PAC, Man2

The Public Accounts Committee at the Commons has today released a biting report, looking at the monumental scale of public waste in the European Union budget. Lest we forget, this is the fourteenth consecutive year in which the Court of Auditors has declined to sign off the books.

The report, available online at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubacc/698/698.pdf , begins with the helpful reminder that the UK’s net contribution for the year in question, 2007, was €6.1 billion – the largest after Germany – so we have a particular vested interest in how the money gets spent.

It notes that 11% of regional spending is irregular; it expresses concern that the Commission is intending to shift the rules so that in high-fraud areas fraud has to cross a higher threshold to qualify as ‘excessive’; and it observes that the UK Government itself is responsible for an astonishing £400 million of cock ups which it will have to repay. One trusts that the Treasury has somewhere budgeted to stump up for this accidental debt and lost returned revenue …

The report itself is short and merits a mental meander. It also accidentally highlights a very contemporary issue. Governments are right now considering who should be their nominated Commissioners. Clearly, the various Directorates General are in need of people of reforming zeal and character. Any premier who turns instead to the usual crop of cronies, fall-guys and has-beens will prove complicit in this disgraceful state of affairs.

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Lee Rotherham

Lee is a Research Fellow at the TPA. Co-author of the hit Bumper Books of Government Waste, he is an extensively published EU expert and front bench adviser.

Follow @the_tpa