20
Watchdog criticises payment of Boris Johnson’s £265,000 Partygate legal bill
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
20 points (100.0% liked)
United Kingdom
4108 readers
248 users here now
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Cabinet Office failed to follow proper processes when it allowed taxpayers’ money to be used to fund Boris Johnson’s Partygate legal bills, the UK’s public spending watchdog has said.
In a report that will cause embarrassment inside the Cabinet Office, Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said its audit team had exerted “significant effort” to investigate whether the spending was “a legitimate use of public money”.
It was criticised at the time by some, including the Labour party, which said that given Johnson should have paid the bill himself given he was making millions from his post-Downing Street career.
The then-permanent secretary in No 10, who was not named in the report but is understood to be Samantha Jones, failed to follow proper processes when the initial contract for £129,000 was awarded last August, said the NAO.
A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said: “The government has been consistently clear that the contract award followed the proper procurement process.”
Whitehall sources pointed to the Treasury agreeing the spending on Johnson’s legal fees was “regular” as further evidence all the correct processes were followed.
The original article contains 519 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!