Economics

Plans to end local authority reliance on Whitehall gather pace

 "Departmental efficiency review" will "help deliver a further £3.5 billion of savings from public spending" in 2019-20, says George Osborne

Chancellor pays tribute to "great public servant" – but SNP MPs jeer reference to "impartiality"

Live coverage and reaction as chancellor sets out the 2016 Budget, provided by our colleagues on PoliticsHome.com. CSW will be have the key Whitehall stories and reaction throughout the afternoon

Weaker growth and delayed sales of government assets expected to contribute to missed target

"The obvious efficiency savings have come through in the early period," says former head of the civil service – as chancellor prepares to outline £4bn of further spending cuts

Chancellor George Osborne picks "outstanding civil servant" for the top Treasury post

Spending watchdog questions the government’s claims on SME spending, and urges departments to make sure that initiatives to improve commercial capability do not undermine attempts to support small companies

"We fully appreciate that we will need to do better in the future," says DfE perm sec Chris Wormald, as switch to new accounting method delays parliamentary scrutiny of his department's finances

All Atos contracts worth more than £10m now under review after public accounts committee said the outsourcing firm had "acted solely with its own short term best interests in mind" on GP data service

Treasury committee chair Andrew Tryie warns of "lack of detailed explanation" of how HMRC's Making Tax Digital plans will play out

New Scottish agency will take on running of some payments from the DWP and will be “directly accountable” to Scottish ministers

Treasury perm sec Nick Macpherson says incoming HMRC chief exec Thompson will focus on "spending the money", while executive chair Edward Troup will oversee "strategic, policy and reputational leadership" of the tax authority

Eurosceptic employment minister Priti Patel escalates row over civil service impartiality in the run-up to the European Union referendum – but former cabinet secretary Lord O'Donnell says guidance issued by his successor Sir Jeremy Heywood last week is "pretty well right"

Senior Tory says Treasury should take the lead on official stats as Cabinet Office and UK Statistics Authority "have been asleep at the wheel"

"There are always ways to make government better, always ways to make sure that the taxes of people are better spent," says chancellor, against gloomy global economic backdrop

Pacac says government spends “considerable amounts of money” producing accounts even thought it "not clear that they are of any use to select committees, or to the public"

Lord Kerslake says it is “impossible to see why any fair person would want to remove this very basic service” - and vows to "sing the national anthem" if the government shelves plans to end automatic "check off" of fees from civil servants' pay packets

Thompson to succeed Lin Homer as chief executive, while tax specialist Edward Troup to chair the board's executive committee

MPs say closure of BIS Sheffield will result in "loss of vital expertise, shrink the civil service talent pool and reduce the variety of experiences that contribute to policy-making"

National Audit Office report says Cabinet Office's Fraud, Error and Debt team is "growing into a centre of expertise" – but warns departmental data is "often variable and not sufficient" to keep tabs on the true scale of public sector fraud

Treasury committee says 2014 intervention by then-chief secretary Danny Alexander “gives the appearance of a minister trying to lean on the OBR”

Public and Commercial Services union mulls industrial action over "unnecessary and inflammatory" compulsory redundancies – but HMRC says it has done "everything possible" to avert the situation

MP Meg Hillier tells CSW that public confidence in the way HM Revenue and Customs reaches settlement deals with large corporations will be an issue until there is greater transparency