Tom Watson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, 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.

Mr Philip Dunne

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has been able to distinguish between duplicate payments and other types of overpayment made to suppliers from financial year 2013-14. In that year, the total value of duplicate payments identified was £4.1 million, 100% of which has been recovered. Over the first quarter of 2014-15, we have identified duplicate payments to the value of £0.5 million of which 60% has so far been recovered. Prior to 2013-14 we were unable to distinguish duplicate supplier payments from other types of overpayments. However all overpayments have been recovered since 2010.

The MOD processes over four million invoices a year totalling some £26 billion. We review our bill payment processes and controls periodically to ensure that we achieve the required high standards of performance and governance and seek to recover overpayments made to suppliers as quickly as possible.