Apparently ministers in the last government ignored accountants’ advice and overruled civil servants on spending in last few months in office.
The Lib Dem was aghast to find a one-sentence note left by his predecessor Liam Byrne saying: "I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left."
New Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws has accused the previous incumbents of making a raft of spending commitments despite being warned that they didn’t represent good value for money.
Can business owners imagine ignoring their accountant’s advice?
Going into government right now is akin to buying a business without being able to do any due diligence
It’s not the first time Labour has rode roughshod over the opinions of people with a superior knowledge of the subject at hand. Professor David Nutt, who was a member of the government's drugs advisory body, was sacked because his science-informed advice on cannabis reclassification that didn’t fit with the government’s populist attempts to keep the Daily Mail onside.
Then there were the WMDs that never were in Iraq. If they'd allowed the infamous dossier to be compiled solely by people with proper expertise and no agenda to pursue, history might have unfolded differently.
David Laws also lambasted Labour for paying out bonuses to three-quarters of all senior civil servants when the public finances were in a mess.
Going into government right now is akin to buying a business without being able to do any due diligence. It just shows how politics exists in a parallel world to business.
