Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 5 September 2022 to Question 40737 on Ukraine: Military Aid, if he will provide a breakdown of the amount contributed by each Department listed.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
I refer the rt honourable member to the answer given by my predecessor (Simon Clarke MP) on 5th September 2022 to PQ UIN 14298.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 19 July 2022 to Question 36000 on Ukraine: Military Aid, from which Departments has the additional £1 billion of support to Ukraine been drawn from.
Answered by Simon Clarke
All ministerial departments contributed from their 2022-23 capital budgets towards military aid for Ukraine. See full list below:
Attorney General’s Office; Cabinet Office; Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy; Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport; Department for Education; Department for Environment Food, & Rural Affairs; Department for International Trade; Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Department for Transport; Department for Work and Pensions; Department of Health and Social Care; Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; HM Treasury; Home Office; and Ministry of Justice;
We also received contributions from the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Territorial Offices (the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Office).
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 27 June 2022 to Question 23221 on Military Aid: Ukraine, how many meetings of the National Security Council he has personally attended since April 2022.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The National Security Council is a committee of the Cabinet. It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet and its Committees, and how often they have met, is not normally shared publicly.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many meetings of the National Security Council he has attended since April 2022.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The National Security Council is a committee of the Cabinet. It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet and its Committees, and how often they have met, is not normally shared publicly.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department plans to take account of inflation when calculating the funds to be provided to the Ministry of Defence for replacing the stockpiles of weapons supplied to Ukraine.
Answered by Simon Clarke
HM Treasury provides departments with settlements on a cash basis, and they are expected to manage the impacts of inflation within these settlements.
Last month, the Government announced an additional £1.3bn funding for military support to Ukraine. This funding was provided for the 2022/23 financial year and reflective of latest cost forecasts.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the total estimated cost is of the reduction to day-to-day spending at his Department between 1 April 2022 and 2025 based on the predicted levels of inflation for that period.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of SR21, departments were asked to meet strict planning assumptions which were based on the expectation that departments would deliver savings over the Spending Review period. At SR21 the government also committed to reducing non-frontline civil service headcount to 2019-20 levels by 2024-25, bar justifiable exemptions.
As a result of this HMT’s day-to-day nominal spending is planned to reduce by £25m between April 2022 and April 2025.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of (a) 10 November 2021 to Question 68120 on Ministry of Defence: Fines and (b) 19 November 2021 to Question 75808 on Government Departments: Fines, what information his Department holds on remedial actions imposed by his Department on (i) the Ministry of Defence and (ii) other Government Departments, in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The Treasury answered UIN 68120 on 10 November 2021 confirming that the department does not hold a central record of the remedial actions that have historically been taken, and such actions can take many forms.
The Minister for Defense Procurement’s answers of 9th and 10th November (to questions UIN 68119 and 68120) explained the actions taken in respect of the cases reported in the department’s annual reports and accounts, and explained the reasons why these were reportable. Other Government departments will report fines in their annual reports and accounts in a similar manner.
Fines imposed by the Treasury on other government departments are considered fruitless payment, a form of loss. Managing Public Money directs departments to report fruitless payments in the Loss Statement of the Parliamentary Accountability section of their annual report and accounts.
Departments are in the process of laying and publishing annual reports and accounts for the 2020-21 period. Annual reports and accounts for central government departments for 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 are linked in the Central Government Department’s annual reports and accounts central landing page.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many fines have been issued by his Department to other Government departments in each year since 2010 for accountancy misconduct; and what the value of each fine was.
Answered by Simon Clarke
Government entities are required to produce annual reports and accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Manual, which adapts and interprets UK adopted International Financial Reporting Standards for the UK public sector context and sets out how to account for the use of resources. The annual reports and accounts are independently audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), supported by the National Audit Office (NAO), to offer assurance that the underlying transactions have appropriate parliamentary authority and that the accounts have been properly prepared and are free of material misstatements.
The C&AG may qualify his opinion should the findings of the audit suggest that there has not been appropriate parliamentary authority, that the accounts have not been properly prepared or that they are materially misstated. Such matters are drawn to the attention of the Public Accounts Committee which may call the Accounting Officer to account for the findings of the audit. HM Treasury does not issue fines or penalties over the quality of financial reporting as audited by the C&AG.
However, as set out in the Consolidated Budgeting Guidance, the budgeting framework allows for The Chief Secretary to consider further remedial action to incentivise good financial management and penalise actions that break certain rules or actions that fall below expectations. This may include asking the NAO to investigate the value for money that the department achieves, conducting a financial management review, reducing delegated authorities, removing access to Budget Exchange and/or making deductions to administration budgets. In all cases, the Treasury retains the right to apply whatever penalties are appropriate to incentivise good financial management and value for money. The Treasury does not hold a central record of the remedial actions that have historically been taken.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the financial impact on savers with a National Savings and Investments (NS&I) account after the reduction of the premium bond prize fund rate from 1.4 per cent to 1 per cent in December 2020.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
In setting interest rates for its products, NS&I must balance the interests of savers, taxpayers and the broader financial services sector.
With unprecedented Government funding requirements in 2020 due to Covid-19 pandemic measures and amid significant uncertainty and volatility in the retail savings market, NS&I experienced unprecedented upside pressures on its Net Financing. In the first six months of 2020-21, NS&I raised a total of £38.3 billion of Net Financing for the Government, so a decision was taken to reduce the Premium Bond rates to mitigate the risk of NS&I exceeding its £35 billion (+/- £5 billion) Net Financing target.
More broadly, it is important that Government takes into account taxpayer value considerations when making financing decisions. With gilt yields at low levels for the majority of the past year, the Government financing raised through NS&I has been more expensive than that raised through gilt issuance.
Asked by: John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will take steps to provide self-employed workers with 80 per cent of their profits prior to the start of the covid-19 outbreak in the fourth Self-Employed Income Support Scheme grant.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government recognises the importance of supporting the self-employed during the COVID-19 outbreak. The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) provides generous support to self-employed people who meet the eligibility criteria.
There will be a fourth SEISS grant covering February to April 2021. Further details on the SEISS, including the fourth grant, will be announced on 3 March.