There’s no point in raising money if it won’t be spent well. Joe Hill lays out how the office for value for money could actually help.

We are often reminded of the cost of government – but we rarely stop to ask whether any of it is good value. A pound raised here, or cut there, is meaningless if billions are already being wasted.
Anyone with a vague interest in public policy follows the Autumn Statement and Spring Budget. But how many have heard of the estimates process, where government departments are given their budgets? Or the laying of each department’s annual report and accounts, where they explain what they did with all the taxpayers’ billions?

Westminster rarely stops to think about what the taxpayers are getting for the 33.5 per cent of GDP that HMRC takes. If anyone was paying attention, there would have been an outcry at the fact that so-called ‘outcome delivery plans’ – where........

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