Permanent secretaries at all Whitehall departments have been ordered to carry out a rapid review of spending on Government procurement cards, including checks on whether everyone who has a card needs one, assessments of approval processes, and disciplinary action when rules have found to be broken.
Ms Little added: “I expect that we will find that ultimately fewer cards should be issued than at present, with more spend routed through central procurement processes; and that once changes have been made we will have higher levels of transparency over our expenditure, and greater confidence that any expenditure through these routes is appropriate.”.
She added: “Other areas of departmental responsibility include how you apply the categories of spend as defined by card providers… for which cards can be used and the thresholds for spend set before further controls are applied, and the process of senior approval for categories of higher risk expenditure.
Ms Little said that while it is the responsibility of individual departments “to control and police” the use of cards, she added: “We will keep expenditure through these routes under close review and will consider reviewing central policy on approved category groups if it should prove necessary.”.
In a letter seen by the PA news agency to all permanent secretaries from Catherine Little, Civil Service chief operating officer and Cabinet Office permanent secretary, she warned that “public trust in Government is hard won and easily lost, and our fiduciary duty in managing taxpayers’ money is a core element of this trust”.
