Home Office praised for improved financial management

The Home Office has been praised for its financial management in a report published today. Skip related content

The report also revealed that demand for passports has fallen by over 10 per cent over the past two years due to the recession.

And as a result the Identity and Passport Service has cut its staffing by 10 per cent by loaning workers to busy JobCentres.

The Commons public accounts committee said the Home Office had made significant improvements since a similar audit in 2006.

Edward Leigh MP, the committee chairman said:

"The Home Office has come a long way since 2006 when its basic financial systems and processes were in disarray.

"Such has been its progress in improving its financial management that it is now being extolled by the Cabinet Office as a model of good progress in the Civil Service."

"As constraints on resources tighten, the department must understand better, for each area of its business, just what it is getting for the money spent in terms of its strategic objectives," he added.

"And it should make sure its systems have the flexibility, capacity and capability to respond to new challenges, as well as being able to tackle existing ones such as knowing who is in the country and the clearance of asylum legacy cases."

But the report also notes that the Home Office has only "limited mechanisms" available to it to hold police forces and police authorities to account for the £5bn funding it provides for policing, its largest single area of activity.

And the department is rebuked by the committee for a poor record on notifying parliament in advance of accepting liabilities.

Informing MPs in retrospect of possible new liabilities that have been entered into was "unacceptable and tantamount to flouting parliamentary procedure", it warned.