Department For Environment Food And Rural Affairs Annual Report And Accounts 2010 11

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs annual report and Accounts 2010-11 : (for the year ended 31 March 2011)

Print and web pdfs are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications Web ISBN=9781474146265

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was created in June 2001, by the merger of a number of government departments. It co-ordinates and implements policies relating to sustainable development, food and farming, air, water, land and rural communities. This is the annual report of the Select Committee set up to oversee the work of DEFRA and its associated bodies during the 2002. The report notes that the Committee's ability to carry out financial oversight of DEFRA was undermined by the way in which financial data was set out in the Department's 2002 annual report (Cm. 5422, ISBN 0101542224). It recommends that future annual reports should include an analysis of DEFRA's performance against each of its Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets.

In the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review the Coalition Government announced its decision to achieve the internationally agreed target of providing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income as ODA from 2013. This will involve spending an additional 2.5 billion pounds in 2013-14 to make the total DFID budget 11.3 billion pounds in that year. There will be a large increase in spending on fragile and conflict affected states and it will be difficult to ensure that every pound is well spent in such war-torn environments. When scrutinising DFID's accounts the MPs were also surprised to discover that the Pope's visit was paid for in part by money supposed to be for overseas development aid (ODA). The Committee expects a response from the Government as to what the £1.85 million, transferred to the Foreign Office for the papal visit, was spent on and an explanation as to how this was ODA compliant. The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announced reductions in DFID's running costs to 2% of the total budget. If achieved, this would make DFID the most cost-efficient development organisation in the world.This is to be achieved by a large reduction in back office administration costs (which excludes front-line staff) of £34 million over the CSR period. The International Development Committee supports the proposals to make savings in back office staff, but the MPs are warning that Ministers must ensure that reduced administration budgets do not affect the ability to deliver aid programmes on the ground. While declining as a share of total costs, running costs will increase in real terms over the next four years because the total budget will rise so much.

Print and web pdfs are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications Web ISBN=9781474134422

The Stationery Office annual catalogue 2011 provides a comprehensive source of bibliographic information on over 4900 Parliamentary, statutory and official publications - from the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and many government departments and agencies - which were issued in 2011.

Twelfth report of Session 2010-11 : Documents considered by the Committee on 15 December 2010, including the following recommendations for debate, Audit policy; Energy 2010; European Citizens' initiative; EU budget review; financial management, report, to