Member

The ultimate absurdity of that approach came when we were working with, we hoped, HMRC to look at recovering debt more effectively. We developed a scheme where some outside bodies would collect debt on behalf of HMRC and be paid a commission on what they recovered. We were told that the Treasury would not allow that to happen because all the money that they recovered from debtors was AME, so-called annual managed expenditure, but the commission that would be paid to them would be DEL, a delegated expenditure limit, so it was a different kind of money, even though the money that got paid to the entities recovering money was actually taken out of the money that was being brought in. It took months to overcome this ludicrous approach in the Treasury, which is far too deep-seated and which is the enemy of looking after public funds effectively.