From the BBC:
The independent [report] has taken more than four years to complete and has cost the taxpayer about £16m.
All the coverage centres around the amount of money the management paid themselves. I am quite sure that this information could have been compiled by looking at the company's accounts, which they could have downloaded from Companies House for a few quid, which would have taken a couple of hours at most.
Seeing as the report was commissioned by the state, they could have gone one better and got hold of the company's pension scheme accounts and reports, and asked the directors for copies of their submitted employment pages to make sure it all ties in.
If the company's accounts do not explain how much the directors were paid, then the accounts were wrong and the directors could be given a slap on the wrist.
And that's it, basically. Hardly more than a day's work. I'm not sure how they managed to spend £16 million on it, which is half as much as the amount of money the directors paid themselves.
Friday 11 September 2009
"Rover bosses took £42m from firm"
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6 comments:
Mark,
Just proves the state can never do things the easy, or most cost effective, way
c'mon MW .. .. they did produce a nice 130 page (at £123k per page) report to go with the results .. .. ..
;)
Remember the real reason for the report was not to find out things as basic as FACTS, but to hide away another New Labour skeleton for long enough for everyone to have forgotten all about it. So job well done.
I expect Gordo & chums think £16m is a reasonable price to hide away their mistakes, especially as the taxpayer foots the bill.
S, that is a good summary.
A proper witch hunt takes an awful lot of padding.
Was the £16 million not spent on making sure that the gov't were excused from any blame? As Marks says, the directors' pay bit was a day's work, it was the whitewashing that took the other 1459.
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