Download Free Fourteenth Report From The Public Accounts Committee Referring To Financial Management Of The Hospitals Department Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Fourteenth Report From The Public Accounts Committee Referring To Financial Management Of The Hospitals Department and write the review.

The reports published as HC 631 (ISBN 9780215555922); HC 632 (9780215555939); HC 574 (9780215556042); HC 552 (9780215556066); HC 502 (9780215556165)
The Ministry of Justice delivers its services through a wide range of arm's length bodies and agencies, including the courts, prisons and probation services. The Ministry's Spending Review settlement requires a 23% reduction to its resource budget over the next four years. The Ministry has a range of financial management processes in place but lacks a consistent approach across its business, and to date it has not integrated financial management into its policy and operational workings. The Ministry needs to implement its Spending Review settlement on the basis of a full understanding of the cost and value of its services, so that financial cuts are best targeted to minimise the impact on frontline services. The Ministry and its arm's length bodies currently lack the detailed information they would need to do this. A comprehensive understanding of the costs and value of services must be a priority. For its arm's length bodies, having a clear direction, the details of which are formally agreed by both parties, is essential as is strong leadership and a shared sense of purpose. The Ministry now needs to oversee the performance of its arm's length bodies, such as framework documents, operational reviews, and accountability meetings. Fee recovery and fines collection have to be priority areas for improvement and the need to improve recovery rates where it does not currently recover the full cost of services provided. On fines collection, there was little sign of the sustained improvement promised when the Committee last took evidence in 2006.
The best available estimates suggest that annually there are at least 300,000 cases of hospital acquired infection, causing 5,000 deaths and costing the NHS £1 billion. This report follows on from a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General ( HC 876 2003-04, ISBN 0102929157) and examines the progress made by the Department of Health and NHS trusts in reducing the risks. It looks at three main areas: the extent and impact of hospital acquired infection; improving knowledge of and compliance with good infection control practice; improving infection control systems and management processes. The conclusion is that progress has been patchy, with a lack of urgency on several key issues such as ward cleanliness and hand hygiene. Progress has also been hampered by a lack of data, a national mandatory surveillance programme and evidence of the effectiveness of different intervention strategies
This report summarises the key areas of the Committee's work over the past five years. It draws out the areas where progress has been made and where their successors might wish to press in future. The Committee has assiduously followed the taxpayer's pound wherever it was spent. Since 2010 they held 276 evidence sessions and published 244 unanimous reports to hold government to account for its performance. 88% of their recommendations were accepted by departments. In many cases they successfully secured substantial changes, for example with the once secret tax avoidance industry. They secured consensus from government and from industry that private providers of public services do have a duty of care to the taxpayer, and in pushing the protection of whistleblowers further up the agenda of all government departments. By drawing attention to mistakes in the Department for Transport's procurement of the West Coast Mainline, more recent procurements for Crossrail, Thameslink and Intercity Express have all benefited from more expert advice and a more appropriate level of challenge from senior staff. After discovery in 2012-13 that 63% of calls to government call centres were to higher rate telephone numbers, the Government accepted our recommendation that telephone lines serving vulnerable and low income groups never be charged above the geographic rate and that 03 numbers should be available for all government telephone lines. They also secured a commitment to close large mental health hospitals.
In May 2009 the Highways Agency signed a 30 year private finance contract for widening two sections of the M25 motorway, including the Dartford Crossing, and maintaining the entire 125 mile length of the road, and 125 miles of connecting roads and motorways. The Committee makes eight points in conclusion of its review of the contract: they do not agree that the PFI contract represents value for money; the £80 million spent on consultants over six years for this project was excessive; the Agency lacks the capacity to assess whether its advisers are providing value for money; the Agency significantly over-estimated the market rate for operation and maintenance; the invitation to tender was too narrowly drawn as it excluded hard should running as a solution for traffic congestion; the Agency persisted with its preferred solution of widening the M25 because of the time taken to trial hard shoulder running; the Agency appeared to be committed to a single procurement route & justified a widening deal through a flawed and biased cost estimation; evidence could not be taken from the Senior Responsible Owner of the project as he had left the Agency and was employed by one of the project's major contractors and investors. Ultimately the Committee believe that the project was mishandled at a potential extra cost to the taxpayer of around £1 billion