Government Tax Profession

Public pending watchdog finds delays in the justice system because of “basic avoidable mistakes” and says reform alone will not tackle all “causes of inefficiency"

Cabinet Office-commissioned review of FOI rejects charging for requests, as minister Matt Hancock says government will "not make any legal changes" to the transparency act

Consultation outlines proposals to let government share data to improve services, reduce fraud, and create timely research and statistics

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

Interviews for the top Treasury job get going this week – as Macpherson jokes process could "go into a black hole for many months"

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

New appointments in the civil service, UK politics, and public affairs, via our colleagues on Dods People

"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"

Cabinet office minister Matt Hancock says the ONS - which moved out of London in the mid-2000s - will stay in Newport to to act as a "big data hub" in the region

793-page investigation into response to Savile's serial offending cites warnings from former cabinet secretary Lord Butler over plans to award TV and radio star a knighthood

£23.2m contract to develop a new generation of GPS tags scrapped because it has proved “too challenging”. The MoJ tells CSW it still expects to see benefits of spending to date on the deal

Sharing of staff and ideas between Holyrood and Westminster still hindered by "a bit of a perception" it will require upheaval for civil servants, says Scotland's top official - as she stresses "need to recognise each others’ evolving roles"

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

Public Accounts Committee criticises lack of transparency over HM Revenue and Customs' £130m, ten-year tax deal with Google – but says department has taken "a step in the right direction" in pledging reform of penalty regime

Peter Wilkinson, director of rail passenger services at the DfT, comes under fire after reportedly telling commuters they had "got to break" industrial action over changes to train drivers' terms

Pilling – who served at the Prison Service, Department of Health, and in the top job at the NIO – has been drafted in to check up on the post-Leveson press regulator set up by industry

Overall block grant will be at least as high as it would have been under the Barnett Formula – while Scottish government gets extra borrowing powers

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"

After better-than-expected Spending Review settlement, Foreign Office perm sec says new review to make FCO "more flexible" will not be ignored

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

New report by the public spending watchdog finds "major concerns about how accountability of taxpayers' money is exercised"

New appointments in the civil service, UK politics, and public affairs, via our colleagues on Dods People

Powerful Economic and Domestic Secretariat to get a new deputy director to help departments focus on longer-term trends and the impact of technology