Tom Watson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Northern Ireland Office

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

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

Dr Andrew Murrison

My Department does not hold records of duplicate supplier payments. The system currently operating in the Northern Ireland Office registers invoice numbers and will not allow two invoices with the same reference number to be paid. To manually search through the invoices received and paid from 2010 to date would incur disproportionate cost.