said taxpayer money had been squandered for too long.
“This Office’s role is additional to existing parts of government and will draw on a range of expertise across disciplines to help root out waste, including a focus on where department spending may be overlapping,” a Treasury spokesperson said.
Reeves announced the OVfM in her first budget on Oct. 30 and set government departments a target of identifying 2% efficiency savings over the next year ahead of a multi-year spending review due in June.
Reeves is under pressure to reduce expenditure further as she has largely ruled out tax rises. A rise in government borrowing costs since her budget has put her at risk of missing self-imposed targets to balance day-to-day spending.
The committee criticised the government for not setting out how much the OVfM would cost, which areas of government spending it would focus on or how it would assess the value of spending or investment projects.
(Reporting by David MillikenEditing by William Schomberg and Toby Chopra)
