Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Conservative). It was answered on Tuesday, 26 October 2010.

Public Expenditure: Value for Money

Question: My Lords, on the subject of value for money, can the Minister tell us what his or the Treasury’s estimate is of the difference in value for money obtained when an individual spends a pound according to their own judgment and when that pound is spent by Government when it has been taken from them in taxation?

Answer: My Lords, the assessment cannot be done exactly in that way—but when it comes to procuring large public projects and it costs more to cancel the project than it does to complete it, that is not the sort of behaviour that most people would indulge in when spending their own money. I absolutely take my noble friend’s point that there is far too much waste in procurement in government expenditure, inherited from the previous Government, and that is not the sort of thing that any of us would do when managing our own budgets.

Secondary information