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From The Times
December 12, 2006

Home Office fails sums

Richard Ford, Home Correspondent
Poor record-keeping at the Home Office means no one knows how many people are employed by the department, according to a government watchdog report published yesterday.

The department has also run up an “overdraft” of £246 million with the Office of the Paymaster General and is still struggling to get a grip on its finances.

It is unable to reconcile the amounts of money owing to suppliers with the records of suppliers themselves and there are weaknesses in matching purchasing orders with invoices. For the second year running Sir John Bourn, the Comptroller and Auditor-General, is critical of financial management at the Home Office.

He has given only qualified approval to the annual accounts of the department after last year failing to approve them at all because of the flawed financial records. Sir John said yesterday that the department had worked hard to address many of the problems.

Home Office sources said last night that they had showed the total number of people employed by the department was 80,000, including 20,000 at the core.

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