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So, a total of £14.2m was spent on the Scottish government procurement cards over the near three-year period from September 2019, around £4.7 million per year.
In the first half of 2011/2012, UK Central Government civil servants spent £149 million in the same manner.
In 2010/2011, the first year of the Con/Lib coalition to impose austerity, resulting in disabled suicides and laying the ground for thousands to die in the pandemic, the MoD staff spent £237 million using government credit cards.
From the Guardian in 2012:
An examination of transactions using government procurement cards in five ministries has uncovered evidence of unauthorised transactions, the government’s official auditor says.
One card-holding mandarin from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is at the centre of criminal proceedings, while three instances of suspected fraud have been identified in the Department of Health, the report discloses.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/20/civil-servants-accused-credit-card
In 2019:
AN ACCOUNTANT who scammed the Ministry of Defence out of more than £100,000 to pay off mounting debts has been jailed.
Damian Leach defrauded the MoD for more than three years through a ‘sophisticated and sustained’ operation at St George’s Barracks, Bicester.
The ex-regimental accountant covered his tracks so successfully that even his family were initially oblivious to his actions, enabling Leach to live a ‘double life’.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17880887.damian-leach-jailed-sustained-fraud-mod-bicester/
The Labour Shadow Minister for Defence, Dame Nia Rhiannon Griffith DBE, was unavailable for comment.
Let me know if you hear of any police tents on the Scottish Finance Secretary’s front lawn. That would have seemed a crazy notion until recently.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/mar/20/civil-servants-accused-credit-card
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Another day and another attack on devolution.
How the Labour run, Welsh government procurement cards were spent can be downloaded here
https://www.gov.wales/welsh-government-procurement-card-spend-data
Presumably, there will be similar information available for UK government procurement cards?
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Thanks
Will have a look
John
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Context. The very thing we are not allowed according to unionists. But how are we supposed to know what’s acceptable and what’s not if we don’t have something to measure against?
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Yes, that is the point – CONTEXT. It is what enables us to make comparisons and then look at the circumstances, if the comparisons indicate significant differences, when things might be thought to be similar.
This is important in auditing and evaluating.
However, it is misused to enable BLAMING, and blaming becomes an end in itself and one which has very little purpose.
The fallacious response to proving context for the purpose of comparing is to call it ‘whataboutery’, as if that refutes the argument.
Philosophy enables us to identify fallacies and to get closer to the truth, insofar as it exists. However, some politicians and journalists wilfully deploy fallacies as part of their specious arguments.
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Westminster costs £Billions to maintain. The Scottish Gov is far cheaper to run. Scotland still has to pay for Westminster. Offices in the Mall and higher Gov salaries.
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