Latest news with #DavidGoldstone
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Reeves scraps £600k ‘value for money' quango after just one year
Labour's cost-cutting quango is set to be scrapped just one year after being unveiled, The Telegraph understands. The Office for Value for Money (OVfM) was formed in 2024 to assess government spending, identify inefficiencies and scrutinise investment proposals to safeguard taxpayers' money. In that time the chairman, David Goldstone, was paid £950 a day and expected to work a monthly average of one day a week. Mr Goldstone also could not give advice on HS2 and the development of the Royal Navy's new Dreadnought submarines due to conflicts of interest – despite both projects having huge cost overruns. The OVfM was always planned to have a lifespan of at least one year, a Treasury official said. Documents published last year stated Mr Goldstone's remit of providing spending advice to Rachel Reeves came with the 'possibility of extension' – but the official confirmed there would be no such extension. The OVfM was formed in October last year and will be shut down around the same time this year. The closure comes after a damning report by MPs in January criticised the newly-formed taskforce and asked it to justify its cost to taxpayers. When the OVfM was launched, Labour said the independent body would conduct assessments of 'where and how to root out waste and inefficiency' and scrutinise Whitehall spending with a 'ruthless focus [on] realising benefits from every pound of public spending.' Bob Blackman, a senior Conservative MP, said: 'This was a gimmick to start with and it's not surprising it hasn't gone anywhere. When they are looking for dramatic savings, not wasting money might be a good idea to start with.' Richard Tice, deputy leader of Reform UK, said: 'This Value for Money tsar was a ludicrous virtue-signalling slogan which has wasted even more money and achieved nothing. It is being abandoned because Labour know their backbench MPs will not tolerate any cutbacks. This Government is bankrupting our economy.' Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said: 'It seems to me to have achieved nothing in a year so perhaps it is at last achieving value for money by being shut down.' A Treasury review is now under way into whether the OVfM lived up to expectations and represented value for money for taxpayers, with the findings scheduled to be published in October. Labour outlined plans in April to cut dozens of quangos in an effort to reduce the size of the state. The announcement came after 27 new recommendation-making agencies were formed in the first eight months of Sir Keir Starmer's time in Downing Street. In January, MPs on the influential Treasury Select Committee published a report questioning whether the OVfM was a useful initiative, describing it as a 'red herring'. The cost to taxpayers of running the taskforce so far is £598,474, according to Treasury accounts published in March. This was less than its overall budget of £611,489. Mr Goldstone was paid £23,000 as chairman in the financial year ending in 2025. His full remuneration package amounts to £49,400 a year. This is equivalent to a full-time salary of £247,000, or £950 a day, and significantly more than Sir Keir Starmer's £166,786 salary. Dame Meg Hillier, the Treasury Select Committee's chairman, said at the time that the OVfM was 'an understaffed, poorly-defined organisation which has been set up with a vague remit and no clear plan to measure its effectiveness. 'All of which leads me to feel this initiative may be something of a red herring,' she added. The report recommended that estimates of how much the OVfM had cost the taxpayer be made public. It called on the quango to explain how it was working with existing Whitehall organisations and would avoid duplicating existing cost-cutting plans. As of December, the OVfM had 12 full-time members of staff, not including Mr Goldstone. It had the power to hire as many as 20 officials and considered using external consultants to fill any gaps in expertise, according to the select committee report. In its response to the report, the OVfM said it was 'committed to transparency of its costs' and that there was no intention to hire any external consultants. The OVfM has published studies with recommendations about budgeting for so-called 'mega projects' like the Sizewell C nuclear plant and the procurement of short-term residential accommodation by the public sector. Mr Goldstone was not involved in discussions that could be linked to his roles on the board of HS2 and as non-executive director the Submarine Delivery Authority – responsible for delivering the new Dreadnought-class submarine fleet – during his time at the OVfM, according to details of his employment published by the Government. The costs of HS2, the delayed high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, was initially projected to be £38bn but will now likely exceed £100bn. The updated submarine fleet is likely to spend its extra £10bn 'contingency' funding on top of a £31bn budget, according to the House of Commons Library. A Treasury spokesman said: 'For too long, taxpayer money has been squandered, and we are putting an end to it. The Office for Value for Money is a unique, time-limited office based in the Treasury, with an independent chair, which has been working in partnership across government to place value for money at the heart of spending decisions.'
Telegraph
12-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Rachel Reeves's secret plan to save her job
By the end of this spending review period in 2028-29, the Government will supposedly have saved £27.7bn, slightly larger than a black hole. The annual saving for that year is predicted to be £13.8bn, more than doubling Reeves's fiscal headroom, which has been rapidly dwindling as borrowing costs surge and growth forecasts are downgraded. Only published on Wednesday, these figures couldn't have been factored into either of the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecasts produced for this Labour government. So, where does this free money, sourced neither from the taxpayer nor lenders, come from? There are certainly commendable ideas within it, such as renegotiating contracts with external providers, using fewer temporary agency staff and, thankfully, calling time on a raft of consultants. Dig a little deeper, however, and these 'efficiency gains' start to look more and more ludicrous, and surely unquantifiable. Apparently, we can calculate the millions of pounds to be saved from the Department for Education 'getting maximum value from every pound of public money'. We know that 'using digital technology more effectively' will add to Treasury coffers, and 'improving efficiency' is apparently enough to put a pound figure on. We have factored in savings from hiring fewer temporary workers in the NHS, which will be achieved by 'reducing sickness absence'. There is no detail how this might happen, but Office for Value for Money chairman David Goldstone, the man behind such great efficiency hits as HS2, has implicitly signed off forecasts based on people being sick less next year. Nobody tell the soldiers, but part of the Ministry of Defence's £105m 'energy efficiency' savings will come from installing low-flow toilets. HMRC's plan to save £1.3bn is largely comprised of using computers a bit more, while nearly every department is convinced they can quantify the benefits of AI. At least these come with some semblance of possibility; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is going to save £14m by 'merging websites' and restructuring its marketing team. It remains to be seen whether Rachel Reeves will indeed hold the document aloft in the autumn to declare her 'iron-clad' fiscal rules have been met, although it would be strange to leave billions of pounds of no-strings money on the table.
BBC News
12-03-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Treasury's Value for Money body targets asylum accommodation
Treasury advisers tasked with finding government waste have identified spending on accommodation for people such as asylum seekers as their top Office for Value for Money (OVfM), which has 15 members of staff and reports directly to the chancellor, was launched in a Treasury response to a BBC Freedom of Information request revealed that as of last month the team had not started scrutinising any investment documents released on Tuesday showed the first two areas it will investigate are government spending on short-term accommodation and multi-billion pound so-called "mega projects" such as HS2. The OVfM is aiming to cut departmental spending by £4bn annually starting this previously said the "hit team" would ensure that "every penny of taxpayers' money is spent wisely".Concerns have been raised by both Conservative and Labour ministers in recent years about how much public money goes on short-term accommodation Treasury says the Home Office spent £2.3bn on hotels for asylum seekers in government money was spent on accommodation for veterans, care leavers, survivors of domestic abuse, victims of modern slavery and those fleeing Institute for Public Policy Research think tank reported in 2024 that per asylum seeker, costs had increased by 141% to £41,000 last year - up from £17,000 in in government question whether departments signing separate accommodation contracts get the best Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England, has said that "uncoordinated" procurement of accommodation has "driven up local accommodation costs".It says this has left "large numbers of properties void in areas where the demand from those cohorts is lower than supply".The OVfM's investigation into accommodation costs will involve the Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice. Mega projects The OVfM 's chair David Goldstone will not be able to participate in the investigation into the "mega projects", because of his previous senior roles with HS2 and the Submarine Delivery Goldstone, who was also involved in the financing of the London Olympics and Parliament's long-delayed Restoration and Renewal project, is being paid more than £50,000 for an average of one to two days a week's was hired on a one-year contract as a direct ministerial appointment, meaning the usual civil service recruitment procedures didn't have to be has said his job was to give "direct advice" to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones about how to save money in June's Spending Street was forced to defend his appointment after he was linked with a string of high-profile projects that went over Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride told the BBC the office "has yet again been shown to be a complete waste of money".He accused the government of "treating the taxpayer like a piggy bank".Earlier this year, Parliament's Treasury Select Committee criticised the office as an "understaffed, poorly defined organisation".Dame Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, added that the team had been "set up with a vague remit and no clear plan to measure its effectiveness".The Treasury has said the OVfM will ask every government department to find at least 1% efficiency savings, equivalent to around £ will be included in the 5% of savings that Rachel Reeves has asked ministers to identify. Documents published alongside the Budget said the office would be "undertaking value-for-money studies in specific high-risk areas of cross-departmental spending and scrutinising investment proposals".Earlier this year, BBC News used a Freedom of Information request to ask what specific high-risk areas and investment proposals the team had looked Treasury's response said it did not hold any information about specific investment proposals because the office would "decide which investment proposals to scrutinise after receiving initial proposals from departments as part of the Spending Review".One key area the office is expected to look at is where multiple government departments could be doubling up on it has been suggested that the OVfM could itself be guilty of a report published in January, the Treasury Select Committee noted that the government already "uses a range of existing frameworks to safeguard value for money". Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to read top political analysis, gain insight from across the UK and stay up to speed with the big moments. It'll be delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
