THE government has “no evidence” that spending hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on major projects is producing the desired results, according to a panel of MPs.

The Commons public accounts committee said today that government activity is not being evaluated “robustly or at all” and that it does not know what works to improve outcomes.

It said that the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit found in December 2019 that only 8 per cent of the £432 billion spent on major projects had “robust” impact evaluation plans in place, while 64 per cent had no evaluation arrangements.

The committee has also demanded greater transparency on project spending, saying: “Transparency is critical for the public to understand the evidence behind decisions and how money is being spent [and] also allows departments to learn lessons from past projects and from each other.

“Ministers have the final say on whether evaluations should be published, and some parts of government are reluctant to publish their evaluations.”

The committee recommended that the Treasury work with the Cabinet Office to publish a tracker with details of evaluations, including their planned publication date, and explanations from departments where publication is delayed or withheld.

Dame Meg Hillier, who chairs the public accounts committee, said: “Government spends hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on major projects with no evidence what is working or idea what to do when it isn’t.

“The Home Office describes its Rwanda refugee policy as ‘experimental and novel’ — so much that the Permanent Secretary sought a direction from the minister to spend the money required, because it could not be shown that the programme will deliver its objectives with value for taxpayers’ money.

“Now we are told that the terms of the agreement with the Rwandan government may trump transparency to the UK taxpayer.

“That is absolutely unacceptable. Facing intertwined crises in our environment, energy supply and cost of living, every penny counts.

“Government must show its cards and prove it is delivering or stop a programme quickly when it doesn’t deliver, not gamble away taxpayers’ money.”

A government spokesperson said: “Evaluation is crucial to informing spending decisions.

“The government created the Evaluation Task Force to bolster its evaluation capability and the Treasury made evaluation a key part of the 2020 and 2021 spending reviews.

“The Procurement Bill will build on this work, requiring transparency publications on contract performance and allowing public-sector organisations to ban underperforming suppliers from bidding for new contracts.”