Tri-Service

MoD Wrote Off £127m In "Fruitless Spending" In Last Decade

It's emerged that the Ministry of Defence wrote off £103 million on Chinook military helicopters which did not meet operational requirements in 2010/11.

£24.4m was also incurred for cancelled military flying tuition in the same year.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said:

“The MOD always strives to secure value for money for the taxpayer and there are robust processes in place to cut out inefficiencies wherever possible.”

The sums were revealed in new figures showing that government departments have written off £600m of taxpayers' money as "fruitless spending" over the past decade.

Other departments saw losses of £89.3m on compensation to contractors after the Flexible New Deal was scrapped in the same year, the first under the newly-elected coalition government.

Other figures include £27m incurred in relation to an office move for the Communities Department in 2013/14, £11.8m after the closure of a TV channel for teachers in 2012/13 and £10.4m for an embassy in Syrian capital Damascus which was never built.

An embassy in Damascus was never built, but cost £10.4m

But many smaller sums were also classified as "fruitless" because they resulted in nothing being received in return.

They ranged from subscriptions for libraries and magazines which subsequently folded, leases on empty buildings to a £1.7m payment for unused office furniture.

Some £300,000 was lost when Somali jihadist movement Al Shabaab seized five trucks carrying UK-funded aid.

The £600m total was calculated by the Scottish National Party from Freedom of Information requests and annual departmental accounts.

SNP MSP Colin Beattie, who sits on Holyrood's Public Audit Committee, said:

"This is an eye-watering amount of waste by Whitehall departments and it's even more concerning when you consider £600m is just the tip of the iceberg."

"While ordinary families are being hammered by Tory austerity and told to tighten their belts, it's absolutely shameful that the UK Government has been playing fast and loose with hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.

"Even worse, it seems as though some departments of this Tory government have something to hide - battening down the hatches and refusing to come clean about their misspending sprees. In the interests of democracy and accountability it's important that they are honest and transparent about frittering away public cash.

"It's one thing for governments to make mistakes, but this reveals a much deeper rooted problem - a systemic culture of waste in Whitehall and an absolute scandal in the UK's public finances."

"This Tory government has many questions to answer and taxpayers have a right to know their money isn't being squandered."

A UK Government spokesperson said:

"This government saved the taxpayer £3.3 billion during the last financial year by disposing of surplus property and reforming the way we work, building on total savings of £52bn during the last Parliament."

"By contrast the SNP have wasted almost £1bn on bungled IT projects and cost overruns since they came to power - and it is Scottish schools, hospitals and public services that are suffering as a result."