Tom Watson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Watson on 2014-07-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the value is of duplicate supplier payments identified by his Department since 2010; and what proportion of such payments have since been recovered in each of the last two financial years.

Claire Perry

In 2011, £28,861 of duplicate supplier payments were identified by the Department and its agencies, and were all recovered. No duplicate payments have been identified in subsequent years.

In accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines, the Department commissioned a spend recovery audit in 2010. This reported that:

The quantity of payment errors identified during our review (0.0002%) highlighted that the internal controls used by DfT have been effective in limiting supplier overpayments. Overall the accounts payable function is well managed and controlled.

In view of this advice, the DfT decided that formal appraisal of potential duplicate payments, either internal or external, did not represent a good use of public money for the years after 2011.