|
Gavin
Brown, the Tory party's enterprise spokesman is asking
which public bodies established since May's election are
and are not VAT exempt. He asks whether any public bodies
have lost their VAT exemption, and what the VAT status
will be of any new bodies the government plans to create.
He
also asks the government "whether it has or intends
to carry out a review of public bodies to ensure that the
most favourable VAT position applies to each of
them."
It
emerged last week that the failure to secure VAT exemption
for the SPSA could cost £5m and seriously undermine the
potential of the new body to secure efficiency savings by
taking over responsibility for procurement from individual
police forces.
It
then became clear that the difficulty was flagged up to
senior civil servants two years ago but had not been
resolved with the tax authorities.
The
Herald then revealed that there was a similar difficulty
facing reform of the enterprise network because the local
enterprise companies which are being abolished are
VAT-exempt but Scottish Enterprise is not.
This
means, in effect, that the first £6m of efficiency
savings will not benefit the Scottish public spending
block.
Mr
Brown said: "In the light of the revelations in The
Herald, we are keen to ensure that the government is
taking a value-for-money approach.
"If
there are new organisations that are liable for VAT, then
we need to know sooner rather than later. For the
organisations that are paying VAT, can they take steps to
reduce VAT in any way?"
Source
:
The Herald -
Glasgow, Scotland, UK, dated 26/11/2007
|
