Times: £23bn lost on state projects

Every household in Britain is paying £900 a year to fund overrunning government projects, according to figures from the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

It claimed that Labour has squandered £23billion of taxpayers’ money by failing to control the costs of its flagship schemes. Among the projects cited by the alliance are the Eurofighter military aircraft, the 2012 Olympics and a super computer for the NHS.

The campaign group investigated the official budgets of 305 government schemes. Researchers compared the initial estimate with the final cost or latest estimate. They discovered that the average overrun was 34 per cent.

The biggest drain on the public purse was the installation of the Department of Health’s computer system designed to hold NHS patient records. The original cost was £2.3 billion but the latest estimate is £12.4billion.

The worst departments for overruns were the Department of Health and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Matthew Sinclair, policy analyst at the alliance, said: “These figures expose a consistent pattern of poor project management.”