NAO investigation?
Saturday, November 17th, 2007Added to the FT last night:
The National Audit Office was poised on Friday night to investigate the hugely scaled-back programme to buy £700m worth of private-sector care for NHS patients after it emerged ministers had spent more than £100m on the procurement.
The cost of the procurement so far is £84m, the Department of Health admitted on Friday. In addition, it has already paid £8.4m in compensation to private health companies for schemes cancelled at the last minute, ahead of this week’s announcement.
Industry estimates are that the department will have to pay at least another £20m, maybe much more, for the latest round of scrapped deals.
The NAO, the spending watchdog, said it was “very conscious of parliamentary interest” in the issue, and that it was at the “early stages of preliminary inquiries”.
I guess that we will be seeing more about this in the coming weeks.
Loading ...
